dallascowboys

Log In above and share your thoughts on this topic with other fans!Tony Gonzalez was so wide open he probably had time to choreograph his post-touchdown celebration.The were running a pass play on first-and-goal from the St. Louis three-yard line. Running back Larry Johnson and fullback/tight end Kris Wilson flared out into the left flat, taking Rams defenders with them. Gonzalez slipped out, almost unnoticed from his tight end position, and made a break for the corner of the end zone.Gonzalez isn"t supposed to get that wide open. For years now, he"s been molested by linebackers and ridden by safeties and corners trying to disrupt his release from the line of scrimmage. Opposing defenses brought saddles along when it was time to face Gonzalez.But for whatever reason, the Rams" defense completely forgot about Gonzalez on this particular play. Chiefs quarterback Damon Huard didn"t, and flipped Gonzalez the nhl jersey easiest touchdown pass of his 10-year career. Just like that, the Chiefs were up 14-0, en route to a 31-17 win over the St. Louis Rams.Gonzalez finished the day with five catches for 64 yards and two touchdowns. His second score came right before halftime, when he was, again, so wide open he could have stopped and made a sandwich before hauling in a 25-yard scoring pass.Is someone making his morning coffee with water from the fountain of youth? After a dominating 2004 season that saw Gonzalez break the single-season record for catches by a tight end (102), the 10-year veteran"s numbers slipped in 2005. He averaged less than 12 yards per catch for the first time since 1999 and, most notably, scored only two touchdowns all year.This year, Gonzalez is averaging Saints jersey a healthy 13.3 yards per catch, the best mark of his professional career. Sunday"s two-touchdown game was his first since December 2004. Last year, Gonzalez scraped out just 376 yards in the first half of the season. There were whispers that he had lost a step, that Chiefs fans were finally seeing the decline that inevitably hits great tight ends once they turn 30. But this year Gonzalez is off to one the best start starts of his professional career, with 38 catches for 504 yards and three touchdowns. It"s been an eight-game stretch that is much more comparable to the way he started 2004, when he put up 576 yards in the first half of the season. What"s even more remarkable about Gonzalez"s renewed vigor in the passing game this year is he"s doing it Bills jerseyunder improbable circumstances. The Chiefs lost Hall of Fame left tackle Willie Roaf to retirement right before training camp. Quarterback Trent Green went down to a nasty concussion during Week 1. Gonzalez is putting together one of his best seasons with Huard, a journeyman at quarterback who had barely thrown a pass over the previous five seasons. It"s difficult to pinpoint any one factor that has led to the return of No. 88 as the NFL"s dominant tight end. Maybe it"s the fact that for the first time in years, he"s entered the season with a completely healthy foot. Perhaps it has something to do with KC"s new offensive coordinator, Mike Solari, a former tight ends coach. Heck, maybe Herm Edwards has Marty McFly"s Delorean stashed somewhere deep inside the bowels of Arrowhead Stadium, and switched out 30-year-old Gonzalez for 26-year-old Gonzalez before the season started.Whatever the reason, Gonzalez is back where he belongs. For the last several years, the national media promoted Jeremy Shockey, Alge Crumpler, Antonio Gates and Kellen Winslow, Jr. as the NFL"s best tight ends. As of Nov. 6, 2006, Gonzalez was leading that entire pack in receiving yards. commentary, courtesy of

Log In above and share your thoughts on this topic with other fans!There it was, and if it wasn t staring down at them from the Jumbotron or Funkitron or whatever the hell they call the big screens in Reliant Stadium, the " defense surely later heard of cheap nfl jerseysthe one eye-popping, team-damning statistic responsible for the team s current malaise. As Joseph Addai pounded it in for the touchdown in the first quarter, it marked the 11th TD on 12 trips into the red zone. By the time a debacle had unfolded and the Indianapolis Colts had twice more scored from inside the red, the Texans had given up 13 touchdowns on 14 trips into the red zone. For the record (Houston fans, look away), that s five surrendered to Pittsburgh, three to Tennessee, two to Jacksonville (including both in the second half) and three to Indy (including two in that record-setting final 5 minutes).That s an approximately 92.9 percent chance you ll score seven points against Houston if you can just get the ball to Minnesota Vikings jerseythe 20 yard-line. To put further perspective on this appalling bit of non-football (Texans fans, again, skip to the next paragraph), the Kansas City Chiefs one of the bottom three NFL defenses by any standard or measure have allowed only ; nine scores in 18 trips to the red zone. The lowly Detroit Lions have given up a score on 11 of 17 such occasions in 2008, and they ve been outscored 147-66 this year.To define Houston (blood) red-zone ineptitude in terms of the only statistic that matters, wins (sorry, Texans backers, this bit isn t for you, either, and maybe Pittsburgh Steelers jersey you should just check out the Oakland Raiders page instead), its soft defense has directly produced two last-minute losses, both against division rivals. The D holds just once, Jacksonville doesn t get to tie it up at all; same for the Indianapolis game and as much as the pundits want to give props to Peyton Manning or blame Sage Rosenfels, this red-zone defense means that any team s QB statistically morphs into a Tom Brady once inside the red.Win both games, you re in the driver s seat for second in the AFC South and on the early playoff bubble in a wacky conference. Lose either, ouch. Lose both and .. well, you re another edition of a team that s never produced a winning record.Almost nothing in football is simple. But the secret of the 0-4 is indeed this simple.Gee, maybe it wasn t the offensive line all along ...Fan Pulse: Over at TexansTalk, user J-Russ has posted a brilliant demotivational poster ; illustrating just how far in the wrong place Rosenfels head was on Sunday.

