Morning Extras: I was Ready for Some Football. Was Washington?

The fall brings one beautiful thing to America: football season. I think a few hundred leaves fell off my tree just to get a closer glimpse of the TV to see the defending Super Bowl champs last night. And in the first quarter, that's what they looked like. The Giants came out with determination and force, punching the Redskins right in the mouth, and literally running right through the Washington defense.

The Redskins offense, behind new head coach Jim Zorn couldn't get as much as a first down without help of a penalty and didn't complete a pass until the first half was nearing completion. Washington started to gain some momentum leading into the break, scoring a late touchdown to cut the lead to 16-7 at the half.

NBC should have cut to the convention coverage right then. The second half was a snooooooooooooooozefest. Eagles fans should be heartwarmed to see one obvious thing last night: those two teams aren't very good. Well, Washington looks terrible. I don't know if they'll score 250 points all season. As for the GMen, it was what we should have expected. One drive they look like world beaters. The next they look out of sync and Eli Manning tries to do too much and gets picked off. One drive their defense looks progressive and stalwart, only to have the offense run a delayed draw on third-and-six and kick.

Yes, last night's game should have been quite heartwarming for Eagles fans.

A few notes about the game, then some more links.

• Either John Madden could have used a few more preseason games, or he just stinks. I know that Madden's schtick has been to just say the obvious thing. At one point he said something like, "if you run the ball well and you pass the ball well, you're probably going to score some points." I shit you not, it was something about that dumb. But he seemed particularly off his game at times last night.

In the first quarter, Plaxico Burress had an unbelievable circus catch with two men all over his back and Madden didn't even mention it, talking instead about how Eli stepped around pressure and that he must have learned that from Archie. NBC, taking Madden's lead after showing the catch twice without any analysis from their lead analyst, cut to a shot of Archie looking glumly at the field, wondering if he's going to make his flight to Indy to see his favorite son play.

At the start of the second half, Santana Moss was hit while trying to catch a third-down pass and fell to the ground, losing his helmet. Moss never had possession of the ball before he was hit and after the ball bounced off the leg of the defender, Moss pinned it against his buttocks, spun it into his hands, rolled over and got up to run for what would have been a touchdown.

And should have been a touchdown.

He never had possession at the time he was touched. Once he gained possession, he was on the ground, but was NEVER TOUCHED. Had he scored on that play, the score would have been 16-14 and made for one hell of a game. Madden (and Al Michaels for that matter) never once questioned the fact that of whether he was actually down by contact. Hell, Madden never even chided Moss for running a seven-yard out on third an eight. Maybe they had a Heroes promo to get to.

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Links:

• The Steinbog was at the game (and who I stole that photo from), doing his typical hilarious coverage of American sports. He actually did some reporting as well, getting post-game quotes from the Skins:

Moss: "I mean, we just sputtered a lot....Sputter here, sputter there."

Zorn: "We sputtered from the first play. We sputtered around for too many minutes and too many plays for the first half."

• From the Giants side of things, the team looked good but not great according to the Ledger's Mike Garafolo. To save time, this link has all your other Gints stuff for those who want full recap and analysis.

• Locally speaking, Paul Domowitch has his NFL rundown, talking about two local boys making good in Matt Ryan and Joe Flacco. He has some pretty good hits from around the league worth checking out, then snuck this in at the end:

* How long it will be before the Eagles' still-learning-how-to-block fullback Tony Hunt suffers his first neck stinger.

Can we bet on that at BodogLife? I say two games. And does this mean Domowitch is now rooting for players to get hurt, or just pointing out they will?

• Bob Ford takes the Phils day off to rip on them some more, using Dave Montgomery's words to do the ripping:

"Shame on us if we sit back and say, 'Everything is fine.' "

Ford says, indeed, shame on them. I half-jokingly ripped Ford the other day for his 'press box food' line, so I don't want to pile on (yes I do) too much. But does anyone think that his lede makes sense today? I think he's trying to dance around the idea of the other teams in town having had memorable quotes before, but they're out-dated and unrelated and he tries to flower it up too much. And it takes until the fourth graph before you understand what he was even trying to get at in the first. Don't dance. Say what you want to say.

And by the way Bob, if you're looking for the most memorable quote in recent Philly sports history, you don't have to invoke the names of AI, Ricky Watters or Terry Murray (?!?!!?). I know what you're getting at. Montgomery's quote won't be a chapter in any Philly sports history book, but it should be more important to hold him accountable for it than "practice?" or "for who? for what?" But don't dance around it by invoking quotes that were said literally DECADES ago to prove an utterly unrelated point. Go back to last year. Remember, "we're the team to beat." We need more of that.

Commenters, let me know what you think. Am I being too hard on this?

• We've had talk of soccer stadiums on the site lately, so I wanted to throw this in, following up on my post from last week. Turns out, local girl turned national hero Carli Lloyd doesn't want to stay in Jersey to play. Given three choices of locations to play in the new Women's Soccer League, Lloyd put Chicago as her first choice, Washington as her second choice and left number three blank. Yes, she'd rather NOT PLAY than stay in Jersey. Attagirl.

• In other news, Novak Djokovic beat Andy Roddick in four sets last night, then ripped the American in a post-match interview, hearing boos careering from the rafters of the Billie Jean King National Tennis Center. Oooh, a tennis bad guy. This could be good for the sports. I'm being serious.

