Hi Folks,
We do a lot of really insightful, thoughtful and serious features here at Footballguys with some very smart people thinking deeply for you. This is not one of those features.
This is a few pages of me downloading my goofy and dysfunctional mental hard drive that gets stuffed with way too many random items from too many hours watching, reading about and listening to football every weekend and throughout the week. It's the only way I keep relatively sane. Here's hoping it has a tiny bit of value for you. Let's go.
In case you didn't hear, Washington coach Mike Shanahan replaced Robert Griffin III with Kirk Cousins last week. Not surprisingly, this caused the football internet world to blow up with everyone weighing in on the decision.
I thought Jimmy Johnson nailed it. "This team has won 3 games. Shanahan can bench the whole team as far as I am concerned."
Robert Griffin III's father is reportedly lobbying for Baylor coach Art Briles to be named as the new Washington coach. The elder Griffin is pushing hard to unseat Marcus Vick in the "Most Annoying Relative" category…
With back-to-back wins against the Giants and the Broncos by the Chargers and with the Colts win earlier against the Broncos, the Pagano brothers are 3-0 against the Manning brothers.
Thanks to Footballguy Kenneth Lim for that one.
Commercial of the Week with a Holiday Flair.
Harley Davidson's version of Silent Night.
Nice.
Give me this over a hundred of those ridiculous Acura and Lexus spots.
Presumably, the key to the Eagles turnaround had been the Chip Kelly Turkey Burger Sliders served on Friday afternoons.
I get it that Kelly comes from Oregon and eating healthy and hip is important and all. But I'm just not comfortable linking "Philadelphia" and "Turkey Burger Slider" in the same sentence.
Give me a One Wiz With at Pats.
Or maybe it wasn't the Turkey Burger Sliders at all. Maybe we can pin things on this guy.
Baseball Note Of The Week: ESPN's Rick Reilly wrote a big article about how much responsibility managers should assume for their players who were juicing.
The best part was Reilly's tease on Twitter: "LaRussa had no idea his stars were on juice. And Bonnie + Clyde's driver just figured they always ran late."
Early Christmas present for me Sunday morning. I was about 4 minutes behind on my DVR watching ESPN's Sunday Morning Countdown. Which allowed me to fast forward through the entire Frank Caliendo segment. My biggest fear is the DVR companies discover how much money I'd be willing to pay for that ability.
Here's the problem when old giant companies start trying to "leverage" the new hip "social media tools". Translation: Companies you don't really care about putting ads disguised as posts on Twitter usually kind of suck.
Tide jumped out with this thing for the Dolphins.
Zero people who actually use social media were surprised to see the first reply.
Maybe it's because I'm mentally twelve and there's a horse's butt joke in there somewhere but I loved this picture of how the Colts enter the field.
If I ran the football operations for the USC Trojans, this is exactly how I'd do it too.
New York Giants head coach Tom Coughlin was clearly disappointed in the effort from some of his players: "I told the players who prepared and gave great effort that I appreciate what they did," Coughlin said. " I told those that were obvious they had not that I felt sorry for them, because they’re missing the whole point."
Looks like the fans followed suit.
Music Note Of The Week. I mentioned this week that I don't know what the music in Heaven will sound like. But I think it's going to sound a lot like Iron And Wine When I want to hear something beautiful and soulful with a tiny bit of rawness, they're my go to.
I love The Sea And The Rhythm
The Banjo at the 2:00 mark kills. Cinder And Smoke is gorgeous and their cover of the Postal Service's Such Great Heights is awesome.
Love them.
I think everyone agrees Adrian Peterson is awesome at Football. But when it comes to gift giving, not so much.
Minnesota's Matt Asiata entered Sunday with three career carries. And left the game with three touchdowns. Nice.
The look on Peterson's face here summed up how most of us felt about Asiata and Banyard before the game.
Here's the definition of power. Nick Saban was completely out coached with two huge blunders in the loss to rival Auburn. And turned that into a two million dollar a year raise.
Breaking News: The Dallas Cowboys have released Jerry Jones.
God Bless The Onion…
Glitch In The Matrix
Kansas City running back Jamaal Charles turned in a game for the ages shattering records Sunday carrying fantasy teams to victory.
And Knile Davis was the leading rusher…
Thanks to Footballguy Sean Hastings for that one.
Here's a little known pic of Charles in the end zone Sunday.
That's from my Buddy Kyle Lebeda at Slantshirts.com . Buy some stuff from him.
Charles didn't seem to mind the Black Hole.
And Raider Guy seemed enthusiastic there.
Everyone knows Shaun White is a incredible snow boarder and skater. Turns out he's a good guy too giving his trophy away to a kid at the event. The boy's name is Connor Tripp.
