Festering Thoughts...

I have had a bit of time to reflect on the developments of Saturday a bit more thoroughly and I have for the time being, managed to push the nightmare that is the labrum procedure to the back of the line in what is becoming a laundry list of problems with that game. I sat thinking about this while reading Simmons’ a few minutes ago. He had a mailbag day, and the participants were giving out various fantasy awards for the players that most often ruined their game of Dungeon’s and Dragons, for adults of course. Yep, people complaining about their various fantasy football teams because someone that is actually in the NFL, didn’t have an exemplary day or year or worse suffered an injury, usually the season ending kind. These ‘GM’s’ actually whined and cried to Bill Simmons about it. Sorry, but I can rip these guys for about two days, I’ll move on. One guy wanted to give Tomlinson an award, the “Thurman Thomas Super Bowl Killer Award”. Which by definition is the award that goes to, “The player to whom without there would be no way your fantasy team would get to the Super Bowl, only to watch him kill you once you’re there.” Needless to say that the guy that wrote this is an absolute hose that needs to get out from in front of his computer a bit more than one weekend a month. He went on to mention that Tomlinson killed not one but two of his fantasy teams at the end of this season. Yep, this is a disease that most twelve year olds outgrew when their parents kicked them in the ass and sent them outside, not these guys, not one but two fantasy teams. Both with Tomlinson. Sorry I’m doing it again. Here is my question, as I know you are wondering if this is going anywhere. Why was Tomlinson so bad in the last quarter of the season, was it the injury that occurred in the Raider game? Was he hurt? What was going on?

How hurt was Tomlinson? He was ineffective the last four games of the season. Didn’t get over a hundred yards, didn’t score a touchdown until Saturday. We sure were throwing the ball a lot. 53 times against the Dolphins, 33 against the Colts, a week that found the Burner in the game with it on the line, not #21. 33 against the Chiefers in the rain. He didn’t get a lot of carries, he wasn’t scoring, he was relatively ineffective. How hurt was he? Was this more serious than we thought?

So we move to Saturday, against the Donkeys. Tomlinson and Brees are in the starting lineup. The boys want to get Marty his tenth win so he can hang his golf hat on that in January. So the starters start. A meaningless game. Truly meaningless to everyone but the Steelers, and if you think they were counting on us then you probably think our coach is good. If Tomlinson was showing any effects of a rib injury that had him sitting out one of the biggest games of the year with it on the line late in the fourth quarter, what the hell was he doing in the game against the Broncos? If he was hurt, he had no business being there. If he was 100% healthy, which you are going to have a very difficult time convincing me of, what the hell was he doing in there? Instead of #21 being the victim, it wound up being our Quarterback, who management has forced into a very expendable position due to some lingering performance issues. None of them should have been in the game. Now we have a dilemma. Not one that would make even the Jets envious. That’s good coaching. Ten wins. Ten wins. I can’t believe this has happened.

Best case scenario, we lose one year. This labrum stuff is a very big deal. It is a very big deal. Worst case scenario, we franchise our injured Quarterback, pay him $10MM for next year, and shuffle between him and the new guy while his injury is sorted out. If it winds up being the new guy, we lose three years. This is fun. I love football.