The day didn’t start out great. I received a call at 7AM. A coworker was sick and I was needed at our other office for the day. This meant instead of going

My porblems yesterday were not the result of too many beers.

to my usual office, tucked nicely in the financial district of lower Manhattan, I had to travel all the way up to mid town, near Grand Central Station, which is not nearly as convenient to my Brooklyn apartment and is a crowded mess of professionals and tourists.

This turn of events, coupled with the minor hangover I had from the previous nights Super Bowl festivities, did not put me in a fantastic mood, I admit. Still, I wasn’t feeling grumpy because of my disrupted routine or the minor headache I was trying to shake off. In fact, I didn’t feel grumpy at all.

I felt, well, sad.

I couldn’t explain it. I just felt, really, really down. I noticed as much around midday, just after a finished compiling a monster blog post about Derrick Thomas and the 10 year anniversary of his death.

“Maybe that’s it,” I thought. “You’re just bummed out rereading all those old articles about Thomas and it made you think about the fragility of life, which always gets you down.”

I assumed the feeling would pass fairly quickly. It did not.

As the afternoon stretched on, it occurred to me that I was feeling bummed out well before I started the piece on Thomas. I decided I just needed to blow off some steam and that maybe banging out an article for Arrowhead Addict would do the trick.

15 minutes later, I was still staring at the blinking cursor in Microsoft Word. I had nothing. Moreover, I didn’t feel like writing.

“Whatever,” I thought, “I got nothing on football today.”

Then it hit me. I had a hangover that had nothing to do with the four six beers I had the night before. I had the Super Bowl Hangover.

(more…)

Without further ado…

Pick	Team	Player Selected	Player’s Position	Player’s School	Analysis
1.		Jimmy Clausen	Quarterback	Notre Dame	Yep. I’m going there. Look, the Rams have been drafting high for a while now. They usually go with the safe pick. Everyone is going to think they are crazy for passing on Suh but I think the Rams are going to look around at the teams in the playoffs. They’ll see names like Favre, Rivers, Manning, Brees, Brady and Warner. It is apparent you need a QB in today’s NFL more than ever. If the Rams don’t get one now, they aren’t getting one in this draft.
2.		Ndamukong Suh	Defensive Tackle	Nebraska	Detroit, already having a QB, pees their pants when the Rams take Clausen. Litterally pees their pants on their way to the podium to take Suh.
3.		Gerald McCoy	Defensive Tackle	Oklahoma	Tampa is now also freaking out because they had Gerald McCoy’s name circled on their draft board and suddenly Eric freakin Berry is available. They have planned their draft around the fact that Suh and Berry would be gone when they picked. The don’t gamble and they stick with McCoy.
4.		Eric Berry	Free Safety	Tennessee	Mike Shanahan won games with Jake Plumber as his QB. He can probably win games with Jason Cambell. He also isn’t stupid enough to go reaching for Sam Bradford here before he has a season to evaluate his new team. He is building a new program and Eric Berry is one hell of a start. No way does he let Berry slip to the Chiefs.

(more…)

DeeNice42: u shud preach that to 27, he always on some shit in da clubs. he got shit pendin’ n thems just the ones who actually said sumthin. smhabout 23 hours ago

Translation: You’re talking to Larry Johnson? You should be scared sh**less. He’s always in trouble for slapping around women at nightclubs, and those are just the ladies who decided to come forward. Homeboy is a regular Ike Turner.

DeeNice42: yous a good woman then…but b careful wit that no self control shit cause he a big dude n u but like a buck-two-five. hope he dnt put his about 23 hours ago

Translation: You’re a good woman. Be careful, though, because L.J. is a big ass dude who likes to slap chicks around/spit drinks in their faces. Hope he hasn’t whooped that ass already. He’s the black Tom Sizemore when it comes to abusing women.

DeeNice42: he still got almost a buck on ya, so dnt preach him too much lol. he been to nyc yet or wut..about 23 hours ago

Translation: He has 100 pounds on you, so watch what you say or he’ll punch you right in the mouth. Has he made a booty call to see you in NYC yet?

DeeNice42: oh good, did he bless ya wit some bling, expensive dinners n all that…about 23 hours ago

Translation: So he did come through and hook up with you. You better have gotten some jewelery and expensive dinners out of those you-know-what payments. Do your thing gold digger. Take him for all he’s worth.

DeeNice42: no matter if ya into bling or not, we come tru d town of a honey she gotta b taken care of u feel me.. by any mean necessary. about 22 hours ago

Translation: L.J. didn’t buy you bling? Dude’s got no game. Actually I have no game, but I’m rich and I’m letting you know that I will spoil your ass and do anything else necessary in order to get with you. That includes throwing a fellow NFL player who would break me in two under the bus on the world’s biggest social networking site. When it comes to hating, I step into the phone booth and emerge wearing spandex and a cape.

