MMQBTE--What I Read During Detention

A break down of MMQBTE, in which PK reveals that he and BF, while not BFF, are BFFib“B”YMtOGCaRAoWftOGitFGCfSI (that is, Best Friends Forever if by “Best” You Mean that One Guy Carries a Ridiculous Amount of Water for the Other Guy in the First Guy’s Column for Sports Illustrated)

So, the big topic this week is that Brett Favre, in a fit of pique because the Packers didn’t acquire Randy Moss—you know, the same one whom the Patriots signed in a deal that can’t work out regardless of the outcome—demanded a trade. Surely, such a selfish act from the fourth most selfish athlete in major American sports (somewhere behind Roger Clemens, Terrell Owens, and Kobe Bryant), would dim the flame of PK’s inordinate love for Favre.

Mapquest tells us it's 1,036 miles from Brett Favre's offseason home in Hattiesburg, Miss., to his in-season place, Green Bay. It might as well be a million miles. Because the one thing we learned from his failure to woo Randy Moss over the last couple of months is this: he may be one of the true legends in NFL history, but he is nothing more than an employee in the eyes of the Packers front office.

I am fucking stupid.

And Peter must have been great at that summer-camp punishment when the counselor makes you hold buckets of water with your arms extended at shoulder-height. Brett Favre is the one employee fucking the Packers more than anyone else in the state of Wisconsin, the mere employee who has been on the fence for two years, hamstringing the entire franchise with his increasingly bad play while leveraging his popularity to his own advantage.

It's now clear that Favre pulled out all the stops in trying to get Moss to team with Donald Driver and Greg Jennings as a potent trio of Green Bay wideouts. He politicked for it internally, had his agent press the Packers to acquire Moss and made it clear that with Moss, Green Bay would be a serious contender for the NFC Central title this year. But as has been the case since he took over, Ted Thompson communicated that he runs the franchise and the quarterback should concentrate on rehabbing his ankle and getting ready for his 17th season in Green Bay.

None of this paragraph makes either Thompson or Favre sound especially unreasonable, but does anyone really think that Brett Favre would ever make a good GM of an NFL team? I’m not sure that I’d trust him to be a QB coach.

I don't know Favre as well as I used to, but I do know this -- this failed dalliance with Moss had to have wounded him deeply. He knows Moss. He knows he would have been able to get Moss to play hard, which is something the receiver didn't do in Oakland the last two years. And I don't think this is a case of Thompson telling Favre that he isn't wanted. Thompson does want Favre ... but as his quarterback, not as his assistant general manager. If Thompson could have stolen Moss, who is a risk by anyone's standards, he would have done it.

Peter and Brett had a falling out when PK refused to draft Moss on their fantasy team. Let’s count the ways in which this paragraph implicitly argues against Brett Favre’s status as GMM (that’s general manager manque) 1) He’s personally wounded that a business transaction didn’t come to pass. 2) He’s relying on his own impressions of Moss’s personality to judge his fitness to play for the Packers, impressions that must be limited because they’ve never actually been teammates (except at the Pro-Bowl, if that counts, which it doesn’t. For anything. In any context. Ever.) 3) He’s indulging his own ego by assuming that Moss wouldn’t dare slack off around the great Brett Favre. 4) Remember that PK has insisted on multiple occasions that Moss will not be good (even if he plays fantastically) for the Patriots, so surely PK would have to find fault with Favre’s pro-Moss mission.

There's one thing Favre has missed in this whole drama. I think that once the Patriots were in the picture, Moss didn't care about the Packers anymore. If New England hadn't been involved, Green Bay probably would have gotten Moss and Favre would be a happy man today.

I just listed four things that Favre missed, but I agree with Peter, so this would make five. Why would Moss play for a piddly-ass Green Bay team that in no meaningful way will compete for the Super Bowl any time soon?

But the Packers aren't going to win the Super Bowl this year. The Patriots might. And if you're Moss, and the only thing you really care about right now is trying to win a championship so you can shut the people up who are ripping for you for taking a dive last year with Oakland, there was only one team to go to this offseason. That's New England. Once the Patriots showed even a flicker of interest, Moss would have walked to Foxboro.

Hey, I was right.

And now to some reader email:

Brian Gridley of Atlanta: "As a life-long Packers' fan, I'm sad Ted Thompson has decided to waste the final years of Brett Favre's playing career. Thompson, who inherited a playoff team, has done nothing to ingratiate himself to Packers fans, and the recent comments by Favre certainly won't help. Thompson may have some plan to build the Packers for what looks like a far-distant future, but if the team takes a step back this year (which looks likely), the public pressure to get rid of Thompson is going to be intense.

Just like last week, the first emailer has things backwards (switch Brett Favre with Ted Thompson and change final to first and you’ll be pretty close to the right sentence). And what, exactly, has Favre done recently to ingratiate himself to Packers fans? That guy is coasting on beloved-by-all capital.

I don't agree. Now if the Packers go 2-14, there's going to be pressure to fire everybody who works at Lambeau Field, but I don't think club president John Jones is going to give Thompson so little time to rebuild the team in his image. I do think it's sad Thompson and Favre don't have a better line of communication. Favre will go down as one of the great players in NFL history, and I think he and the GM should make a better effort to get on the same page, and soon. But as far as Thompson's job being in jeopardy this season, I don't see it.

At what point does a player get to start authoring the page onto which he and the GM are supposed to get?

STEELER NATION MAY SIDE WITH FANECA. From Melissa Pust of Pittsburgh: "Great story on Mike Tomlin -- enjoyed hearing that he is ready to work and think he'll bring a freshness to the Steelers. That being said, don't be too surprised if the fans here support Faneca. You'll recall that when Hines Ward was redoing his contract the fans were vocal that the team pay him more money. Do you think they can get a deal done or is Faneca already packing up his locker for greener ($$$) pastures?"

Good for you, Melissa Pust, though you could stand to get a better surname. I mentioned this very issue last week, so I’m glad to see some follow-up. Peter is less player-friendly, though,towards Faneca (if only he were more Southern, charming, quarterbacking, car flipping, small-intestine losing, and painkiller abusing).

After spending time with Tomlin, I found it extremely interesting that he has this "what-me-worry" attitude about Faneca's contract situation. Tomlin told me that when you've been a position coach in pro football for a while (and for five years he was Tampa Bay's secondary coach before moving to Minnesota as defensive coordinator in 2006), you constantly hear players moan about their contracts. He told me he listened to Ronde Barber and Brian Kelly, Bucs cornerbacks, complain about being underpaid for two years and it's just a way of life in the modern NFL.

Yep, employees bitch and moan about money. Why, even our favorite everyman scribe routinely bitches about cable packages and satellite dish prices.

Regarding Faneca, he simply feels there's no need to create a problem before one surfaces. If Faneca isn't there at the start of training camp, that's when Tomlin is going to start worrying about it. Not before then. This is a good attitude for a coach in 2007, because there's nothing Tomlin can do to make Faneca happy other than to pay him $7 million. Maybe the Steelers will, eventually. Faneca is a great player. But every contract impacts every other contract. And with Troy Polamalu and Ben Roethlisberger deals to be made in the next year or so, the Steelers are going to have to be picky about who they make gazillionaires.

One, gazillionaires is a wild exaggeration, especially since PK has already named the dollar figures involved. Two, the real “gazillionaires” are those who CTC for millions of dollars to would-be millionaires. Three, maybe, just maybe, Faneca et al. have something to do with making the Steelers profitable, hence making themselves millionaires.

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MMQB's out for Summer

If this week’s MMQB is titled “New School Meets Old School,” does PK = pre-K? He does give us a “head start” on the NFL.

Sitting in new coach Mike Tomlin's office the other day, I got the impression he will be about as meat-and-potatoes as any other coach in football. On the wall of his office are three blown-up Steelers prints.

One is an artsy, tight line-of-scrimmage shot from the 2006 preseason, with Vikings helmets butting up against Steelers helmets. "Beautiful,'' Tomlin said.

Two: Guard Alan Faneca is pulling on an end sweep, with tight end Jerame Tuman sealing off another block. "Power football,'' Tomlin said. "That's beautiful."

John Ruskin said, “Beauty deprived of its proper foils and adjuncts ceases to be enjoyed as beauty, just as light deprived of all shadows ceases to be enjoyed as light,” so let’s get to the foil of this Faneca beauty:

Tomlin on the Faneca contract issues/distraction/holdout-potential: "You know how that stuff is. Contracts are emotional deals. It's going on in every city in the NFL. It's reality. If guys want to enjoy the fruits of free agency, they've got to get to the market.''

