The 2014 NFL Offseason Has Proved That Free Agency Hyperactivity Is At An All Time High, and Two May Soon Be The New Three…

Former Giants Defensive end Justin Tuck looks forward to another explosive sub-.500 season in a different jersey

Now that NFL free agency has kind of slowed down, we’ve really had the opportunity to sit back and let it soak in. We’ve seen franchise guys move around, and with every passing year it seems to surprise us less. As very well that it should, because free agency is crazy these days.

As you very well may know, I am a diehard New York Giants fan. The Giants had their most active offseason in recent history where they made some decent acquisitions, even garnering a B+ rating from their beat writer on NFL.com. They have brought back WR Mario Manningham, signed corner Walter Thurmond from the Seattle Seahawks and acquired a big name in Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie to help him try and repair that less than impenetrable New York Giants secondary amongst several other players. For the first time in as long as I remember, they really impressed me by going out of their way to make bold moves.

But as Dubsism would say…Here’s the $64,000 question: Did the Giants finally decide to make moves based on the way that they are going to run their own franchise for the next ten years; or did they make moves based on the way that they rest of the league seems to be losing their patience with players who do not perform? I personally think this is a case of monkey-see, monkey-do. The New York Giants will never be trendsetters; the franchise is just simply too old and doesn’t have what it takes to stick their neck out and lead the way due to their football-oriented conservative fanbase and ownership. So I believe that they have finally just caught up with the rest of the league, but in their defense the rest of this league has moved really fast. Just think about what’s happened this offseason already…

DeSean Jackson to the Washington Redskins: A Step in the Right Direction or a Match Made in Hell?

It’s official – the word came down late Tuesday evening that former Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver DeSean Jackson will now join forces with Robert Griffin III in the D.C. area as they will both try to help the Redskins recover from a dismal 3-13 2013 season, and attempt to get them back to the playoffs and atop of the NFC East like they were the year before.

Yeah, about that…

What We Learned From Week 17 of the 2013 NFL Season: The Play-Off Preview Edition

By J-Dub and Meehan

As we promised in last week’s What We Learned piece, it is time for us here at Sports Blog Movement to breakdown this play-off season, because like we always say, there’s a ton of stuff you need to know that the usual suspects in the sports media will miss while they are busy lapping Peyton Manning’s spooge off a locker-room floor. Having said that, let’s break this down by conference.

AFC:

The Actual Conference Play-Off Power Rankings:

This has nothing to do with the seeding of the tournament; this has everything to do with who is playing the best football right now.

What We Learned From Week 15 of the 2013 NFL Season: Truth or Lie Edition, Part III

By J-Dub and Meehan

As we have been doing all season, we are breaking down things that you need to know as we head into the play-offs. As we get closer, that means that issues with team get more magnified. That also means that a lot of assumptions that have been held about the teams who are still play-off contenders become true or get exposed as just another pack of lies. So, without any further adieu, here are this week’s questions…

1) Truth or Lie: The Philadelphia Eagles Defense is a joke.

We Say: Truth

They allowed 29 First downs and almost 50 points against a Minnesota Vikings team with no Adrian Peterson and they made Matt Cassel look like the second coming of Fran Tarkenton. As brilliant as Nick Foles and the offense have been, the defense has been the exact inverse.

What We Know Now: The NFL May Have a Problem Much More Serious Than Bullying‏

This weekend I am wrapping up a piece for East End Philadelphia for my “Deep Six” series of columns.  One of the things that I mentioned is the overuse of the term “bullying” in the media and how that word has been misapplied to a lot of things in modern life, and recently the NFL has gone through an issue where a guy accused a teammate of such things.

The issue that I am speaking of would be the Richie Incognito story, and thankfully it has disappeared quickly for the time being.  I have this feeling that the NFL is going to wait to release their findings until after the season is over so as not to distract the fans from the playoffs which are going to be awesome this year.  And I had thought in my mind that we were done hearing about bullying in the NFL for the time being… But I was wrong.

