Beer and football II — week fifteen

The game: Patriots at Broncos
The beer: People's Pint Scotch Ale
The result: Win, 41–23; Sophie, 6–3–0
The commentary: I picked up the Scotch ale a few weeks ago out in central Mass. and thought it was a good choice for the Broncos game. Since Tebow is (was?) God's favorite quarterback, I thought I'd counter that advantage with a secular-sounding brewer in People's Pint. And it worked! I tried to go into the game (watched on lousy standard-definition delay because we were out running errands that afternoon/evening and I didn't want to take up the whole DVR drive, what with the Survivor and Dexter finales looming later on) with an open mind toward Tebow. I can get pretty worked up over just about anything but I at least try to see all sides before gripping "the correct" point of view with the ferocious death-chomp of one thousand blood-stained teeth.

All this Tebow stuff—how many people have actually watched him play? You have the religious folks who see how publicly he proclaims his faith and, of course, want to believe he's a better quarterback than a superstar who had an illegitimate child with some B actress from Longmeadow. And then you have the football fans who see him bowling over linebackers in a run-first offense and just know that he couldn't hit a wide-open receiver thirty yards down the seam. My impression is of a (very) raw athlete in the mold of a bulky, tougher Randall Cunningham—maybe he's not the best pocket passer, but just look out if you're chasing him from sideline to sideline for a few seconds and whiff on a tackle or two, because by then someone will be open. We saw a lot of that early in Sunday's game and, conversely, saw him get sacked for a loss of almost thirty yards after trying to do too much. So he lost the game but he lost it to Tom Brady, not to the Patriots' defense. I can count on one hand the number of elite quarterbacks in this league that Tebow couldn't possibly outscore on a regular basis, and that tells me he'll probably do alright. He's not a traditional quarterback—you can't compare him to John Elway or even Jake Plummer—but he has the time to develop that part of his game. It's his first meaningful season, he's got a lot of confidence and the Broncos would be nuts to go in a different direction next season. If they embrace him as their guy and approach the draft and free-agent market with his skills in mind—and if he puts the brakes on what I suspect is false humility and doesn't get too caught up in his own celebrity—he and his team will only get better, especially once his scrambling starts to result in late-hit penalties against defenders who are terrified to let him slip past. I can't believe I'm defending this guy but there you have it.

As for the game itself, the Broncos were somehow the first of fourteen teams to attempt to take Gronk out of the game and it was therefore rewarding to watch Hernandez do his yards-after-the-catch thing. I can't say enough about these guys and I look forward to what they can do in the playoffs, even as I dread the day they both take big-money deals elsewhere. In other news, the running game continues to not do a whole lot, which should be expected since they haven't had a whole lot of opportunity. That's something I'd like to see ironed out, because we've seen the past couple of years what happens when talented, determined teams figure out how to defend the passing game.

Really too bad about Andre Carter, who was put on IR yesterday. I'll miss his disruptive defensive presence but luckily we can still enjoy the weekly roundtable program where he, Alge Crumpler, Fred Taylor and Deion Branch engage in well informed discussions about leading national and international topics like the viability of an isolationist United Kingdom, the boom in Gulf Coast tourism and that guy in Maine who probably killed his daughter. At least Mark Anderson can fill his spot on the field for the rest of the season, now that the risk of him breaking an arm in a bicep-smashing sack celebration with Carter is no longer a thing to fear. I haven't heard Anderson speak a whole lot but maybe he can even sit in on the show and provide some thought-provoking insight on the record industry's potential reaction to Fugazi offering up hundreds of concert recordings for $5 a piece.

I've made it this far without complaining about the defense? You don't say! ESPN writer James Walker does a nice job on his AFC East blog—it's great to have unbiased commentary on the Jets and the two UFL teams that round out the division, as well as some outsider perspective on the Patriots. On that topic, his pitch-perfect piece about the Patriots needing to aggressively surround the newly extended Jerod Mayo with quality players was two hundred fifty words of rock-solid action. (At first I thought the post was written by ESPN Boston's informational wellspring Mike Reiss—whom I do love—and marveled for those mistaken few seconds at the fact it this was the first bit of real criticism he'd ever laid upon the team's personnel philosophy of stockpiling veteran cast-offs and undrafted rookies in order to rotate them in and out of a starting lineup every week. Then I realized it wasn't Reiss after all, and instead his role as a beat writer continues to get in the way of offering opinions other than "Patrick Chung walked through the locker room today so that's a good sign he'll play this weekend" for the sixth week in a row, followed by Chung being inactive for the sixth week in a row.) It was the kind of constructive (not just negative) analysis that is hard to find outside of PFW in Progress and Patriots Daily and I really appreciated it. Awesome job, seriously. But…

I'm all set with Walker's repeated assertion that Miami is "playing its best football late in the season" and "relishes the role of spoiler." I guess he's overlooking the stinker against the Eagles ten days ago? "Look out, NFL, the Dolphins are going to fuck up your playoff plans! Unless you're the Eagles. They will spoil that shit! Assuming again that you're one of thirty teams not based in Philadelphia. Go Fins!" What, exactly, have they spoiled? Ask me again next week.

Some minor items that I don't feel like flushing out:

Sophie won Survivor because Coach for some reason thought she would be easier to beat than that Rick guy, about whom A. and I still know nothing. If Coach had taken Albert and Rick to the final it would have been a clean sweep, though maybe none of those three could have defeated Ozzy in that last challenge? Unfortunately this season was a bit of a bore outside of Coach's eccentricity, Ozzy's unlikability, Brandon's insanity and Cochran's general awesomeness.

Few things challenge me like fastening my daughter's clothing. Why do buttons and snaps on onesies and stuff have to be so tiny? I don't appreciate proper scale at the expense of my fumbling adult-sized fingers.

The other day I went to the post office to get some stamps. (Thank-you notes, Christmas cards and those assholes who sell your name and address to The Company Store's catalog division are the post office's last hope.) I asked the guy "Do you have any holiday 'forever' stamps"? He responded "Which would you like, ornaments or baby Jesus?" He might as well have asked "How would you like to be judged, hellfire or salvation?"

I've been playing Can's "Mother Sky" two or three times a day for the past week and a half. Its quarter hour is much too brief and the "sudden" fade-out surprises me every time. A hip-hop group (probably called Tha Kanz) could sustain itself on nothing but Can beats for ten years.

Keeping with music, I heard Boss Hog's "Strawberry" this morning and realized the sound of the rhythm-keeping dot matrix printer would be a complete mystery to high school and maybe college students today. "Awesome keyboard effect, bro!" What other noises of my youth are obsolete? Dial-up modems? Jackée?

This afternoon we're having a $20 Yankee swap in which my gift is a $15 iTunes card and a $5 bottle of BBC's Coffeehouse Porter. I might open it myself. People are bringing snacks and my contribution—as a first-time baker—is a batch of peanut butter blossoms. (I just ate one to make sure it didn't taste like ass and I'm proud to report it was delicious.) Please wish me luck. [Edit: I got a pretty kick-ass orange picture frame.]

Up next: Dan Marino is not walking through that door. Cheers!