Yep, I know how that stuff is ‘cause I know how it is (we’re supposed to be speaking in tautologies, right?)

Faneca has one year left on a contract due to pay him $3.375 million, with a $1 million roster bonus. That's $4.4 million, in essence, for the second-best guard in football, next to Steve Hutchinson. It looks like the Steelers have no intention of paying him in the range of the $7 million-a-year deals of Hutchinson, Eric Steinbach and Derrick Dockery. Faneca's furious about it. But Tomlin expects him to be a pro, and to come to training camp ready to play.

3.375 + 1 = 4.4?

I think Faneca will, but it could get ugly. And the city of Pittsburgh will have no pity on him because it's not the kind of town to ever feel sorry for a guy on its beloved team making $4.4 million, no matter what anyone else is making.

People say stuff like this a lot, but are we meant to side with the people of Pittsburgh or with Faneca, who’s working, presumably, at less than 65% market value? Someone must have written a book about the crazy cognitive dissonance of the modern sports fan who both loves and hates professional athletes.

"Right now, it's hard to be optimistic. I'm not getting any younger and I think everyone knows that. I don't have five years to rebuild. No one in Green Bay is saying rebuild, but it's hard to look at where we are going and say, 'How can they not be rebuilding?' ''

--Green Bay quarterback Brett Favre, in Sunday's Biloxi (Miss.) Sun-Herald, still fried that the Packers did not acquire Randy Moss on draft day.

Will someone please tell Brett that he is most certainly part of the problem in Green Bay? Anyone? Surely some employee of the Green Bay Press-Gazette or some paper near Brett’s hometown of Kiln, MS (which may be the Sun-Herald—it covers a good chunk of Mississippi’s gulf coast) is on his or her way out the door and out of the business. Can’t we find a disgruntled intern or something?

"He told me some things and he was pretty bold and said exactly what he needed to say. I heard him out clearly and I know he means business and I have to respect that. I have to respect the organization. They gave me a chance to play in this league.''

-- Atlanta quarterback Michael Vick, on the talking-to he got from Falcons owner Arthur Blank, following revelations that emaciated dogs -- dogs that may have been trained to fight other dogs -- had been found on Vick's property in Virginia.

Just “a chance”? Between all the bullshit off the field and a career punctuated by dazzling runs and lousy passes, I count more like 37 chances (+/- 3%--my study has a 95% confidence interval).

And here is PK again with the circumspection about what the dogs may have been doing. Criminals of the world, make sure that Peter King is called to jury duty when your time comes.

"It boggles the entire mind. It was stunning to all of us.''

-- Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, an Eagles season-ticket holder, to Bloomberg Television, on the team using its first draft choice in April to select University of Houston quarterback Kevin Kolb. Rendell was outspoken eight years ago against the Eagles' picking McNabb, saying they should have chosen Ricky Williams. Now he's upset the team has chosen a player to compete for McNabb's job.

I hope, for the sake of Rendell’s involuntary bodily functions, that it boggled the medulla oblongata and pons only briefly. And I’m not going to look, but I can’t possibly imagine that Rendell was the only person who wanted the Eagles to draft Ricky Williams. McNabb’s pick is the most famously booed draft pick in history (at least if we’re to determine “most famous” by “most times played during ESPN’s draft coverage”).

"I think we are going to rue the day we didn't pick him.''

-- Rendell, to Bloomberg, on the Eagles' bypassing USC receiver Dwayne Jarrett to pick Kolb.

Here's my question about Rendell: Why doesn't he just buy the damn team from Jeff Lurie and go make the picks himself?

I’ll just defer to JLD on this one: As my response, I quote from the Millersville U. student paper: "Pennsylvania Governor Edward G. Rendell only makes $164,396 a year, almost $26,000 less than McNairy and $67,000 less than Atwater." (McNairy being one Francine McNairy, President of Millersville, and Atwater being Tony Atwater, President of Indiana University of Pennsylvania (not to be confused with the Indiana University of Indiana (or frankly, Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne (IUPUFW)).
http://www.thesnapper.com/index.php?page=articles&article_id=1922606

Now, $160K is nothing to sneeze at, but as far as I can tell, Rendell has been in politics or prosecution his whole career, and 6 years of a governor's salary ain't putting you in the sports franchise ownership echelon of the wealthy. Not even Arena Football ownership, frankly. You've got to be Jon Bon Jovi to get there.

HPP again: That was too easy. Also, Dwayne Jarrett was really good in college, and Keyshawn Johnson sure as hell wishes that the Eagles took him.

"I want to hear that nice, soft, poof. I don't want to hear that 'whack' at the palm of the hand. He made some nice catches. He has got good hands. I was up at the other end listening to ... usually I like to listen. You can listen and tell a lot about a guy catching the ball. He sounded good.''

-- New York Giants coach Tom Coughlin, after watching second-round wideout Steve Smith catch the ball during a mini-camp practice on Saturday.

Tom Coughlin and Stephen Dedalus, famed appreciators of the ineluctable modality of the audible, especially as it relates to ball sports. Right now, I’m imagining Tom Coughlin walking on a beach with his eyes closed. Or forcing Steve Smith to wash and wax all his cars and paint his fence.

Stat of the Week

It's hard to argue with a judge's ruling in New York last week that allowed Comcast to put the NFL Network on a pay tier. (And believe me, I'm no fan of Comcast. I jettisoned the cable company for the Dish in March.) The NFL will appeal the New York Supreme Court's ruling that Comcast can place the NFL channel with like channels on a level of pay service.

These numbers are not exact, but I am told they are close. In New York, Comcast can put the NFL Network on a pay level that will charge consumers about $5 or $6 per month for specialized sports channels. Had the network been put on a basic cable tier, it would have raised the bill for all consumers by about 75 cents a month. The ruling seems fair. The people who really want the channel -- and the late season Thursday night football games it provides -- can now pay for it, and the people who don't want the channel will not have their basic cable bill jacked up by nearly $10 a year.

Readers, have any of you ever met someone so obsessed with cable prices? Also, note that this stat of the week has no “stats” until the second paragraph and that said “stats” are approximations recounted from hearsay. And, though maybe I’m reaching here, is this yet another instance in which GE >> pk? I don’t exactly know what NBC’s stance on this should be, but it must have one.

A/ETNotW

Five quick observations about the 740-mile round-trip jaunt from New Jersey to the Steel City to cover Tomlin for a story in this week's Sports Illustrated:

1. Satellite radio and cell phones have totally changed car trips. On the way to Pittsburgh last Tuesday, I had a static-free, 40-minute, hands-free chat with Brad Childress about his former defensive coordinator, Tomlin. I also had two chats with NFL front-office people about league affairs, and listened to Sirius NFL Radio and ESPN radio for long stretches. You leave home when you please, you get off the road when you please, you inject coffee into your veins when you please.

Hang up and drive, Peter! Also, you inject coffee into your veins when you please, or maybe you could just start freebasing powdered beans.

2. Number of Starbucks on the Pennsylvania Turnpike while going west from Harrisburg to Pittsburgh: three. Starbucks on the Turnpike going back east: three.

I’ll assume that one can’t cross the turnpike on an exit and that this symmetry really exists, but what’s the point? And did PK stop at each Starbucks?

3. The tobacco companies must love Pittsburgh. Walking downtown on Thursday morning near the Westin Hotel, I passed three or four posses of smokers outside tall buildings ... many more than I see in Manhattan in a three-block swath.

Tax on a pack of smokes in PA: $1.35. Tax on a pack of smokes in NYC: $3.00.

4. Workout room at the Pittsburgh Westin: $9 per visit. Look, take away all but one or two of the TVs and the too-loud Richard Simmons-soundalike fellow doing aerobics. All we want in a workout room on the road is a few stepmills, some treadmills and elliptical trainers. Can't you give us that without charging us?

That does sound shitty enough to be actually aggravating. Good one, PK.

5. Saw three innings of a Harrisburg Senators game. Funeral. They're 8-24, and judging by my brief snapshot, they might finish 8-130.

Based on my ability to use ratios, I’ll predict a finish of 34-104. And how exactly does Funeral work as its own sentence here? Someone gave a eulogy? The atmosphere at the game was funereal? The Senators were buried/cremated/shot out of Hunter S. Thompson’s cannon/lost in rocket wreckage with the ashes of James Doohan?

Factoid of the Week That May Interest Only Me

The Steelers cut backup linebacker Ricky Seigler last Thursday, just before the Las Vegas police arrested him for allegedly running a prostitution ring.

Here’s a factoid that may interest Ricky Seigler: which employee of the Steelers dropped a dime on him. Maybe Mike Tomlin can put up one of the chalk court illustrations in his office. Beautiful.

