I talked about Joe Torre’s roster moves on Thursday, and by Sunday they had already come back to haunt him. As you may recall, Torre deactivated Jeff Weaver and Jon Garland, and activated Hiroki Kuroda in their place. Kuroda had been out for the first round with a back injury. I said then that it seemed like a very odd decision – surely a healthy Garland or Weaver was better than a rusty and likely sore Kuroda. It turns out, for once, that I was right. Kuroda was terrible last night – allowing six runs while recording just four outs – and is the main reason why the Phillies are holding a 2-1 lead. Far be it from me to second guess Torre, but I really don’t get it.
What in the world is Sherman Lewis possibly hoping to accomplish? Two weeks ago he was retired. Now, after first being hired as an offensive consultant with the Redskins he is now in charge of calling the plays. I’m not exaggerating even slightly when I say that there isn’t even the smallest bit of upside for Lewis. He won’t have the full cooperation of the head coach because the job was ripped from Zorn and Lewis was hired without his approval. He takes over an offense that is incompetent, an offensive line that is laughably bad, and a quarterback who is totally useless. He’s not going to be able to make any significant improvements for this team. Even if he does, and they wind up at 6-10 or 7-9 or something, so what? He’ll still get fired along with everyone else when the Skins clean house and bring in a whole new staff, and it’s not like anything he can do for the Redskins – short of getting them into the playoffs – will help his reputation. I just hope Lewis is getting paid a lot, because that’s the only possible reason why someone should take this job.
Speaking of the Skins, if they were going to do this bizarre staff shuffle anyway, then why in the world wouldn’t they just fire Zorn? They’ve totally neutered him and stripped him of any credibility or self respect, so what’s the point. Daniel Snyder makes me scratch my head.
Big blow to the Jets – they have lost nose tackle Kris Jenkins for the season with an ACL injury. Jenkins is a total beast, and has been a big part of the defensive resurgence the Jets have experienced this year, so he will really be missed -especially because they don’t have a particularly compelling replacement for him.
The Bengals fail to score in three of four quarters and lose at home to the Texans, yet we are supposed to believe that they are a new and improved team? Not buying it. I’ll be shocked if they are better than third in the AFC North by time the season ends.
Aaron Rodgers had a very nice game yesterday against the Lions. Now just think what he could do if he had an offensive line to protect him. The Lions do not have the personnel to get five sacks on any team, yet somehow the did.
If Derek Anderson is still the QB for the Browns, and it seems he is despite going a combine 11 of 41 over the last two weeks, the EricMangini must really, really, really have it in for Brady Quinn. Such a circus. I’m not buying the excuse that Anderson was better than the numbers because there were so many dropped passes, either. Have you noticed that goodQBs never have nearly as many dropped passes as bad QBs. Not a coincidence.
I’m not writing the Jaguars off just yet. They are 3-3 now, and they will be 5-3 after beating Tennessee and Kansas City over the next two weeks. They also have almost certain wins over Cleveland and Buffalo on tap. That means that they only need to win three of their other six games to be a factor in the playoff picture. I’m not saying that it will or should happen, but it certainly could.
