Whether or not you put them ahead or behind his Airness, there’s no denying that we have THREE guys in the league right now who draw comparisons with MJ. You could argue till your nuts fall off over who’s the best between Lebron, Wade and Bryant and each can make a claim at being on the same level as Jordan. We also have studs like Dwight Howard, KG, Paul Pierce, Tim Duncan, Chris Paul, Deron Williams, and others who are or will be considered all time greats for their respective teams and/or positions.

There’s just so much talent in the league right now and we’re in an era where defense is actually very important. Back in the ’80s and ’90s most teams didn’t really D up all that much. Other than the Bad Boy Pistons or Jordan’s Bulls, the majority of the league tended to play like the Phoenix Suns of recent years. Just watch some old games on ESPN Classic and you’ll see what I mean. The growth of defense, to me, really makes the play of guys like Lebron, Wade and Kobe even stand out more.

What really kills me, though, is that I just HATE watching basketball nowadays. It seems that regardless of whether the team I’m rooting for wins or loses, there are always about a dozen or so horrific fouls that have been called that end up ruining my experience. The refs often appear to have more control over the outcomes of these games than the players. And it doesn’t matter if they’re “on the take” or just ridiculously awful at what they do, it just kills my love for the sport. The NBA needs to fix this because these players are just so amazing and it’s a shame that the sport isn’t reaping the benefits that it ought to be with all this marketable talent. Fixing the ref problem would make a massive difference.

And now Tom Brady looks like he’ll be coming back healthy and with the Cassel trade the Pats have an extra draft pick and a shit ton of extra cap room to shore up that defense. Even if Brady’s comeback fails, I see no reason why Matt Gutierrez can’t come in and play every bit as well as Cassel did last year. The guy has yet another year in the Pats’ system and he performed infinitely better than Matty C did in the pre-season. Cassel is just another Steve Bono, Elvis Grbac or Scott Mitchell. The Pats didn’t lose much by losing him.

The Jets should also be better this year. And that’s not just because losing Favre at this stage in his career might be addition by subtraction. With him at the helm, the Jets would all too often abandon their solid running game because they had the old gunslinger back there and it was what they were supposed to do. Leon Washington was running all over the Phins, but they went ahead and threw the ball 40 times with Favre and he was picked three times and that’s why Miami won. What scares me is that the team’s defense, which was already solid, has been substantially improved with free agency additions, trades and having a new head coach in Rex Ryan who coached some amazing Ravens D’s.

And, now, with the addition of T.O., I think the Bills also leapfrog the Phins. Sure, he could also blow that team up but he usually does well in his first season with new teams. Not to mention the fact that our secondary was ass last season and couldn’t stop any team that had a good WR. Lee Evens, for one, has been a Dolphins killer and now he has T.O. lining up opposite him with the always dangerous Roscoe Parrish (from the “U”) in the slot. We don’t have a starting caliber CB opposite the aging Will Allen and our safeties are more known for their run support than pass defense. Even if we draft some CBs, rookies tend to get burnt a lot even when they do come out of the gate strong.

Combine all of that with the fact that we’re looking at what might possibly be the toughest schedule in the NFL and I see a recipe for disaster. 9-7 is likely our best case scenario, but 6-10 or 5-11 seem much more likely at this point. That said, I still love the direction of that the “trifecta” is taking this team and like that they’re trying not to overpay free agents and appear to be concentrating on the all-important draft. I think they’re grooming this team for long-term success and I’m a huge fan of that. I think the team and organization is on the right path; we’re just likely going to hit a speed bump on that path this season record-wise even if we’re on a rise as a team. Look out for us in 2010 and 2011!

One of my many duties at Quick Hit when I’m not designing the football game or giving Brandon Justice massages with happy endings is to do a lot of community-oriented work such as writing blogs and development diaries. Given my background with this site, my old fan sites, Working Designs and IGN.com, it’s pretty much the cake part of the job since I’ve been sharing my thoughts and opinions with the netizens of the World Wide Web for nearly 13 years.

My first significant entry, other than my initial introduction which none of you should need, is my dev diary on Fixing the QB Passer Rating. It doesn’t necessarily do with the development of the game, other than the fact I plan to use the formula in player stats, but it should give you a little insight how my mind works as far as football and statistics are concerned.

At this point, if Canseco claimed to stick steroid needles into the ass of Jesus I would believe him. He was right about A-Rod and he’s right about more than 2/3rds of the league using it during the early 90s. At this point, it’s non-issue to me. There’s really no way of telling who “cheated” and who didn’t so you just gotta assume that everyone did. It was “legal” in the baseball world, and, according to Canseco, more people were on it than weren’t. A-Rod used, but so did whoever is your favorite player. And, as Kevin Brown proves, it doesn’t matter if the player has muscles or not. Skinny twig bitches used steroids, too.