After doing a column on the good news and bad news about Jason Campbell (by Redskins fans, for Raiders fans), I figured I ;d turn the tables and get the skinny on Donovan McNabb (by Eagles fans for Redskins fans). Thanks to everyone at the 700level.com and Philaphans.com message boards for participating. Here ;s their good news and bad news about McNabb: Good news: you finally have a QB who can get you to the big game again. Bad news: he can"t seem to win the big game. ;-bigballer Good news is he doesn"t throw interceptions; bad news is he gets sacked a lot while holding the ball. Good news he throws an excellent deep ball; Bad news he throws a horrible short ball. ;-speedyg Good news: if he is hot, he will carve up any defense. Bad news: he can go from hot to cold in a matter of minutes. ;-iceman42 Good news: McNabb has a great arm, has tons of experience, and will not be in trouble with the law or have character problems off the field. He throws the deep ball very well and throws nba jersey balls that can cut through December winds. He has a lot more playoff experience obviously than Campbell did. He"s been fairly healthy the last few years. Perhaps he will have more of a running game in Washington than he did in Philadelphia. Change of scenery might help him.Bad news: with age, his agility has decreased, and he doesn"t have the escape-ability he once had. Due to this, he is forced to rely on accuracy, which is not really a strongpoint in the short and intermediate game. He is terrible in the two minute drill and having urgency at the end of games. While not injured lately, he does have an injury history. Not sure if the Skins offensive line will protect him well as he tends to hold onto the ball too long. This could leave him exposed more. Seemed complacent in Philadelphia and didn"t hate losing enough, and tended to rarely if ever take the blame for a bad performance. ;-KevinKolb4SB Good news: he is a nice guy and likes to have fun and tell jokes. Bad news: he isn"t a funny guy. He thinks he is Chris Rock but he is not funny at all. People say he is funny. That"s a lie. Get ready for a bunch of goofy interviews. ;-L-Money Good news: you finally have a good quarterback. Bad news: you"re about to get teased into thinking that you might have a chance to win. Sadly, you will realize that what you actually have is someone who has to be brilliant at times to make up for the amount of Saints jersey mediocre or downright awful plays that he makes. Oh, and he gets hurt, too. ;-Phorever a Phan Good news: DMac will make amazing plays that defy logic and lead the fan base to believe he is the second coming of God. Bad news: often those amazing plays only occurred because he didn"t feel comfortable throwing the original patter that was only 80% open. Good news: he"s a good guy that is a credit to the game and is someone kids can look up to as a person as well as an athlete. Bad news: he can be emotionally fragile and seems to still be maturing as an individual which manifests itself as a weakness when he tries to be the leader of the team. Good news: he won"t throw picks that end drives. Bad news: he will err on the side of caution even when situational context tells you he needs to be more of a risk taker. All in all I was a big Donny supporter but we just thought it was time to change horses and give him, and us, a fresh start. Good luck to you and him, you will get a good, but ultimately unfulfilling ride. ;-Swarm06 Good news: has been successful without many top WRs and thrived as a running QB. He ;s led teams without many offensive weapons to the playoffs with his scrambling ability and elusiveness. Bad news: bad red-zone QB, can"t throw the fade route, not good on 4th and inches, has played 16 games twice since 2003, inaccuracy leads to many 3 and outs. ;-dac4m Almost all of the negative thoughts I have towards 5 can be traced back to Andy Reid. Inaccuracy: if his left knee locks, the ball is going anywhere but the Receiver"s hands. If I can see that on my TV all the way here in Sweden, you"d think someone on the staff could have seen it & corrected it. 3 & outs: For a team that was always at the top of the stats for points scored, they also topped the list on "3 & outs." The fans always complained about the inevitable incompletion on 3rd & 2, but the real problem was not being able to run for those 2 yards. In the long run, I feel that 5 masked a lot of Bills jerseyReid ;s problems as a coach, not the other way around. ; -fågelpojke If he was more consistent I"m sure folks would have been more accepting of his guitar hero antics, but he wasn"t, choked (and vomited) in the big games and could then be seen on the sidelines with that big smile. I"m pretty sure that was really the thing that got on more people"s nerves than anything, that he would have that big joking smile during a loss. You"d never see Favre or Manning do that. ;-LyteInc The thing everyone is obviously missing here is the level of curse laid upon the Eagles, and us. McNabb will win a championship in DC, and