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By Anthony De Franco  March 7, 2010, at 3:39 pm  Stock Up
- Joseph Benavidez – I did not see that one coming whatsoever. Miguel Torres was the class of the division for so long that no one could have ever guess that he would lose to someone like Benavidez. He had the reach advantage, the experience advantage, and had been improving his striking with Mark DellaGrotte. However, Benavidez charged ahead and stifled just about any offense that the mullet could muster and dominated Torres from bell to bell. We can only assume that a rematch with Dominick Cruz is on the docket.
- Dominick Cruz – Speaking of the new banntamweight champ, Cruz impressive dispatched of Brian Bowles using a jumpy, movement based style that left me confused. You’ll have to excuse me if I don’t beleive that it will work against someone who is an equal athlete to him, but for the moment he is the champ. Expect the aforementioned rematch sooner than later.
- Scott Jorgensen – How about that guillotine? He lifted Chad George up off the ground and than let him go and left him laying on the floor. With that performace, Jorgensen enters the top five at 145 and will likely need just one more win before getting his title shot.
Stock Down
- Miguel Angel Torres – Things are looking grim for the former champ. There was a time where Miguel was at the bottom of the pound-for-pound top 10. Now, he is coming off two consecutive losses and has seemingly been passed by three separate fighters at 135. Will he ever gt back to being dominant? It’s not looking good.
- Jens Pulver – It seems like I’ve wrote this column six times now. Pulver remains a legend of the sport, but simply can’t cut it anymore. He came out with a terrible gameplan. He knew that Javier Vasquez wanted to take him down, but instead of concentrating on his sprawl, he was throwing kicks. It didn’t make much sense. Now a loser of 9-of-13, you’d have to assume that he is done as a fighter and will concentrate on coaching.
- The WEC – With the move to pay-per-view coming, the best thing that could have happened to the WEC was the fighters that already have name recognition winning. Guys like Torres and Brian Bowles winning was an important step towards creating stars that can headline money making cards that aren’t named Urijah Faber. However, they now have to start all over again with Cruz and Benavidez. Not good.
By Jason Comack January 6, 2010, at 3:42 pm At 6-0 I was drinking the Josh McDaniels kool aid.
Of course 10 weeks in the NFL can often feel like an eternity and boy has a lot changed in 10 weeks.
Like everyone else who owns a sports website I couldn’t comprehend any of the Broncos off-season moves. They fired Shanahan abruptly, owing him 14 million, to hire a blue eyed baby face coach to turn things around. Three years ago no one questions this move. Three years ago Charlie Weiss isn’t a pariah in South Bend, Eric Mangini is still the “Man-genius” and Romeo Crennel hasn’t failed so famously McDaniels was suppose to be different. After all he was the guy that developed Brady was the selling point, that was suppose to set Josh apart. So what happens? McDaniels arrives on the scene, cleans out the coaching staff, feuds with his star QB and diva WR. McDaniels put the pressure on himself. Then 6-0 happened. The Patriot game happened. The Marshall hug happened. Denver had found their new Golden Boy. I went on 4th Down and compared Josh McDaniels to Bill Walsh (gulp.).
So what went wrong?
Simply put McDaniels made every mistake that his predecessors made;
- Step 1: Alienate Players. Marshall, Scheffler and Cutler. Shaun Rogers, Cribbs, Edwards.
- Step 2: Arrogance With The Media. Check.
- Step 3: A questionable draft track record. Moreno, Smith, Ayers, Quinn. Clemens, Gholston, Schlegel.
- Step 4: Bring In Your guys. Gaffney, Leach. Barton, Coleman, Elam.
Ultimately Step 3 and 4 lead to the Broncos decline. McDaniels inherited a roster with star pieces and little depth and did his best to entirely turn it over. Only problem is he got absolutely no production from any of his draft picks and immediately cut back the playing time of the established starters. He choose “his guys” over guys that were better players. Why do you think Eddie Royal, coming of a 90 catch season, didn’t play. Why do you think Moreno, who struggled mightily played while Peyton Hillis never even got a look. Scheme and talent can make up for a lot in this league but your players have to buy in. Clearly there was a rift between the Shannahan hold overs and the McDaniels faithful. There’s no other explanation for a team failing to show up against two awful teams when it mattered the most.
