Who remembers what happened when we had Donovan McNabb and Michael Vick, two quality quarterbacks, fight for the starter position on a very good Eagles team? Anyone? Well...McNabb was shipped off to Washington, and well, turn on the TV and you can see how Vick has turned out as the starter. Quarterback controversies are deadly to a team, especially when they are a young team on the rise. Don't get me wrong, McNabb was on the tail end of his career, and Vick, even though he was fresh out of jail, was a younger, more athletic quarterback that could lead the Eagles to a championship. Well, that has yet to happen, and with Vick looking like he is going to get the boot after the season, as well as Andy Reid, you could use this is prime evidence that quarterback controversies KILL good football teams. Andy Reid is a well-respected coach around the league and has been with the Eagles for over a decade. He has never led them to a Super Bowl win, but he has gotten pretty darn close. Unfortunately, his decision to try out Vick and McNabb in the same season a few years ago will probably cost him his job. They tried to switch it up with Kevin Kolb and failed horribly. They drafted a kid named Nick Foles out of the University of Arizona, and it looks as if he is going to be the future of the Eagles, even though his debut was less than spectacular.
Another QB controversy that has become deadly to a team is the whole Tim Tebow fiasco in New York. I really do not want to comment on that because their is nothing to say but let me just say a few words. Mark Sanchez, who has led the Jets to the AFC Championship for 2 straight seasons in 2010 and 2011, is being scrutinized for his bad playing, even though his receiving core lacks a big name. With no help from his offense, he has been ridiculed and embarrassed all season, and the Jets fans want a change, and Tebow will eventually get that opportunity. If you don't call that controversy a nail in the coffin of the Jets franchise, I don't know what else to say.
With all that said, we have another controversy on our hands. Colin Kaepernick, a 2nd year quarterback from Nevada, shined in his starting debut with the 49ers. He manhandled a solid Chicago Bears defense and threw for 243 yards and 2 touchdowns. His quarterback rating was an astounding 133.1! Can you have a better debut in the NFL than that? I don't think so. Oh, did I mention it was on Monday Night Football? Incredible! A week ago, many didn't even know who the backup quarterback was for the 49ers, as many did not really care. Alex Smith played well against the Cardinals, lighting up the field with 18 completions out of 19 attempts for 232 yards and 3 touchdowns. Yes, Smith has played sub-par for his first 5 seasons in the league, but he came around with the arrival of Jim Harbaugh and hasn't looked back. He led this team to the NFC Championship! You have to give him his credit.
Let me take a step back and say this, I am extremely critical of Alex Smith and I do not think he is the right answer for the quarterback position for the future of the 49ers. When the 49ers had the 1st pick in 2005, I said from day one they needed to pick up Aaron Rodgers. The kid had issues with his throwing delivery, but had extreme potential. Unfortunately, he went to Green Bay and won a Super Bowl years later. We decided to go with Smith, and was a laughing stock for the next 5 to 6 years. Even though I cannot trust Smith because of his past, I am optimistic he has turned around and is finally living up to his potential. With all that said, we now have a quarterback controversy on our hands with a team that has TREMENDOUS upside for years to come!
It seems as if Kaepernick will get the start for the game against the Saints this weekend, but I really hope Harbaugh will realize Smith is the one who has led this team to success and will make him starter as long as he can recover fully from that concussion. I think this QB controversy can hurt this team, as they are still a young squad, and Harbaugh needs to control this situation and not let it get out of hand with the media. I hope Kaep can stick with the Niners and learn the ropes with Smith and Harbaugh, as he could become the next Aaron Rodgers. I just hope Harbaugh thinks the same way as myself as well as many other die-hard 49er fans, because this whole fiasco can hurt this team as history has shown its lethality.
Showing posts with label San Francisco 49ers. Show all posts
Showing posts with label San Francisco 49ers. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Saturday, October 6, 2012
Texas Rangers...Trouble In Paradise?