Whether White was disappointed he didn't win and gave away a trophy he didn't care about or not isn't the question. The reality is some kid was super stoked to get a trophy from Shaun White.
"I thought he was just letting me hold it," said Connor as he cradled the trophy in his arms.
"He's a really good snowboarder and he's really nice."
Did you hear? Dallas WR Dez Bryant left the field Sunday before the game was over.
Most everyone buried him for it including Deion Sanders: "Dez Bryant leaving the field was absolutely, 100 percent, positively wrong. Can't do it under any circumstances," said Sanders.
Bryant apologized later. "I was wrong," Bryant said, via the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. "It didn't have anything to do with my teammates. I just ... I couldn't watch Green Bay kneel the ball down on the field after a tough loss like that.
"I was very emotional. I cried when I got into the locker room. I didn't want to show that stuff on the sideline."
My take? Wrong for sure. But I get it. And certainly not the end of the world like many are making it to be. Move on.
I do realize I often fall into the role of defending Bryant. To those that have asked, No, we're not related. At least that I know about.
On the upside, Bryant and Tony Romo and some of the Cowboy players spent the day after the loss hanging out with sick kids at a hospital.
“This day belongs to them (the kids), and you should be excited about that,” Dez Bryant told the newspaper. “It eases up a little bit of the pain. I know it did for me.”
I know I'm soft but I'm calling it even after that.
A local Seattle car dealer is paying out $420,000 for a promotion that promised to split the money between 12 winners if the Seahawks shut out the New York Giants on Sunday.
"This is crazy," dealership owner Jim Johnson told ESPN.com after Seattle blanked New York 23-0. "We never expected that we'd actually be giving away the money."
Here's the question I'd ask Mr. Johnson: Have you seen the Giants play?
Truth be told, the promotion was reportedly supposed to run the previous week when the opponent was the San Francisco 49ers.
Ouch.
And then there's the guy who dresses up like Jesus at Steelers home games holding up a "Defeat Cin" when they're playing the Bengals.
Thanks to Footballguy SteelCurlin for that one.
Peyton Manning has more rushing touchdowns than Robert Griffin III. Yeah, we saw that coming…
Thanks to Footballguy Jason Pierobon for that one.
Here's another odd one from our friend @Adamschefter "When scoring 35 or more points in a game this season, Dallas is 1-2. When scoring 35 or more points this season, other teams are 51-2."
This is what that looks like on the sidelines:
I missed this one last week but the West Jet Santa Commercial is incredible.
Not just a feel good story. I love the "magic" part of the marketing angle. Like many things that seem magical, the real secret was hard work.
Thanks to Footballguy Jim Cogley for that one.
Patriot fans want to see Rob Gronkowski on the field. Not at Whole Foods on a scooter.
This is more like it. Stevan Ridley as Santa and Gronkowski as the Elf.
When we launch Futbolguys.com (hmmmm - I see you Brad Lewis), Italian star Mario Balotelli is going to be our poster guy.
Dude creates custom "boots" with his newspaper headlines on them.
You know that Chad Johnson is so pissed he didn't think of that…
More Griffin goofiness. In a cruel twist of fate, look which player is on this week's ticket….
Baltimore kicker Justin Tucker kicked 248 yards worth of field goals, 13 more than Matthew Stafford's 235 yards passing.
Tucker knew what time it was.
Thanks to Footballguy Ryan Cotten for that one.
If you're like me, you've probably been sitting around wondering how Kyle Orton's doing.
So I did a little checking.
He started off the year with this unfortunate haircut.
But now is rocking the Dave Grohl look.
Nice. He's always looked like Grohl, now he's got the hair too.
Of course, nothing tops the all time classic Kyle Orton bids Denver farewell video.
Merry Christmas.
Behind The Scenes - How I Write Random Shots - Glitch In The Matrix
And I promise this is true. At the exact time I was typing the words about Kyle Orton looking like Dave Grohl, a random guy at my Starbucks tried to hit on the girl at the table next to mine with the "Has anyone ever told you that you look just like …………" line.
I hope this column is better received than he was.
Do you love flame wars in the NFL.com comment section? Be careful. Roger Goodell is now personally reading every comment.
That may or may not have been a flimsy excuse to use my favorite Goodell picture…
Looking backwards can often be super helpful as we look forward. Here's some interesting draft info from our friend @adamlevitan :
"Six of fantasy's top-10 QBs this season were widely available after Round 7 in drafts: Rivers, Luck, Romo, RWilson, Alex Smith, Dalton."
"Only one of fantasy's top-10 RBs was available after the fourth round of drafts: Knowshon Moreno."
