Monday, February 21, 2011

Monday Morning Falcons Hangover

Could these guys work their magic again if an extended lockout hit the NFL?

Would an Extended Lockout Actually be Good for the Falcons?

There is a line of thought that there are some teams in the league who may be better insulated from the effects of the oncoming lockout than others. Teams that have a stable franchise structure as well a limited amount of holes to fill through free agency and the draft may have a slight upper hand over teams in some kind of transition, such as a new head coach who was not an interim hire such as in Dallas.

Looking out on the landscape of the NFL, it is fairly easy to see that the Super Bowl Champion Packers and runner-up Steelers have the least to lose as far as missed practice time for new draft picks or possible free agent pick-ups, because they appear to have cohesive teams with few needs or staff turnover.

There is a feeling in the Atlanta media that the Falcons are also such a team who could “benefit” from a long lockout, and this is a feeling I do not agree with.

The fact is, the Falcons were thoroughly exposed by Green Bay in many ways during the playoffs. They were exposed as desperately needing a front-four pass-rush, as needed a change-of-pace running back, a reliable nickel-back who does not crumble under pressure, and as needing a speed receiver who can stretch the field.

The team must also have a change in philosophy in the coaching staff that is willing to be more aggressive on the field: willing to take more shots downfield in the passing game, and willing to play less soft zone coverage in the secondary.

The team has no player pieces like that within the organization, so they must fill in those holes through free agency and the draft. Meaning these key players will have no experience running the Falcons’ system, and need the practice time they would surely miss in an extended lockout scenario.

The Falcons play in the hardest division in football, and based on their playoff belly flop, it’s very easy to go back and review their regular season with a more discerning eye and see they were fortunate to win 13 games. With New Orleans healthy and Tampa Bay coming on strong, with two coaching staffs who are not afraid to be aggressive on offense and defense, something that cannot be said about Mike Smith’s play-not-to-lose, unaggressive philosophy, I can’t see the Falcons repeating as NFC South Champs, and I have a hard time seeing them walking into the playoffs without a struggle for a Wild Card slot, a struggle they could lose.

No, unlike some in the Atlanta media, I do not think an extended lockout would be good for the Falcons at all.

Seven Things I Know

1) The best possible thing the NFL and the Players could have decided was to bring in a mediator. I have to wonder if Jerry Richardson’s particular petty emotionality is what brought this decision on, and if it did, at least something good came of it.

2) The Daytona 500 is not an acceptable replacement for football games on a Sunday, and I kind of like NASCAR.

3) Neither is the NBA-All Star game for that matter. As far as the NBA goes, I think of it as I do NCAA basketball: it does not really exist until the post-season starts. I will watch at that point, but not until then.

4) One would think network television would have a better plan in place for having good football replacement programming on the air after the Super Bowl, but they do not. This weekend was a desert, and my couch offered no oasis, as there was literally nothing on TV. Jeff Zucker is not around to blame anymore, broadcast TV people. Get your houses in order.

5) One of the staples of television from when I grew up was the TV Movie or Miniseries of the Week, but the networks have let this become the domain of HBO and Showtime, and it is a shame. A good TV Movie could be a nice salve for our lack of football wounds. I hope some TV Exec will bring back the TV movie or miniseries to a broadcast network.

6) For those of us who love NFL football, this is very good news.

7) Those of us who love football also have to wonder why it took the league and the union this long before serious negotiations have taken place. Whether the public agrees more with owners or players is irrelevant. If a lockout were to take place, the public will blame everyone.

Today in History

On 21 February 1848, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels publish their infamous work, The Communist Manifesto for the first time. For some people, it is akin to an awakening to the corruption controlling their economic livelihood, and therefore, their lives. For many others, this book represents a dangerous, jealousy-tinged, and hate-filled kind of propaganda that should reside on the same bookshelf as Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

Whether you are a true believer or an anti-Communist crusader, the fact remains that in the history of the world, the work of Marx and Engels has left its mark in a very real, tangible way, and is therefore important from a historical perspective. Without the extreme and unnecessarily violent point of view found in this book, it is unlikely that much-needed changes would’ve been made in the way businesses were run in a capitalistic economy and society at that point in time, changes such as the establishment of a 5-day, 40-hour workweek, child labor laws, vacation time, maternity leave, worker’s injury insurance, workplace safety laws, et cetera. In this way, The Communist Manifesto proved itself to be a force for change that was not completely unbalanced or evil.

Film Real

There is an unsettling trend in film over the last few years, and it has come to a head in this year, 2011. This year marks the most sequels ever coming to a theater near you, and this is a bracingly unfortunate development coming from Hollywood.

While some sequels are necessary from a filmmaking standpoint (think the final Harry Potter film coming out in July), did we as a movie-going public really clamor for films like Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked, which is a third film in that series of films, films that have been critically lambasted? What about Scream 4? Who the hell was asking for a fourth film in the Scream franchise?

As the American movie-going public becomes more and more ADD-addled and willing to consume crap, the more and more Hollywood is going to be serving 90-minute slices of steaming crap on film like Piranha 3DD.

There is hope on the horizon. Two of the absolute best films of the year, The King’s Speech and Black Swan, films that are well-written, original, and well-acted, films that no prognosticator would have ever thought would be commercially viable, have both crossed over the 100 million dollar mark. This may not seem it, but for two films such as these, films thought to be niche films, to have crossed into triple-digit millions shows that original filmmaking still has a place in Hollywood.

Please, people, I know many sequels look like harmless fun, but they are really not, especially when they are soulless pieces of crap like a Chipmunks sequel or yet another lame sequel that is using “3D.” I know many of you who go to these films do so with your kids in tow, but I want you to remember this idiom: Garbage in, Garbage Out. It’s a phrase used by those in the computer field. It means that if create computer code that is wrong, you will not get the desired result.

Think of your kids as computers. If you continue to subject their pliable, spongy minds to all these crap sequels (not the Potter films, again, those are well-made and have a logical reason beyond the cash register for needing sequels), then they will grow to be undemanding, uncreative, and undiscerning consumers as teenagers and adults. They will just perpetuate and grow the cycle of soulless crap we get now from Hollywood, never demanding more original or better movie-going fare.

Please, do not do that to your kids. Do not turn them into mindless consumers of crap.

Smart Quote

This quote is for all of those film studio execs pumping out mindless sequel after mindless sequel.

True originality consists not in a new manner, but in a new vision.

Edith Wharton

Hey, Check This Out!

Because I, and I am sure y’all, need to see someone hit somebody, here ya go.

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