It's Finally Here

It has finally gotten here.  No not the telephone book as Steve Martin rejoiced for in the movie 'The Jerk' when he saw his name for the first time in the telephone book. Starting Thursday night NFL preseason football is back. What better way than to see my guy Philip Rivers for maybe ten plays on ESPN. I will be interesting to see how the teams handle the preseason over the normal routine of years past. Now that hitting is down to a minimum during the week you may see starters in longer over other years getting use to the contact. Then again who knows.

Last year I only correctly picked six of the 12 teams that made the playoffs. This off season there have been several teams that have made splashes but I am not sure how good the splash was. Philadelphia seems to have had the biggest cannon ball but everyone is handing them the NFC championship but I will not go that far. I do like the fact that they have Vince Young. Players for whatever reason get labeled. Vince Young’s case if you look at his winning record at Tennessee he was more than adequate. I think he never got his coaches confidence in Tennessee and now as a backup I think Philly will not be hurt if Vick goes down for any time. They are basically the same style player so the Eagles don’t have to reshape the offense if they need another quarterback.

All I have heard all off season is Green Bay had 12 players on injured reserve and with those player healthy they could repeat as Champs. Did you know that the Packers are the only team during the lockout that did not have team practices. Sounds to me like too much celebrating last year’s Super Bowl. If I remember correctly if somebody else had of won the last game of the season the Packers would not even made the playoffs.

New York Jets seem to be losing all their free agents and all the ones they thought they were going to get have gone somewhere else. Old sly New England seems to have stocked pile another good team. You know when the Jets coach comes out and ask somebody else help him beat the Patriots , first he probably knows he can’t do it and deep down a coach always knows how good they really are and deep down Rex knows he is going to have to talk a lot this year to get the Jets into the playoffs.

Mystery teams like the Dallas Cowboys who seem to be almost the same team as last year except the coach but of course he was there last year too. San Diego will have Vincent Jackson and Malcolm Floyd for Philip Rivers to throw too from the get go this year. I admit I like the Chargers but I feel like one problem the Chargers have had since Norv Turner has been coach is he hates to hit. I think one of the problems for them in the past losing so many early games has been they had to take four or five games to get into hitting shape while others had already been doing it in preseason. Now that everyone is limited on hitting maybe the Chargers will not be slow starters. I will also say this that I think they have been fresher in late season when others tired as the season wore on and that helped them win so many games late in the season. I guess this season they will win early and lose late.

Let’s talk Cam Newton for a minute. I am not sure he is a first round pick but I do see him as a Vince Young over Demarcus Russell and I have already said here that Young is better than his reputation. Carolina has made some good moves this off season but until they get a steady QB under center they will be hard pressed to win five games. Just look at Jake Delhomme when he was the Panthers QB. He was steady and steady is one thing the Panthers never had at any time last year. It would not surprise me if Carolina doesn’t go through three or so quarterbacks just like last year before this season is over.