This Came Out More Serious Than I Though It Would. Oh Well, I Wrote It For Me Anyway.

It occurred to me that during this bye week I might be interested in hearing about how I feel about some of the other teams and issues in the NFL. So, to appease my curiosity I’ve decided to delve deep into my football mind and deliver some heavy NFL insight to…well…myself. Feel free to read along.

For those of you who don’t know, I hail originally from Minnesota. Now, I only lived there for the first few years of my life, but seeing as a great many relatives of mine reside within the Land of Ten Thousand Lakes (total lie, I swear there’s twenty thousand), I do feel an affinity for Minnesota sports franchises. The Twinkies have been an entertaining, competitive baseballing squadron for the last several years, and the Queenies…well, the Queenies are a football team. You can tell by the uniforms and the frequency which they are witnessed combating other football teams. All that being said, a logical place to begin my foray into all things not San Diego Chargers would be with the Minnesota ViQueen football club. Too bad they bore the snot out of me right now. So, let’s talk about a loosely related topic in Daunte Culpepper and the Miami Dolphins.

After acquiring Daunte Culpepper in the offseason, so many people picked the Dolphins to advance to the playoffs-maybe even the Super Bowl-that I actually had to go back and check last year’s AFC playoff roster to see where they were seeded. Imagine my surprise when I found that they had, in fact, somehow managed to miss the playoffs altogether. So why all the praise and prediction? I’ll tell you why. Two completely unrelated reasons. They finished last year’s campaign with a six game winning streak, and they signed Daunte Culpepper.

As far as end of the season winning streaks go, when teams who are more or less out of the playoff picture pull them off, I personally believe they don’t mean jack. Teams with nothing to lose tend to play with a ferocity and tenacity that comes with having nothing to lose. They go into spoiler mode, because that’s the only real joy of playing when your season’s over. I’m not saying Miami didn’t have the foundation to be a legit contender this year, but the problems they had in the off-season were obvious precursors to a letdown.

First off, they lost Ricky Williams. Again. This guy might not be the same kind of cancer as TO, but when it comes to cancer, all kinds pretty much suck the life out of you. So far, Ronnie Brown has not shown the world that he is capable of shouldering the whole load, and I’m not sure he ever will. Uhh, didn’t he split time with Cadillac (who also looks like he might not be living up to expectations) in Auburn? What made anybody think he’d ever pull of a one man show in the bigs?

Next, and most importantly, was the changing of the guard behind center. Now, I’m not saying Gus Frerotte is any kind of Pro Bowl passer or anything, but he has always been solid in a solid system. He’s fairly accurate, he can throw the long ball, and when he’s not banging it against the wall and giving himself a concussion, he keeps his head cool. Unfortunately, much like the Bills when they ended 2004 with a similar streak and decided to ditch Drew Bledsoe, the Bills felt they needed a less than obvious upgrade. Completely disregarding his poor level of play to open up the 2005 season, the Dolphins answered Minnesota’s prayers and took Culpepper off their hands. Now, I’m sure there are a lot of people in Minnesota that were pretty pissed when they let him go, but believe me, most of them knew that unless Troy Williamson turned into Randy Moss, Culpepper was never going to be the same quarterback he was in ’04. I’m not talking about those guys in the deep north woods who think Rush Limbaugh’s a hippie and that Doug Williams scoring 35 in a quarter vs. the Broncos was some kind of civil rights conspiracy. I mean real football fans knew that Randy Moss got after Culpepper’s bad passes. He took interceptions away from receivers. He out-jumped the field. And when he wasn’t on the field, teams covered the run, letting Culpepper keep his numbers up. Culpepper stares down his receivers and most receivers can’t help him then. No Moss, no chance. Now, Culpepper is a nice guy and the league and its writers love him and they’ll make excuses for his poor play. His line will get a lot of the heat, because you can’t really fault talents like Randy McMichael and Chris Chambers, but Miami fans better hope the coaches aren’t biting. If they are, and they let Culpepper run up a couple of more losses, all the fans will have left to hope for is Joey Harrington leading them on another meaningless win streak at the end of the season.

Wow. Was that harsh?