After many years, the Texas Rangers have become a franchise that many respect and most fear. They took down the Yankees with ease in route to the 2010 World Series, as well as dominating the 2011 Playoffs. You had players like Elvis Andrus and Mike Napoli who before the magical run were no namers to many average fans. This season, Andrus was a prime target in the trade market and Napoli overcame a terrible first half of the season to be selected BY THE FANS as the starting catcher for the AL at the All-Star Game, only because of his performance on the biggest stage of them all, the 2011 World Series. Don't get me wrong, I am a huge Napoli fan, but with those stats being as low as they were (he hit .228 with 12 homers and 30 RBI's), he should have been at home working on that swing while Chicago White Sox's catcher A.J. Pierzynski, who batted .285 with 14 home runs and 45 RBI's, should have taken his spot.
With all that said, the Texas Rangers have made it to the top of the baseball world by showing teams and opposing fans they are not to be messed with. This season was supposed to be the one where they make it to the very top, by winning that championship! Little did we know, Hamilton would become the most hated on the team and the Rangers embarrassed themselves by blowing a 13 game lead at the end of the season, while looking like garbage in the first ever American League Wild Card game against the Baltimore Orioles.
Let's talk about every one's favorite individual, Josh Hamilton! Enough is enough, this man needs a new start and needs to go somewhere else. Is he really worth 6 years, $100 million? Two words people...HELL NO! This guy is not worth 5 years, not even 4! At this rate, I see 2 to 3 GOOD, PRIME years of his career, yet after that, he will become like anyone else past their prime, an afterthought. Don't get me wrong, I respect the hell out of this man. He has continually fought addiction with drugs and alcohol.. One thing that kept occurring this season was the excuse factor. He always had an excuse of something when he wasn't playing his best. Before the season started, he was caught at a Dallas Sherlock's pub relapsing with while hooking up with a random chick in the bathroom. At the start of the season, he couldn't hold on to his bat when swinging. Then it was his slump for a month when he said he was trying to quit chewing tobacco. AFTER THAT, he told everyone about his struggles with caffeine. I mean look...the guy is an amazing player. His 4 home run game against the Orioles was NUTS! For some reason, I just feel he makes too many excuses to get paid $100 million. Look at Adrian Beltre...he is making $96 million in 6 years and this guy makes NO EXCUSES! He forced Ron Washington to play him in games down the stretch where he was hurt, yet still managed to help the team with his bat and glove. That man deserves $96 million, Hamilton does not.
Now onto the Texas Rangers and their not so happy finish of the 2012 season. They finished with a 93 win season, which is definitely a successful season, yet in Ranger Nation, was a complete failure. Yes, Colby Lewis' departure in the middle of the season hurt them, and also other slumps with Young and Holland definitely did not help their case for another deep playoff run, but somehow they managed to pull off a good string of wins to be 13 games away from a third straight AL West pennant. They looked like they had home-field advantage locked up and were saving their strength for the playoffs. If only we thought it would be that easy. They managed to do something the Red Sox did a few years ago in BLOWING their lead and imploding by the end of the season. All they had to do was win one single game in Oakland, against an A's team who many wrote off even before the season began, yet they struggled in that series and got swept while losing their chance for home-field and the AL West title. If that wasn't enough, many fans saw Hamilton drop a routine fly ball, where some say that dropped ball swung the momentum all the way into Oakland's hands and killed everything the Rangers did in the 161 games before that. Many also saw Hamilton and Wash argue while in the dugout. The two men who you would NEVER think would yell or make a scene in a dugout did, and it looked ugly. That showed that the Rangers dominance, which was built in the playoffs of 2010, was over. I had a bad feeling going into the Wild Card game, and my gut was right. They played like little kids, missing routine plays and not succeeding on the Orioles mistakes. Some could say the Rangers played well, but the Orioles played better. With Hamilton going 0-4 and Napoli going 0-3, the Rangers had a rough night.
