For all you football or videogame lovers out there, the game that I’ve been slaving away at in Boston over the past 14 months has recently gone live in Beta. The game is Quick Hit Football and it’s a free-to-play online football game that you can play on your PC or MAC. The game is still in Beta, so it’s buggy and we have a long way to go before it’s considered complete — however, even in it’s infant stages it’s a lot of fun and admittedly quite addicted.

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.

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.

Things are also looking good for the Dolphins after winning yet another close game today. They’re still in a 3-way tie for first place in the AFC East with the Jets and Pats, and are still in complete control of their destiny. They beat the Chiefs and Jets and they’re in. If not, then they’re probably watching the playoffs from home yet again.

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!

The one apparent downer to my fruitful football weekend, which began on Thursday, is that my fantasy football team has a very precarious 15 point lead over one of the worst teams in the league, with that team still having Winslow, Randle El, and Lindel to play. He also has the Cards D going right now while all I have is 2nd string Mewelde Moore. If I lose this game, it was be heartbreaking given the competition and the fact that I got home 1 minute too late and was stuck with BenJavus Green-Ellis who I was going to bench in favor of either Ted Ginn Jr or Lance Moore (15 and 16 points respectively) if Sammy Morris was cleared to play, which he was. I ended up with 0 points in that slot instead of at least 15. The late work day on Thursday just might cost me a victory that I was favored to win by 51 points. Sad Christmas if that happens.

The Miami Hurricanes took care of business against Wake Forest and still have an outside shot at the ACC title or at least being bowl eligible. The Dolphins played great today and beat down the Buffalo Bills, with Ginn Jr finally showcasing his playmaking ability. And that’s not all, my fantasy football team scored 109 points and barring a 40+ point outburst by Scaife on MNF should up its record to 6-2 and into a three-way tie atop the division.

And in what might quite possibly be the best news of the weekend, I weighed-in this morning at 299.6 lbs. Hopefully I won’t ever allow myself to go up past the 300 mark ever again for the rest of my life. If I do, I give you permission to put a bullet in my head. It feels good to be back under 300 lbs and I can’t wait till my wrist and ankle/foot heal up so I can start getting back into the gym on a regular basis.

They were sloppy and made so many mistakes throughout the game, but this team is so young that I’ve come to grips with the fact that I need to expect those things. What impresses me is the tremendous amount of talent I see from our freshmen and the fact that they never gave up in this game. I’m proud of my baby Canes. It’s, still, all about the “U”!

Most of his tirade about Kiffin in yesterday’s press conference didn’t make any sense at all and he often contradicted himself in the same damn sentence. He physically handed him the letter, but then says he FedEx’d it? What the fuck, dude? Make up your Mr. Burns-esque ancient damaged mind. He’s clearly the problem with the Oakland Raiders and the team will continue to be one of the laughingstocks of the entire league until he finally dies. However, that will probably never happen, as he’ll likely still be running the Raiders into the ground 500 years from now while he’s nothing but a talking head like in Futurama.

My hope is that Kiffin ends up coaching the Kansas City Chiefs next year and starts beating the crap out of the Raiders every year just like Shanahan and the Denver Broncos. It would be completely befitting and proof that there is indeed a God out there.

The offensive play calling once again sucked. Patrick Nix sucks. The bringing in of Jacory Harris for a few drives yet again killed our offensive momentum and cost us points. I really like the kid and think he can be a good QB for us down the road, but he’s not ready yet and I’m beginning to hate him because the coaches keep using him. The only player that looked like a Cane out there was Cooper and maybe Epps. All the rest just choked and just cracked under the pressure in the 4th. Despite my hopes for an ACC title game appearance, we may be headed for another losing season.

I still think they have the talent to actually compete in the A(wful)CC but they better start showing they have what it takes on the “inside” to be a truly great football team or else this could end up being another disappointing season. We also can’t just overlook the fact that they dominated the Aggies like this last year, too, and it was pretty much the only game the offense looked good in all season. I am very optimistic about this team and I’m hoping it’s just growing pains for a very young squad, but they’ve still got a lot to prove to me before I start believing the Canes are really back.