Brief Sports Discussion

My head is still buzzing a bit from a comment made by my new favorite NFL analyst, Trent Dilfer, after the trade of Tony Gonzalez to the Falcons. He says something like, "Let me tell you something, Tony Gonzalez has forgotten more about football than these current Falcons on the offense know. When he comes in there he's going to be able to teach them so much about the little nuances and their learning curve is going to speed up."

Huh? What? Do veteran players really have this kind of power? Weren't the Chiefs 2-14 last year with a young QB (Tyler Thigpen) and a young receiver (Dwayne Bowe) and were 25th in the NFL in scoring? Wouldn't Gonzalez's presence have helped their learning curve a bit? And these Falcons who are young...didn't they score exactly 100 points more than the Chiefs did last year with a bunch of guys who apparently don't know as much football as Gonzalez has forgotten? Their top receivers (Roddy White, Michael Jenkins) haven't been around for long, but a few seasons...enough to be veteran. And Matt Ryan did a pretty good job in his rookie season. I'm not sure, I might have heard about that a few times last year.

Gonzalez's presence in the Falcons lineup certainly helps and makes them better. But these TV guys (especially former players) always seem to think a veteran presence = all this stuff young players can learn! This whole "learning" idea has worked wonders in the past when a young QB has been drafted to replace the old QB. See: Rodgers, Aaron/Favre, Brett. Also: McNair, Steve/Chandler, Chris.

I think more accurately, it opens up your offense to do more and hence, your QB has more options, more weapons, and the appearance that tremendous learning has occurred because the stats don't lie.

Also:

Our mortal enemies, the San Jose Sharks, went down in fairly embarrassing fashion last night. They were the league's best team and got sunk by the 8-seed Anaheim Ducks. And while this isn't terribly surprising, considering a core of current Ducks have won a Stanley Cup and are still good, it's still a sweet thing to see.

One thing that I love about the Sharks' demise is that they're a team every year NHL analysts scratch their head over and wonder, "Will they ever take the next step?" This year, they looked to have it all together, and they lost in the first round. This makes me wonder, though...why couldn't the Predators take advantage of these perennial playoff losers?