O's manager, Buck Showalter out managed Wash that night as well. He made smart decisions with his bullpen by putting in O'Day and Johnson at the right times, and it shut the offense of the Rangers down. We can only hope next season will not be as brutal at the end as this one was, as it was tough to swallow seeing those players leave before they even got to the ALDS.
I hope you have enjoyed reading this as much as it was putting my thoughts down on a virtual notepad and please comment below so we can converse on the topic of the state of the Texas Rangers as well as Josh Hamilton.
Peace and Love!
D
With all that said, the Texas Rangers have made it to the top of the baseball world by showing teams and opposing fans they are not to be messed with. This season was supposed to be the one where they make it to the very top, by winning that championship! Little did we know, Hamilton would become the most hated on the team and the Rangers embarrassed themselves by blowing a 13 game lead at the end of the season, while looking like garbage in the first ever American League Wild Card game against the Baltimore Orioles.
Let's talk about every one's favorite individual, Josh Hamilton! Enough is enough, this man needs a new start and needs to go somewhere else. Is he really worth 6 years, $100 million? Two words people...HELL NO! This guy is not worth 5 years, not even 4! At this rate, I see 2 to 3 GOOD, PRIME years of his career, yet after that, he will become like anyone else past their prime, an afterthought. Don't get me wrong, I respect the hell out of this man. He has continually fought addiction with drugs and alcohol.. One thing that kept occurring this season was the excuse factor. He always had an excuse of something when he wasn't playing his best. Before the season started, he was caught at a Dallas Sherlock's pub relapsing with while hooking up with a random chick in the bathroom. At the start of the season, he couldn't hold on to his bat when swinging. Then it was his slump for a month when he said he was trying to quit chewing tobacco. AFTER THAT, he told everyone about his struggles with caffeine. I mean look...the guy is an amazing player. His 4 home run game against the Orioles was NUTS! For some reason, I just feel he makes too many excuses to get paid $100 million. Look at Adrian Beltre...he is making $96 million in 6 years and this guy makes NO EXCUSES! He forced Ron Washington to play him in games down the stretch where he was hurt, yet still managed to help the team with his bat and glove. That man deserves $96 million, Hamilton does not.
Now onto the Texas Rangers and their not so happy finish of the 2012 season. They finished with a 93 win season, which is definitely a successful season, yet in Ranger Nation, was a complete failure. Yes, Colby Lewis' departure in the middle of the season hurt them, and also other slumps with Young and Holland definitely did not help their case for another deep playoff run, but somehow they managed to pull off a good string of wins to be 13 games away from a third straight AL West pennant. They looked like they had home-field advantage locked up and were saving their strength for the playoffs. If only we thought it would be that easy. They managed to do something the Red Sox did a few years ago in BLOWING their lead and imploding by the end of the season. All they had to do was win one single game in Oakland, against an A's team who many wrote off even before the season began, yet they struggled in that series and got swept while losing their chance for home-field and the AL West title. If that wasn't enough, many fans saw Hamilton drop a routine fly ball, where some say that dropped ball swung the momentum all the way into Oakland's hands and killed everything the Rangers did in the 161 games before that. Many also saw Hamilton and Wash argue while in the dugout. The two men who you would NEVER think would yell or make a scene in a dugout did, and it looked ugly. That showed that the Rangers dominance, which was built in the playoffs of 2010, was over. I had a bad feeling going into the Wild Card game, and my gut was right. They played like little kids, missing routine plays and not succeeding on the Orioles mistakes. Some could say the Rangers played well, but the Orioles played better. With Hamilton going 0-4 and Napoli going 0-3, the Rangers had a rough night.
O's manager, Buck Showalter out managed Wash that night as well. He made smart decisions with his bullpen by putting in O'Day and Johnson at the right times, and it shut the offense of the Rangers down. We can only hope next season will not be as brutal at the end as this one was, as it was tough to swallow seeing those players leave before they even got to the ALDS.
