Madden 2004 - It happened. The promise of Michael Vick's full potential was fulfilled this Monday night in Landover, Maryland. You know the stats: 20/28 for 333 yards passing, 4 passing touchdowns, 80 yards rushing, and 2 rushing touchdowns. Yes, this changes everything.

ESPN may have the Falcons at #1 on their Power Rankings this week, but they were beaten handedly by the Eagles less than a month ago with a backup quarterback. NFL fans are now realizing that they are literally witnessing football history on a weekly basis. Mike Vick is undefeated in any game he has started and finished. He has zero interceptions. He has zero lost fumbles. He's running a very complex offensive scheme with absolute ease. He's piloting the leagues most explosive offense to new heights in a year where most of the Super Bowl favorites have been grounded. Shit, the Pro Football Hall of Fame even requested Vick's jersey from Monday night. This is big. This is historic. This is Madden 2004.

Michael Vick is in a position to make one of the greatest comebacks in sports history. A mercenary field general with a cannon arm and a killer instinct is leading a team of talent-drenched kids through the NFL jungle. Neither NFL golden boy Peyton Manning nor friendly foe Donovan McNabb could stop them. What exactly are we witnessing here?

With 7 weeks remaining in the regular season and so much left unanswered, this story is far from over. But as of now, if this Philadelphia Eagles team can stay healthy, it looks like there is a legitimate shot of Michael Vick -- the same man who spent 2 years in prison and last year running 2-yard wildcat plays -- hoisting the Lombardi trophy.

The NFL: Where Amazing Happens.

What else did we learn? LaRon Landry Got His, Dimitri Patterson's Hands are Sticky, Jerome Harrison: Karma Police, Beat 'em After a Bye, Steve Young: Critic turned Believer, How to Beat Vick, Andy Reid Back Pats, Mike Vick Head Explosion Meter, DeSean's Record, Worst to First, and Fuck the Giants.


LaRon Landry Got His - You talk shit before a game to a player/team that's better than you and you get what you deserve. Some things are fair game in the verbal confrontations that proceed an NFL kickoff. Brain-threatening concussions aren't one of them. That's why it was so gratifying to see that shit-talking, center-spitting asshole get his on play numero uno. Suck it, #30.

Dimitri Patterson's Hands are Sticky - I really hope teams keep testing this guy. There are reasons beyond a hip flexor as to why Ellis Hobbs' buttcheeks are warming bench every Sunday. Dimitri Patterson is pretty good. In each of the last two games, Patterson has been tested by top-flight quarterbacks and has made them pay. A fantastic game against Reggie Wayne last week and two INTs and a pick six on Monday. I love DP! Wait....

Jerome Harrison: Karma Police - Eleven carries for 109 yards (9.9 avg) and a TD. Nothing in this life is free, Cleveland. You can't just go around stealing awesome runningbacks and not have a trade come back to bite you in the ass at some point. The universe has a way of keeping itself in balance, so consider the Mike Bell for Jerome Harrison exchage payback for what you did to Denver.

Beat 'em After a Bye - You mean to tell me the Redskins had two weeks to prepare for that ass-whooping on Monday? That's the best McNabb and Shanahan could do in TWO WEEKS!? Haaaahahahahahaha.

Steve Young: Critic turned Believer - I watched the whole 12-hour ESPN pre-programming for this weeks Monday Night Football game. During several of their 700 segments, it was apparent that Hall of Fame QB Steve Young was critical of Michael Vick and his (former) style of play. It was obvious to any Eagles fan that Steve either hadn't watched much of the Birds this season or that he was threatened by the success by another left-handed running QB, but immediately after the game he was Vick's #1 cheerleader. Young called Vick's performance "a transformational moment," "the full fruition of the position," and "one of the most defining games at quarterback I’ve ever seen." Think he's a fan now?

How to Beat Vick - Another thing Steve Young managed to point out was the difference in game planning for Vick opposing teams must go through now that they didn't have to when he was a Falcon. The rule of thumb was to spy him, make your defensive ends hold their position, and force him to throw from the pocket. The Eagles were actually great at this and that's part of the reason why they often contained Vick in their former battles. Nowadays, things are much different.

As Young mentioned, you may want to completely flip your game planning strategy now for Mr. Mexico. Instead of forcing him to stay in the pocket (where he had a perfect 158.3 QB rating on Monday), you may want to force him to run. Sure, you're going to give up big chunks of yards and lots of underneath passes, but you're saving yourself from the back-breaking deep passes that have murdered teams thus far this year. Let him run and try to get good licks on him when he doesn't go out of bounds -- the dude has already admitted he won't ever slide. This is the only way to contain MV7 at the moment, and if the Giants are smart, this'll be what they look to do Sunday night.

Andy Reid Back Pats - The team was ripe for a big letdown on the road after a big home win against Peyton Manning and the Colts, but came through and dominated a tough divisional opponent. They didn't even start practicing until last Thursday! Andy Reid and the rest of the coaches deserve some serious credit here, especially since we give him so much shit when things don't work out well. If they can pull off a convincing win against the Giants, Big Red better be getting at least a HJ from wifey this week.

Mike Vick Head Explosion Meter -

DeSean's Record - That 88-yard opening play touchdown was actually the longest reception of DeSean's career. And, you know, he's had a lot of long ones. #Pause

Worst to First -

Yeah, just let that marinate in through your thoughtsicles for a while.

