Football pre-season has begun! I cannot tell you how exciting it is to actually watch an NFL game, even if it is just the pre-season.
My two NFL fan bases, the Rams and the Colts met up on Saturday night. Not surprising to me, the Rams won and did so by a really nice margin. I had predicted this, because the Rams played more of their potential starters, and the Colts? Well Manning and Freeney didn't play for one, and the rest of their main starters (Wayne, Garcon, Clark, Addai) didn't really get much play either. Also, the Colts are known to lose in the pre-season yet win in the regular season.
I'm glad it was a pre-season game because it is SO hard for me to choose between these 2 teams. Growing up, I had no allegiance to any team because the Cardinals moved to Arizona when I was 4, and the Rams moved to St. Louis when I was just starting high school. So I've always been a football fan first. We have a good family friend, Pat Leahy, who was the kicker for the NY Jets and we followed the Jets in the years he played. Also followed the 49'ers a bit since I have some family who live in the area and Green Bay, because my mom loves the cheesehat. And we had friends in Wisconsin.
In other words, it's hard for me to figure out who my long term favorite team is. The Rams are the first team I really followed regularly because they came to St. Louis at a time where my sports fanaticism peaked. Sure, they were terrible in the beginning. We had to endure Chris "the concussion king" Miller and Tony Banks as QB's. They were rough years but I got to go to live NFL games finally!
I always had been a fan of college football. My family just always had their favorites (Notre Dame, UCLA, Virginia Tech, Mizzou to name a few) and I used to get such a kick out of watching all of the bowl games back when they all were on or around the same day and you could watch several games at the same time (if you had multiple TV's, like my uncle, or went out to a bar/restaurant).
That's where the Peyton Manning love begins. He was so fun to watch at Tennessee (even if I wasn't rooting for the team, he was fun to watch). Then he chose to sign with the Colts, and I was going to college in Indiana at the time. I didn't want to become a Colts fan, because the Rams were my home team.
But as time went on, and I ended up living in Indianapolis for several years, my respect for Manning just kept increasing. And I found myself rooting for the Colts more and more. I then decided that the Rams would be my NFC team, the Colts my AFC team and should they ever meet in a Super Bowl I'd be totally screwed and would have no idea who to root for.
Anyway, that's just a bit of background of me. So the Colts and Rams pre-season game was obviously of strong interest to me.
I'm not worried about the Colts yet because this is what they do in pre-season. The Rams, however, impressed me a lot. Bradford looked sharp, Dahl, Mikell and Hines all got interceptions (okay, it was Painter and Orvlovsky, but still nice to see good defensive plays). Cadillac Williams ran for a TD and Bradford threw a TD pass. And how about Josh Brown kicking a 60 yard field goal? Did Brown's stock just go up in fantasy football after that? I think so.
Okay, it wasn't just the Rams and the Colts this weekend. Cam Newton made his debut in Carolina and looked good, and so did the Brown's Colt McCoy (one of the best football names, BTW) . The Patriots has a field day with the Jags, Mizzou alum Blaine Gabbert didn't have the best outing but there's time still.
Am looking forward to watching how the pre-season unfolds.
There is this thing called baseball going on. The Cardinals are currently 5.5 games behind Milwaukee, and at this point if they want any hope of making the postseason, they have to win the division. That's going to be really tough. Have to hand it to the Brewers, they've been playing spectacular lately. The Cardinals trade of Colby Rasmus for Edwin Jackson isn't panning out so well so far. If Colby were here would the Cards be in a better position? Doubtful. The pitching is a big problem, so I don't think Rasmus is a factor. However, am sort of feeling like the Cards jumped the gun on that trade and we should have gotten more for him.
We're almost to mid-August, so about a month and half of regular season left. Still a lot of games to play and anything can happen. It'll be interesting to see how it all ends.
I think Philly takes the east, the west? Arizona is in the lead at the moment but I think the Giants will pull off another division win. The Yankees and BoSox? One of them will win the division and the other will be the wild card. The Rangers and the Angels race has been fun to watch. I'd like to see the Angels pull it off. The central? Still could go to Detroit, the White Sox or Cleveland. Nice to see a close race to keep the competition going.
And...that was a long sports rant for me, so I'm going to leave it there. Happy NFL is back, disappointed in the Cardinals but still hoping! More in the world of sports soon!
No comments:
Post a Comment