Could this be Tom Brady’s finest season yet?

What Tom Brady has been able to achieve this season with essentially spare parts at the offensive skill positions has been absolutely amazing. Could we be witnessing perhaps Brady’s finest season as a New England Patriot thus far?

Tom Brady - By Keith Allison from Baltimore, USA, via Wikimedia Commons

It is not an exaggeration to say that it is a big surprise that the New England Patriots stand as the sole obstacle to Peyton Manning and his All-Star crew making the Superbowl. NFL pundits, fans and the Las Vegas bookmakers all had the Patriots as 4th, 5th and even lower ranked AFC Champion favourites at various points of this crazy NFL season.

The Bengals, The Colts, Chargers, Ravens and Chiefs all received more plaudits than the Patriots at various junctures of the season, and many picked Indianapolis to walk into New England and upset the Patriots in last weekend’s divisional playoff game. However, like a stone cold vampire, like an Egyptian Mummy or any other of the army of the undead, the Patriots keep coming back from seemingly impossible situations, and forcing themselves into the spotlight time and time again.

In seasons past they have done so with a smattering of good-to-great players on defence and a couple of legitimate superstars on offence, all working in tandem with future Hall Of Fame Quarterback, Tom Brady. Name check time. Wes Welker, Rob Gronkowski, Jerod Mayo, Big Vincent Wilfork and Aaron Hernandez among others combined to make the Patriots a dangerous football team last season. Welker and Hernandez are gone, Mayo, Wilfork and Gronk are injured and will take no further part in this season. The heart was ripped out of the Patriots skill positions in particular before this season got meaningful.

Nevermind, the Patriots won the AFC East yet again and qualified for the playoffs with a first round bye to boot. How did this happen? Well, you can’t really say the defence has carried the team in the absence of any big name offensive players. Instead, the defence has had to overcome its own rash of injuries, and has managed to survive without breaking completely only because of some herculean performances from kids who weren’t drafted and the proverbial guys off the street (free agents picked up and thrown in at the deep end). That and the brilliant defensive scheming of Bill Belichick, of course.

The real reason the Patriots have been a playoff calibre team, despite massive obstacles, is the man at the rudder, Tom Brady. He has been a bright, shining light of consistent play all season long. His efficient, calm leadership has kept the Patriots scoring points despite the fact they are lacking literally any big name offensive presence.

Statistically the numbers are good, not great. Brady does manage to hang in around the NFL passing leaders in a few areas though. 4th in completions, 6th in total yards, a good TD/Int ratio of 25/11, and 7th in Yards per game average with 271, Brady has managed to hang around the leader-board despite the fact he had, you know, basically no one of note to throw to.

Achieving ‘good’ statistics when you are throwing to Wide Receivers that would barely make the cut on the Jaguars squad is an incredible feat in itself. Brady has efficiently led a very high scoring offence (The Patriots rank third in the NFL in 2013 with 444 points scored) despite the fact he is playing without a Tight End of note, with several small, slow slot receivers and with absolutely zero deep threat receivers.

A closer look at the gentlemen who fill out the Patriots Wide Receiver depth chart is illuminating.

Danny Amendola figured to be the jewel in the crown, yet has struggled to stay on the field. The Patriots best offensive player other than Tom Brady has probably been hard-nosed, hardworking Julian Edelman. However, and we’re desperate not to insult such a hard working player, it is fair to say Edelman would probably find it hard to get on any other squad in the NFL right now, particularly any playoff squad.

The names at the WR position after those two gents are underwhelming to say the least. Thompkins, Dobson, Collie and Slater are trying their best (when not injured) and again, you hate to insult anyone, but seriously, have a look at that list and consider Brady’s stats above.

It is literally miraculous that the Patriots scored 444 points in 2013.

Furthermore, Brady has done this with little more than the illusion of a running game behind him, with a group of running backs that either can’t stop putting the ball on the ground (Ridley), players no one has ever heard of (Bolden) or players the game of Football had more or less given up on completely (Blount).

In short, you can say with authority, while Peyton Manning lorded it with a cast of super star Pro Bowl types around him, Tom Brady played the 2013 season with, effectively, the bare minimum around him at the skill positions.

The amazing thing is the Patriots managed some very high point totals in ’13 (43, 55, 34 three times) and that is almost entirely down to the skill, experience and competitive tenacity of Tom Brady. He basically willed the Patriots offensive forward.

Here’s the thing, and it’s a great thing and a clue as to why the Patriots are where they are.

Brady himself would absolutely balk (vociferously) at the suggestion that he has not had a supporting cast around him in 2013. He would probably reject the suggestion outright and respectfully point to the various strong points of the players who have been toiling away for the Patriots this season. That’s Brady all over, a consummate leader, a terrific team-mate.

Add to that the experience that Brady and Bill Belichick have together leading the Patriots to 3 SuperBowls, 2 near misses, countless big game wins and a plethora of statistical wonders, and it is a little easier to understand why the Patriots are where they are today, standing once more on the brink of greatness.

Whatever happens this coming weekend In Denver, the 2013 season has been a personal triumph against the odds for Tom Brady.

Then again, when a guy is a 6th round draft pick and climbs to where Brady is at right now, nothing should surprise us.