I hope you have enjoyed reading this as much as it was putting my thoughts down on a virtual notepad and please comment below so we can converse on the topic of the state of the Texas Rangers as well as Josh Hamilton.
Peace and Love!
D
Not Your Generic Introduction
Well folks, it is FINALLY HERE! The Dugout has come to blog form and will transform the virtual sports world forever! Hold on to your pants, because you are about to go on a magical journey with me, Derek Ficken, as I will talk about anything and everything there is to talk about with my two passions in life, music and sports! Are you excited? I sure am! HERE WE GO!
With this first post, I want to keep it basic and introduce myself if you do not know me. My name is Derek Ficken and I am a sports fanatic. I bleed for my teams, in every color they wear. I hate their rivals and I can be that guy that yells at the TV… sorry. I was born and raised in Fremont, California, which is a city close to the Bay Area. My dad raised me the right way in rooting for teams like the San Francisco 49ers, San Francisco Giants, Oakland A’s, Oakland Raiders, San Jose Sharks, and the Golden State Warriors. Unfortunately, I moved away at the age of 10 and moved to a little place named the DFW metroplex. Here, I started cheering for the Texas Rangers, Dallas Mavericks, and Dallas Stars. To this day, I will always hate the Dallas Cowboys. That will never change. My friends think I do it to spite them but in fact, I do it because I am a 49er fan for life. Even though for my hatred of the Cowboys, I plan to cover them and talk about their season as it progresses. As I grew up a sports fan, I learned of a new passion in the world, and that is music. I am a jazz musician as well as a music freak. I listen to bands like Muse and Radiohead while listening to artists such as Erykah Badu and John Coltrane. I am all over the place when it comes to music and I plan to talk about many things going on in the music world, whether its comments on new albums or whatever. I want you, the reader and my audience, to come away with a sense of knowledge on things you did not know before you started reading my posts. I also want you to be engaged with me in the comments section below. I want you to fight me in words on how stupid I am for criticizing Josh Hamilton (which you will see in the next post) or how you agree with my stance on Mike Napoli (which will also be in the next post).
Please help me become better as I hope I can bring new thoughts and ideas to you. Thank you so much for taking the time to check this out and be on the lookout for my next post!
Peace and Love!
D
With this first post, I want to keep it basic and introduce myself if you do not know me. My name is Derek Ficken and I am a sports fanatic. I bleed for my teams, in every color they wear. I hate their rivals and I can be that guy that yells at the TV… sorry. I was born and raised in Fremont, California, which is a city close to the Bay Area. My dad raised me the right way in rooting for teams like the San Francisco 49ers, San Francisco Giants, Oakland A’s, Oakland Raiders, San Jose Sharks, and the Golden State Warriors. Unfortunately, I moved away at the age of 10 and moved to a little place named the DFW metroplex. Here, I started cheering for the Texas Rangers, Dallas Mavericks, and Dallas Stars. To this day, I will always hate the Dallas Cowboys. That will never change. My friends think I do it to spite them but in fact, I do it because I am a 49er fan for life. Even though for my hatred of the Cowboys, I plan to cover them and talk about their season as it progresses. As I grew up a sports fan, I learned of a new passion in the world, and that is music. I am a jazz musician as well as a music freak. I listen to bands like Muse and Radiohead while listening to artists such as Erykah Badu and John Coltrane. I am all over the place when it comes to music and I plan to talk about many things going on in the music world, whether its comments on new albums or whatever. I want you, the reader and my audience, to come away with a sense of knowledge on things you did not know before you started reading my posts. I also want you to be engaged with me in the comments section below. I want you to fight me in words on how stupid I am for criticizing Josh Hamilton (which you will see in the next post) or how you agree with my stance on Mike Napoli (which will also be in the next post).
Please help me become better as I hope I can bring new thoughts and ideas to you. Thank you so much for taking the time to check this out and be on the lookout for my next post!
Peace and Love!
D
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)