Hmmmm
I've been as hard as anyone on Falcons running back Steven Jackson saying he isn't the back he used to be.
Josh Wilson may disagree.
Black Eyed Joe is everywhere. Even in your beer.
Thanks to [icon] from our Footballguys message boards for this one.
These snow games are fun for us. When we're sitting on the couch by the fire.
I have to think more than a few players feel like this…
I believe in looking for the good in things.
With that, I present to you Joseph "Cat Daddy" Fauria.
And while it isn't necessarily good, you don't see a ref taking a set on the bench everyday.
I'll go ahead and call this bad.
But this is downright scary.
I don't know what Trent Richardson did to @FauxJohnMadden, but I'm glad he did.
Fun Black Hole moment from Sunday. This Chiefs fan is pretty brave.
Hats off to Miami. This team was in turmoil with the Martin / Incognito mess and they very quietly went back to work, focused, and pulled themselves together. Nice effort.
But they still give us this kind of stuff.
Because I can't get enough…
NBA Note Of The Week: James Harden injured his ankle and shot his free throw on one foot.
Nice.
Anyone seen Mark Sanchez lately?
I'm not sure how I feel about the hit on Bengals punter Kevin Huber by Pittsburgh's Terence Garvin.
Tuesday the league said the hit was illegal.
I hate to see a punter blasted like that. But clearly, he was headed toward trying to make a tackle. Basically, I see both sides.
I'm kind of surprised the Wall won here against Vernon Davis.
I Googled "not how you draw it up" and this gif came up.
Parent of the year material here.
If benching Robert Griffin III is enough to "ruin Christmas" this kid is in for a hard life.
Do you think when they pick who gets to go out for the Overtime Coin Flip that the Cardinals just pick two guys starting with the lowest number?
Why do I notice these things?
Here's how good Jets rookie Sheldon Richardson is:
In a split second, he went from this.
To this.
That's not easy to do with Cam Newton.
Bright spots, people. Bright spots.
I've been hard on Robert Griffin III. But here's something I liked Sunday. He stayed into the game and clearly seemed thrilled to see Cousins throw the TD pass to Santana Moss at the end.
Oh those wacky ESPN guys…
Before we get to the Hard Luck Awards - a note from my column last week where I wrote about the owner who took third place in the FanDuel 3 Million Dollar Event. He owned Nick Foles and the Brent Celek slide moved him from $300,000 to $100,000. A Random Shots reader mentioned he knew this owner, connected us, and I was able to call him this week.
His name is Stephen Basile and I have to tell you this guy has the best attitude of any fantasy owner I've met. I told him I was broken hearted he lost money on the Foles play and he said, "Are you kidding? I won a HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS playing Fantasy Football".
And you know what? He's exactly right. That's incredible and that's exactly the right take on it. Out of the 50 teams in the tournament, he was sitting at #43 at half time of the 1 pm games. He rocketed up the chart and wound up landing at #3 taking home a cool $100k.
He said a huge upside was all the props he was getting from his buddies because their wives now are great with the guys playing Fantasy Football as they saw how profitable it was for Stephen.
Awesome. Rock on, Stephen Basile.
Hard Luck Awards for Week 15
Plus the Nullified TDs
- PHI WR DeSean Jackson left end for 18 yards, TOUCHDOWN NULLIFIED by Penalty.
- TB LB Lavonte David 69 yard Interception, TOUCHDOWN NULLIFIED by Penalty.
- CHI K Robbie Gould 46 yard field goal is GOOD, NULLIFIED by Penalty.
- NO QB Drew Brees pass short left to WR Lance Moore for 8 yards, TOUCHDOWN NULLIFIED by Penalty.
- SEA QB Russell Wilson pass deep right to WR Golden Tate for 29 yards, TOUCHDOWN NULLIFIED by Penalty.
Sometimes it's better to just not know...
That'll do it for this week, Folks. Thanks to Footballguy Doug Drinen, Ryan Cotten, Jim Cogley, Jason Pierobon, SteelerCurlin, Sean Hastings, Kenneth Lim, Frank Cafarelli, icon and Keith Overton for the help on this one. If you've got a Random Shot of your own, shoot me an e-mail at bryant@footballguys.com.
Note for you folks inclined to pray or those that care enough to read all the way down this far. This season of Random Shots is dedicated to my close friend Mike Wenger who apparently has decided to upstage Chuck Pagano this year. Mike's been diagnosed with Acute Myeloid Leukemia and is undergoing aggressive chemotherapy and will start a Bone Marrow Transplant in January. Much Love, Buddy. Mad Respect. Go Chiefs.
Thanks for playing along. I hope you make the most of whatever you're doing in your life. Love your neighbor and stick together.