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January 21, 2004
THE PATRIOTS DEFENSE: AMONG THE BEST EVER?
I was asked in a comment Monday whether I thought the New England defense ranked with the 2002 Bucs or 2000 Ravens. Well... I am a fan of Boston sports, which means that by nature I dread any comment about my team being great or the favorite... it's just tempting fate, and fate doesn't like us much to begin with. So I was prepared to just avoid the question out of sheer fear of karma.
But I was intrigued, and re-looked at the statistics. The Pats' D gave up only 238 points in the regular season - only 68 points their 8 home games! -- and gave up 4,666 yards. The 2002 Bucs gave up 196 points, 4,339 yards, and won a championship; the 2000 Ravens gave up 165 points and 4,165 yards (less than 1,000 of them on the ground... how just incredibly sick is that?); the 85 Bears gave up 198 points -- including NONE in the playoffs -- and 4,618 yards. So, statistically, they rank behind each of these great defenses, and the 2003 Patriots have yet to win a championship... so for now, I would say that they don't yet rank among the best of all time.
However - if they win a title, they get closer. And to me, the truest test may be to see how they do next year. We all know what happened to Tampa Bay last year; the 2001 Ravens fared a little better, still ranking #4 in the NFL in defense and winning the first round of the playoffs before bowing out... but the 86 Bears went 14-2 - that's only losing 3 games in 2 years! - ranked #1 again in defense, and only gave up 4.633 yards that year. I think consistency is required to prove that great years aren't just the result of good defense and some lucky breaks. If the Pats win it all and then play great D next year, they'll move up past the Bucs and Ravens. For now, I still have to say that the 85-86 Bears were the greatest defense ever.
THE RECORDING INDUSTRY SHOWS ITS GREED AGAIN
So they're suing 532 more people... wonder how many grandmothers and 10 year olds will be in this bunch? As I have said before, time and time again, in memo after memo to the recording industry: Stand up to ClearChannel, fight the genericization of radio that results in pre-porgrammed playlists and cookie cutter, paint-by-numbers formats in every market... that's your real enemy. The fact is, if people heard more that was interesting and fresh on the radio, they might not be so desperate to look for it and swap it online. The ClearChannel monolith is killing music in this country, and until you realize that and do something about it, people will keep rejecting radio and looking for something better on the Net - and getting it by whatever means necessary.
DEAN HAUNTED BY POST-IOWA RANT
For the record, I blogged that this would be a problem not two minutes after he'd given it. But as Dean continues to free-fall in New Hampshire, at least two pundits (as reported on MSNBC.com) have cited that bizarre rant and the blood-curdling war cry that ended it as a factor in his decline.
Pollster Dick Bennett of the American Research Group of Manchester said the latest tracking polls in New Hampshire indicated that voters were taken aback by Dean's speech. "That thing has legs," he said. Andrew Smith, a political scientist and pollster at the University of New Hampshire, said: "I think it crystallized a lot of the concerns voters in Iowa had, as well as voters in New Hampshire had, about Dean's potential temperament as a president. My sense is that this will go down with Edmund Muskie supposedly crying in front of the [Manchester] Union Leader [in 1972] and Bob Dole telling George Bush to 'stop lying about my record' [in 1988]."
Lesson learned: when running for President, keep the primal screams to a minimum.
(And for the record, Mike, I wasn't defending Dean the other day... just saying I knew what he was trying to do. He exercised not only bad judgement, but a frightening lack of emotional control... and I am closer and closer to thinking he may be done. Even so, I still maintain that he was trying only to energize and rally his dis-spirited troops on Monday.)
