Doc: These Bearcats could be like '09 team
Merry morning, Mobsters! I figured if The Club could smile last night, I could smile this AM. Plus, I'm headed to the Palatial Estate South today, for several days watching the sun drop like an over-easy egg off a plate into the Gulf on Longboat Key. Ain't nothin' bad about that.
So, time to turn that frown upside down, kids. Start with the Reds, briefly. Last night might have been the first time in a month they didn't look like pall bearers. Good for them. The kid Adam Duvall got 'em going, to the point that Chappy scored from 1st on a double to left.
Just do it again 25 more times between now and Oct. 2.
Now, then. . .
IN THE SPIRIT OF PEACE, LOVE AND UNDERSTANDING, and because I'm bored with the Big 12 talk, I'm urging us to stop bemoaning UC's small-potatoes status and embrace what the Bearcats have, and are. They are the best offensive team in the AAC, and could be among the very good nationally as well. Remember the Tony Pike-Mardy Gilyard days? Like that.
They will be highly entertaining, no matter the competition, and they do have a game with The U here this fall. If the defense picks up – TT says he has 25 D-1 quality defenders now, compared with 10 last year – the Bearcats could be in the mix for the Throw-Em-A-Bone bid to the tournament.
We know they need to leave the AAC. We know eventually there will be four 16-team associations in the quasi-am big leagues. We know AD Mike Bohn is working the back channels, furiously. It's time to be happy wit' what we got. As John Prine sang:
"Unhappy, unhappy you have no complaint/
"You are what you are and you ain't what you ain't.''
NICE STUFF ON D. STILL in the TM today. With his daughter over most of the humps, Still says his mind is fixed on football, and his body is completely sound.
Question:
Is he good enough?
The last cut is the deepest, no matter what Rod Stewart said. Here's hoping Still hangs in there here. Failing that, he finds work elsewhere in the league. Some people, you wish great things for. Devon Still is some people.
Meanwhile ... In the midst of all the deserved positivity surrounding The Men, we've kinda neglected addressing what could still be their biggest (only?) weakness: The pass rush.
M. Johnson says he'll be ready for the opener Sept. 13 at Oakland, but he will have missed almost all of camp. Beyond Johnson, it's the same group that finished last in the league last year. Will Geno Atkins' presumably revived self make a big enough difference?
Another question: Are sacks overrated? Of the top eight sack teams last year, only two made the playoffs. Jacksonville came in at No. 6; the Jags were 3-13. The Jets were 4-12, the Giants 6-10.
What P. Guenther needs isn't necessarily more sacks, but more pressure. He's still missing his hammer, V. Burfict, and while the LB corps is deep, it has no Pro Bowl types. A lack of a rush can cripple even the best secondaries, such as Cincinnati's.
The Men face no shortage of quality QBs this year: Ben, Flacco, Wilson, Kaerpernick, Peyton, Brees, Carson. Anyone else removing the optimism glasses long enough to be worried about this?
ME, ME, ME! … Big media day yesterday for An Uncomplicated Life. Thanks to an essay I wrote for TheMighty.com, Jillian got online attention from Buzzfeed, Cosmopolitan, Yahoo and Good Housekeeping. ABC News inquired this morning.
The book website is uncomplicated.life. TML sez ckitout.
I HAVE SEVERAL APPLICATIONS for the job handled so adeptly by Brandon Kors, but the competition remains open. If you're interested in writing 200 words a week about what's happening entertainment-wise downtown, lemme know. It don't pay nothin', but as BKors will attest, it polishes some resume.
BECAUSE TV IS MY LIFE. . . and we finished the 11-episode, 2-season run of The Fall on Netflix (excellent, typically understated BBC cop procedural about a serial killer) I needed something new.
Got it with Ballers, on HBO. It's a documentary about off-field life in the NFL. Actually, it's a dramedy starring The Rock, and it's pretty damned funny. Whoever wrote it seems to have a decent working knowledge of what "Ballers'' do away from the field. It ain't PG stuff, brudda.
This sort of thing has been going on since North Dallas Forty. That is, four decades at least. The NFL, where men are men and wholesome is scared.
JUST SAYIN' … Mobster Dave offered this the other day:
The Reds have been a great source of talent for other playoffs teams. Former Reds: Byrd and Leake to the Giants, Volquez and Cueto to Kansas City, Latos and Grandal to the Dodgers, Josh Hamilton to Texas, Edwin Encarnacion to Toronto and Didi Gregorius to the Yankees to name a few.