But not as beautiful as the Think-I-Thinks.

1. I think this is what you should know about Ricky Williams: No matter what test he passes, no matter which shrink recommends to Roger Goodell that he's OK to play football again, Williams will never suit up for a Cam Cameron football team. I know Cameron, and he is very big on personal accountability to the team.

How can anyone argue that putting Williams on the Dolphins -- and relying on him -- would be a good idea? No one has a clue if he'd be around two days or two seasons.

Will any major sportswriter ever just say that the NFL’s obsession with marijuana is ridiculous?

2. I think these are the other things you should know about Williams, and if you're a Dolphins fan, these things should tell you to give up on the guy: He turns 30 this year, which is the other side of the hill for most backs. He's had two 85-yard-plus games since Christmas Day 2003. And come Wednesday, it will be 500 days (71 weeks and three days) since he touched a football in an NFL game. It's over, people.

What’s the other side of the hill for quarterbacks who used to be addicted to pain killers?

3. I think there is some must-see TV tonight at 10 on HBO's Real Sports show. On Sunday, I read a transcript of Bernard Goldberg's piece on concussions, brain damage and dementia among retired football players, and the story is chilling. If nothing else, the story has a mountain of circumstantial evidence that should cause every NFL team physician to be more conscientious than ever about the care of players who have had head injuries. Please watch this story.

There goes PK, hedging again. What, in this context, does circumstantial mean?

4. I think Mike Vick is telling -- no, insisting -- to some in the Falcons organization he's not involved in raising pit bulls for dog-fighting. As of now, these people believe him. And I hear Vick has not ever been caught in a lie with these people. Still, my money's on my good pal Don (Donnie Brasco) Banks, who reported the other day that a couple of sources close to Vick believe he's definitely involved in dog-fighting.

Why does Vick’s not being caught in a lie to the Falcons contribute to his credibility? Ron Mexico is now more famous than Tony Clifton as arch alter-ego. And, if Don Banks really goes by Donnie Brasco, he should be fired (or killed in the same way that Tony just killed Christopher—I assume that we’ll get an update on that in the PK’s Non-Football thoughts).

5. I think there is more shoulder-length hair in football than in any other sport right now, and I include women's figure skating in that comparison.

I doubt that such is the case, though female figure skaters often wear their hair up, so I can’t make any definitive claims about its length. Wait? That was just a ham-fisted joke? Oh. Ha.

6. I think I hear really good things about Bobby Petrino. I mean, really good things. About his organizational skills, his no-nonsense approach, his offensive plan (with new offensive coordinator Hue Jackson) and attention to detail. Imagine if Mike Lombardi had persuaded him to take the Raiders job 16 months ago, and Al Davis hadn't saddled the team with a wasted Art Shell/Tom Walsh year. Imagine Petrino working with JaMarcus Russell. (Not that Lane Kiffin's not going to do well, mind you. It's just that Petrino's got a better track record working with quarterbacks than most NFL coaches right now.)

Here’s where the think-I-thinks get a little weird: when PK combines the think with some other mode of cognition or perception, he sounds as though he’s sorting out issues with schizophrenia. Also, note how PK covers his ass by laboriously not insulting new coach (and new contact) Lane Kiffin even as he smothers Bobby Petrino’s ass with kisses and as he slams Shell, Walsh, and Davis, all of whom are easy targets and inconsequential to King’s career.

7. I think you know I have a soft spot for two New Orleanian things -- the work Habitat for Humanity is doing rebuilding the city, and Drew Brees. Nice combo platter last week by Brees and Habitat.

Combo Platter, you say? I’m going to add a third thing to PK’s New Orleanian soft-spot spread.

After describing Drew Brees’s rebuilding efforts, PK says

My problem, quite frankly, is the rebuilding is too slow. This country should be mobilized by the federal government, like yesterday, to attack the reconstruction of a tattered city.

New Orleans was demolished by Katrina in late August 2005. Yesterday’s not much of an improvement.

Good for Brees, who housed and fed about 105 volunteer students, and good for the hotels who made deals with Brees to put the kids up, and good for the kids, who worked through Saturday afternoon.

And good for Brees, who picks up his own dog’s shit (FotWTMIOPK).

8. I think it might be worth a few minutes tonight, if you can tear yourself away from Cavs-Nets or Marlins-Pirates, to catch a few snaps of the Chicago-Dallas Arena game. It's the best two teams in the league (they're a combined 17-2), and there's an intriguing player in the game -- 6-3, 220-pound Chicago receiver Bobby Sippio, who might engender a small bidding war (very small) between NFL teams at the end of the Arena season in July. He's a big receiver, obviously, not just the typical Arena smurf, and he's on pace to catch 71 touchdowns. I have no idea what that means in the real world, but in Arenaball, it'd be an all-time record. The game's on ESPN2 at 8:30 Eastern.

Arena Football? ESPN2? What happened to PK’s corporate overlords?

9. I think Pacman Jones has to be out of his mind if he thinks his suspension is going to be reduced more than in some very, very minor way.

I think that Pacman Jones, by visiting a strip club the night before his meeting with Commissioner Goodell, might be trying to prove that he is out of his mind to evoke public sympathy and a not guilty by insanity verdict.

10. I think these are my non-football thoughts of the week:

a. Belated Happy Mother's Day, ladies.

Do women actually like being called “ladies”?

b. If I'm not the worst rotisserie player on the planet, I'm close. Of course, when the first two pitchers you pick are Matsuzaka and Wainwright, and you try to outsmart everyone with Delmon Young and Ronny Paulino. In other words, I deserve my catastrophic fate.

Anyone who reads PK’s non-football thoughts about baseball knows that he throws his money away in his fantasy league. And do people still use the term rotisserie in this context?

c. Coffeenerdness: Ever been in the Omni William Penn Hotel Starbucks in downtown Pittsburgh? Convivial. Bright. Airy. One problem: Weak, inconsistent espresso shots. Get on it, Seattle.

Do you think that PK ever considers that he may have just caught one of these Starbucks on a bad day? Surely the quality of the coffee must vary somewhat at a given franchise.

d. Gotta love TV Land. There's not much as funny, and I mean ever on TV, as the Mr. Ed episode where Leo Durocher teaches Ed how to hit a baseball -- and then Ed slides into home.

Holy shit! Item 10d is the Rosetta Stone to PK’s brain. Feel free to contribute to a list of funnier things “ever on TV.” I’ll start with Patrick Stewart on Extras: “But I’ve already seen everything.” This episode of Mr. Ed aired in 1963, so, if PK (born 1958) saw it the first time during its original airing, can you imagine, if he still thinks that it’s the funniest thing ever on television, how hyperactively he overreacted as a five-year-old? Right now, I’m envisioning the Mr. Show sketch of a flashback in which Bob Odenkirk’s mother visits a doctor to abort a four-year-old Bob, who asks, “What’s a gagortion?”—another thing funnier than Leo Durocher on Mr. Ed.

e. Have a good next phase of your life, Tony Blair. You sure were good in The Queen.

So that’s an okay joke, I guess. Tony Blair does have a very long imdb page, by the way.

f. Speaking of chick flicks I liked quite a bit, I recommend Waitress, a neat little fairy tale about a likeable waitress, Keri Russell. Excellent actress, by the way. Lots of good life lessons in there.

The Queen is a chick flick? I like to imagine that the last sentence of this entry is a less-than-subtle aside to Mary Beth King, who, I also like to imagine, made her dad watch Waitress, which looks like it has a decent cast. I really hope that Felicity ends up with Noel at the end.

g. Watched some of Suns-Spurs on Saturday night, quite unlike me. And a football game broke out.

I know that Peter means that watching what many expect to be the best series of the NBA playoffs is something that he likely wouldn’t do, but the sentence-fragment syntax here leaves only two nouns for quite unlike me to modify: night or Suns-Spurs, so, yes, Peter, you are quite unlike the Suns or the Spurs. Also, can we retire the I-went-to/watched-one-thing-and-another-different-thing-broke-out joke, especially since the different thing that broke out is disproportionately a football game?

Although I did just go to a coloumn ostensibly about football, and a 3400-word, snarky bitchfest broke out. Okay, now we can retire that joke.

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Don't Fire PK, but Let's Think about Firing Brett Favre

More PK, in the bite-sized form of MMQBTE.

Anyone who has consistently read Peter King’s work knows that he carries a lot of water for the quarterback with the misspelled name, and his most recent opus is no different, focusing on why Favre should keep playing for the Packers, how the Packers let him down with bad drafting, bad talent, hell, probably bad Gatorade.