he"s going to stand there with the Lombardi and turn around and moon us all. Just watch. ;-Eaglebreath I think if you take out the extreme fringes of both sides of the 5 debate you"ll get something that looks like this: very good QB who (at one time, perhaps again) can make the kind of plays that very few guys in this league can make. Because of this trait, he was able to keep this franchise in contention for the better part of a decade. As far as his mechanics and skills go, that"s pretty much the same thing that you"ll read elsewhere. He can heave a ball 70 yards downfield, but it"s in the short game where his flaws are more prevalent. He throws low and hard. In a precision scheme, this becomes very much a magnified flaw. When he has confidence in his line and his feet are set, he"s better able to make these throws, but this brings up the second flaw...he holds on to the ball WAAAY too long. I think that"s one of the things about his career INT stats which is somewhat jilted. He"s always been a guy whose hated tossing picks, but that"s not as good of a thing as you might think. He hates taking chances. He"ll take the sack or make an incredibly bad check down throw instead. Final analysis time: McNabb was/is a very good QB who was brought into a situation in which his personality and abilities were right enough to make this team very competitive, but flawed enough to undermine the team"s ultimate efforts. Some of it is the organization"s inability to build a system around the talents of the player, rather expecting the player to perform under a specific system. This part was Andy Reid"s fault. The part which was on McNabb is that he was never able to get past the part of himself which continually faulted the environment around him, rather than putting his efforts into working on the aspects of his game which needed to be addressed in order to succeed in this system.

All good things, as they say, must come to an end, including eight-game winning streaks by fascinating NFL teams such as the 2006-2007 Green Bay Packers. After emerging from the subpar pack at the end of last season, head coach Mike McCarthy has his mostly hand-picked bunch of mostly youngsters playing decent defense and creative offense. More importantly, he had his Packers at 4-0 going into last week"s game against the Chicago Bears and the rest of the league believing his guys were dangerous.Until it fell apart - OK, you don"t have to go that far; until it all looked mighty wobbly - in a disastrous second half that saw the Bears accrue 17 unanswered points in making the Cheesy Ones look like the most disoriented and disorganized team since ... um ... the early 2006 Packers. So call it a 8.5-game winning streak. Also call it over.The secrets of Chicago"s victory (and keys to the Washington Redskins" game plan for next)? How nfl jerseys about: The Bears" serious exploitation of the Pack"s man coverage. Greg Olsen simply out-jumped Atari Bigby for the quick-strike follow-up to the Brian Urlacher interception the Packers sorely needed to prevent. Later, Desmond Clark blew past Brady Poppinga and everyone else for the dagger TD that had been designed merely to get the first down on a third-and-2 play.Lovie Smith stated in the post-game that "We like the matchups with our tight ends versus their guys." This week, the Pack should see a diet heavy on the Chris Cooley, who showed last week just how good (and underrated) he is in all facets. Washington offensive coordinator Al Saunders has his team running an ultra-complex offense nearly to perfection; though Washington doesn"t run many two-TE formations, Saunders will surely dig into the playbook to baffle with Cooley. Coming off a breakout game, scary Mike Sellers may also create matchup problems. Ol" Favre showing hints of Old Favre. Now, I know we"re well into the Unofficial Year of St. Brett, but the water-walker showed his unfortunate tendency for erratic decision-making. The Urlacher pick was the showcase play - Favre rolled right, couldn"t find the receiver and hurriedly threw left while being pursued by about 27 Bears. Additionally, after a shaky and uninspiring 5-of-9 performance to start the fourth quarter, Favre couldn"t go long during the Cowboys jerseygame"s final drive while time ran out on the Packers and meaningless 8-yard gains.Should the Washington-Green Bay game be tight in the closing minutes, figure Favre to see a lot of the anti-Peyton Manning defense, i.e. back off the secondary a further 5 yards. Extremely costly mistakes. WR James Jones should be given a game ball for his two-fumble performance. After that, he should be given that old college training ritual of Never Let The Ball Out Of Your Sight. In preparation for the Washington game, Jones needs to be sleeping, showering and eating with the pigskin in a relationship closer than Tom Hanks and Wilson"s. And a couple of veteran miscues were particularly painful: Favre"s third-quarter interception was bookended by Charles Woodson"s fumble on a punt return. Combined with the bizarre "illegal formation" call on Corey Williams in the first half that give the Bears a first down on fourth, these mistakes were directly responsible for Colts jersey helping a low-watt offense to 17 points. Chicago perpetually had opportunities inside the 50; thus did the Bears win the field-position contest going away and ultimately the game. Washington, too, is quite content to swap punts until a flub by the opposing offense or special teams; witness the tight margin of victory in Weeks 1-3 combined. Last week, Washington blew out the Detroit Lions on conservative play as well as a ridiculous two picks and three fumbles recovered for losses by QB Jon Kitna.Though still sitting pretty at 4-1 and two games up on Chicago, Green Bay lost a costly one on Sunday, an "L" that could well haunt the Pack later in the season. Now if McCarthy, rapidly emerging as one of the finest coaches in pro football, can impart a few lessons this week, the Packers should be back on track with a home win against Washington.School"s in all year-round

By now, you"ve surely heard of the Green Bay Packers" Max McGee"s passing over the weekend. A former member of Vince Lombardi"s "Title Town" teams of the 1960s, McGee is certainly best known for his performance in Super Bowl I. In that inaugural game, McGee had a hangover from an all-nighter at Hollywood"s amazing Whiskey A Go Go - Do you realize the Whiskey has hosted as performers or house band Blondie, Buffalo Springfield, The Byrds, Alice Cooper, Cream, The Doors, Guns N" Roses, The Kinks, Led Zeppelin, Metallica, The Melvins, Motley Crue, Mudhoney, Nirvana, Oasis, The Police, The Ramones, Roxy Music, Sam & Dave (on one occasion joined by Jimi Hendrix!), Soundgarden, Talking Heads, The Turtles, Van Halen, The Who, X, XTC and Frank Zappa among others? One wonders who was on stage that Super Bowl eve - and famously didn"t expect to play at all. However, Bart Starr"s No. 2 target in 1967, Boyd Dowler, went down in the first quarter. The rest, as they say, is history. And stats: seven catches for 138 yards and two TDs plus the MVP nod in the Super Bowl. For his career McGee snagged 345 passes for 6,346 yards to go with 50 TD receptions and an impressive 18.4 yards per catch spread over 12 years. Always fun to watch and funny to quote, McGee was a true gem from an era nfl jersey when professional athletes partying properly was more jokingly admired (and, admittedly, less dangerous). When fun-loving guys were fun-loving guys, if you will.RealFootball365.com hereby suggests a few ways in paying simple tribute to a classic wide receiver and all-time great guy.Check out the Super Bowl I highlight clip. Though the one-minute NFL Films clip has mysteriously disappeared from SuperBowl.com, the official Web site still has it posted here. McGee"s first-quarter TD, in which he"s reportedly wearing someone else"s helmet and the one-hand grab was an attempt to prevent the interception, is there. Also see toward the end of the video McGee"s second TD, bubblier than champagne and perhaps more bobbled than his date to the Whiskey. Slip his most famous quote into Minnesota Vikings jersey conversation. Said quote: "When it"s third and 10, you can take the milk drinkers and I"ll take the whiskey drinkers every time." The line can of course be adapted to other ways of life: "When we"re in a pinch to close the quarter..." or "When we"re coming up against publishing deadline..." If you ask this quote enthusiast, though, the "milk drinkers" line doesn"t even make the list of McGee"s own top three, which goes:3. "Ladies, it"s been a festival, as always. You are all too beautiful for words. I only hope that I more than made up for the disappointment of Paul Hornung not being here." (On his departure from the Whiskey a Go Go.)2. "Not so fast, not so fast." (Reportedly McGee"s devastating comeback to Vince Lombardi"s cutting opening line in his introductory talk to the team in 1959: "Gentlemen, this is a football.")1. The closing line from this exchange, which occurred right after Super Bowl I and went something like the following according to Jerry Kramer"s Lombardi: Winning is the Only Thing.Lombardi: Nice game.McGee: Most any end could"ve done the same thing.Lombardi: You"re right.McGee: Well, you sure took the edge off that, you S.O.B.Damn, to Pittsburgh Steelers jerseywrite dialogue like that ...Have the man"s drink of choice - whiskey - in a memorial toast. Perhaps on Sunday while watching the Pack. Just drink responsibly. Well, responsibly enough to catch seven passes from Bart Starr while displaying Wildean wit to the ladies and gents. Perhaps some Loch Lomond...?Give to his charity, the Max McGee National Research Center for Juvenile Diabetes at the Children"s Hospital of Wisconsin in Milwaukee. McGee"s brother and one of his sons were sufferers of the illness, inspiring McGee to create the foundation in 1999. Every little bit helps, as they say, and I"m sure the Wild One himself would have appreciated the gesture.RealFootball365.com: Saluting the memory of Max McGee