What We Learned From Week 11 of the 2013 NFL Season

By J-Dub and Meehan

Up until now, we’ve been consulting our medical expert Dr. Kelly Brackett for his prognoses on NFL teams. But now that we are clearly in the homestretch, it’s time to shift our focus from the survivors and the casualties to an analysis of the survival of the fittest. That means we change our expert as well; rather than looking for overall health, this becomes an exercise in actuarials…or to make it sound less insurance-like..it’s time to look at the odds of each possible contender making the play-offs.  For that, we have invited legendary movie odds-maker Sam “Ace” Rothstein for his thoughts.

AFC:

1) Indianapolis Colts (7-3)

Remaining Games:

• @Arizona
• Tennessee
• @Cincinnati
• Houston
• @Kansas City
• Jacksonville

Odds of Making Play-offs:

Metaphysical certainty. Steal as much money as you can get your hands on, then bet twice that much that Indianapolis will be in the play-offs.

Key Facts:

With six games to go, the Colts have a three-game lead in the AFC South over their closest competitor, and they just beat them on the road with a dramatic comeback victory.The Colts will make the playoffs because no one else in the AFC South will step up and challenge them.  The Titans are in second place, and the other two teams might as well be Terri Schiavo two days after they yanked her feeding tube.  They’ve already beaten Seattle, San Francisco, and the Broncos, and by the time they get to the Kansas City Chiefs, both teams could be just resting up for January.

What We Learned From Week 8 of the 2013 NFL Season

By J-Dub and Meehan

Yet another week has passed in the sportsgasm that is the NFL season, and that means it is time for us to tell you some things you need to know without the self-serving spin those assbags at ESPN will never give you. We know this because if you think you can get real football information from concussion poster children like Merrill Hoge, you probably also didn’t know that tetherball originated as  ninth-century Tatar war ritual that involved chopping off the head of your dead enemy, tying it to a pole, and beating the shit out of it.

Think about that the next time you drive by an elementary school. Now let’s learn something about this week in the NFL. 

1) Your Official Dr. Kelly Brackett NFL Death Watch:

Philadelphia Eagles

• Cause of Death: Vick-Barkley Syndrome
• Autopsy Report with Bonus Comment:  For the record, Meehan accurately projected how the Eagles would start this game.  Ah yes…here it is…

“But after all that, really – it’s a 60% capacity Michael Vick versus Eli.  And after Vick leaves the game because he aggravates that hamstring yet again, it’ll be Matt Barkley in his place.”

What We Learned From Week 7 of the 2013 NFL Season

By J-Dub and Meehan

Yet another week has passed in the sportsgasm that is the NFL season, and that means it is time for us to tell you some things you need to know without the self-serving spin those assbags at ESPN will never give you. We know this because if you think you can get real football information from whichever fat-bag ex-player they’ve trotted out who makes a $1,500 suit look like a bursting sausage casing with buttons, you probably also didn’t know that kit-flying is a professional sport in Thailand.

Think about that the next time you want to tell us how much soccer sucks.

1) Your Official Dr. Kelly Brackett NFL Death Watch:

We started this bit a few weeks ago, and in addition to the death certificates we mailed out last week, there’s another autopsy report to share with you.

Minnesota Vikings:

• Cause of Death: Multiple Organ Failure
• Autopsy Report: This  death didn’t exactly have an obscure pathology. Taking a guy who got run out of town by the most dysfunctional franchise in the NFL (holy living fuck, for the first time this century that phrase is not being used in reference to the Oakland Raiders) and making him your starting quarterback is like taking a needle from the arm of an Ebola patient and using it to shoot 30 cc’s of battery acid into your eyeball. Make no mistake, this team is dead. If it wasn’t the fact that you saw the Giants spreading Josh Freeman all over the turf like he was 250 pounds of Jif Extra Creamy Peanut Butter, if it wasn’t the fact that Adrian Peterson couldn’t get anywhere with the ball, then the sight of Christian Ponder sitting on the sidelines knowing full well he will never see the field again had to tell Viking fans everywhere this team is done.  The part that is hard for us to understand is that Ponder was HUGE in the Vikes’ playoff run last season, so what happened? He suddenly didn’t get any more mediocre; he’s been amazingly consistent in his level of meh. The simple fact is the entire team got worse.