Let’s start with a reader’s letter:

Steve Brown of Burke, Va., writes: "If you were Brett Favre, would you stay another year with the Packers and why?''

That, Steve Brown of Burke, VA, is not the right question. (A hint to figure out the right question: swap “Brett Favre” with “Packers” and add a let into the ordinate, what some may call independent, clause)

Peter’s response:

Hmmm. I believe Steve means through 2008, because Favre has already said he'd stay this year. And the more I think about it, the more I say: Heck yes ... with an asterisk.

Right, unfortunately for Packers fans who want to win games, Favre is going to play this season. What the hell am I talking about? Packers fans love Brett Favre so much that they don’t care if they win as long as Brett is slinging the ball around (too often into double coverage, but who cares? He’s just a great guy.) And surely PK’s asterisk will involve the quality of Favre’s play in ’07 (it wasn’t good in ’06—more on that soon).

And the asterisk has to do with one thing -- Green Bay's record in 2007, and whether the four-game winning streak at the end of 2006 was a mirage or the mark of real progress, which we'll find out around the end of September.

Oh well, I guess if everyone else on the Packers is better, Favre doesn’t have to be. What a leader.

Last season, I remember talking with rookie coach Mike McCarthy after a game and asking him about a report from Jay Glazer that day on the FOX pregame show. Glazer said McCarthy thought Favre could certainly play another year. And McCarthy told me then that there was no doubt in his mind that Favre could not only play and play well in 2007, but also in 2008; that's how physically on top of his game and at one with McCarthy's offense Favre was.

Let’s get one thing clear: Brett Favre is not a good NFL quarterback anymore. He’s not an Aaron-Brooks-level abomination, but he is certainly not good. PK, however, is about to try to convince his readers that Favre isn’t so bad by cherry picking some statistics and ranking them against other QB’s in the league.

As far as his play and his comfort with McCarthy, there's no reason other than physical decline why Favre couldn't play two more years. Check out how he ranked against his own career bests in the significant passing categories in 2006:

What? He’s going to cherry pick stats and rank them against Favre’s own career? Does that make much sense in assessing his effectiveness today?

Attempts: 613 (first)
Completions: 343 (fourth)
Percentage: 56.0 (15th)
Yards: 3,885 (seventh)
TDs: 18 (14th)
Interceptions: 18 (10th)
Sacks: 21 (third)
Completions of 20 yards or longer: 49 (sixth)
Rating: 72.7 (13th)

Note that, if one ignores raw-number stats largely dependent on play-calling (Attempts, Completions, and Yards) or on some arbitrary definition (Completions of 20+ yards), Favre had a very bad year for his career, which has been truly great.

PK makes excuses, of course:

But I believe the numbers don't show a very important element -- the sketchy talent around him.

Of course the numbers don’t capture everything because then anyone would have to say that Favre isn’t very good anymore, and we know a priori that such is not the case. Just look at the guy in those Paxil ads. Oh, and Favre is part of the sketchy talent at this point.

Bubba Franks had one of the worst years I've ever seen a tight end have. Remember when Steve Sax couldn't throw to first base anymore, and when Chuck Knoblauch did the same with the Yankees? It essentially ended their careers. Bubba Franks had the worst case of stone hands I've seen in a good player last year. That killed Favre. He needs his two tight ends to catch more than the 46 balls Franks and David Martin combined to snare last year.

Remember when Peter King used in a metaphor two decent players who ceased to throw the ball with any accuracy and then compared them to a guy trying to catch the ball even though the whole focus of the column is on a guy who throws a ball with less and less aptitude every year? It will most certainly not end his career.

And just to make my point about Favre’s not-goodness, let’s compare him to PK’s favorite whipping boy, David Carr, on whom Peter routinely cracks. (Don’t believe me? Check the archives. PK was on his case almost every week.) The stats are last season’s, and the number in parentheses is the rank among 32 NFL quarterbacks.

Completion % Carr 68.3 (1^st) Favre 56% (26^th)

Passer Rating Carr 82.1 (15^th) Favre 72.7 (25^th)

Interceptions Carr 12 (T-19^th most) Favre 18 (T-4^th Most)

YDs/Attempt Carr 6.3 (23^rd) Favre 6.3 (23^rd)

Sacks Carr 41 (8^th) Favre 21 (20^th)

The numbers, of course, don’t show a very important element—the superlative talent on the Houston Texans.

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Seriously, Don't Fire Peter King--What Else Would I Do with My Mondays?

I offer a little PK, having recently imbibed on a pony keg (in honor of the Kentucky Derby, of course. Place your bets—for Funny!).

As he frequently does, PK begins strong, thoroughly explaining why Trent Green has not yet been traded to the Dolphins and using the access that perhaps only Peter King possesses, but then:

News item: It's official: The wise guys like New England. According to Antigua-based sportsbook Bodog.com, the odds to win next year's Super Bowl have fluctuated wildly -- and in the direction of Foxboro -- since the Colts walked away with the Lombardi Trophy in February. New England has gone from being the fourth-most-likely team to win Super Bowl XLII in Glendale, Ariz., next February to the most likely.

This factoid seems fitting for, well, the factoid of the week that is interesting only to Peter, but he does include a nice table to prove his point about the mercurial Vegas line. (I won’t praise too effusively, though. It’s not like he needed regression analysis or Fourier transformations to provide a few data points to show how the line on the 2008 Super Bowl has shifted over the last three months.)

But, if this tidbit were just the FIOtPK (Factoid Interesting Only to Peter King), we wouldn’t get the subsequent disquisition, including this bit of hypothetical hyperbole from the mouth of a Tony Dungy imposter:

Observation one: If I'm Tony Dungy, I have my perfect pre-training-camp speech. "No one thinks we're going to win it again,'' he could say. "All you did last year was answer every challenge, and all our major pieces are still in place, and we had a great draft. And the oddsmakers start you at 6-1 to win the Super Bowl, drop you to 7-1 and now you're 8-1? If that isn't the biggest lack of respect I've ever seen, I don't know what is.''

That’s right, from a coach who’s so religious that he publicly denounces same-sex marriage (but evidently is quite the gambler), we get the Colts’ slogan for the ’07-’08 campaign: The Indianapolis Colts: A Good Bet (to Cover the Spread and Beat the Over in Super Bowl XLII). I’d definitely take the Colts to show (if I were a betting man).

Observation two: 2-1 odds for the Patriots? In this sport in which two injuries can kill a season? I can see 4-1, maybe. But the Patriots still are old at linebacker, might be thin at running back if Laurence Maroney can't be the horse that he's expected to be, and then there's Randy Moss.

I know that Peter thinks that opinions (or, in this context, prognostications) “make the world go ’round,” but who gives a fuck? Oh, but more Randy Moss:

I talked to a GM last Friday who knows Moss well. "I'll tell you what'll happen to Moss early on in New England," he said. "Two or three safeties, early in the season, are going to come and try to knock Moss' block off. He doesn't like to get hit, you know. And teams will learn that the way to make Randy very ineffective is to knock the crap out of him early in games."

So is Peter creeping up on revising his claim that the Moss trade is wrong no matter its outcome (item 2) by planting the seeds that it may not work anyway, even though he said that he thinks that it will, from a pragmatic perspective (you know, the one not invested in the metaphysics of the Patriots’ “mold”)?

Observation three: The betting line suggests it would be three times as unlikely that San Diego would win the Super Bowl as New England. And man, that is nuts. Just nuts. If I were a betting man, I'd pick New England right now. But by a small margin over Indy and the Chargers. Not by a landslide.

So, is Peter actually not a betting man? Then for what the fuck were the above four paragraphs?

News Item: Michael Vick is in increasingly warm water.

Warmed by a golden handshake?

I have very little to add to the report by a Virginia TV station that up to 70 dogs -- some of them injured in ways that suggest they were used for dog-fighting -- were found on Vick's property.

We'll let the investigation take shape here, but Vick faces the prospect of a suspension if he is complicit in a ring that trains dogs to fight each other. That's not to say a suspension is certain, but NFL commissioner Roger Goodell will be under tremendous pressure from animal-rights activists (he's already received a letter from the Humane Society of the United States) and plain, decent human beings everywhere to suspend Vick if he's into pit-bull fighting. And if Vick is tangibly involved, he deserves the suspension.

I like how circumspect Peter is by noting that some of the dogs were “injured in ways that suggest they were used for dog-fighting,” and I like that the implication of that circumspection is that someone might argue otherwise, attributing the dogs’ various injuries to unfortunate incidents involving, among other things, barb wire, razor wire, cacti, porcupines, fish hooks, nail guns, those short three-pronged garden tools, snakes, snapping turtles, bobcats, Wolverine from the X-Men, Satanists, tasers, and, oh, maybe some other crazy fucking pit bulls.

