With Christmas now in the rear view mirror, this introduction could easily qualify as a "Plus/Minus Take of the Week". The plus: football fanatics everywhere were treated to a Christmas Eve full of football; it was like being able to open presents at midnight instead of waiting until 9 a.m. long after Santa done crawled his dusty behind back up with milk in his mustache and Christmas cookie crumbs in his beard. The minus: although they had two pivotal division matchups with playoff implications--one being in prime time--they had to sacrifice most of Christmas Day to the NBA. Either way, outside of celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ and spending time with family and friends, there aren't too many other things I'd rather do than watch football on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. For some teams--as well as some coaches and GMs who will get their pink slips before Black Monday--jolly old St. Nick had lumps of coal. However, if you were like the first team featured in this week's edition, then you felt like you got straight As and minded your manners at the 11th hour...
One of the things which has helped me to overcome an emotionally trying period of my life outside of music has been football. It's like the home team knew I was going through it and needed to get excited for my favorite sport in the whole wide world because after starting off terribly at 0-2, they've ripped off four straight wins and at least look like contenders in the NFC East race. Granted, seeing the Capitals and Nationals flake out in early rounds amidst Stanley Cup and World Series talk, respectively, doesn't give me much hope for their playoff aspirations, but the turnaround is good nonetheless. I'm frankly happy the NFC East is not the "NFC Least" as it had been for the past several years as no team is under .500, making every win absolutely critical. I'm so pumped about the NFC East's comeback that, although I was cheering for the Packers to beat the Cowboys, it's hard to knock two rookies as impressive as Dak Prescott and Ezekiel Elliott; heck, I marveled at many of the throws Carson Wentz made and he was making them against the home team! While many of the overall matchups throughout the league aren't always alluring from week to week, it's still not an all-out blah fest and Week 6 continued that trend...
I came into Week 2 of NFL regular season action on a high from a solid Saturday in NCAA football. Although all three of my favorite teams won big--including Michigan storming back from being down 14 points in the first quarter at home to beat Colorado 45-28--my favorite game of the day was between two unranked teams, Maryland vs. Central Florida. After UCF QB McKenzie Milton lost his third fumble of the game in the second overtime in a tie game at 24, Maryland freshman QB Tyrrell Pigrome had the daunting task of filling in for the injured Perry Hills. However, there are few plays better in someone's first snap than to get a 24-yard TD run to win the game 30-24 in double OT and push your team under your first-year head coach DJ Durkin to 3-0. Yeah...seeing another one of my favorite college football teams win in dramatic fashion definitely got me ready for football on Sunday. So enough about the kids and let's talk about the grown man's game...
