Armadillo: Tuesday's six-pack
Six QBs taken before Tom Brady in the 2000 NFL Draft........
-- Chad Pennington 1st round, NYJ-- 44-37 record as a starter; 17,813 yards.
-- Giovanni Carmazzi, 3rd, SF-- Never played in an NFL game. Played some in NFL Europe and some with Calgary and BC in the CFL.
-- Chris Redman, 3rd, Balt-- 4-9 as starter. 3,179 yards. Lasted eight years.
-- Tee Martin, 5th, Pitt-- 3 games, no starts. 6-16 for 69 yards.
-- Marc Bulger, 6th, NO-- 36-24 in his first 60 starts, 5-30 in his last 35. Martz chose him over Kurt Warner; Rams haven't recovered in decade since.
-- Spergon Wynn, 6th Clev-- 0-3 as starter. Completed 46.1% of passes for 585 yards. Where is the genius who took Wynn over Brady?
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Armadillo: Tuesday's List of 13: Doing some thinking out loud........
13) Friend of mine who played a ton of football in his life had this comment about Peyton Manning throwing the ball with a 41-20 lead at the 2:00 warning Sunday: “If you don’t like it, play harder.” I defer to his opinion, seeing as he knows more football than anyone I know, and is an Arizona Cardinal fan.
12) Broncos saved $3.25M on next year’s salary cap by dumping kicker Prater now; they also had to give Giants a 7th-round draft pick for Brandon McManus, their new kicker. Had they cut McManus, Giants would’ve gotten bupkus, but they dealt McManus to Denver because they thought the Eagles were going to sign him if he was available and they didn’t want that.
11) Detroit Lions are 4-12 on field goals this year (0-6 from 40-49 yards) and they play home games in a dome; they should’ve signed Prater before this even gets posted. We’ll see.
10) Cal 60, Washington State 59— Wazzu QB Connor Halliday was 49-74 for a I-A record 734 yards passing late Saturday, but the Coogs lost when they missed a 19-yard FG at the gun. How do you gain over 800 yards in regulation and lose?
Cal ran two kicks bad for TDs in this game; Washington State fired its special teams coach on Monday- the defensive coordinator was spared.
9) Florida 10, Tennessee 9—This game was painful to watch, like watching two tired, drunken fighters try to land a haymaker on the other. Tennessee has an excuse, they’re a very young team. Florida is just ugly to watch and now that QB Murphy has been accused in an off-field incident, they might be even worse moving forward. SEC is not deep at all at quarterback.
8) Thru five games, Eagles have 11 offensive TDs and seven return TDs. Lot of teams don’t get seven return TDs in an entire season. Philly blocked punt for a TD on opponents’ first possession in each of their last two games.
7) This from Manish Mehta of New York Daily News, written before Sunday’s debacle in San Diego:
“(Jets GM John) Idzik works under rolling deadlines, apparently immune or oblivious to the realities of frustrated PSL owners doling out big money for a diminished product. The Jets have the sixth-highest average non-premium ticket price in the NFL ($105.66), 25% more than the league average ($84.43), according to teammarketingreport.com, yet the team has the lowest cash payroll ($95.2 million), according to spotrac.com.”
6) Syracuse lost its last three games to Maryland-Notre Dame-Louisville, so a scapegoat had to be found; it is OC George McDonald, who is now former OC. Tim Lester takes his place calling plays; good luck there, with starting QB Terrel Hunt now out 4-6 weeks with a broken leg.
5) Mike Scifres has been the Chargers’ punter for 12 years now; he’s appeared in 171 career games. He punted in college at Western Illinois, but when he was in high school in Louisiana, he was his team’s kicker, but not its punter.
How many NFL punters didn’t punt in high school? His team’s punter by the way, was future Hall of Fame safety Ed Reed.
4) Six QB’s were drafted ahead of Tom Brady in 2000. Six. Check the table up above for details, but if you think scouting/drafting is an exact science, think again.
3) It should be noted that when the 49ers drafted Joe Montana in the 3rd round in 1979, Bill Walsh preferred his old Stanford QB Steve Dils to Montana. 49er scouting guru Vinny Cerrano got the last word, though and Niners drafted Montana. Lucky for them.
2) Yusmiero Petit has had an interesting season; not only was he the winning pitcher in the 2nd-ever 18-inning playoff game (throwing 6.1 scoreless innings) he also set a major league record earlier this summer when he retired 47 consecutive batters, an obscure but very cool record.
1) So who knew that through five weeks, the Cleveland Browns would be the NFL’s most interesting team? All four of their games have seen winning points score in the last 1:09 of the game and all without Johnny Manziel doing one significant thing, other than congratulating his teammates. And making Snickers commercials.