And, yeah, I don’t have much concern for dog-fighters (that is, the people arranging the dog-fights. For the dogs themselves, I have some moderate concern, though if Method Man were involved as his character "Cheese" from The Wire, I’m not sure if I could condemn this totally.)

"Clemens is going back to the Yankees? I thought he retired from the Yankees and they gave him that big ceremony. Remember they gave him that orange Hummer? Now he's back?''
-- Trent Green, when I broke the news to him Sunday afternoon that Roger Clemens was returning to the American League East to torment me for the next five months. Or longer.

Green would have been really incredulous if PK had told him how much Clemens will be paid for 20-25 starts this year. (Hint: It’s around the disparity between the third and twenty-second picks in the NFL draft over the maximum length of the rookie contract, or, in other words, the amount that Brady Quinn should be able to recoup by getting to file for free agency a year earlier than a top sixteen pick.)

"Brady Quinn threw consecutive balls into a brisk wind that could be described charitably as wounded ducks. Each ball looked to hit a brick wall in midair and plummet, one far short of the intended and uncovered receiver. Quinn compensated on the next pass and overthrew a receiver."
-- Cleveland Plain Dealer veteran Browns beat writer Tony Grossi, observing Brady Quinn's first mini-camp practice Friday in Berea, Ohio

I don’t like to complain about media saturation, but I am now officially soaked.

"For some reason, I was labeled fat, lazy, a pot smoker, or whatever else was said."
-- Mike Williams

I can't speak about the pot-smoking, Mike. But I'll tell you exactly why you were labeled the other things: because they're true. Let's not try to recreate history now. Be a man and take the blame for personally screwing up your NFL career and giving a Randy Moss-like effort to the Lions for the past two years.

Peter stole the obvious joke, but I like how he’s still harping on Moss. Shouldn’t a receiver be allowed out of his contract if his team hires Aaron Brooks to play quarterback? Who was sandbagging whom out there in Oakland?

"I think a lot of these guys were probably on the dinner circuit. They haven't been working out as much. When we come out here to practice, there's a big difference. All of a sudden the pressure is on. It's always a little bit of a shock to them. That's probably good, though. They probably need a wakeup call to what this will be all about."
-- Washington coach Joe Gibbs, after watching his rookies go through their first mini-camp practice. It's likely that 31 other coaches, plus about 800 rookie draftees and free-agents around the league, know exactly what he's talking about.

Good, could you put me in touch with one of them so that he can tell me?

"He can hit you and hurt your whole family. Interception for a touchdown or put a guy in the hospital? That's a tough decision for LaRon."
-- Hahnville (La.) High coach Lou Valdin, on his former defensive star LaRon Landry, the first-round pick of the Redskins, in Howard Bryant's excellent piece on Landry in Sunday's Washington Post.

If only LaRon played a sport in which hospitalizing his opponent were worth six points.

Factoid That May Interest Only Me

A rookie free-agent named Xzavie Jackson is in camp with the Bengals, trying to make the team as a reserve defensive lineman. That's notable because there never has been a player in the history of American professional sports whose first or last name began with the letters "xz."

Actually, that is interesting, though it needs fixing: A rookie free-agent named Xzavie Jackson is in camp with the Bengals, trying to make the team as a reserve defensive lineman. That's notable because there never has been a person in the history of the English language whose first or last name began with the letters "xz."
There, all better.

Aggravating/Enjoyable Travel Note of the Week

New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine, released from a hospital after an 18-day stay from a serious car accident in which he was not wearing a seat belt while his state-trooper driver was speeding at 91 mph, said this upon his release: "I also understand that I set a very poor example for a lot of young people -- a lot of people in general -- and I certainly hope the state will forgive me. And I'll work very hard to try to set the right kind of example to make a difference in people's lives as we go forward.''

In case you’re wondering, no, this A/ETNoW has nothing do with Peter’s traveling anywhere, but he is making this trip aggravating for one hobbled governor, I’d bet (if I were the gambling type, of course).

A Newark Star-Ledger reporter who trailed the governor's six-vehicle convoy from the hospital to the governor's residence in Princeton, about an hour's drive, said the convoy's speed "crept up near 70" on the freeway. That is above the speed limit of 65.

Maybe it's me, but I'd think the troopers in my adopted state would not inch one mph over the speed limit with the governor aboard, unless there's some sort of emergency.

This just in: John Corzine’s motorcade traveled down a slight incline and didn’t reset the cruise control on the interstate! Where’s the lever that you pull to stop the presses very dramatically?

And, yes, Peter, it is just you. Also, didn’t you make a big deal out of being a "Jersey guy" a while back? Yes, just three weeks ago. And earlier in 2002, also (5e).

Stat of the Week

When Warren Sapp stepped on the scale in Oakland recently, the Raiders were stunned. The needle stopped at 285.

More of a factoid than a stat, but I’d wager that the needle stopped because it was A) exhausted or B) broken.

To the Think-I-Thinks

1. I think what Cam Cameron said the other day about how young players in the NFL have to constantly learn should be required reading for every young player. And veterans too.

So what he said is in print somewhere, maybe like this column?

I don’t really want to quote the entirety of this week’s lead-off think-I-think (it’s 371 words), but the first two-thirds or so details the rigors through which Cleo Lemon, Miami’s backup quarterback, was put by Cameron and Miami QB coach Terry Shea to improve Lemon’s mechanics. Let me just say that I think that Miami would be better off putting this effort into acquiring Trent Green. Also, PK indulges Cameron’s hyperbole when he compares the process by which Lemon’s form was broken down to how Tiger Woods continually works on his swing. To wit:

"I correlate it to Tiger Woods. Tiger Woods has won an unbelievable amount of golf tournaments and then realized he [wouldn't be] as good as he wanted to be unless he changed his swing. You can't believe what Tiger Woods did for every coach in America. When the best golfer in the world changes his golf swing to become better, you have an opportunity to say to the guys, 'We have to change these techniques or you are only going to get so good.' I give Cleo credit. He did that. Now you did notice the ball traveling accurately throughout the entire practice."

Look for Cleo to don a green jacket any day now, or, at the very least, look for Jim Nantz to give the play-by-play of a Dolphins game in hushed whispers when Lemon gets in during garbage time.

2. I think the more we hear from NFL teams that have had an interest in quarterbacks in the recent draft, the more we understand that there was JaMarcus Russell and then there was the field. Brady Quinn was a lot closer to the Becks, Stantons and Kolbs than he was to Russell. "Look," Cam Cameron told me Sunday, "I like Brady Quinn. I think he's going to be a good quarterback in this league. But that doesn't mean we think he should be a top-10 pick." Logical reasoning. I think what happened here is the more we all talked about Brady, the more we thought he should have been in competition with Russell for the top pick. But not many teams at the top of the draft really felt that way.

He is so damn close to getting it, yet again.

3. I think Brady Quinn needs to stop apologizing for things like not watering the plants when he left home this morning. The Joe Theismann rant about Quinn looking disheveled and chewing gum was silly, and Quinn said he was sorry like he'd just tripped an old lady crossing the street. Jon Corzine needs to apologize, Brady. Not you.

Hear Hear! Screw Theismann, but I do like how King goes back to his hobbyhorse Corzine (get it, ’cause the Kentucky Derby was this weekend).

4. I think what's so insane about draft grades the day after the draft -- I don't give them -- is this: The same people who gave Dallas a C this year for an uninspired first-round choice (Anthony Spencer of Purdue) will give them an A next year because they'll have one high first-round pick and one middle- to low-one, and they'll pick players of some fame. The Cowboys should get the A this year, not next year, because this is the year they wrangled from Cleveland what is almost certain to be a high pick in 2008's first round, and for what ended up being, in essence, third- and fifth-round picks. Next year Jerry Jones will get more pats on the back for having Cleveland's first-round pick than he ever got for winning a Super Bowl.

Seriously, someone send a rescue team and one of those big inflatable cushions from Lethal Weapon—he’s about to jump.

5. I think the Browns will be proven right on Eric Wright. You know the story: Kid gets busted on sexual-assault and possession-of-ecstasy two years ago at USC, charges are dropped, he transfers to UNLV, plays OK through some injuries and, according to draft guru Rick Gosselin of the Dallas Morning News, half the teams in the league take him off their draft boards because they fear his past. I wrote a short piece on him for Sports Illustrated this week, and though I didn't come away from a chat with him feeling warm and fuzzy, I'd be surprised if he's a problem in Cleveland. Very surprised.

