My goodness, welcome back to football

I didn't see tonight's 5-3 loss to the Yankees, but the reaction over at HH seems to indicate several missed opportunities and miscues, which seems to be par for the course in throwaway games like tonight's. The Angels head to Boston for three in a game with wild card implications before facing off against Texas for three. I'll be at Wednesday's matchup between Hokie Joe Saunders and Paul Effing Byrd. Why the Sox threw away Penny in favor of an identical pitcher in Byrd is beyond me.

But the real game tonight was in Foxboro.

Patriots 25, Buffalo 24

Let me preface this recap by explaining the Curse of Marcus as is pertains to fantasy teams. This past baseball season, I had more players hit the DL than anyone else in my league. Naturally, I drafted lots of Angels.

So my fantasy football draft comes around, and all the players I drafted have had miserable opening weeks. Every single running back and receiver, along with my tight end and defense, all undershot their projections between 15 and 85%. My last two players to suit up? Tom Brady and Wes Welker.

I was half expecting a bomb to go off in Gillete Stadium, but the only thing explosive was the general flatulence exhibited by the Patriots defense. The Pats were also saddled with two insanely bad roughing the passer calls, both of which dramatically changed the game. When New England allowed Trent Edwards to connect with Fred Jackson for an 11-point lead with 5:32 left, I was already dreading class with the self-anointed "Buffahoes" in class tomorrow.

Of course, I conveniently forgot about Ben Watson. Ben Watson is the tight end I should have drafted for my fantasy team instead of Vince Shiancoe, and he connected with Brady with 2:06 remaining.

At this point, Bill Belichick made a smart move: Forgo the onside kick and hope for a defensive stop. With all three timeouts remaining plus the two-minute warning, the Partiots had an opportunity to stop the Bills without giving them better field position with a 10% recovery rate onside kick.

Gostkowski shellacked a ball into the endzone, and McKelvin decided to run it out. His decision made sense...if he gets it out of the endzone, Buffalo can burn 40 seconds off the clock instead of 5. His mistake, however, was trying to gain a couple meaningless yards at the end of his run. Merriweather stripped it, and Gostkowski, of all people, came up with the ball. Another Brady to Watson touchdown sealed the game.

It's funny how a secondary which has played like crap all day can come back and win a game. Sports are weird.

My only real problems with the Pats, outside some pretty poor defense, was the dropped passes and overthrows to Welker and Moss which are so atypical of a Brady-led offense. I'll chalk it up to rust, but if it's still happening next week, it's cause for concern.

US Open

I'm planning to have Mark guest-blog here, if I can. I didn't watch the match, but he did, and besides, he knows more about tennis than I do. I didn't even know Nadal was eliminated.


Hockey

The brick motif is terribly inaccurate, but a sieve pattern looks too much like polka dots.

I believe I have a team. I have an almost completely covered-in-electrical tape mask*, and all the equipment I need to play goalie in a semi-competitive setting. Kira provided the artistic know how, and the general concept was inspired by some of the goalies over at the Goalie Store boards.

First game should be coming up pretty quickly. Also, wearing this mask in broomball should provide a pretty distinct intimidation factor, or at least a "hey look at that moron" factor, which tends to be equally effective.

*From what I've been told, the electrical tape will stay put. And it better, as it took me most of an evening to cut tape into 1.5 inch bricks and then carefully mold it over compound curves. I'd still like to find a small California flag decal to go with a small American flag decal for the back. I'm probably also going to fill in the chin with bricks until I think of a cool nickname.