Tom Brady - by Mongomez93

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On Dee Dee McCarron and the ‘Speak English!’ phenomenon (VIDEO)

Once again a Z-list celebrity has taken to Twitter to tell people to ‘Speak English!’. In this case that Z-lister is Alabama Quarterback AJ McCarron’s mother, Dee Dee McCarron. This is sadly not a new phenomenon, and here we look at some of the ironies around aggressive, angry, silly people telling other people to ‘Speak English!’.

 Jameis Winston 

All too often lately we are seeing reports of individuals taking to social networks to chastise people from other cultural backgrounds to ‘Speak English!’. In most cases it takes place after a sporting event where an athlete might excitedly break into Spanish or perhaps an urban slant on English, at which point the angry, often aggressive, militant takes it upon themselves to instruct the subject to ‘Speak English!’. This played out last night after the BCS Championship as Florida State’s breathless, overjoyed Quarterback Jameis Winston attempted to answer some post-game questions. Dee Dee McCarron, mother of Alabama Quarterback AJ McCarron, decided to Tweet the following:

The Tweet has since been deleted and the standard ‘I am not racist’ apology has been hurried up in its place.

There are obviously a number of issues with Dee Dee McCarron’s idiotic Tweet.

First of all, shouting at someone to ‘Speak English!’ is effectively ordering someone to communicate in a certain way. It is unusual of anyone to demand that anyone communicate with anyone else in a particular way, but even more so in a country, the United States, where freedom of speech and expression, in other-words freedom of communication, is expressly protected by the constitution of that country. It is very interesting to see certain groups demand the freedom of speech allowed in the constitution to, for example, protect a hate-filled television show that spouts racist rhetoric ad nauseum, and then deny that same freedom of expression, speech and communication to other groups and peoples.

Apparently freedom of speech (and communication) only applies if you are a fat, middle aged white guy who is angry about something.

The second point is an off-shoot of the above, and that is the United States is a vast boiling pot of cultures and peoples, and that comes with a myriad of varieties of languages and variations of those languages. Dee McCarron is from Alabama, and her Twitter account is full of those adorable little southern quirks like ‘Ya’ll’ and so forth. To my knowledge nobody has shouted ‘Speak English!’ to Dee McCarron, despite the fact that she is taking part in a massive bastardization of the American-English language on a daily basis.

That anyone from Alabama should comment on any other human beings usage of the English language is rather ironic, to say the least.

Perhaps the greatest irony of all is that nobody in the United States really speaks English. Instead a bastardization of the English language called American-English is used, a particularly lazy language that effectively drops letters and simplifies words for its users. The correct English spelling of the word Colour changes instead to the lazier, shorter, Color in the United States. If Dee McCarron and all those other confused individuals who impeach upon others to ‘Speak English!’ wanted to be technically correct, as it would appear they are cajoling others to be, they would in fact stipulate that the subject of their ire should ‘Speak American-English!’.

One final thought, the interview itself. Considering a number of elements, the context of the interview, the unprepared nature of the response, the excitement of just having won such a big game, and in such a dramatic manner, and finally considering the clearly overjoyed and thus extra excited nature of the man giving the delivery, frankly this author (or, author, if you wish to use American-English) thinks that the communication in question was actually a thing of beauty. Every sentence is free, easy and quite entertaining to listen to. The message is colourful, humble and good natured.

Jameis Winston’s post-game interview:



It is so sad that someone in a position of responsibility (someone with a large following of very easily suggestible peoples on Twitter) would then take from that same communication the desire to spread a shorter message of aggressive, hate filled dominance.

Jameis Winston spoke, clearly, emotionally and entertainingly, from the heart.

Let’s just hope Dee McCarron was not doing same.

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Bookies release odds on Johnny Manziel staying at Texas A&M

All the talk on the Texas A&M campus right now is around whether Quarterback Johnny Manziel will stay for another year at the collegiate level, or if he will take his talents to the NFL instead. We talked to one of the bookmakers who has set odds on this very question.

Johnny Manziel

Texas A&M Quarterback Johnny Manziel led his team to one last big win last night, hammering Duke 52-48, and as soon as the game ended the questions started, will Manziel stay at the college level next season or will he join the ranks of the NFL?

The speculation is voluminous, to say the least. From Twitter threads to the sports pages, to Texas A&M forums filled with sad fans trying to convince each other he's staying, like passengers on the Titanic convincing each other the ship isn't going down.

To cut through the noise and get closer to a logical answer to the question, we approached a well known bookmaker to ask him, what are the odds of Johnny Manziel staying in school next season?

Viktor Jerkoffavitch of Back Alley Sports Betting had this to say;

''We took a number of things into consideration while setting these odds. After lengthy analysis it was clear to us that money, fame and, well, money, are probably more important to Manziel than anything else. So with that in mind we are offering 2,500/1 that Manziel will stay at Texas A&M.''

Manziel. Money.

''Of course there is also the fact that, you know, he hates being there, too.''

What these odds of 2,500/1 means is that it is rather unlikely that Mr Manziel will be staying in college for another year. Essentially there is, as they say, a snowball's chance in hell.

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