I have no idea where Peter draws the line for his moralizing: dog-fighting and not wearing a seatbelt = very bad; sexually assaulting and possessing copious amounts of rave/date-rape drugs = not completely awful.

7. I think they might as well go ahead and inscribe the Offensive Rookie of the year trophy with Marshawn Lynch's name. With a run-blocking offensive line coach in Jim McNally, two very high-priced line free agents in the fold (Derrick Dockery, Langston Walker) after being trained in run-blocking in their previous places, and the likelihood that Lynch will get 300 carries if he stays healthy.

Seriously, PK is already going to predict an award that’s largely meaningless?

... I mean, unless Calvin Johnson catches 80 balls or some Hofstra receiver comes out of nowhere again, Lynch should win it in a walk.

What the hell is happening? Is that a bit of winking mockery of himself and even of his profession? He’s on the balls of his feet, his toes are curled around the ledge, he’s spreading his arms, closing his eyes, and leaning forward…Where the hell is Riggs!?

8. I think the 49ers will end up disappointed in Darrell Jackson, and I'm sure they'll end up disappointed in Ashley Lelie. Jackson misses too much practice time, and Lelie won't be tough enough for coach Mike Nolan

Oh, maybe don’t call Riggs. We’re back into comfortable clichés about missing practice and toughness.

9. I think that's a nice honeymoon Lane Kiffin's got going in Oakland, but if you ask me if anything's really changed there -- I mean, really changed -- the answer is I doubt it. Because the first time he makes a call Al Davis hates that doesn't work on a crucial third-and-3, Kiffin will feel the hammer.

Yep, never mind. False alarm. Move along, people. Early stages of a job/relationship/endeavor of any kind = honeymoon, and Al Davis = crazy old control freak who lowers "the hammer." Nothing to see here.

a. Not a soul who I am close to, not one person, began a conversation in the last week with me with anything like the following statement: "Can't wait for that fight Saturday night,'' or "You think Mayweather's going to win?'' SI called Mayweather-De La Hoya "The fight to save boxing.'' Boxing, I think, can't be saved. There's no buzz around it anymore. I remember covering Aaron Pryor 25 years ago in Cincinnati, and I think in those days there were more fighters who people couldn't wait to see. There's no one I can't wait to see today.

This would be a very different non-football thought if NBC carried the fight, or even if it still aired The Contender.

b. Requiem for the Devils: Watching Martin Brodeur let in easy goal after easy goal this postseason reminded me of A-Rod's Yankee playoff history. When you're a team based on defense, you can't win with a goalie giving up so many soft ones.

Since when have the Yankees been a team based on defense? Or is this metaphor so tortuously mixed that PK is taking a swipe at A-Rod’s offensive postseason issues while bemoaning bad defense? And wouldn’t the most salient example be the uber-shitty fielding of Detroit’s pitchers in the World Series last year?

c. The Devil Rays' payroll for six months for 24 major-league players: $24,124,200.

d. The Yankees' payment and luxury-tax fee to employ Roger Clemens for four months: $25,900,000.

I’m shocked! The Devil Rays actually have 24 Major-League caliber players? Shouldn’t they at least fill out the 25-man roster anyway?

e. Coffeenerdness: I always chuckle when a fairly fit person in line at Starbucks will order a drink straddling the line of fit and fat. The other day, a woman said: "Grande skim triple mocha, extra mocha, extra whip.'' Big cup of a light flavored coffee, loaded with extra sugar and extra heavy cream. What's the point, exactly?

Well clean my colon with a hot coffee enema! PK actually says “what’s the point” about consuming coffee and yet doesn’t engage in one iota of introspection (how’s that for alliterative “analysis” in one segment?) I’m starting to question that wry comment about Rookie of the Year candidate Marshawn Lynch above.

h. I want to say this with all due respect, because I'm an animal lover. But I wish there would be as much hand-wringing over the 3,376 American fatalities in Iraq than there is over the death of Barbaro.

But Barbaro, and his kin, is actually measured in hands, thus the hand-wringing—people are trying to get off the dead horse (I don’t mean that in any kind of necrophiliac, animal husbandry sort of way). And perhaps I’m confused, but is Peter aware of the 24-hour news networks that cover many, many stories about Iraq? There’s like four on basic cable (though maybe PK can’t afford it (10g)).

And how nifty that we finished up with a nod to horse racing (I promise that I didn’t read ahead to make my initial comments fit with the whole column).

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Fire Peter King, Again (and Again, Not Really)

So my weekly insanity is coming a little late, but all you loyal readers will have something to do over the weekend. More Peter King zaniness:

"On Friday,'' he [Browns GM Phil Savage] said, "I called [Quinn's agent] Tom Condon. I'd heard some stuff in the press that he might be negotiating with the Raiders for Brady to be picked at number one. And I had so much respect for Brady through this process. He's a great kid, and he's worked so hard, and he's done everything through the draft process exactly the right way. I told Tom I didn't know if the Raiders were going to take Brady or not, but I wanted to let him know that we'd decided not to take him at number three; so if he was talking to the Raiders, he'd know he didn't have us to fall back on.

"I'd heard Brady talk about having two dreams -- being the No. 1 pick, or playing for the Browns," Savage said. "And I didn't want to see his heart broken twice. We weren't going to take him, so I wanted Tom to be able to do whatever he could to get a deal done with Oakland, if that's what was happening.''

That's class right there.

PK does a really thorough job explaining the process and circumstances by which the Browns nabbed Brady Quinn with the 23^rd pick before he closes the three-page narrative with the above passage. Maybe I’m an asshole, but how classy is sacrificing information about one’s plan for the NFL draft so that a player whom you expect not to draft can better his bargaining position with a competitor? The only reason that anyone feels comfortable revealing this information is that Cleveland fell ass-backwards into getting Quinn after the Dolphins, who need a quarterback, did something nigh-inexplicable (i.e., passing on Quinn and drafting Ted Ginn with the ninth pick). And, not that I particularly care about “class” in most instances regarding sports, how classy is Brady Quinn’s repeated assertion that he wanted to be the first pick in the draft?

"Let me just say this: If any of you are thinking we're going to use this pick now to leverage it, the answer is no. Calvin Johnson is staying right here in Detroit. Calvin Johnson is going to team with the rest of this offense and turn it into one of the most dynamic offenses in this league. I firmly believe that. You can scoff at it if you like. I really don't care, because I think it's going to happen.''

-- Embattled Detroit general manager Matt Millen, after choosing Johnson with the second overall pick on Saturday.

What exactly is the onomatopoeic for scoffing? Is it just scoffing? If so, scoff, I’ll use that, scoff. Scoff.

"Brady Quinn is a great quarterback, and just to be in competition with him and for me to beat him out -- it was a great thing from God.''

-- Ohio State wide receiver/kick returner Ted Ginn Jr., after being selected ninth in the draft by the Miami Dolphins, much to the chagrin of Dolphin Nation.

From Ginn’s lips to our ears: God hates the Dolphins.

"Savage = Genius. Miami will be haunted 4 years.''

-- HBO "Inside the NFL'' senior producer and not-so-closeted Browns fan Brian Hyland, in a text message to me Saturday afternoon at 4:23 p.m.

4 reel! pk = leet sprts riter

"Booooooooooooooooooo!''

-- The sound greeting Miami coach Cam Cameron at a south Florida draft party when he stepped to the mike to tell them the team had used its first-round pick on Ted Ginn Jr., not Brady Quinn. The sound was interrupted by one fan yelling, "What a dumb pick!''

This is kind of like Time picking “you” as its person of the year, but not as stupid.

"It's my hair, and I have nothing negative to say about it.''

-- ESPN's Mel Kiper Jr., on his puffy coiffed 'do, to The Baltimore Sun.

Mel’s hair graded out really well at the combine.

"We just caught the biggest fish of the day. It looks like it's a brown trout.''

-- Wisconsin offensive tackle Joe Thomas, aboard a boat in Lake Michigan, fishing with his father while conducting a conference call with the Cleveland media after being picked third by the Browns.

Let me add: Wisconsin offensive tackle Joe Thomas, aboard a boat in Lake Michigan, fishing with his father while conducting a conference call with the Cleveland media after being picked third by the Browns, officially taking this folksy, down-home bullshit too far.

On Oct. 14, Miami plays at Cleveland.

I christen thee: "The Brady Quinn Bowl.''

Now that Brady’s in the league, I hope that his sister starts screwing someone on the Browns so that she won’t be tempted to wear a half-Packers/half-Browns jersey.