• David Stern is not a happy man.

• John McCain spoke last night. Again, these speeches don't really say much other than things to galvanize the parties. But according to the pundits, McCain didn't do much galvanizing last night. The real story out of the Twin Cities was Sarah Palin, who is now the most beloved figure in all of GOPland.

McCain, however, spoke of Change. He spoke of ending partisan politics. At one point I think he even suggested he and Obama just RPS for the POTUS spot, with the other getting VP.

• Here is the full video, so watch for yourself. And say what you will about Keith Olberman but in the end of the clip below he was dead on about the blue screen of death behind McCain. Sure a 100 foot high American flag swaying in the breeze looks great for the 25,000 people in the arena, but safe for a few wide shots during applause, it looked to 50 million viewers like McCain was standing in front of a blue screen. Ah, Colbert Nation is going to have a field day with that.

Comments

[Pete D]

From the Phillies newsletter last night:
---
Jimmy Rollins nominated for the 2008 Roberto Clemente Award, presented by Chevrolet.

When shortstop Jimmy Rollins was growing up, his father used to assign him a "Word of the Day" to learn.

At the end of each week, Rollins would have to pass a test to prove he had mastered each word's definition. The young Rollins couldn't possibly have known it at the time, but this would mark the beginning of a passion for literacy that would ultimately be used to benefit thousands of students in the Philadelphia area.
---

This means he had every reason to know what frontrunner meant, and must have spoken accordingly.

[philb]

I was wondering why no one mentioned the Santana Moss 3rd down catch during the game. He clearly didn't get touched when he actually had posession. Why didn't they challenge that(?)- especially how the offense was playing. At that point in the game they had all 3 timeouts left - didn't they? How the hell does Washington not have a hurry up offense at the end of the game? Is it me or does Jason Campbell just suck? Everyone says he's been through 7 or 8 (or whatever the number is) offensive coordinators - but he hasn't picked up the offense in any of them. Didn't Collins play better than him last year anyway? WTF was the offense doing out there? Anyone know what is the injury update is on Kiwanuka(sp)? He got hurt on the last play of the game - that could hurt the Giants even more if he goes down for a while. Announcing - Let's see. Was it the lighting or did Bob Costas look like a freak yesterday during the halftime show? He was like bright white. Scarry looking. At this point they could substitute Madden with Dierdork and my ears would bleed the same. No amount of alcohol consumption could make that kind of pain go away. Both are horrible. Madden has steadily gone downhill since the days of him and Sumerall on Fox.

[Michael C]

John Madden has been terrible for years. Here is a fun game: when he broadcasts the Eagles, do a shot every time he talks about cheesesteaks, 2 for every time they show cheesesteaks being made, and 3 for everytime they show Big John stuffing his face. And try not to pass out by halftime.

[theKrisheim]

i went to see andy roddick get his ass kicked last night and i got what i wanted.

dude is a fraud and his career is over, not to mention he is a supreme asshole.

two double faults at 5 - 4 in the 4th will haunt him for the rest of the year.

couldnt have happened to a nicer guy.

[Dan]

The Moss play wasn't a catch. He went up for it, didn't have possession of it when he came down, it hit the ground, so did he. Incomplete. Check out the replay - he clearly never had the thing under control.

[Kulp]

One thing was for certain in that game: Jason Campbell is not ready to run that offense, and it was evident from the first play of the game.

Campbell drops back and looks for Moss, but he's covered. Rather than continue through his progressions to find Cooley open in the middle, he rolls the pocket toward Moss while staring him down the entire time. There weren't even any other receivers on that side of the field. The protection quickly breaks down, and it's a sack.

That is simply unacceptable quarterbacking.

[jd]

i was wondering that as well-IMO, from every angle i saw, the ball never touched the ground. i don't fault the refs for their decision-it was a circus catch that only a cat would have noticed in real time.

both teams were meh.

did mcdougle account for the redskins first first down with that penalty on ST?

[jd]

o, and madden is awful, and near unwatchable.

[ill]

I hate the US Open. I hate the fans, the lack of tradition, the music they pump through the stadium, and the interviews.

But I like who is left in the semis.

[HLH]

I agree that Madden was off his game last night and has been pretty annoying for years. But I'd much rather listen to him and Al then Tony Kornheiser and his stupid remarks. Or him trying to pick a fight with everyone that disagrees with his thoughts. He is good on PTI where he is supposed to be arguing. And I'd rather see Madden stuffing his face with food during an Eagles game rather then Troy Faikman and his little butt buddy Joe Fuck. I swear if Joe gets any closer when he talks to Troy he is gonna have his tongue down his throat. I'm sure he would like that though.

[BadMotherFutley]

Ford definitely rambles too much at the beginning of his article, and the other quotes don't add anything except a few dozen words.

That said, it's all well and good to trash the team for not making a splashy deadline trade, but it rings hollow unless you give some info on various moves that could/should have been made.

Did the Phils make a legitimate push for Sabathia, and the Indians just decided that Milwaukee's offer was better? What's the real truth about the Holliday/Fuentes deal? Did the Phils balk at the asking price or did Colorado cut off talks when they won a few before the deadline?

If he had actually done some reporting instead of just spouting off like a blog commenter, he could have written a pretty good column.

[d27]

way to link us to a wide-range of responses to mccain's speech.

[enrico]

Politics are boring. Football is not.