Tag Archives: Super Bowl

Joe Mack Named Bombers GM. News Conference on Friday.

Joe Mack, who was with the Bombers from 1984-87, will be officially unveiled as the team’s general manager and director of football operations at a 10 a.m. news conference on Friday.

The story was broken early Thursday afternoon on Winnipeg’s 92-CITI-FM.

Mack has not held a CFL position since he left the Bombers in 1987, but he has worked with three NFL franchises — Carolina Panthers, Cleveland Browns and Washington Redskins. He won a Grey Cup ring with the Bombers in 1984 and helped build the team that won in 1988 and he won a Super Bowl ring with Washington in 1992.

Mack is a tremendous football man and an outstanding guy. This is a great first step for the rebuilding Bombers.

How Good is This Guy?

I knew it when I declared back in July that Brett Favre would indeed sign with the Minnesota Vikings (which, of course he did), but I must admit, after Sunday afternoon’s performance against the Seattle Seahawks not even I thought he’d be this good.

Sunday at Mall of America Field, Favre completed 22-of-25 passes (88 per cent) for 213 yards, no interceptions and four TDs as he led the Vikes to a 35-9 shellacking of the Seahawks. Those numbers are beyond remarkable. Eighty-eight per cent is the highest single-game percentage in Favre’s career. He threw touchdown passes to four different receivers — Sidney Rice, Visanthe Shiancoe, Bernard Berrian and Percy Harvin.

NFL.com reported that Favre’s previous career high was an 85.2 percent completion mark against Detroit on Sept. 20 of this year. But, amazingly, he has only completed at least 80 percent of his passes in a single game, two other times in his previous 18 seasons in the league.

Having had the opportunity to interview Favre (albeit in news conferences and scrums) on a number of occasions this season, I’ve concluded that the 40-year-old quarterback has reached a stage in his career in which every down is a bonus. As a result, he’s become more likable, more respected (if that’s possible) and perhaps even more skilled that he was when he was leading the Green Bay Packers to the Super Bowl.

In fact, on Sunday, Favre set an NFL record with his 22nd career game with at at least four touchdown passes. He and Dan Marino were tied at 21 each.

When Favre’s achievement was announced to the sellout crowd during the fourth quarter at the Metrodome on Sunday, he received a standing ovation and yet looked like a guy who had no idea what he’d done.

One gets the sense he no longer cares. At 40, he’s playing on perhaps the best team he’s ever seen — let alone been part of. In fact, if you base greatness on the number of weapons a team has, then Favre’s Minnesota Vikings might be the greatest team in the NFL today.

Frankly, it’s extremely unlikely even the unbeaten New Orleans Saints and Indianapolis Colts can claim to have seven of the most potent weapons in all of football, but Bret Favre can. In fact, does any team have more great offensive players than Minnesota: Favre, Harvin, Rice, Berrian, Peterson, Taylor and Shiancoe. No team in the NFL can touch that group.

The post-season is going to be fantastic.

The Insanity Continues. And the Local Media Proves How Hypocritical It Is Once Again.

MINNEAPOLIS — If the Minnesota Vikings win the Super Bowl, it won’t be because they were threatened in their own division.

I mean, how good do the Vikings look after both the Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers were clobbered last Sunday and then the Bears lost again on Thursday night?

Well, we’re here in the Twin Cities to watch the Vikings pummel the Lions at Mall of America Field on Sunday and then we’ll be back to watch the Vikings beat the Seahawks next weekend and the Bears on the 29th. Three straight home games against inferior talent should have the Vikes at 10-1 by the end of this month. And that means the Vikings could have the NFC North sewn up and their ticket to the playoffs punched.

It’s been a fun week in Winnipeg, made even more fun by Winnipeg drivers who need a little NASCAR fix and the local mainstream media who just can’t stop taking out all their frustrations on the only person who has the guts to call them what they are — belligerent, obnoxious, childish, ignorant and thin-skinned.

1) Blue Bombers head coach Mike Kelly made them all crazy again, just by saying he’ll be back next season. They whined and moaned and cried and bitched. Even the ones who have never, ever interviewed Kelly, screamed for his firing.

Then the hypocrisy of the local media mob reached comical levels.