After PK shows us what Vince Young (a QB and last year’s third pick) and Manny Lawson (a DE who went 22^nd last year) stand to make over the lifetimes of their respective contracts, he says

Depending how you look at it, Quinn could miss out on approximately $26 million, but there are two upsides. One: Teams can sign picks 1 through 16 to six-year contracts; picks 17 through 32 to five years, at the most. That can be an advantage to a player who is outperforming his contract; he'll get to be a free agent sooner.

One year of earlier free agency could be worth $26 million?

Two: If you think Quinn’s agent is going to take six percent more than what some defensive lineman got in a similar slot last year, you’re nuts. This negotiation between Condon and the Browns could result in a long holdout, unless Lerner steps in and tells his GM: Let’s be fair to this kid and pay him like the 13^th pick, or something like that. I don’t think that’ll happen, because it would screw up the 22^nd slot in the 2008 draft and beyond, but something may have to give.

Didn’t people break Matt Leinert’s balls last year for acting as though he deserved to be paid like a higher pick than he was? Yes? That’s what I thought.

So here's what the press and Seattle staff had for a meal lineup prior to accomplishing anything in the draft:

• Breakfast: Omelet station, bacon, scrambled eggs, sausage links, grits, banana bread, fresh fruit station, biscuits and gravy, oatmeal.

• Lunch: Sushi bar, teriyaki salmon and chicken breasts, brown rice, soup, hamburgers, brats, Caesar salad.

• Dinner: Mushroom shrimp cocktail, carving station with turkey breast and beef loin, cornbread stuffing, carrots, broccoli, mashed potatoes, vegetables, salad. Mac's homemade cookies.

Wow, sounds delicious, if not indulgent.

Unfortunately, the team's latte machine was left at Qwest Field, so the writers and staff had to muddle through in the caffeine department with a couple of blended coffees -- caffe appassionato and French roast.

Never mind, then. Fuck the Seattle Seahawks.

Memo to SI pro football editor Mark Mravic: Hey boss ... I'm thinking the Seahawks are a heck of a story next year on draft day. Lots of interesting stuff going on out there. I can feel it in my bones. And stomach.

And in his hands, warmed by the six-gallon thermos of latte that PK will be taking as one of his carry-on items to Seattle next April.

This week’s “Aggravating/Enjoyable Travel Note of the Week” gets pretty weird:

The other day, I'm in the Comfort Inn near the BWI Airport. I open the wrapped soap, use it for a morning shower and put it back on the soap dish. I'd say the soap is about half as thick as the bar you'd buy in the store. This bar could last 10 or 12 days, easily. And so the next morning, when I step into the shower, I find the bar's been taken away….

Hotels of America, I ask you this: Why do you waste soap like that? Why not simply put another wrapped bar near the sink, and if the customer, for some strange reason, wants to throw away the lightly used soap, he or she can do so and open a new bar. But why assume we always want a new bar of soap?

First, I’m totally on-board with Peter on this one. Last time I was in a hotel, it had wall-mounted dispensers for hand soap, hand lotion, body soap, and shampoo, and I couldn’t believe that I’d never thought of how much waste is produced by a hotel’s toiletries. Still, I have a few quibbles. I’d guess that hotel soaps are more like one-third the thickness of a normal bar of soap (of course, I haven’t purchased a bar of soap since 2001 when I was given two enormous boxes of tiny, individual soap samples of Lever 2000 and Dove—with such a large sample size, I can confidently claim that I prefer Lever 2000). Also, ten to twelve showers from one hotel-sized bar of soap? Does Peter use special face soap, preserving the body bar? Does he use a wash cloth, or does he just rub the bar on his body? And is he counting a shower when you have to scrape together and consolidate into a ball the little pieces of soap into which the bar breaks when it’s almost used up. (Brief digression: my youngest brother, at the age of about four, dubbed those little soap remnants “winkling bars” or “winkles.” Winkle, by the way, is a real noun that means, among other things, the penis of a young man (OED). That will do wonders for search engine traffic. You’re welcome, JLD)

Who at home uses soap one time and throws it away? Imagine the savings in a 200-room hotel if 80 percent of the multiday-stay people use one bar of soap per stay. That's got to be 300, 400 bars a week -- or maybe 15,000 bars a year. At 20 cents a bar, let's say, that's $3,000 a year. What hotel couldn't use $3,000 a year?

Like I said, I’m down with PK on the environmental waste represented by so many hotels’ policy of daily, default soap rotation, but I can name a few hotels that don’t sweat three large over four fiscal quarters. Paris Hilton probably spends that much on [insert hacky Paris-Hilton-is-a-debauched-spoiled-twat-joke].

One other thing about hotel upkeep, while I'm at it: I wrote about this a few years ago, and it continues to confound me. What's the deal with housekeepers stopping up the drain in the bathtub every time they clean the room? What person gets in the shower and says, "Sure am glad the drain is closed. I like to shower, as Cosmo Kramer once said, in a tepid pool of my own filth.''

I used to until I imagined Peter King doing it.

Factoid of the Week That May Interest Only Me II

With Johan Santana looking on from the Minnesota dugout, new Lion Calvin Johnson threw out the first pitch before the Twins-Tigers game on Sunday afternoon at Comerica Park. The ball went through the web of Tigers coach Andy Van Slyke. "High, hard one,'' said Johnson. "He underestimated my fastball.''

Is that really a factoid?

b. We'll look back on this draft one day and say Amobi Okoye was a steal at No. 10 to Houston. He's a clean-as-a-whistle Warren Sapp.

Okoye’s hygiene is obviously uncompromised by any drain-stopping hotel staffs.

f. Anthony Gonzalez must be pinching himself. I played in Ted Ginn Jr.'s shadow all this time, and now I get to catch passes from Peyton Manning in the NFL? I've died and gone to heaven.

If Gonzalez is pinching himself, does that mean that he’s also figuratively putting Brandon Stokely’s hand into a bowl of warm water?

g. Best match of player to team in the entire seven rounds: Paul Posluszny to Buffalo. He was made to play in the tundra, and that town is going to love him like it loved Steve Tasker. Mark my words.

Does “love him like Steve Tasker” mean in wild disproportion to his contributions to the team’s success?

i. I wish Brian Leonard had been picked by an outdoors team, preferably one that got muddy a lot. That's the kind of player he is. But you'll love him, St. Louis.

PK is concealing the homoerotic undercurrent of his writings on Brian Leonard less and less.

k. And H.B. Blades going in the fifth? The Redskins stole him. Just stole him.

Washington took a page out of the Blades’ family playbook.

n. Amazing how Matt Millen stays so positive with the daily barrage of negativity in the community about him.

Is that a compliment?

o. Jerramy Stevens to the Bucs. What, Randy Moss wasn't available, Bruce Allen?

To be fair, Stevens is a TE. Also, to be fair, Stevens’ rap sheet dwarfs Moss’s.

And speaking of Randy Moss:

I'm about to get preachy/sappy. Even when the Patriots took a chance on guys like Corey Dillon, they were using roster spots on guys who were never accused of not hustling. To me, and to Bob Kraft, Bill Belichick and Scott Pioli, cheating the game is the worst crime a player can commit. Moss has done it regularly, going back to the infamous dogging it that Merril Hoge proved on ESPN years ago.

People around the Raiders had a major beef with Moss -- he regularly dogged it. I'm not going to kill the Patriots for this, because Moss might well turn into Pete Rose, and if he does, good for him. But this is not the kind of player the Patriots stand for. He can prove all of us doubting this trade wrong. But I can't help but think that, regardless of the outcome, the Patriots should have let someone else deal with his potential flameout. In their quest for the greatest offseason in the Cap Era (which the Patriots might have won before the Moss trade), I think New England went one step too far.

Sometimes I wonder if PK’s brain has an off switch that somehow allows his hands to keep typing. How can an accomplished writer say that “cheating the game is the worst crime a player can commit” and then say that a morally rehabilitated Moss might “turn into Pete Rose,” which I take to mean that he will not only beat his wife, consort with people known to be connected to organized crime, commit tax fraud, and fix (implicitly or otherwise) the sport in which he participates by gambling on it but also that he will run to first base on a walk? This rhetorical turn is just as bad as last week’s gaffe when PK referred to a player accused of rape as “seductive” to NFL scouts.

Also, I believe that Moss “dogs it” sometimes (mostly because I believed Randy Moss when he admitted to everyone who cared to listen that he doesn’t hustle on every play—Merril Hoge does not a Sherlock Holmes make), but don’t most players take a play off every now and then, especially receivers? Let’s see what Moss’s coach Mike Tice said 5 years ago about this issue: “Is Randy going to take a couple of plays off in a game? Sure. All receivers do. But he knows if it happens too much I'll yank him. And then the s---'s going to fly between me and him, believe me.” You’ll never guess to whom he spoke those words.

