Illegal Procedure

The holiday season, along with life in the academy, has gotten the best of us here at illegalprocedure.com. Never fear, I make the prediction that posting will be up once the postseason begins. 3 thoughts to get us started: 1. The Colts are still the best team in the league. 2. The Jaguars are not nearly as good as their record. 3. What once looked like a powerful division, the NFC South, has become weak due to the recent play of the Bucs and the Panthers.

Here’s a poorly written article documenting the rushing supremacy of the AFC West. This highlights a point I’ve been making since before the season started: the AFC West is the best division in the NFL. The NFC East was looking pretty good until the Redskins, Eagles, and Cowboys were all exposed. Now the AFC West reigns supreme.

I don’t think any individual team has the ability to topple the mighty Colts, but this is a tough bunch of teams, and 2 or possibly even 3 of them will be in the playoffs. The division games over the next few weeks should prove very interesting.

I’m not writing up the big-ass article. I’m tired, and all those tags are an awful lot of work. The WordPress interface blows.

Anyway, I pick all the obvious winners in all games. The only two that aren’t pretty clear are Chicago @ Pitt and KC @ Dallas. I’ll take Pitt over Chicago since they are at home, and I need them to rebound if my fantasy team is going to win in the playoffs. And I’ll take KC over Dallas. Both of these teams are good but seem to choke randomly. I’ll take KC since I was born in that city, and the overly made-up women of Dallas look like a bunch of harlots.

Although I think it’s obvious that Green Bay will finally pull one out vs. the beleaguered Lions, I kinda wish they would lose to keep the Pack in the run for Reggie Bush.

In the most hilarious statement I’ve heard this side of Terrell Owens’ driveway, Rex “a joint or bone regularly” Grossman claims that he is a “durable” player.

I’ve been playing football since 2nd grade and I know I’m durable. I’ve only been hurt twice in 18 years.

Rex, we at IP.com are absolutely sure you could stand up to a 2nd grade pass rush without risking crippling injury. Our oddsmakers are shaking their heads on this one, but we’d even be willing to go all the way to junior high, if the opposing coordinator isn’t allowed to stunt or blitz the secondary. However, your “hurt twice in 18 years” statistic is not particularly meaningful, given that those injuries have both come where it counts — in the NFL — and that you’ve started six games in three NFL seasons.

So let’s not talk “durable” yet, li’l Rex. We’re sure that, given the right combination of painkillers and media adulation, you’d be a regular Brett Favre. However, averaging two games per season is barely “durable” even by third-string long snapper standards.

Chicago‘s front office shouldn’t complain, though, as it is getting a stellar deal. In fact, if you figure your $5m signing bonus alone, they’ve only paid $833,333 for each of your starts. Injured or not, one wonders why, given your bargain price, every team in the league isn’t clamoring for the services of a quarterback with a coin-flip completion percentage, three touchdowns, and only four interceptions.

The premise

Well, that room full of monkeys hasn’t yet produced the complete works of the Bard (or even of the Earl of Oxford), but if you feed them and make them fight, they might just predict the outcomes of NFL games. The Food-Eating Battle Monkeys page gives a name and a “battle rating” to different characters based on their names. To demonstrate the futility of attempting to forecast NFL games, we have used the Battle Monkey calculator to determine who will emerge victorious from this week’s contests. We’ll be tracking the results of the battle-monkey predictions and (if we get around to it) will compare these to those of various NFL pundits.

Rather surprisingly, many of the battle-monkey predictions are plausible.

Early afternoon

Atlanta at Carolina: Atlanta (although since when is Atlanta “Purple-People-Eating?”)
Buffalo at Miami: Buffalo
Cincinnati at Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh
Dallas at N.Y. Giants: N.Y. Giants
Green Bay at Chicago: Green Bay (in a squeaker)
Houston at Baltimore: Houston
Jacksonville at Cleveland: Jacksonville
Minnesota at Detroit: Minnesota
Tampa Bay “at” New Orleans: Baton Rouge
Tennessee at Indianapolis: Tennessee

Late afternoon

Arizona at San Francisco: Arizona
Washington at St. Louis : Washington
Denver at Kansas City: Denver
N.Y. Jets at New England: New England

Sunday night

Oakland at San Diego: Oakland

Monday night

Seattle at Philadelphia : Seattle

Usually Gus features a Pathetic Pundit Prediction as part of his weekly NFL forecast, but I found one that was so absurd that I had to chime in. This week, Venti Latte Mocha Cleveland Steamer predicts that the Vikings will best the Lions 38-7. This is patently absurd for at least four reasons.

