marion barber and laurence maroney splitting the load in the backfield would be like a golden gopher reunion.
i know its a stretch, but it would be cool to see this happen.
Stranger things have happened.PART 2.Hillarious:
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I spent last week in New York City for the Tribeca Film Festival. Every time I return to Manhattan, weird things happen to me. On Wednesday night, I was sitting in the bar of the Tribeca Grand having a drink with friends when a giant photo of Jeremy Irons fell off a makeshift wall and nearly decapitated my friend Hench. On Thursday afternoon, I was walking around Soho and nearly stepped in a pile of human feces that may or may not have been left by Vito Spadafore Jr. On Saturday afternoon, my cab driver got into a NASCAR-like "you're not getting ahead of me and I don't care if I kill everyone in this cab!" duel with someone driving a town car, culminating in a near-street fight when we finally reached our destination and me actually saying the words, "If you want to fight him, I've got your back." On Saturday night, I went to a seemingly normal bar that had three plasma TVs showing Skinemax porn behind the bar, including a sex scene between two people who were working out in a gym, then decided to fornicate while the guy continued to work out.
The last one especially blew me away. We live in an era where nobody wears bras, casual sex is OK, women take pride in being in shape, female celebrities show off their private parts when they're leaving limos, and bars show softcore porn scenes at 12:30 at night and nobody bats an eyelash. I want to know what's next. Women heading out for dinner topless? Where do we go from here?
Anyway, I was supposed to be seeing movies on Saturday and ended up getting sidetracked by the start of the NFL draft. Four hours later, I was still sitting in front of the tube in my hotel room saying, "All right, all right, one more pick and I'm leaving." I don't get how anyone can call themselves a football fan and not completely love the NFL draft. It's just too good. But here were my favorite moments:
. Miami trading Wes Welker for a second-round pick, then wasting the ninth pick on the draft on Ted Ginn Jr. (who won't be good for two years) when they could have taken Brady Quinn, then basically explaining it like this: "Well, we won't really need a QB because we have Daunte Culpepper and Cleo Lemon and we might trade for Trent Green." That killed me. How many games will Green survive on a crappy team with a shaky offensive line? Five? Six? The VP of Common Sense goes crazy during the NFL draft.
(Note: Miami passing on Quinn reminded me of the Raiders passing on Leinart last spring -- at some point, if you're a potentially crappy team and everything's equal with the guys on the board, you HAVE to consider your fans, right? Pick Quinn or Leinart and they become the face of your franchise, the one guy on the team that everybody knows -- men, women, old people, kids, you name it. You're not getting that with Ted Ginn Jr. So if you need a WR and you need a QB, and everything's equal, how are the fans not the tiebreaker there?)
. Another example: Dwyane Jarrett scores 45 TDs at USC and looked like the best player on the field in the Rose Bowl, hands down ... then he runs a 4.63 40-yard dash and drops to No. 45 (Carolina) in the draft. Meanwhile, Justin Harrell spends his whole career hurt at Tennessee and goes 16th to the Packers. If you had to bet your life on Harrell being a better NFL player than Jarrett, would you do it? Seriously, would you? Call me crazy, but I'd bet on the guy with 45 TDs.
. Reader Joe D. summed it up best: "Brady Quinn Face! Brady Quinn Face!
(Note: Like everyone else, I was dying for the poor kid and thought he handled himself about as well as anyone could have handled that experience. In fact, I'd love to see an ESPN Classic marathon filled with edited footage of every draft pick waiting to get picked and eventually dying a slow death. I'd even call the show "Dying A Slow Death." It's just too bad the draft picks aren't allowed to drink like everyone at the Golden Globes. And by the way, it's moronic that a potential franchise QB could drop to No. 22 in this draft only because everyone spent the last year picking him apart because he stayed in college too long. I love when a team like the Packers passes him up under the logic, "We're already set, we have Aaron Rodgers" or the Vikings say, "We don't really need a QB, we have Tarvaris Jackson." Classic. These teams are soooooo stupid. In case you missed it, Malcolm Gladwell and I wrote a back-and-forth partially centered on the topic of teams out-thinking themselves at a draft. Everything held up on Saturday, that's for sure.
. Speaking of stupid, my all-time draft pet peeve: When a team built around a franchise QB wastes a top-50 pick on another QB, like Philly did with Kevin Kolb at No. 36. (Check out this YouTube clip of the Philly fans reacting -- high comedy.) Forget about the fact that they reached for him; when you have a definitive window to win a Super Bowl, how can you throw away a top-40 pick like that? At the very least, why not trade the pick for Indy's No. 1 next year (like San Fran ended up doing at No. 41)? I'm telling you, the VP of Common Sense goes CRAZY during the NFL draft. These guys make NBA GMs look like rocket scientists.
. I'm not prepared to live in a world in which the Lions do the right thing in the NFL draft.
. But seriously ... would the Texans have overpaid Matt Schaub and given up two high picks for him if they knew Quinn would be sitting there at No. 10? Ouch.
. Around 2:30 p.m., right as the run on defensive players was starting and it looked bleak for the Pats to end up with two blue-chippers in the secondary, I called The Guy Who Knows Things and asked him, "Hey, is there any chance the Pats can trade one of those first-round picks for a 2008 No. 1?" And he said, "I don't see it, nobody really likes this year's draft, especially near the end of the round, next year's No. 1s are more valuable. But if anyone can pull it off, it's Belichick." Two hours later, Belichick swapped the No. 28 for San Fran's fourth-rounder and a 2008 No. 1 pick. Unbelievable. Having Bill Belichick run your NFL team is like being friends with a billionaire hedge fund guy who tells you, "Hey, if you ever want to invest with me, lemme know."
(Gary A. in Florida brings up another point on this: "If the Pats hadn't made the Branch trade last year, they wouldn't have had an extra No. 1 to trade ... so they parlayed that No. 28 into two picks, then traded one of them for Moss. If you think about it, they lost a year of having Branch, but they basically turned a possession receiver into Randy Moss and San Fran's 2008 No. 1 pick. Not as good as Dallas dropping four spots on Saturday and picking up Cleveland's No. 1, but still, pretty good.")
. My three favorite first-round picks: Joe Thomas to Cleveland at No. 3 (you can never go wrong with the marquee left tackle, unless his name is "Mandarich"); Reggie Nelson to the Jags at No. 21 (one of those picks where you know instantaneously that it's the right player for the right team, like when the Ravens drafted Ed Reed a few years ago); and Aaron Ross to the Giants at No. 20 (you have to like any starting CB who can also be described as "the next Devin Hester"). I would have thrown in Darrelle Revis at No. 14 to the Jets but I've never been a big fan of teams overpaying with picks for a player who won't make or break their team.