And how can a trade be wrong regardless of the outcome? How else could it be wrong or right besides its outcome, which is (again to the OED), “A state of affairs resulting from some process; the way something turns out (spec. in early use: the ending of a story); a result (of a test, experiment, measurement, etc.), a consequence; a conclusion or verdict” or “The product which results from an action, process, or system; a derivative, a more advanced development of some earlier design, style, product, etc.”

3. I think once you move to the pragmatic side of the deal, my guess is New England will be happy with Moss.

The other side would be what, exactly?

5. I think this might sound strange, but Chiefs defensive end Jared Allen got off pretty light when Roger Goodell took only one quarter of his season away. K.C.'s best pass rusher got a four-game suspension for two DUI charges in the space of one year…. I've heard Goodell is going to have a boilerplate suspension of two games for a first drunk driving charge. Allen's fortunate he only got four. It stands to reason that a repeat offender would get more than double the penalty when he makes the same stupid mistake.

Most people probably agree that a second offense should carry a heavier penalty than the first, but I don’t know if that conclusion “stands to reason.” Equally standing to reason is this ratio, expressed old-school SAT style, One DUI:Two-Game Suspension :: Two Dui’s:Four-Game Suspension.

He [Giants’ first-round pick Aaron Ross] said, "I love to man up on guys and take them out of the game.'' Asked about his biggest adjustment to the pro game, he said, sounding about as honest as a kid can, "I think being star-struck. Facing T.O. Facing Chad Johnson. Making myself realize they aren't on a video game anymore or on Sunday Night Football. I am up against them on the other side. Once I get over that, I feel I will be straight.''

He really said “Sunday Night Football,” the game broadcast by NBC, Peter’s employer? Again, GE >>> pk

7. I think I'd like to hear the defensive comments four years from now from scouts when they are asked to justify how Troy Smith went with the last pick of the fifth round. This isn't Charlie Ward, people. This is a guy who played at a high level until the last game of his college football career. And he goes 174th?

Well, Troy Smith has not to date announced any plans to enter the NBA draft, but Charlie Ward might not be an inapt comparison. Both guys are short for QB’s, both won the Heisman in record-breaking fashion, and both played football really well in college, in part because they were surrounded by ridiculous talent. My guess is that NFL scouts aren’t so scared of a single game that they’d let a good QB prospect fall to 174.

8. I think the Lions might be exceptional on offense this year. Imagine a three-wide set with Roy Williams and Calvin Johnson split wide, with Mike Furrey, the 2006 NFC receptions leaders with 98, in the slot.

Someone (at least Matt Millen) said in the last couple of years, “Imagine a three-wide set with Roy Williams, Charlie Rogers, and Mike Williams.”

9. I think Mike Vick needs to give about 20 golden handshakes to good old friends and tell them, "Sorry. I'm going to ruin my life unless I make a clean break with 70 percent of my past.'' And if those friends are real friends, they'll understand.''

Is golden handshake slang for “move the fucking dog fights out of my back yard”? Nope, according to urbandictionary.com, it’s slang for “The act of urinating on one's own hand then vigorously shaking the hand of another.” That’s actually much less disgusting than the golden corn hole. Or dogfighting, of course.

b. Mariano Rivera, 1-for-3 in save opportunities. Al Reyes, whoever that is, 8-for-8.

Small sample size.

c. Jimmy Johnson has switched to Heineken premium Light from Heineken high-test ... and lost 13 pounds.

Either Jimmy Johnson was drinking way too much Heineken of any kind, or he just used the endorsement money given to him by Heineken to pay for some major liposuction.

d. Sopranos note of the week…. Five episodes left, and the scene is being set for a murderous spring, if you ask me.

Peter King routinely bitches about violence in movies.

e. Coffeenerdness: Detroit's a nice Starbucks town, but the two locations (there may be more, but I've seen two) at the Detroit Metro Airport simply have to serve good coffee more consistently. They rush too much, with too much of an assembly-line feel. And you can't rush a good latte.

A nice Starbucks town—what a way to get on the map. At least Detroit’s chamber of commerce has a new slogan for its promotional materials. The old one, Detroit: The Setting for RoboCop, a Winking Romp through a Dystopic Urban Landscape of Crime, Chaos, and General All-Around Awfulness. Dead of Alive, You’re Coming to Detroit!, wasn’t working too well (the work of Paul Verhoeven just doesn’t resonate with tourists like it used to).

And how. The fuck. Can you. Complain. About. An. Assembly-line. Approach. To. Serving. Coffee. At. A. Starbuck’s? (Each of those “sentences” was typed by a different person.)

g. We'll miss you, David Halberstam. What a great and brave journalist, and what a contributor to smart sportswriting. His book about the staid Yankees and the upstart, team-of-the-future Cardinals and the '64 World Series is one of the three or four best sports books I've ever read.

The Collected Ball-Breakings of Peter King: An Examination of One Sportswriter’s Indulgence of Bloat and Bellyaching by yours truly (release date TBA) will not displace Halberstam on PK’s short list. But it should, at the very least, make it’s way to the desk of PK’s editor.

What am I saying? I might as well have said the desk of PK’s talking unicorn—PK don’t need no stinking editor. And neither do I.

Updated with more PK fun (MMQBTE, in which Peter often addresses letters from his readers)

But before I get to your letters and his thoughts, let me just say that some of you have mistaken my criticism of the trade. I think Moss will play well for the Patriots -- very well. His career's on the line with this scaled-down, no-guaranteed-money, one-year contract, and he'll respond by being a good deep threat for Tom Brady, and I don't even think he'll make a single wave in the locker room all year.

Okay, I'll listen, but I do read somewhat competently (if infrequently), and PK definitely criticized the trade, though I was struggling to figure out why. So far, PK lists like eight reasons why the trade should work out (if you're counting the three compound adjectives describing his contract).

But then (and remember that Peter thinks that the trade is bad no matter the outcome)
But here's my point: This guy dogged his way out of Oakland, and the Patriots rewarded him by giving him a starting job on a three-time Super Bowl champion. Over the last few years, the Patriots have turned their backs on the vast majority of talented players who had some dog in them, or major problems off the field, preferring to go with character guys who played hard and shut their mouths. Though I believe Moss will play hard now, this trade breaks that Patriot mold.

So the Patriots rewarded him by helping their team win football games? Sounds like they rewarded themselves. And, if Moss plays well and flies right, won't that transformation reinforce the Patriots' mold? And, since the Patriots have passed on questionable players before, shouldn't we trust their judgment of Moss even more since they're the anti-Portland Trailblazers?

Not according to Frank Cooney:

Frank Cooney's point: "Moss should lose votes for the Hall of Fame if he actually rebounds and plays hard and well in New England. Why? Because that proves that he purposely disgraced the game of football by dogging it and quitting in Oakland when he did indeed have the physical ability to play. He was on a team that was hurting and needed help and he quit!

Again, plenty of guys don't play 100% on every play, probably many on shitty teams. Should not one of them be in the hall of fame? Surely some guy in the hall of fame disgraced football in some way.

Frank's not done: "Oddly, if he falls on his pratt in New England, he should probably be given more consideration for the Hall. Because maybe he just hit his career wall in Oakland after all, which isn't likely, but it's fair to give him the benefit of the doubt. And let's be clear that Randy Moss was indeed a Hall of Fame-caliber player before suiting up for Oakland. HOF voters are supposed to judge these guys ONLY by what they do on the field. Moss was an embarrassment to the sport on the field in Oakland. I was embarrassed when my grandsons watched him.''

So that's a weird disincentive to Moss: now he has to suck for the Patriots to get into the Hall of Fame, even if he really doesn't suck. And why are HoF voters supposed to judge only what happens on the field if disgracing the game is at issue? Hasn't the new commish pretty clearly indicated that disgracing the game off the field is a big deal? And why am I writing so many rhetorical questions?

From Matt, of West Chester, Pa.: "Is it me, or are the Patriots' acquisitions of Adalius Thomas and Randy Moss eerily similar to the Eagles' acquisitions of Jevon Kearse and Terrell Owens?

It's just you, Matt of the WC.

From Dan Isaacson, of Milwaukee: "I think the Packers flunked this draft for failing to address any of their needs and giving Brett a chance to win now. Your thoughts?''

They could give themselves a chance to win by getting rid of Favre.

PK's response, of course, is predictably Favre-friendly:

Dan, I don't like having a major need at receiver and drafting the 13th and 21st wideouts in the draft. I said to someone after the first three rounds: "Favre's got to be throwing a shoe through his TV right now.''

Pick one: it's going through the TV because he tried to throw it through the window or he forced his shoe into double coverage and it was intercepted.

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