Magini had the same problems in NY. He played his guys, his scheme, feuded with Farve and it got him fired. He started his Cleavland stint the same way. He exiled Rogers on Day 1, Jamal Lewis decided to retire, James Davis got hurt in “non contact practice injury” and players complained to the union about long bus rides. He painted over a mural of Jim Brown. It seemed he had learned nothing. He brought in his guys even though they failed him in NY. Then something changed. The last 4 games of the season the Browns didn’t roll over and die. They fought to save Mangini’s job and it culminated in a win streak and a Gatorade bath for the much maligned coach.
This is exactly why Cleveland hired Mangini. Remember this is the same franchise that let Belichick get away. Remember the circumstances of his firing? He exiled Kosar tried to install his guys and his system and the fans and media turned on him. It wasn’t his X’s and O’s that got him canned. He went to New England learned the error of his ways and of course the rest is history.
McDaniels undoing will never be about football knowledge it’ll be in the way they handle their football knowledge. McDaneils will know more about football then I can learn in three lifetimes but that skill alone can only take you so far.
By Anthony De Franco January 5, 2010, at 12:44 am It’s time for another installment in one of your favorite series on the site: Gettin Paid. Let’s take a look at what the wonderful fighters of the UFC made this past weekend:
MAIN EVENT FIGHTERS
Rashad Evans $375,000 (includes $175,000 win bonus) def. Thiago Silva $55,000
Paul Daley $34,200 (includes $18,000 win bonus) def. Dustin Hazelett $19,800
*Daley was fined 10 percent of his purse for missing weight, which was given to Hazelett. The fine is reflected in the above numbers.
MAIN CARD FIGHTERS
Sam Stout $24,000 (includes $12,000 win bonus) def. Joe Lauzon: $12,000
Jim Miller $30,000 (includes $15,000 win bonus) def. Duane “Bang” Ludwig $12,000
Junior Dos Santos $60,000 (includes $30,000 win bonus) def. Gilbert Yvel $30,000
PRELIMINARY CARD FIGHTERS
Martin Kampmann $46,000 (includes $23,000 win bonus) def. Jacob Volkmann: $6,000
Cole Miller $24,000 (includes $12,000 win bonus) def. Dan Lauzon $15,000
Mark Munoz $32,000 (includes 16,000 win bonus) def. Ryan Jensen $6,000
Jake Ellenberger $20,000 (includes $10,000 win bonus) def. Mike Pyle $17,000
Rafaello Oliveira $20,000 (includes $10,000 win bonus) def. John Gunderson $5,000
UFC 108 DISCLOSED FIGHTER PAYROLL: $843,000
UFC 108 AWARDS & BONUSES
(Each fighter was awarded $50,000 per award, which is in addition to his disclosed salary.)
Fight of the Night:
-Sam Stout and Joe Lauzon
Knockout of the Night:
-Paul Daley
Submission of the Night:
-Cole Miller
First thing is first: Damn. Rashad is well paid. He is one of the top draws in the UFC, and while the people hated him earlier in his career, they seemed to warm up to him after his Ultimate Fighter coaching stint. Then again, there were chants of Silva Saturday night.
Besides that, there isn’t a whole lot that really stands out on this one. Cole Miller gets paid a decent amount, but and Mark Munoz is also well paid for a guy that not that many people know that much about.
By Matt Soldano December 29, 2009, at 1:43 pm As a reader of 3rd String Safety you know that all of us are in some way affiliated with WCWPSports, telling you why you should not be surprised if Tampa Bay drops a 40 burger on the Jets or why Spags took the Rams job just to get his coaching experience for when Coughlin leaves, or even the simpler things like how to pronounce Oshmigo Atogwe?
No matter the reason you tune in, two members of the 3rd String Family, Brandon Steinberger and myself, have provided you with another incentive to check us out. I present to you, College Basketball 2Nite: The Late Game Situation. We want you, our loyal readers, to help track a segment that Stein and I have created called The Late Game Situation Fantasy Shots (SHOTS! SHOTS! SHOTS! Ah Damnit, it doesn’t have the same effect when written, just watch the video on YouTube.)
Anyways this is what the segment consists of. Each week, Stein and I pick 5 players (3 guards, 2 forwards). The players can only be chosen once throughout the season and you select one of their games throughout the week (Sat-Thu) to which they will play. We accumulate their stats for the selected game and see at the week’s end which team performed at a higher level. The statistics are your basics: Points, Rebounds, Assists, Steals and Blocks. Finally, we choose two teams to win one game during the week. The team can only be chosen once and each game is considered to be another category. This is our 4th week of fantasy shots and I am off to an ass-kicking 3-0 start.