Fuck the Giants - I mean, really. Fuck the Giants.

I live and work in New York, and the only thing more annoying than the pervasive urine smell and expensive rent are Giants fans. Sure, I've met a few good-natured ones here and there that can have an intelligent conversation concerning the NFC East and can predict outcomes objectively, but for the most part they're just as delusional and homer-d out as many Philly fans. C'mon guys, your city has two teams of which yours is the worst, and you're trying to tell me Eli Manning is better than Michael Vick right now? You must've inhaled too much hobo urine, buddy. I'm taking cash and desktop wallpaper bets all week. Get ready to get blown out like your sisters boyfriends hair.

Go Birds.

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.)


"U.S. troops are in a part of the world that produces a huge amount of oil and natural gas. We will have U.S. troops in that region for years to come, whether we want to or not. … And with the price of oil going up to a 4.5 dollars a gallon, imagine what would happen to the price of oil if we precipitously pull troops out of the Persian Gulf." - Ted Koppel on This Week, July 6, 2008

Trivia quiz: Which guy in this video is the real newsman? If you answered the guy on the right, the one who got fired by MSNBC for not picking up his pom poms fast enough, you'd be right.

After Walter Cronkite's retirement, Ted Koppel used to be America's de facto "most trusted man in America" then a funny thing happened on the way to lionization and the title of Grand Old Man of American Journalism: He simply sold out and accepted the Bush lies about Iraq as truth. If you can stand to watch the whole thing, the depth of Koppel's deluded state of mind regarding Iraq is breath-taking.

Then two days ago in an op-ed in the Wa Po, he made the mistake of lambasting Keith Olbermann and Bill O'Reilly, uniting the two ancient enemies by providing them with a common enemy. In it, Koppel blamed the degeneration of the news on partisans like O'Reilly and Olbermann without seeming to make any distinction between which man or which network, Fox or MSNBC, was the more honest and factual. Olbermann, in his rebuttal, laid it out succinctly by reminding Koppel that MSNBC doesn't make up facts. And, when they're wrong, they fess up to it.

If it wasn't for we bloggers' nonchalance about restating and overstating the obvious with viral echo chambers, Olbermann could single-handedly wipe out the liberal blogosphere because of the depth and righteousness of his commentary segments. But there are a few more points I can make.

Back when he'd taped that segment on Phil Donahue's soon-to-be-yanked show, he spoke authoritatively about Saddam's possible nuclear weapons program even as Donahue was trying to hold his feet to the fire and remind him of the absurd hypothetical in his and the Bush administration's argument. He even made the colossal mistake of using his own son in law, the Brooking's Institute's Kenneth M. Pollack, "one of the world's leading experts on Iraq", and his 2002 book that proved to be more wrong about Iraq than virtually any book ever written on any subject.

Back in 2004, long after the war had started to go south, Ted Koppel told Amy Goodman of Democracy Now that America didn't deserve an apology from either him or the networks who rah rah, sis boom bahed us into war with Iraq. Koppel's position back then hasn't changed a bit: That while the networks could've "been more critical", it's not their place to apologize for helping the Bush administration beat the war drums.

Koppel completely misses the point: In his fetish for straight, unbiased journalism (and invoking the spirit of Edward R. Murrow as Republicans embrace the skeleton of Joe McCarthy and any dead Democrat with whom they momentarily agree), Koppel conveniently overlooks the main function of journalism, which is to employ its critical faculties and to speak truth to power when government propaganda doesn't pass the smell test.


This is another example of how wrong he was after we'd invaded Iraq, when he told the late Tim Russert that withdrawing from Iraq would be a mistake and result in a regional civil war that would inflame the entire Persian Gulf and, yes, make oil prices spiral out of control.


And here's Koppel telling us yet again during the '08 election that if we pull out of Iraq, it'll disrupt the flow of oil and natural gas and plunge us into a global depression. Essentially, he said, we're staying in Iraq because of the oil and natural gas but not in any critical sense. Duh, you think, Ted? Don't you think that maybe the oil and natural gas industry in the Persian Gulf was destabilized and that our illegal meddling in their nationalized oil industry had made us retroactively indispensable?

But in the waning years of his career as a relevant newsman, Koppel because a passive pro-corporate tool who once wrote an alarming op-ed in the NY Times entitled "These Guns For Hire" in which the opening sentence was, "There is something terribly seductive about the notion of a mercenary army."

Less than a year and a half later, such a seductive mercenary army had killed 17 Iraqis at Nisour Sq. on September 16th.

So Ted Koppel, who was once an admirable journalist who faithfully reported for 444 days during the Iranian hostage crisis, is in no position to be chiding anyone about taking sides, especially when he consistently takes the side of the corporate sector that made him a rich man and helped confer on him the title of the Grand Old Man of American Journalism, a status that was denied his hero and so-called model Edward R. Murrow.

Koppel is spot-on correct in saying that news is becoming infotainment. But that was a trend that began back in the 50's and early 60's and Murrow was the first to speak out about it. But to conflate Olbermann with O'Reilly and, like Jon Stewart of late to make false equivalences between left and right is one of the biggest blunders he ever made. And when a "straight newsman" like Koppel consistently and unapologetically gets it wrong and sleeps with the wrong people time and again, it's symptomatic of why we trust "straight" news less and go to partisan commentators and cable comedians for our news by the millions.