What We Learned From Week Three of the 2013 NFL Season

by J-Dub and Meehan

Yet another week has passed in the sportsgasm that is the NFL season, and that means it is time for us to tell you some things you need to know without the self-serving spin those assbags at ESPN will never give you. We know this because if you think you can get real football information from guys like Chris Mortenson and Adam Schefter, you probably also don’t know that everything at Taco Bell is made of the same five elemental ingredients and that they all end up in the same place.  Speaking of which…

1) The Cleveland Browns have already flushed the 2013 season.

Calcutta – The Cleveland of India.

This is just the Browns way of saying they have flushed on 2013 and are stocking up on picks for 2014. But that’s not always a bad thing.  If you never flush your toilet, your house will become Calcutta in about a week. Cleveland has already had it’s river catch fire more than once; the last thing they need is cattle running loose in the streets trampling children with flies on their faces.

Don’t pay attention to the fact they beat the Vikings after trading their best offensive player and started a third-string quarterback who couldn’t make the roster with the Arizona Cardinals.  Never mind the fact that how they ripped the guts out of Viking fans may be a hate crime in at least 23 states. What this all comes down to is the Browns are auditioning guys for draft day trades in 2014.  Believe it or not, the Browns have some depth almost everywhere except the offensive “skill” positions. This team is young, and with the right number of draft picks and the right decisions using them, they could end up with more positional talent than a copy of the Kama Sutra.

For old guys like J-Dub, well…those guys long for the Sam Rutigliano-led Cleveland “Cardiac Kids” of the 1970’s, and curse the Browns inability to recover from Earnest Byner’s notorious fumble in the 1987 AFC Championship Game.

For the younger guys like Meehan, the good news is that by this time next year, half of the current Cleveland Browns will be working at the Quad Cities Mall with them, and you just know those guys will have some pretty cool stories to tell about the Hooters in Akron. Face it, when you live in Bettendorf, Iowa, Akron is the fucking “City of Lights.” However, the bad news is that there is every chance that this new management approach in Cleveland may be (to quote Roger Daltrey)  just an exercise in “meet the new boss…same as the old boss.”

This is the part where we have to join in an ESPN-style speculation-fest as to what are the Browns planning to do with two first-round draft picks, one of which is as guaranteed to end up in the top three as it was that one of the “Saved by the Bell” girls was going to end up on a stripper pole. We don’t mean in the movies, either. Lark Voorhies, if you are reading this, please drop us a line…we’re concerned about you…really. In any event, it seems the pointy-heads at the World Wide Bottom Feeder seem to think this makes it metaphysical certainty that Johnny Football will be getting his mail in northeastern Ohio about ten months from now.

RILEY COOPER: THE MEEHAN TAKE

Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Andrew W.K.

by Ryan Meehan

I’m standing about forty-five feet from Younkers, a local retail department store that sells everything from hair care products to mattresses.  Usually their stuff is drastically overpriced, or at least most of the products are.  About a month and a half ago, Paula Deen underwent severe public scrutiny for her use of the N-word to describe African Americans.  Her cookware is now half off at Younkers – It’s still really good quality and nobody is buying it.

This week, Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Riley Cooper became the new Paula Deen.  A video leaked Wednesday of Cooper referring to a bouncer at the backstage area of a Kenny Chesney concert as an “N-word”.  The video quickly went viral, and just like that America had someone else to hate.  in that collective moment, they once again vaporized the thought that they themselves could be the source of something so “hateful”.