DeeNice42: dinner n clubbin’ man u easy to please. any nigga do that for ya’. im tellin u when we come tru d town of a honey she gets spoiled…about 22 hours ago

Translation: Did I mention that Larry Johnson is cheap? Not me. Me and my crew will give a gold digger exactly what she wants. One of those referee-lookin’ Foot Locker employees can take you to dinner and then the club. L.J. might as well work at Foot Locker. Don’t you want to get spoiled by a sucker like me?

Even though L.J. is still in my doghouse, I gotta take his side on this one. Smearing a fellow pro athlete’s name all over Twitter to the point of libel just to impress some hoochie (and if you search his old Twitter name you see a bunch of chicks trying to holler, so that isn’t off base) was a pathetic move by Sharper. Larry Johnson may be an asshole/prima donna/hasbeen, but Sharper looks like a coward and a hater. It also amazes me that these athletes don’t seem to think about the repercussions of their social networking. It’s as if Sharper thought nobody else would see this.

Anyway, I found this whole thing very amusing. It took some work to translate Sharperese, but I think I have it down now. So, if anybody is looking for a translator, I’m your man. We’ll keep you posted on the Johnson-Sharper beef. Unfortunately, the Chiefs and the Saints, Sharper’s new team, don’t play this season. Regardless, Sharper better have his head on the swivel. L.J.’s got almost a buck on him, too.

(Adam Best is the senior editor of Arrowhead Addict. Follow him daily via email/RSS feed and Twitter.)

There’s something you should know about me. I watch a lot of Saints football.

I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for New Orleans and their Saints following Katrina, even scooped one of these to help the cause. I always thanked the Saints for giving us Willie Roaf, and for taking Joe Horn off our hands — most of the time, anyway. When we were little, the Old Chief bought Zach and I NFL helmets, but to be fair neither one of us could pick the Chiefs. Zach picked the Jets (pretty sure it was a green one back then). I picked the Saints, because, hey, even as a kid I thought their unis were pimp (they really are). Picking up Marques Colston miraculously snuck me into the playoffs of the Dirty Dozen, my family and friends league, his rookie year. This year, Drew Brees has single-handedly kept me in the hunt.

The rule is no second teams. I abide that rule. At the same time, I find myself watching a lot of Black and Gold football and half-smiling for the good people down in Nola when they do well. Especially when Drew Brees gets me a W in fantasy. But this week the play our Chiefs, so, as Alice Cooper would say, “no more Mr. Nice Guy.” They will get the Arrowhead Advantage treatment just like everybody else, and hopefully an ass whoopin’ less than 24 hours later.

All that being said, the Saints are a very, very flawed football team. They can’t run the ball. They can’t stop anybody defensively. Jeremy Shockey has been at least a bust, if not a cancer as well. And now Mike McKenzie, Reggie Bush and Will Smith are all out. This is a game we can win, but the Saints are still dangerous. The key is to strike first and get after Brees early.

If Brees gets off to a scorching start right away, you can pretty much forget about it. If he does have one flaw, however, I believe it’s that at this point his has almost too much confidence in himself and his accuracy at this time. Given that we are one off the league lead in takeaways with 18, this could be key. Brandon Carr and the corner store backs (because it’s like we just went around the corner and bought them in a pinch) will also really be tested by Lance Moore and Marques Colston. Moore is like a poor man’s Marvin Harrison, and Colston is like Roy Williams minus the whole diva routine. Devery Henderson has also shown the ability to strike deep and tight end Billy Miller is also a threat.

We absolutely cannot allow them to find success in the running game, something they haven’t done all season, especially sans Bush bouncing things outside. Even our rush defense should be able to at least contain Aaron Stecker, Deuce McCallister and Pierre Thomas. I hope we have Turk McBride, because if we don’t we’ll be getting to know Jason Babin and Wallace Gilberry (is that really dud’s name?) better than we’d like to.

This is a game we can win. I won’t be heartbroken either way, but a home win would be good for the young guys and the fans. I don’t know if Herm Edwards can pull it off, so we shall see. The other thing is that I don’t expect us to end up with a worse record than the Lions, and possibly the Bengals and Raiders, anyway.

Regardless, I think this is going to be one the most exciting game Arrowhead has seen since the Jayhawks and Tigers clashed there last year. Let’s just make sure that the scoreboard operator is well stretched and has plenty of fluids.