Dave’s Football Blog

Earlier this morning, I saw a post on my old stomping grounds suggesting that the St. Louis Rams are looking to trade Torry Holt. As a Carolina Panthers fan, I immediately thought to myself, “Can we give them Dwayne Jarrett and call it a day?”

The Panthers’ 24-9 win over those Atlanta Dirty Birds, however, proved that we might not need much help at receiver after all. We’ve got Moose back. Muhsin Muhammad caught 8 passes for 147 yards and a touchdown, serving as Jake Delhomme’s top target and freeing up Steve Smith for a big day himself — 6 catches, 96 yards, 1 TD.

It was always Moose. Whenever Steve Smith was double-covered, Moose was there, just as he was today, making the catches needed to keep drives going. The Panthers spent years trying to replace him after he bolted for Chicago. Keyshawn Johnson couldn’t do it. Drew Carter and Keary Colbert couldn’t come close. Dwayne Jarrett probably won’t do it, either. If Carolina wants to get back to the playoffs, it has to be Moose at the #2 receiver spot to help them get there.

That said, the prospect of Torry Holt in a Panthers uniform — and let’s not forget that Holt has suggested this himself — is quite appealing. He’s got a few years left in the tank, and he could certainly add more power to the Panthers’ passing attack right away. On the other hand, you don’t bring in Torry Holt to be the third option in the passing game, and you don’t want to demote Moose, especially after a day like today.

Then again, it’s better than seeing Holt in a Falcons uniform, and after the sheer number of dropped passes Atlanta receivers had today, they have to be thinking about it. Let’s just hope Jacksonville steps in first or something.

Oh, and while I’m thinking about, I would like to invite Ed Hochuli to bite my crank. Early on in this game, Matt Ryan threw an interception to Richard Marshall that was returned for a touchdown, but Hochuli nullified the score by calling Julius Peppers for roughing the quarterback. He specifically said that Peppers was being flagged for helmet-to-helmet contact. Of course, the video replay showed that no such contact happened. Thanks so much for that, fartface.

I’d be angrier, of course, if the Falcons weren’t in rebuilding mode, or if the Panthers hadn’t made enough mistakes on their own to keep this game closer than it should have been. Still, it was a bad call. It was also a good win, as the Panthers are now 3-1 and face Kansas City at home next week. It does have all the makings of a trap game — Carolina faces Tampa Bay in two weeks — but don’t kid yourself about the Chiefs’ win today. Unlike Denver, Carolina has an actual defense, and it held Michael Turner to 56 yards on 18 carries.

Okay, who saw this coming? Anyone? Anyone?

When Paul McShane gave up an own goal against Arsenal at the Emirates, you figured that was it. Hull City was unlucky, but nobody expected them to go to Emirates Stadium and get a result against Arsenal, right? Then Geovanni unleashed a nasty long-distance strike that found the top corner with a half-hour left. Four minutes later, a Daniel Cousin header gave Hull the lead. Arsenal couldn’t respond. The giant-killing was on.

Hull has that Reading 2007 smell about them, don’t they? Everyone expected these guys to be relegation fodder, yet here they are in the top half of the table, getting results against the big boys, and possibly contending for a spot in Europe’s N.I.T. (UEFA can change the competition’s name all it wants. It’s Europe’s N.I.T.)

Of course, this is the same Hull club that gave the reserves a run out against Swansea and got summarily booted out of the Carling Cup. Then again, how much does the Carling Cup really matter compared to staying up and notching road wins against the Big Four?

This could be the start of something big in Kingston Upon Hull. Or it could be another great purple patch that leads to a mid-table finish, a mass exodus of key players (and possibly manager Phil Brown), and a relegation battle in 2010. I’d like to believe that won’t happen this time, but this is English football, and these things are all too common.

Still, if you’re on the ride, you might as well enjoy it. Keep singing, Hull.

Well, it was more fun to watch than last year’s Grand Final — unless, of course, you’re a Geelong supporter.

When Geelong and Hawthorn met back in July, the Hawks missed a few key scoring opportunities, and when too many shots at 6-point goals result in 1-point behinds, it’ll cost you. This time around, though, it was the Cats’ turn to be inaccurate. A long stretch in the 2nd quarter resulted in 11 consecutive behinds for Geelong, which gave the Hawks a 51-48 lead at halftime and the impetus to pull away in the 2nd half and notch a 115-89 victory in the 2008 AFL Grand Final.

