Geaux Saints!

My NFL rooting interests run Cowboys, Saints, Raiders. The Raiders are on an extended tear of mediocrity and seem doomed so until Al Davis is no longer in charge of football operations. Dallas is out of the playoffs, so that leaves everything on the backs of New Orleans. Happily that team looks to be more than capable of bearing my extra weight.

This is typically the best weekend of football, but overall it didn’t really match up to last week’s games.  The New Orleans Saints steamrolled the Arizona Cardinals 45-14 and the Indianapolis Colts took care of business against the Baltimore Ravens 20-3 yesterday.

Today the Minnesota Vikings dominated the Dallas Cowboys 34-3 and the New York Jets shocked the San Diego Chargers 17-24.

So heading into divisional weekend my battle cry will be, “geaux Saints!”

Congrats to the Cowboys and the Jets

Dallas destroyed the Eagles for the second consecutive week with a final score of 34-14, and finally won a playoff game in the new century. In the other rematch from last week, the Jets rolled the Bengals 24-14. One similarity between the first two games of this year’s playoffs was the play at QB — Romo and Sanchez looked good and McNabb and Palmer looked, well, not so good. Palmer was absolutely dreadful. At least McNabb can place some blame on a solid Dallas D.

All in all an excellent start to the second season. Today’s games should be fun.

Cowboys out of playoffs

In losing to Philly 44-6, Dallas missed the playoffs and looked unbelievably flat for the second straight week.

I’ve always supported him, but I’m starting to think Romo isn’t the guy. He’s pretty much whiffed on every single big game in his career.

(And a quick note to Roy E. Williams — STFU. Don’t run your mouth and lay an egg in the biggest game of your career.)

Killer day for Cowboys

Yesterday was devastating day personnel-wise for the Dallas Cowboys.

The big news is Tony Romo’s pinkie, but lost in the mix is a 2-4 week loss of rookie sensation running back/kick returner, Felix Jones, and maybe even more painful in ways is the loss for the season of underrated punter, Mat McBriar

Ouch all around. We’ll see how the team regroups after a rough week on the PR front, disheveled play on the field and now bitten hard by the injury bug.

NFL used optimization software for 2008 schedule

Looks like everyone’s excited about the NFL season finally kicking off. I know I am, and the Cowboys look real good. Woot!

Even the gang at CIO.com are into pigskin fever as evidenced by this story today about how the league used specialized optimization software to create this year’s schedule.

From the link:

The National Football League is a professional sports organization known for its meticulous, hands-on approach to everything—how the league contracts with TV networks, how teams draft their players and how those players should act on and off the field, how licensing deals are signed, and how rules are enforced on the playing field.

The NFL doesn’t leave a lot to chance.

The same was true with how NFL executives created the schedule for its teams every year: It was all done by hand, starting the day after the Super Bowl, with a peg board and little tags. “The process was kind of secretive,” says Michael North, the NFL’s director of broadcast planning and scheduling, who’s been with the league for 15 years. “We would go into the room, lock the door and emerge 10 weeks later: ‘Here’s your schedule. Play it.'”

That all changed several years ago, when the NFL realized it could use technology to automate the process—making it more efficient and its schedules better—and a Canadian manufacturing engineer named Rick Stone came knocking on the NFL’s door.

In other NFL news, I wish Tom Brady a speedy recovery. You hate to see the league lose a marquee player at any time, especially week one. It was pretty obvious yesterday, but it’s official today that Brady is out for the season. The AFC just got a lot more interesting.

Cowboys take Governor’s Cup

Dallas over Houston in the annual preseason battle for the Texas NFL Governor’s Cup.

Dallas Cowboys and the blogosphere

NFL training camps are cranking up all over, and the Cowboys are no exception. If you’re reading my blog you can likely manage to find all sorts of opinion and facts about your team.

For Cowboys fans, here’s some worthwhile links:

— The official Dallas Morning News blog

— DMN columnist Jean-Jacques Taylor’s blog

— the excellent Blogging The Boys

— and something for everyone, the also excellent AOL NFL FanHouse

And now, let professional football begin once again …

Frank Luksa on Cowboys past

Here’s a great column penned by Frank Luksa, longtime Dallas Cowboys beat writer for Metroplex papers. He covers tales from training camps past.

From the link:

Precisely

 

On his first day as the Cowboys’ receivers coach, the meticulous Raymond Berry demonstrated how to run a sideline route to rookies. Berry made his usual precise numbers of steps, cut toward the sideline and landed — 1 foot out of bounds.

 

“The field is too narrow, Tom,” he announced to Coach Landry.

 

“No, Raymond,” Landry said, “we’ve been out here forever.”

 

This was the sixth year the Cowboys had practiced on the same field without complaint, yet Berry instinctively found it out of line.

 

“Either the hashmarks aren’t right or the field is too narrow,” the former Baltimore Colts star receiver insisted. Landry shrugged, called for a tape measure, and field dimensions were plotted to the exact inch.

 

Berry’s sense of precision was validated. The field was 11 inches too narrow.