Remember when the Bombers got to 7-9 and suddenly the local media made Manny Matzakis the darling of the masses. According to the tall foreheads with the cameras and microphones, Kelly had nothing to do with the team’s resurgence and it was all Matzakis.

Then, after the Bombers were drilled in the final two games of the season, Matzakis suddenly got a pass. The lousy offence wasn’t his fault, it was Kelly’s. Nowhere in the local media was Matzakis even mentioned as a culprit.

The smartest thing anyone in Winnipeg can do is this: Don’t believe a thing you read in a newspaper. They’re just making it up.

2) I love NASCAR for plenty of reasons, but this is the biggest: There are no turn signals on the cars. In Winnipeg, turn signals are the most frightening things you can give a driver.

Seems that in this town we have two types of drivers: the ones who turn on their signals and then never make the turn and the ones who don’t turn on their turn signals until they’re in the middle of an intersection, backing up traffic for blocks.

No wonder Manitoba Public Insurance pays out hundreds of millions of dollars in claims each year.

3) This is why I love it when the Green Bay Packers lose. The franchise is run by a heartless GM and an ignorant, heartless head coach…

According to the Associated Press: “A maintenance employee who’s worked for the Green Bay Packers for more than two decades was fired after making a comment to head coach Mike McCarthy.”

WTMJ radio then reported on Friday that 53-year-old Mike Wood was sitting in a maintenance cart in a stadium tunnel a few days before the Minnesota Vikings visited Lambeau Field. As McCarthy talked to members of the ground crew, Wood says he yelled out to McCarthy to “get the boys ready to kick some butt this weekend.”

A few days later, Wood was fired from the franchise he loves.

Wood says his supervisors thought he told McCarthy not to lay an egg, or something similar which Wood says was a lie. McCarthy said he didn’t fire the maintenance worker, but my insiders say he told the maintenance department to run the guy out of the organization.

Can’t wait to watch that paranoid Packer organization lose again. Those clowns need to worry a lot more about their offensive line and a lot less about the maintenance department.

Steelers are Seven-point Favourites in World’s Most Popular Game

NFL Super Bowl Report No. 2, Sunday Jan. 25, 2009

TAMPA — Three things rattling around in my cranium as I wait in sunny Florida for the Super Bowl teams to arrive…

 

1) I’m told here in Tampa that Jon Gruden’s firing as the head coach of the Buccaneers’ last week came as a surprise to a number of people around the NFL. Not sure I know why that is, but I certainly know now that it wasn’t a surprise for Bucs players. In fact, former CFL star, now Bucs quarterback Jeff Garcia was one player who said a change absolutely, positively had to be made.

 

Garcia told reporters in Tampa on the day we arrived that he felt Gruden’s lousy relationship with the folks in the locker room played a key role in his dismissal. According to my friends at the Tampa Tribune, the veteran quarterback had a long-running feud with Gruden and general manager Bruce Allen. As a result of the Bucs’ preseason love affair with Brett Favre and its reluctance to renegotiate Garcia’s contract last summer, the quarterback didn’t have much a relationship with either of the since-departed Bucs bosses. 

 

In fact, you might say that if there was one player responsible for Gruden’s firing, it was Jeff Garcia.

 

2) As we get set for Super Bowl XLIII, ever wondered how popular the NFL is?

 

Here in Tampa’s media centre, the NFL last out pages and pages of quotes and information. I picked this one up Sunday morning, it kind of answers the previous question: 225 million Americans watched NFL games during the 2008 regular season – nearly 100 million more than the record number of Americans who voted in the 2008 presidential election (131.2 million). 

 

NFL games on broadcast TV (CBS, FOX and NBC) averaged 16.6 million viewers. On cable, NFL games on ESPN averaged 12.0 million viewers and 4.9 million viewers on NFL Network. 

 

Super Bowl XLII was the most-watched TV program ever (148.3 million total viewers). The 17 most-watched programs in TV history are all Super Bowls. And Super Bowl XLII was watched in 223 countries and territories in 30 different languages. 

 

Hmmm. Pretty popular game.

 

3) With the NFL Experience going strong today, Super Bowl Week has officially begun here in Tampa. The teams arrive this afternoon and by 1:30, the first official Super Bowl interviews will have begun.