Not that Hawthorn wasn’t happy to concede behinds all night. The Hawks seemed to have trouble pushing forward from their own goal square. Most of us watching at Woody’s in Raleigh blamed it on lack of motion an inaccurate kicking in the midfield. As a result, the Hawks spent a lot of time stepping behind their own posts for rushed behinds. As it turned out, that strategy stole Geelong’s rhythm and kept the game close until Hawthorn’s 6-goal outburst in the 3rd quarter. Hawthorn took the air out of the ball in the 4th to preserve the win.

Geelong did manage to take Buddy Franklin out of the game in the first half, but clearly, there was more to Hawthorn than Buddy. Hawthorn out-kicked, out-marked and out-tackled Geelong in the end, and once Franklin finally got himself open, he kicked two key goals in the 2nd half.

All in all, it was a fun night. Big thanks to the North Carolina Tigers for hosting the Grand Final party again this year. Judging from the scowls of the Geelong girls as they quietly walked out of the pub, though, I think I had more fun than they did.

This video made the rounds on most sports blogs yesterday, with most people just drooling over the awesomeness of it. I’m going to take a slightly different tack here, though, because it’s Grand Final Weekend in Melbourne, and, well, this is a different sort of football blog, after all.

Take a look at this catch by Morgan State wide receiver Edwin Baptiste…

In this instance, the quarterback was leading the receiver forward. The receiver got ahead of the defense, looked back for the ball and made that ridiculous play.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen that in an AFL match. In most cases, a potential receiver who gets away from his defender is always coming toward the ball, or the kicker boots it to a specific spot and lets players congregate underneath and fight for it. You never see anyone kick a ball with an eye on a receiver moving toward the goal.

I’m curious as to why that is. Is it because players running forward have a harder time taking a mark? Do players who run forward attract more defenders? Does the nature of the game convince coaches that you only have to move forward enough to get in goal-kicking range, thus allowing forwards the freedom to give up 10-15 meters if they’re still able to mark inside the 50? Perhaps some of you out there can explain that one to me.

In the meantime, coverage of the AFL Grand Final kicks off at 11:30 PM ET tonight on Setanta Sports. If you don’t have Setanta or can’t find a pub nearby that carries it, give AussieSport TV a try. Here’s hoping Hawthorn does what last year’s Port Adelaide Power couldn’t — make a game of it against Geelong.

Remember when people were comparing and contrasting the touchdown celebrations of Chad Johnson and Steve Smith? Remember how Roger Goodell did everything in his power to drop the hammer on both of them to end future celebrations? Imagine if Goodell saw this in an NFL game:

Tell me those guys wouldn’t get Pacmanned on general principle. Seriously, CFL, the Red Patch Boys run circles around you.

(Spotted on Larry Brown Sports.)

The Detroit Lions have finally done what they should have done about three years ago — sacked Matt Millen.

Apparently, Bill Ford Jr.’s public outburst was the last straw. Funny how William Clay Ford Sr. won’t listen to an entire city, its newspaper and every football pundit on the planet, but he’ll listen to his boy. The only question left is why it took Junior so long to speak up. I guess our little boy is all growns up…

Back in my salad ramen noodle days — and given the state of the economy, those days may be coming back soon — I used to write about how Sony was the most schizophrenic corporation on the planet. Its electronics company tried to produce cool MP3 players, yet Sony Music was so terrified of people downloading MP3s that it forced the electronics group to hobble those MP3 players so much that they became unusable. Sony is a giant octopus with no coordination; no one arm has any clue what any other arm is doing, and the end result is usually mass stupidity.

As you can see from the above video, Sony has applied this to football. EPL Talk spotted that commercial for Sony HDTVs, in which Peyton Manning and friends have a laugh at the mere mention of soccer.

The irony? Sony is a proud corporate sponsor of the UEFA Champions League.

Say, do you think someone might have thought to mention that to the writers and directors of this commercial before allowing it to continue? Especially since Sony seems to be telling a rather large portion of its potential customers to piss off?

Sony’s PR people are trying to spin this as best they can. I wish them luck with that. PR Rep for Sony is an even more thankless job title than Head Coach of the Oakland Raiders.

Of course, what’s equally annoying to me is the Fox Soccer Channel bumper — which hasn’t made it to YouTube yet, for some reason — that features the two donks in NFL jerseys trying to get into an FSC party, only to be rejected because they’re not wearing soccer-related attire. It’s an ad that tells the world that soccer is some exclusive club, and fans of other forms of football are not welcome. Given FSC’s ratings and the current state of soccer in America, they probably shouldn’t be sending that message to anyone. It just serves to remind us, though, that bashing other football codes never goes out of style.