Friday 5 – Exciting Defenses

When I say exciting defense, what are some of the teams that immediately jump to your mind? The Ravens? Steelers? Vikings? Jets? Cowboys? What if I told you that this Friday 5 is my list of the top five most exciting defenses in the NFL right now, and not a single one of the teams I just mentioned is on it? Now hear me out before you jump to conclusions and discredit the rest of this post. I came up with with this list of top five most exciting defenses by basing it solely on numbers. That’s right, my list is purely from a statistical perspective, and that’s right, none of those teams made the cut. I started out by asking myself the basic question of what are the most exciting defensive plays? I think it’s pretty straight forward to say that they would be interceptions, forced fumbles and sacks. Bone-crushing hits would also be in there but there is no statistic for that, plus a lot of those hits result in sacks and/or forced fumbles anyhow. Starting with this as my foundation I started looking up the numbers for last season. In 2009 there were a total of 1101 sacks, 525 interceptions and 509 forced fumbles. So as a general statement (using 1 sig-fig, if you will) I think it’s fair to say that interceptions and forced fumbles are twice as exciting as sacks, based on how frequently they happen. So I developed two basic formulas:

One for the total number of exciting plays: S + I + F = N

And one for the level of excitement the team causes: S + 2I + 2F = X

Where S represents the number of sacks a team had, I represents the number of interceptions, F represents the number of forced fumbles, N represents the total number of exciting plays and X represents the level of excitement rating. I ranked the teams using the first formula, then I ranked them using the second formula, and after that I took their average from those two rankings and used that as my final number to sort the teams by. As a tie-breaker I used defensive touchdowns scored. Here’s how it panned out:

WMD – QB Point System

I’ve been in a few debates about Peyton Manning recently. Well, a few more than I usually find myself in that is. Either way, people always talk about Super Bowls. I don’t understand that, because it’s a team sport. Not only is it a team sport, it is the ultimate team sport. Though despite this, I decided I would make a point system for seasonal accomplishments: Super Bowl wins, MVP awards, AP First-Team All-Pros, and Pro Bowls. I say that that the accomplishment of winning one or more Super Bowls only solidifies the case for an already impressive career, however most people out there like to have Super Bowl wins be what defines a players career.

Friday 5 – ESPN Commercials

I’m going to go ahead and rule out all of the Peyton Manning ones right now, because I could do an entire Friday 5 on just those. However to make up for the lack of Peyton-love in this post I’m going to make this Friday 5 extra special, and go ahead and make it a Friday 10. There are just entirely too many awesome ESPN commercials. I can sit here and watch them on YouTube all day long, so I couldn’t limit myself to just five. So without further ado, here are my ten personal favorite ESPN commercials of all time… well at least the ones I could find clips for. There was a great commercial when I was in grade school and it was for the Stump The Schwab show where the contestant is asked “who is the only Chargers wide receiver to ever make it to the Hall of Fame” and then the camera goes down under the floorboards and there’s this little puppet character sitting there watching the show that’s going on right above him on a minuscule TV and he’s sitting there saying “Laaaaance Allllllworth! Laaaaance Allllllworth! Laaaaaaaaaaaaaance Allllllllllllworth!” over and over again. It’s easily one of my favorite ESPN commercials ever.

Review of Day 2

Yesterday we used the Review of Day 1 as our Friday 5. Today we’re doing a review of Day 2 just because we like making lists. We’re adding two more lists this time around. Just like yesterday we still have the five best picks of the day, the five worst picks of the day and the top ten players still available. Now we also have the five teams that are having the best and worst drafts so far (total from Day 1 and Day 2) tacked on at the end. Here they are:

Friday 5 – Review of Day 1

Last year we did a Review of Day 1 for the 2009 Draft and Bryan and I decided that we enjoyed it so much last year that we would do it again this year. The difference this year is that Day 1 only consisted of the first round rather than the first two rounds so we didn’t have quite as much to address. So this time we’re simply doing top ten players still available, the best five picks of the first round and the worst five picks of the first round. Here it is:

Friday 5 – Reasons to Watch the Winter Olympics

Okay, I’m going to be honest, this isn’t exactly the top five reasons to watch the Winter Olympics. It’s more so of a list for the top five things to look at while watching the Winter Olympics. In short this is a cop-out Friday 5, where I’m listing the five best looking female athletes that will be competing in the Winter Olympics this year.