First, there is the very real possibility that the Lions, galvanized by crisis and media scrutiny, will pull off the upset. I personally don’t believe this will happen. In fact, I think that Detroit’s offense will continue to stumble; on the other side of the ball, the reëmerging Minnesota Moving Company will play Kalimba Edwards like a thumb piano. However, the possibility — however slight — of a Lions win remains.

Furthermore, King needs to consult recent history. In fact, he ought to consult not-so-recent history — he’d have to go back to October 14, 2004 to find the last time the Vikings scored at least 38 points. This season, the Vikings have only scored more than 28 points only once (against a hapless New Orleans squad) and averaged a meager 18 points per game. (That dismal statistic, alas, is actually inflated: five of Minnnesota’s 21 touchdowns this year have come from defense.) While King is to be commended for not committing the oft-TMQ-identified sin of predicting a statistically-improbable score (e.g. Tennessee 15, Jacksonville 4), it is absurd to predict such an anomalous score given the recent output of the Vikings‘ offense.

A third reason comes from the current identity of the Vikings, who are winning games with clock control and an aggressive defense. Indeed, I would argue that unless Minnesota’s defense scores 14 points, a 38-7 Viking victory should be grounds for Zygi Wilf to immediately dismiss Mike Tice. Running up the score is incompatible with clock control, and the strength of this Vikings team is in its ability to exhaust opposing defenses and force opposing offenses into high-risk, low-reward plays (the sort one might be resorting to if one wished to score 5 touchdowns in a game).

Finally, I would posit that people who make money based on accurately predicting on the outcomes of games are likely to have more reliable opinions than Putatively Fair Trade Doubleshot, who gets paid no matter what crap he fills his column inches with. The Vikings are only favored by 3 in Vegas, and Tradesports forecasts only a 50% chance that they will win by more than one point. (Even more tellingly, Tradesports suggests that there is only a 49.5% chance that the combined score of both squads will meet or exceed 38.)

I think the Vikings will win, but I’m absolutely sure it will be closer than 38-7. My prediction: Vikings win by 13 or less.

Champ Bailey said the following about Kansas City earlier in the season: ‘”The way they played up there in Kansas City, it ain’t the same, though,” said Bailey, referring to last season’s 45-17 Chiefs win. “They’re playing a little different. They’re not playing as hard. I ain’t going to relax, though.”‘ This, predictably, prompted Dick Vermeil to cry: ‘”I know this — none of our players said Champ Bailey didn’t play hard when we beat them by three touchdowns last year out here,” Vermeil said. “Eddie Kennison didn’t say that Champ Bailey was not playing hard.”‘ [It is worthy of another post that this exchange centers on Champ Bailey, who gets horribly burned every third play. He must be the least impressive Pro-Bowler ever.]

After Jermain Taylor won a decision against Bernard Hopkins a few months ago, in the post-fight press conference, Hopkins repeatedly asked the reporters and judges if they had been watching the same fight he had been in. In response, Taylor, getting ready for this week’s rematch, stood next to an Elvis impersonator and told Hopkins via the cameras: ‘”Stop crying all the time!” Taylor said Tuesday. “You ain’t nothing but a hound dog!”‘ At a pre-fight press conference Taylor brought a tape recorder of a crying baby, and, after turning it on, held up an African-American baby doll dressed in a pink stocking cap and sweatshirt emblazoned with “Cry-Baby” Hopkins.”

And Dick Vermeil thinks he’s got it bad because he can’t coach an adequate defense to save his life.