Game Day Thoughts

It's Bye Week week.

It's easy to tell that the bye weeks start this week when an active player like Richard Sherman is on the set of NFL network's GameDay Morning.

I've never been sold on the need for a bye week. The NFL loves it as they get an extra set of televised games in a seventeen-week season. An extra week of money.  It's not so much that I'm against bye weeks in general. I just think that they start too early. Week 4 is much too early to have a bye. Six teams have a bye this week. The Seattle Seahawks is one of the six, of course. That's why Sherman has a free day to chat with Marshall Faulk, Warren Sapp, Michael Irvin and Kurt Warner. The Arizona Cardinals, Cincinnati Bengals, Cleveland Browns, Denver Broncos and St. Louis Rams are the other five teams with no games to play after playing only three. The NFL has given teams a week off since 1990. The NFL was especially generous in 1993. Teams received two weeks off. That was a real treat. Teams certainly don't need two weeks off. It's debatable whether they even need one but a week off can be nice. Byes are best served around week 6. Any time before that is too early. The season has just started. Teams and players are just rounding into team and game shape. The last thing that they need is a week off. Players do need a break. They need a week to get a little healthy. But, they need it later in the season. The NFL should look into concentrating all of the bye weeks from weeks 6-12.

Since I was an itty, bitty Minnesota Vikings fan, the team has played their home games at 10:00, my time. Noon, their time. They have nearly always played in the early wave of Sunday games. Especially when they were playing at home. That's why things feel a bit off today. They play the Atlanta Falcons today at TCF Bank Stadium. They play the game in the afternoon. They usually only do that when they play on the west coast.

This quirk of the Vikings schedule opens up my viewing schedule for the morning game. It almost feels like one of those damn bye weeks. Here's what we have in the morning:

Green Bay Packers at Chicago Bears
Detroit Lions at New York Jets
Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Pittsburgh Steelers
Carolina Panthers at Baltimore Ravens
Buffalo Bills at Houston Texans
Tennessee Titans at Indianapolis Colts
Miami Dolphins at Oakland Raiders

Typically, I would drift to the Packers-Bears game. Today, I may drift to the Panthers-Ravens game. It's mostly due to Ravens receiver Steve Smith. Joe Flacco, his own quarterback, referred to him as a maniac this week. Smith is a kick. He's been a kick for more than a decade. The first time that I ever saw him touch a ball in the NFL he took a kickoff back for a touchdown against the Vikings. That was his first NFL game and he's been driving defenders nuts ever since. I remember him all too well taking apart Vikings corner Fred Smoot in 2005. He's a fun player to watch. He should be a really fun player to watch today as he plays against the only NFL team that he's even known.

I may end up flipping between the Packers-Bears and Panthers-Ravens.

The last one is a home game for the Raiders in name only. The game is played in London. The Raiders fans were robbed of a home game. I dislike the London games more than I dislike early bye weeks.

On a college note. I'm not so sure that the Cal defense survives the season.

Back to the NFL.

Today is potentially a very significant day in Vikings franchise history. It's the starting debut of rookie quarterback Teddy Bridgewater. It's expected (hoped!) that the kid becomes the face of the team for 10, 15, 20(!?!) years. The Vikings have been looking for a long-term, franchise quarterback since Fran Tarkenton retired in 1978. Tommy Kramer was drafted in the first round to step right in and be that guy. He had some terrific moments but he could never stay healthy long enough to sustain anything. Kramer and Wade Wilson took turns leading the team at the end of the 1980s. The 1990s were a crazy revolving door of quarterbacks. Sean Salisbury, Rich Gannon, Jim McMahon, Warren Moon, Brad Johnson, Randall Cunningham, Jeff George. There were some fantastic performances from Moon, Cunningham, and George but they were at the end of their careers. Daunte Culpepper was drafted in the first round of the 1999 NFL Draft. He looked like he was on his way to being elite and a franchise cornerstone until a knee injury derailed everything. Quarterback has mostly been a disaster for the Vikings since Culpepper's knee came apart. A rejuvenated Brett Favre turned things electric in 2009 but that was a lone highlight in a decade of quarterback frustration. Christian Ponder was taken in the first round of the 2011 NFL Draft but he's been so inconsistent that the Vikings felt forced to dip into the first round again this past spring and select Bridgewater. The future of the Minnesota Vikings is now the present. It's Teddy Time.