Breakin' It Down II: Electric Boogaloo

Let me tell you about living in Los Angeles. First, despite the fact that I spend a ridiculous amount of money on NFL Sunday Ticket and the super upgraded programming package, DirecTV still won't

let me watch preseason games live. Instead, I have to wait with the rest of the unwashed masses for the game to come on NFL Network a full day late, which means I can't watch any sports programming, or read the sports section in the paper, or go to too many places on the internet, out of fear of ruining the result. Also, during the broadcasts, the NFL Network itself does its best to ruin the result by running a crawl of games scores and stats, including scores and stats for the very game I'm trying to watch, so I have to tape a newspaper over the bottom of the screen to avoid seeing the crawl. Well guess who ruined the result of the game for me? Mike Fucking Shanahan, that's who. Thanks a lot, dickwad, for ruining my perfectly adequate Sunday afternoon.

BIG MONEY:

• Um.... Brian Clark? That guy was pretty good. I just finished a compelling book called "The Chronicles of Devoe" that pretty much proves Brian Clark will make the team. The book started out one really great sequence, but then it didn't go anywhere for the entire rest of the book, but everyone was still asking, "what happened to the protagonist, he was soooo good in the beginning," even though he really wasn't. Then it just ended unceremoniously. Whatever- Clark looked better than Morgan both returning kicks and catching passes.
• Dan Graham continues to block the shit out of anyone who gets near him, so that's pretty cool.
• that's all I got.

WHAMMIES OF THE WEEK:

• Mike Shanahan. After his utterly craptacular game plan, he had the gall to bitch and moan about the Cowboys playing, you know, hard. He said that there was some unwritten rule about not blitzing or going 100%, and the Cowboys broke that rule. Boo fucking hoo, Shanahan. Maybe this is why your teams are never ready to go when week one roles around. Maybe you should start wearing a stupid sweater vest and playing the guitar, and then take all your underachieving players tubing down Boulder Creek. Man, do I hate Rick Neuheisel. Wait, where was I? Oh yeah- get your fucking team ready, RatFace.
• I really don't understand the defensive philosophy. They don't do ANYTHING. It's a read and react philosophy, and right now, the players can't do it. This needs to change right now. The defense is terrible. No pressure, no dynamic plays, nothing. They don't even pretend to blitz. The line doesn't do anything. From what I see, the line plays the way a 3-4 line would, except with 3 gaps instead of 2 (the tackles were lined up on the outside of the guards, for some reason). And our linebackers, whose strengths are going sideline to sideline, are now responsible for plugging the gaps, instead of just running to the ball. I don't get it. Granted, this might be a result of RatFace's "sleepwalk through the preseason" coaching style, but that doesn't exactly invoke confidence.

STOP:

So that was it. It was an ugly game, and even when we were scoring points, I really wasn't that interested. On NFL Network, the announcers start with the home team, and then switch to the away team, so we started out with the Cowboys announcers, who aren't aware that football exists anywhere but Texas, so they spend all their time explaining everyone's ties to Texas. they also say that anything the Cowboys do well is because of the Cowboys, but anything the Broncos do well is because of the Cowboys' failure. Then we switched to the Broncos announcers, where Gary Miller (?) continued his record streak of 20 consecutive years of never knowing anyone's name, and Reggie Rivers' continuing his self deprecating "humor" about how shitty he was when he played. Nice to have some continuity, guys!

In other news, Gerard Warren was traded to the Raiders for a 2008 draft choice. I'm not exactly sure what he was good for on the field, but his beard growing responsibilities, along with those of Jake Plummer, will now be shouldered by Travis Henry and Dan Graham, as well as rookie Marcus Thomas. Senior beard grower Nick Ferguson also remains.