I've been accused recently of being "soft'' on Walt Jocketty. Someone please tell Jock. Maybe he'll resume calling me back.
Out of context, that list looks bad. And maybe in context, you think it still looks bad. I don't.
They dealt EE when EE was a glum presence in the clubhouse, a bad defensive 3B whose hitting wasn't nearly what it is now. They got Rolen in exchange. I make that deal every day.
They dealt Grandal as a piece to get Latos. They already had Hanigan, and Mesoraco on the horizon. Latos helped them make the playoffs twice, then was used to get DeSclafani. I make that deal every day. (Alonso couldn't play anywhere but 1B, and he wasn't going to play 1B here. Boxberger you can argue, I guess. But him? Or Chappy?
Gregorius was part of a 3-team deal that brought Choo. Good SS, still under team control. OK. Where would he play here? I make that deal again.
Hamilton for Volquez. At the time, the Reds believed Hamilton's years of drug use left him vulnerable to injury and relapse. The perceived preferential treatment he got here didn't help the clubhouse mix. Volquez won 17 games his first year here. As predicted, Hamilton has been prone to relapse and injury. He has also had some monster stretches. I don't make that deal again, though. I ride it out with Josh. Of course, Wayne Krivsky signed Hamilton, and traded him. Not Jock.
Cueto, Byrd and Leake, we've discussed. They were salary dumps. Maybe the kids they got in return will be good. Maybe they won't. Ask me in two years.
So, while it's easy to rip Jock for the current state of the state, please recall that lots of those deals helped the Reds reach October three times in four years. A playoff berth in hand is better than two prospects in the bush.
Or something.
A FRIEND ON FACEBOOK (is there any other kind these days?) asks for my favorite concerts. In high school and college, concert-going was a regular deal for me. Since, it's been sporadic. I mean, how many times can one see the Stones before it occurs that the World's Greatest Rock-n-Roll Band has gone totally vaudeville?
In no particular order, my top 5, some well known, some obscure:
1.Led Zeppelin, Capital Centre, D.C., 1975. Spectacular. I mean, it was Led Zeppelin, yeah?
2.CSNY, same year, same venue. They did maybe 90 minutes together, then each soloed for about 30 minutes apiece. Neil Young, playing acoustic on a stool, harmonica around his neck, dog at his feet. Magical.
3.The Nighthawks, in The Cockpit, Fall 1978, Washington & Lee University. My Bethesda, Maryland, homeboys rocked the house. I was a senior. I told the manager of the on-campus pub to bring the 'Hawks in, and cut off alcohol sales by midnight. He did bring them in, he didn't cut off sales. They rocked the house, and damned near destroyed it, with some underclass help. Rock-and-blues anarchy at its absolute peak.
4.The Stones, 1978, DC. The boys were close to their peak, though beginning their decline. Still, this was the Some Girls tour, and they rocked it.
5.J. Geils, Riverbend, more than a decade ago. I can't recall the year. They got together for one big reunion blowout. Always a great concert band, J., Peter, Seth, Dick and the boys played like they were 25 again, and Riverbend was one big house party. Memorable, even from the lawn.
HM goes to the Steve Winwood, Carlos Santana show at PNC Pavilion maybe four or five years ago. Consummate pros and rock legends. A delightful three hours.
Your choices, obviously.
IF YOU READ JUST ONE THING TODAY. . . Charlie Pierce is worth the price of Grantland.
Uh, Doc, Grantland is free.
You know what I mean.
Chuck is the latest, and quite possibly greatest, hack to rip my Redskins a new one:
Earlier in the week, Gruden, who coaches a football team bearing the name of an obvious racial slur, who works for an owner who's a transparent lunatic, and who himself was suspected recently of deliberately arranging that his once-signature quarterback get concussed out of the starting job in favor of Cousins, demonstrated the kind of priorities necessary to succeed as a coach at the professional level.
"I listen to it a little bit, I read a little bit; some articles. I have to be up to date so when I come up here I know what is going on," Gruden said via CSN Washington. "And I really dislike the guy who called me a fat a--, that really ticked me off. I don't mind you critiquing my coaching style but to make fun of my weight, that's unfair. I'm only 225. Jesus."
Point taken. Your team is screwed to hell, but you are a fine-looking specimen of a man. Are we OK? Good.
That's it, that's all. I'm off to the land of sunsets and Clancy's, quite possibly never to be heard from again.
TUNE O' THE DAY. . . WNKU never ceases to deliver. This one is in the rotation there now. Good.