Without further ado, here are the picks for Week 4:
Stein’s Team:
G – Xavier Henry, Kansas (17.2 ppg 4 asts) 12/29 vs. Belmont
G – Ronald Moore, Siena (8.5 ppg 8.4 asts) 12/31 vs. St. Peter’s
G – Damion James, Texas (17 ppg 10 reb) 12/29 vs. Gardner Webb
F – Kyle Singler, Duke (15.7 ppg 7 reb) 12/29 vs. Long Beach St.
F – Al-Farouq Aminu, Wake Forest 12/28 (23 pts, 17 reb, 6 blks)
Xavier over LSU (12/29)
Mississippi over Jacksonville St. (12/29)
Soldano’s Team:
G – Rotnei Clarke, Arkansas (20 ppg 3 reb) 12/30 vs. Baylor
G – D.J. Kennedy, St. Johns (16.7 ppg 6 reb) 12/31 vs. Georgetown
G – Dominique Jones, South Florida (18.6 ppg, 6 reb) 12/30 vs. Louisville
F – Wesley Johnson, Syracuse (16.8 ppg 8 reb) 12/29 vs. Seton Hall
F – Storm Warren, LSU (14 ppg 10.7 reb) 12/29 vs. Xavier
UCLA over Delaware State (66-49) 12/27
Oklahoma State over Pacific (12/29)
Make sure you listen to College Basketball 2Nite: The Late Game Situation every Friday night at 11 PM (EST) on WCWPSports.
By Anthony De Franco December 1, 2009, at 8:50 pm What Steve Spagnuolo built in his two years as New York Giants defensive coordinator was more than just a Super Bowl caliber defense. He built a culture that an entire football team fed off of. It was a feeling of being untouchable for the fans.
It was a mantra that was simple. On almost every play, someone that wasn’t a defensive lineman was coming on a blitz. The goal was to get someone, anyone turned loose to hit the quarterback. If it was the blitzer, that was fantastic. However, more often than not, the blitzer was a distraction. His job was to simply present a fifth body for the offensive line to block. That created one-on-one opportunities for the ultra-talented Giants defense line to rattle quarterbacks into submission.
Now, it wasn’t a perfect system. The defense was willing to present to opportunities for the offense they faced to make big plays. Blitzing meant a ton of man-to-man coverage that wasn’t always air tight. Long passes were made, but there was a feeling of invincibility. So, the other team scored. So what? The next time the defense went out there, they would bring the noise once again, and the opposing quarterback would be forced to move heaven and earth to get his team down the field again.
Now, that feeling is gone. In it’s place is a lot of what Giants fans felt during the Tim Lewis era. A feeling that the offense is going to convert every single third down, regardless of length. A feeling of pain every time a defensive linemen drops into coverage. A feeling of helplessness. A team with an offense completely capable of winning is destroyed by the unit that has mean the trademark of the team for nearly fifty years.
Here’s the worst part of it all: New coordinator Bill Sheridan promised the fans that nothing was going to change whatsoever. The blitzing would still be present. Pressure would be the key to the defenses success. That’s why everyone blamed the faulty knees of the three of the four linemen when things started going wrong. They said that they couldn’t win the one-on-one matchups because they were hurt.
In reality, the problem is that there is no one-on-one matchups anymore. That’s because there are no blitzes. At least, not nearly as frequently. What happened almost every play last year happened only roughly 20 percent of the time in both the second half of the Falcons game, and the embarrassing loss to Denver in Thanksgiving.
Sheridan has changed the defense completely. Gone is the risky, but physical man-to-man coverage. In it’s place is soft zones with receivers running through the secondary unimpeded. Gone is the creativity, and with it has gone all the success that the team has enjoyed throughout the Spags era.
While they are 6-5, and certainly still alive in the playoff race, there is a palpable feeling of disappointment in the air in Giant-land. While the whole team has taken a step backwards, there is no doubt that the defense is the source of most frustration. With all the same players, plus high priced additions like Chris Canty and Michael Boley, this defense should be amongst the league’s best.
If you tell yourself that coaching isn’t the problem, than you’re lying to yourself.
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