You can rationalize that someone like Greg Maddux didn’t use because he’s not a power pitcher and isn’t muscular but that’d be naive on your part. Steroids or HGH could be the reason he’s been able to pitch this long at such a high level. Using doesn’t necessarily mean big muscles and more power, it could just mean quicker recovery time. Or even extending your career a few years longer than it would normally end. People like to say that it’s clear that Griffey Jr was clearly natural and now should be called the “best ever” because of guys like A-Rod and Bonds being “caught” but how do we know he’s clean? He’s had a TON of tendon injuries and steroid abuse is linked to tendon damage…so how can we conclude that he’s been 100% clean? There’s just no way of knowing who cheated and who didn’t. Sure, positive tests might make it easier to place blame on some of the guilty but it in no way proves innocent for everyone else.

I just think we need to move on and deal with it. Instead of banning people from the Hall of Fame, just institute different standards. 600 is the new 500. Compare players based on their own era instead of against others. Sosa hitting 600 HRs in his era is probably comporable to someone hitting 400-500 HRs in the 70s and 80s. Don’t keep him, McGwire, Bonds or A-Rod out of the Hall of Fame just because they “used” or allegedly “used”, but just put their stats in perspective against their contemporaries. It’s quite simple and is common sense as far as I’m concerned, but the sad truth is that common sense is very uncommon and most people just don’t have it.

He seems to have a great offensive mind and his track record at UMass, Brown and New Haven on the offensive front is astonishing. The praise being thrown his way by guys like Bill Cowher and Andy Reid are also fairly significant and his former players seem to like to throw out the “genius” tag when talking about him.

The only thing that makes me have concern is the fact that it seems a bit odd for someone to be have been in the coaching business for as long as he has without getting any true big-time opportunities, especially if he’s deserving of the overly-used genius moniker. Then again, there could be numerous reasons other than lack of ability that could cause something like this to happen. It’s not like he’s getting any automatic Rooney Rule interviews.

While that gave me a lot of hope, the way things were going early on in the Dolphins game had me nervous beyond belief. They were seemingly dominating the Jets, but kept making significant boneheaded mistakes. The Pennington fumble, the Ricky drop on what would’ve been a huge pass play, and the errant pass by Ronnie Brown that could’ve been a potential long TD. Throw in those and all the false starts and offsides and I was beginning to think it just wasn’t meant to be. Luckily, things started to come together. Favre started trying to put his interceptions record out of reach, and we held on to a euphoric 24-17 win.

To be quite frank, I don’t think we have any shot at all at making it to and winning the Super Bowl. We won’t likely make it out of the first round. However, after suffering through a 1-15 season last year, just making the playoffs is a huge victory for me. That said, it’s the playoffs and anything can happen. Maybe we surprise some folks, myself included, and we make a nice little run.

First, he fumbled inside his own god damn 5 yard line. Take care of the fucking ball you fucking moron! Just take the sack or throw it away, don’t run around with the ball loose like the world’s biggest moron. His idiotic fumble resulted in a Cal TD that gave them a 24-17 lead with 2 1/2 minutes left to play. So, he has a shot to make up for it, right? Well, yeah, except his idiotic play continued.

It began with our retarded offensive coordinator starting off with a straight run play, that netted us nothing and took some time off the clock. Then Jacory, dinked and dunked it 3 times to gain 9 yards and a first down while taking a minute and a half off the clock. Then the brainless wonder takes off running and instead of just stepping out of bounds like he had a clear shot to, he cuts it up field and takes off another 30+ seconds off the clock. He waisted 2 minutes just to gain about 15 yards. Pure genius. I hate him and blame his retarded ass for us losing to Cal.

EDIT: January 15, 2009 — Now that some time has passed, my hate for Jacory has faded. The truth is that it was a fairly meaningless bowl game that the team was expected to lose and, as is the norm with me, I often just get too worked up over any game the Hurricanes lose. I’m back to being a Jacory fan and am now anxiously awaiting for National Signing Day to see if the Canes can land another solid top 10 class!

I’m still a bit pessimistic about their chances at beating the Jets, but it’s pretty simple for them — if they win they’re AFC East champs and in the playoffs, if they don’t, they’re most likely left out in the cold. After last year’s 1-15 disaster, I honestly couldn’t have wished for anything better than this. I’m proud of them either way and it’s been a very fun year of watching them play.

Winslow got 30+ yards bringing his point total up to 4 and Lindell made a couple of extra points bring him up to 9; this made the score 67-66 in my favor after Dawson made that 56 yard FG to give the Browns the lead with 93 seconds left to play. I was actually hoping that Dawson would’ve missed because then the Bills would’ve just run out the clock but he made it with plenty of time left for Buffalo to get into FG range. Then the idiotic Romeo decided to squib kick it and put give the Bills prime field position near mid-field and the Bills quickly marched into FG range. I was absolutely livid. I was thinking that he would surely make the kick and I would lose to one of our league’s worst teams 69-67.

But then when the Bills were lining up for the field goal I thought to myself “wide right” and then I typed “WIDE RIGHT” in my aim chat window to Dave Toole. Then the announcers started talking about “wide right” in the Bills lore…and then…Lindell missed the kick “wide right” and I squeaked out a 67-65 victory! And unless the official scoring changes between now and this morning, I will be sitting pretty at 8-3 and with a playoff spot potentially locked up!