The Honorable Mention for this one goes to Hilary Knight of the United States Women’s Hockey Team. Here’s a picture of her, and the top five after the jump:

Friday Five – Young Receiver Tandems

I know that after my last Friday Five being about rookie receivers and now this one being about young receiver tandems you’re going to start thinking that all of my Friday Fives are going to be about young receivers, but I promise they won’t be. I got the idea for this one when I was talking to Bryan earlier this week about if it’s better to have two big receivers (Larry Fitzgerald, Andre Johnson, Terrell Owens, Randy Moss, etc), two small receivers (Steve Smith, the other Steve Smith, DeSean Jackson, Santana Moss, etc), or one of each. Then we thought about the receivers that don’t really fit into either category like Reggie Wayne, Hines Ward or Chad Ochocinco. So this got me thinking about what the best receiver tandems of all time are. Then as my mind started wandering off in this direction I found myself wondering what are some of the best receiving tandems of all time that were two young players.  That is how this list came to be.

The Best Players Not Drafted

I decided to put together a list of the best players not drafted in the 2009 NFL Draft. I’m putting them in order with the best non-drafted player first. I might redo the list later and update it, and add some players just depending on how much time I decide to put into this but I figured I would go ahead and throw my initial list up here.

My NCAA Football Top 25 – Week 5

RK	(LW)	School	Comment
1	2	Oklahoma	The Sooner’s pass attack is scary. They go to Baylor this week and then get Texas and Kansas at home. Can they stay on top?
2	4	Missouri	The Tigers travel to Lincoln this week to face the Cornhuskers. Mizzou hasn’t won in Lincoln in 30 years.
3	5	Louisiana St.	Charles Scott has been a beast. LSU travels to Gainesvill next week. Can they hand the Gators their second straight loss?
4	8	Alabama	With Kentucky this weekend and Ole Miss after that the Tide shouldn’t lose anytime soon, but if they look too far ahead Ole Miss could upset them just like the Gators.
5	7	Texas	The Longhorns have a tough 5-game stretch coming up: Colorado, OU, Mizzou, Oklahoma State and Texas Tech. If they can win all five then they might be the best team in the country.
6	10	Pennsylvania St	Penn St is the front runner of the Big Ten now. Will it stay that way after facing Purdue, Wisconsin, Michigan and Ohio St in October?
7	12	Brigham Young	BYU plays TCU on October 16, and Utah in the last game of the season but other than that, their schedule looks like a cake walk.
8	11	Texas Tech	From October 25 to November 22 the Red Raiders have a tough 4-game stretch: Kansas, Texas, Oklahoma St and Oklahoma. Can they survive that?
9	3	Georgia	At this point it seems that a loss to Alabama is nothing to be embarrassed about, and because of that the Dawgs stay in my top 10.
10	14	South Florida	Pitt comes to town on Thursday, can the Bulls string together back to back convincing wins after beating NC St by 31 this past week?
11	1	Southern California	Well that was embarrassing.
12	13	Auburn	They’ve only lost to LSU, but their win over my Vols wasn’t exactly convincing. Auburn better watch out because they travel to Nashville this weekend, and I think Vandy will be ready for them.
13	6	florida	I’m trying not to laugh… Go Rebels!
14	15	Ohio St.	They travel to Wisconsin this week, which should be a good game, and will likely prove to be meaningful later in the season.
15	17	Utah	The Utes get Oregon State at home this week. Can the Beavers pull off back to back upsets?
16	18	Boise St.	The Broncos look good, and don’t seem to have a tough game on their schedule until the last game of the season against Fresno St.
17	19	Kansas	The Jayhawks need to win their next two game against Iowa St and Colorado because after that it’s Oklahoma and Texas Tech.
18	9	Wisconsin	They blew a big win against Michigan, and now that Ohio St has Beanie Wells the Badgers could be in trouble, especially considering after this week’s game against the Buckeyes they have to play Penn St the following week.
19	22	Vanderbilt	Vandy looks good, and they look to show Auburn just how good when the Tigers come to town for “GameDay” this weekend.
20	29	Oklahoma St.	The Cowboys look good but after this weekend against Texas A&M they have to face Mizzou, which I don’t think anybody would look forward to at this point.
21	28	Virginia Tech	The Hokies have bounced back from their disappointing season opener at East Carolina, now the look to try and take back the ACC.
22	26	Oregon	The Ducks look to be the second team from Oregon in as many weeks to beat the USC Trojans.
23	25	Fresno St.	It should be easy sailing from here on out. At least until they meet up with Boise St in the last game of the season.
24	NR	Connecticut	UConn plays North Carolina this week, who are looking for a way to get ranked. If the Huskies aren’t careful they could get upset.
25	16	Wake Forest	After losing to Navy I’m not sure they still deserve to be in the top 25, but I’ll let them hang in here for one more week.
Others to note:
26	NR	Michigan St.
27	NR	Maryland
28	NR	Tulsa
29	NR	Kentucky
30	NR	Ball St.