2018 NFL House Calls

The parade of trips to the end zone by NFL players last season may not have been unending, but it sure lasted a long time. Longer than ever, in fact. The total of 1,371 touchdowns scored during the 2018 regular season were the most ever, smashing the old record, which was set in 2013, by 33 touchdowns. How many of those 1,371 were scored by players with dreads? I'm glad you asked, because that's what this post is all about. For the record 259 of the 1,371, or 18.9%, were scored by 60 different players with dreads. The 259 house calls, an average of slightly more than one per game, are also a new record; and the 18.9% is a nice increase from 17.9% in 2017. A little later we'll take a look at some photos and videos of several of them.
  
Los Angeles Rams RB Todd Gurley certainly had plenty to smile about. Again. Shown in the photo above making his exit after his 3-touchdown day at Seattle in Week 5, Gurley for the second consecutive season led everyone - that's with or without dreads - in individual touchdowns.

We Taking L's

Only 9 months earlier he was shouting that the Jaguars were going to win the Super Bowl; but now during his media session following a Week 7 home loss to the Houston Texans, Jalen Ramsey, aka as the Mouth of the South, or at least the Mouth of Duval County, FL, was singing an entirely different tune. We taking L's? Say it ain't so. Unfortunately for Jaguars fans and for my crystal ball, CB2, which picked the Jaguars to win Super Bowl 53, it was very much so. Mercy, the fall of the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2018 was just as swift as their rise had been in 2017. And that was rather remarkable because the team that laid such an awful egg last season had most of the same players as the 2017 team that nearly won the AFC championship.

I'm With Stupid

There's no better word to describe it. Stupid. That was the first word that came to my mind after my crystal ball, CB2, revealed its forecast for the 2019 NFL season. That's because the team CB2 is picking to win the championship never wins championships. Well, almost never and certainly not lately. In its 'storied' history the team CB2 says is going to win the Super Bowl has won all of 3 championships. The first one was so long ago that there was no such thing as the Super Bowl. And the second one doesn't count either because immediately after they won it they were trounced in Super Bowl 1. So in reality just one true championship in the 59 years of their existence. That's why any mention of the Kansas City Chiefs actually winning the Super Bowl is not only stupid, it's utter stupidity. Right?

Well, I hate to admit it, but I'm actually with CB2 on this one (and not just because I'm a huge Chiefs fan). Guess that makes me an idiot too.

Quinnessential

The first two times Philadelphia Phillies outfielder Roman Quinn took the mound to pitch it wasn't serious. The Phillies were so far behind that the game was out of reach; and, rather than use a real pitcher in a game they no longer had any chance to win, they called upon Quinn to come in and get as many outs as he could and at the same time provide a little comic relief for the fans who hadn't already left. But this time it was different. This time - late last Friday night (Aug. 2) at Citizens Bank Park - with the clock about to strike midnight and with the Phillies out of options at pitcher, Quinn was brought in to pitch in a tie game in the 14th inning against the Chicago White Sox. Well, to the surprise of no one, this didn't end well for the Phillies; but they didn't go down without a fight. In fact, even though they saw the home team lose, the fans still at the park at that late hour were glad they still were, because the last two innings turned out to be the most entertaining part of the game.

If you had told Quinn when he woke up that morning that he was going to have the chance to be the winning pitcher in the game that night, he would have asked you what you'd been smoking. But in sports - and especially in baseball - these three words are always so true: you never know.

DG176

If you are an NFL team that begins a season by losing its first 2 games, you are already in deep trouble. And if you start with 4 straight losses? Well, history says you might as well pack it in and start getting ready for the next season, because ... Since the NFL went to a 16-game schedule (up from 14) in 1978, there have been 118 teams that began the season 0-4 and only one of them went on to reach the playoffs that year. So you can imagine the tension and desperation in the air in a game where the teams on both sidelines are 0-4 .....

It was Sunday, October 8th, Week 5 of the 2017 NFL season. Warm and humid weather greeted the 0-4 Los Angeles Chargers after making the 2,400-mile, cross-country flight to face the 0-4 New York Giants at MetLife Stadium. Jokes were made about the matchup being the "Game of the Weak" or "Game of the Meek". If it had been between most other 0-4 teams, CBS would have done whatever possible to broadcast the game to as few people as possible; but since it was between teams representing the two largest television markets in the nation, the game was televised live to millions more than it should have.