 

Just to set the record straight, Arizona will wear their home reds on Sunday, Pittsburgh will wear road whites. NFL legends Lynn Swann, Roger Craig and John Elway will flip the special 24 kt. gold two-tone coin while Joe Namath will present the Vince Lombardi Trophy.

 

As of this morning, the Steelers are seven-point favourites.

 

Some Thoughts From a Crazy Weekend of NFL Playoff Football…

A few thoughts from a weekend in front of the big new Sony Bravia HD…

 

(1) OK, so I’d make a lousy NFL owner. No question about it. I know, because, on Saturday afternoon, if I owned the Carolina Panthers, I’d have fired head coach John Fox at halftime.

 

Let’s be honest, five interceptions will cost any team any football game and Carolina QB Jake Delhomme did himself no favours by coughing up the football five times. However, had Fox been marginally prepared for the Cardinals, Delhomme would not have found himself in a position where he had to force so many second-half passes.

 

Fact is, the Panthers could still have beaten the Arizona Cardinals on Saturday WITH five Delhomme interceptions, if Fox and his staff thought it might be somewhat important to actually try to cover Arizona wideout Larry Fitzgerald.

 

Fitzgerald came into Saturday’s game as the leading receiver in the NFC (1,431 yards). He might be the best receiver in football. He’s not a secret. 

 

Meanwhile, his receiving partner Anquan Boldin was injured and not in the lineup. So suddenly, with one of the Cards’ two most important weapons out of the equation, Carolina still forgot that Fitzgerald was playing. The Panthers allowed Fitzgerald to catch eight passes — six in the first half — for 161 yards and a second-quarter touchdown. Had Carolina shut down Fitzgerald before halftime, they’d have shut down the Cardinals. 

 

I hope this doesn’t sound presumptuous, but why didn’t Fox think of that?

 

(2) Evidently, in the National Football Conference, the 17-week regular season doesn’t mean very much. This coming Sunday a 9-6-1 team will journey to the home of a 9-7 team to play for the NFC title.

 

That’s right. It will be the 9-6-1 Philadelphia Eagles against the 9-7 Arizona Cardinals in the NFC championship game and the team hosting the game, the Cards, lost 35-14 at home to the Minnesota Vikings less than a month ago.

 

In a league where four injury reports are published every week just to keep the gamblers happy, it has now become painfully obvious the only reason the NFL’s regular season exists is for the benefit of the gamblers. 

 

After all, when an 11-5 team misses the playoffs and a 9-7 team could win the Super Bowl, the integrity of the schedule comes into question and right now, it would appear the only reason they bother to play a regular season is so you and I can bet on it.

 

(3) Why is it that people hate Minnesota Vikings QB Tarvaris Jackson so much? Seems everyone from Vikings head coach Brad Childress to the entire Minnesota media corps wants the Vikings to find a way to make it appear as if ol’ T-Jack never existed.

 

Which brings up the following question: “Because T-Jack had no support whatsoever from his offensive line in a 26-14 playoff loss to the Eagles two weeks ago, is he any worse at playing quarterback than Eli Manning — who had some support at home this past week and lost 23-11? With no help from his Hawgs, T-Jack DID put up more points against that Eagles defence than L’il Manning.

 

Just asking.

Vikings really need a quarterback.

The Minnesota Vikings won a thrilling 28-27 decision over the Green Bay Packers at the Metrodome last Sunday and at the end of it, all I could ask myself was “How good would this team be if it had a real quarterback?” 

Gus Frerotte is a solid backup, but he’s a lousy starter. Sunday’s game would not have been close if the Vikings had a legitimate starter. In fact, 17 of Green Bay’s 27 points came directly off Frerotte interceptions.

Minnesota’s defence is so good, the only way Green Bay was close this week was because Frerotte made three game-changing passes right to the wrong team. Green Bay didn’t score an offensive touchdown, Aaron Rodgers was hounded by Jared Allen and Co. all day and yet, the Pack lost by only a point. 

Fact is, without that defensive line and Adrian Peterson, the Vikes would be battling Detroit for last in the NFC North. It’s almost impossible to believe, but Bernard Berrian didn’t catch a pass last Sunday. That would never happen with a real quarterback. 

Wow! How good would Minnesota be with a quarterback?