“Why, God!? Why didn’t I start Jonathan Stewart instead of DeAngelo Williams this week!?”
So the second weekend of September has passed, and I’m still bleary-eyed from hanging out at the Blues at the Beach Festival in Virginia Beach with about 100 of my closest Facebook friends. I never made it to CP Shuckers as I had planned on Friday when I wrote that open thread post, instead catching fleeting glimpses of the Panthers-Bears game on my less-than-reliable cell phone. (I like my Slingbox. My Treo? Not so much.) The superstitious and cowardly side of my brain is telling me never to set foot in CP Shuckers on game day again.
This year’s Panthers have now come back twice in the 4th quarter against very good teams. In fact, we’ve already seen a repeat of two things that happened in 2003 — the Panthers won their first game on the last play of the game (also a Jake Delhomme touchdown pass), and the Panthers have won their home opener. One more late comeback win, and the tag “Cardiac Cats” will be far from inappropriate.
Oh, by the way, they did all this without Steve Smith. He returns to the lineup next week. I hope he washes his drawers before then.
You’ll excuse me if I start grinning a little too much. The Panthers, the Steelers, and my fantasy team are all 2-0. I can’t ask for a better start than that, really.
I didn’t get to see any Premier League or AFL Finals action over the weekend, though I did meet a woman who barracks for the St. Kilda Saints. She had quite the fatalist attitude about her club in the Finals, saying the team was always less than the sum of its parts and figuring it would just be better if the Saints didn’t get her hopes up and made their usual quick exit. I never got to tell her that the Saints actually beat Collingwood on Saturday. Of course, she’ll probably say they’ll never get past Hawthorn now, but hey, at least they got to a Preliminary Final, right?
In the meantime, let’s not make too much of Hull City in a European spot on the Premier League table right now, okay? Hull is in fifth place after Aston Villa beat dead-last Tottenham today and leaped into 4th place. The Tigers might yet survive the drop, but does anyone really believes they’ll come up with 60+ points in their first-ever top-flight season? I still wouldn’t put them on 42+ right now.
I’ll have some videos later, but for now, I leave you with another fine piece of comedy from our pal MJD — a letter from Ed Hochuli’s pit bull. MJD’s Chargers are not off to as good a start as my teams. You might say that’s coming against the run of play. They have reason to be upset at Ed Hochuli. They should be mad at themselves, though, for letting that chick from Clerks 2 put one over on them.