Actually though, despite their records there were a couple of things that made the game very much worth watching. RB Melvin Gordon (photo above) had his first 100-yard rushing game of the season and scored the winning touchdown for the Chargers; it was the second NFL meeting between old Muck City rivals Travis Benjamin and Janoris Jenkins; and, rather incredibly, not one, two, or three, but four Giants wide receivers were knocked out of the game due to injury. And oh, right, there was one other thing too: the dreads.

DG175

Dread Gallery #175 features more photos from the 2017 NFL season and includes a variety of things - some odds and ends followed by several shots to remind you just how painful playing in the NFL can be.

1. Everybody, including the game officials, thought that RB Andre Ellington scored his 1st TD of the season on this play early in the 2nd quarter in Week 4. CB Rashard Robinson knocks Ellington out of bounds, but not until after Andre gets both feet inbounds and has control of the ball for a 12-yard reception on 3rd and goal ..... but then the replay official nullified the TD, ruling that Ellington lost control of the ball when he hit the ground. The ruling was dubious, because the video was inconclusive; and in those cases whatever the game officials call is supposed to stand. But not this time. So instead of the Cardinals taking a 7-3 lead, they settled for a FG on the next play to tie it 3-3. Despite having the TD taken away Ellington made the dread stars list for the only time all season, finishing with 104 total yards (18 rushing, 86 receiving) on 14 touches as the Cardinals defeated the 49ers 18-15 in overtime.
http://arizonasports.com/story1263650/cardinals-andre-ellington-overturned-touchdown-catch/

Quarter Ton, Full Power

They tip the scales at a combined weight of a quarter of a ton (give or take a few pounds), so what they did should come as a surprise to no one; but that doesn't make what they did any less impressive. It was the late evening/early morning of May 14/15, so you might have missed what they did. I was tuning in to various things on television and changing channels often. At times I made it to the telecasts of the MLB games between the Pittsburgh Pirates and Arizona Diamondbacks and between the Toronto Blue Jays and San Francisco Giants - but just not at the right times; so it wasn't until a couple of hours later, while watching the nightly highlights show on the MLB Network, that I found out about what they did. Who are they? And what did they do? Well, the photo collage above is the giveaway answer to who they are - 1B Josh Bell of the Pirates and 3B Vladimir Guerrero Jr. of the Blue Jays. And in their respective games that night they both blasted a pair of mammoth home runs, with the shortest of them measuring in at 438 feet.

DG174

During my 2017 NFL dreads focus I put in CAPITAL letters the names of 212 players whose dreads are long enough to be seen when they have their helmets on. That's an average of about 6.6 per team and 13 per game. So it's inevitable that at some point in nearly every game players with dreads from opposing teams will bump into each other. And that's what dread gallery #174 is all about. These are many (but not even close to all) of the instances from the 2017 season where players with dreads from both teams found their way into the same photos.

1. And we'll begin with a couple of instances that  RB Todd Gurley went up against players with dreads in Rams games vs. NFC West division foes.
On 3rd and 2 during the 1st quarter in Week 3 49ers LB Ray-Ray Armstrong, after running behind TE Tyler Higbee on a pick play, turns on the jets trying to catch up but doesn't get there in time to prevent Gurley from scoring his 2nd TD of the game - a 7-yard reception that puts the Rams back in front 14-7. Gurley, who scored his 1st TD on the game's 2nd play from scrimmage, added a 3rd TD before halftime and finished the game with 149 total yards (113 rushing, 36 receiving). Armstrong, starting in place of the injured Reuben Foster, had several other close encounters with Gurley. 4 of Ray-Ray's 6 tackles (4-2) were tackles of Gurley, including 1 TFL. Leading 41-26 midway through the 4th quarter, the Rams barely held on to get the road win 41-39. Here are some of Gurley's highlights in the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eVc3tVAUluo

Delaneys star in episode of February Foolishness

If you are a basketball fan, surely you have heard of March Madness, the term used to describe some of the unlikely, unbelievable, improbable, and impossible things that happen in the month of March every season at the end of tournament games everywhere, but most notably in the NCAA's popular Division 1 Men's Tournament. Well, maybe you did or didn't know it, but March Madness has a close relative that goes by the name of February Foolishness. Although games in February lack the life-or-death urgency of tournament games, they don't lack for some of the same crazy, bizarre, and absurd finishes. I mean just look at some of the things that just happened this February. You'd be a fool to think any of them were possible - until they actually happened, that is.