Ramblin' On

Packer pain now dissipated, there are lots of things going on:

Yanni Therapy
In case there's anything terrible left inside, watch this.  Inspiration is a tenuous thing, but Yanni has found a way to capture human emotion and deliver it, over and over again.  If and when the Packers fall behind against Washington, I urge you to bring your laptop out and cue this baby up.  It will help.  I promise it will help.  I also urge you to allow this to play as you read the rest of this post if you can bear to look away from Yanni's enthusiasm.  Again, same conecpt: it will only help.

At Least You're Not a Buffalo Fan
At least you're not a Buffalo fan.

Congress Cares About Brett Favre
Looks like the US congress is up to its usual tricks.  And, if you're wondering, here's what else congress worked on that day.  Seems about the same degree of importance.  Next stop: UN Ambassador.  After that we'll have to wait until interstellar travel before Favre is again singled out for duties. 

It's possible he'll still be starting when we break through the warp barrier, right?  Fontenot prediction: Rogers asleep behind the bench, 78 years old, his beard gray and long like Rip VanWinkle's.  A reporter wakes him and asks him what he thinks about Favre's planned mission to Belvetron IV.  His quote: "I'm just happy I've been able to learn so much from him.  My shot's just around the corner, and I will use what I've learned, definitely." 

New JSOnline Packer Blog
Now you can finally read an informative blog about the Packers.

James Jones Won't Get Bounced
It doesn't seem like it, anyway.  Nor should he, really.  After seeing the replays, it's a lot easier to say that Tillman made two solid plays than Jones made two horrible plays.  Yes, he fumbled.  But it's not like the guy was running free down the sideline and just dropped the ball.  It's not like it was the end of the Vikings game and he inexplicably dropped a handoff after the game was locked up.  He needs to bounce back.  I predict a redeeming performance from him on Sunday.  There's something about Jones that seems very, very psychologically sound.

Not that the fumbles weren't devastating.  When you're there, as you probably know, you can feel the energy and momentum a little better.  During that second drive, when it looked like the Packers were going to score again, everything was in place.  By all indications it was going to be another night-game Bear-demolition.  I know it was early, but feeling the enthusiasm of 70,000 people sucked up into the sky (or worse, sucked up into the sky and sucked down the shore of Lake Michigan and deposited into Chicago) makes it hard to believe your team is going to win.

So it goes.  What if?: the second-lowest form of conversation.

The Challenge
I learned on Wednesday via the NFL PR flotilla NFL Total Access that the refs technically got the time out/spot change thing right.  However, this rule, along with a few others, highlight some oddly complex philosophical problems you would not expect to be dealing with in America's Meathead League.  Seriously, I'll take an extension class somewhere if I want to do gedanken experiments.  The tuck rule leads to a morass of intentionality vs. action.  The "plane of the endzone" conceptualization asks fans to imagine  invisible lines, planes, and rectangular solids extending (infinitely? ) away from the field. Think  about who you're asking to do this!!! Replay draws all causality into question--if we say it was a force-out, we are also implicitly saying there is no longer  history.  Also, if we say he fumbled and he didn't, we'll turn it around, but if we say he didn't fumble and he did, we will blow the "Whistle of Nothingness," which, as you know, also stops time, causality, and history.

For the Packer situation, the rule is this: all challenges for field position must be linked to challenges of a first down.  Therefore, if you challenge for field position, you are also automatically challenging for first down.  Both changes must be made in order for it to be a "successful" challenge.  A few strange things here.  First, why link the two things at all?  Does this not imply that you are not, in any circumstance other than a first-down challenge, allowed to challenge a spot?  Of course it does.  And yet the game is full of "spot" challenges that have nothing to do with first downs.  Imagine a play in which a runner steps out of bounds, then runs another 35 yards...first downs are never discussed, and are not part of the equation.  If you say, in response, that they are part of the equation, and are simply not mentioned, then I'll give you a different hypothetical: say a player is nearly tackled ten yards behind the scrimmage, shakes a few defenders, and gets back to the line of scrimmage.  Now say the replay show this runner's knee clearly touching the ground ten yards back.  Of course you can challenge this. Field position is challenged independently of first downs all the freaking time. So what is there to conclude?  Only that the refs arbitrarily "link" the field position and first-down challenges when faced with situations in which they are both relevant.  

This is stupid, makes no sense.  The rules of your game have to be coherent.  Watching the game on Sunday night was like playing a video game that has yet to be debugged.  Everything is okay for awhile, then you walk into a frame that just doesn't work, and all of physics collapses in on itself.

Not to beat a dead horse, but the end of the Buffalo/Dallas game highlighted another serious problem with the rules, and one that should be addressed by the league in the offseason.  With about 13 seconds left in the game, T.O. appeared to catch a pass that put the Cowboys into field position.  The ref, befuddled, took a solid five seconds to make a call (he called catch), and then we got to watch their uninspiring hustle as they tried to get the ball in place for a snap.  The game easily could have ended here, because of that ref's hesitation, which is a problem in and of itself.  But furthermore, even though Dallas spiked the ball, the refs decided to review the T.O. play.  The official word was that "they pressed the button" just before Romo snapped the ball.  I think this is bullshit.  Mike Perriera, director of officiating, lauded this moment as a great job from the guys upstairs in the replay booth.  Clearly, though, there is no oversight at all.  Perriera claims that they have to wait to "press the button" until it is clear Romo  would have been able to get off another snap.  Only then will they interfere and challenge a play.  Otherwise, they risk falsely interfering with the flow of a game.

Are you fucking kidding me.

Here's what this policy implies:  a blown call (T.O.'s catch) creates a false path in time.  Within this false path of time, however, you must prove to us that  you can get a false snap off before the false clock ticks down to zero.  Once you have successfully shown that it's hypothetically possible to do this, now that you've passed the Test of Falsity, we will go backwards in time in our Delorians and let you try again, this time for real. 

There is bad, bad confusion afoot.  There need to be many changes.

Best Thing To Ever Happen
Profootballtalk linked to this the other day, and I found the full version and watched it and cried while watching it.  I was up watching this live whenever it happened, and I absolutely lost control of myself then.  It's still the same.  If you have any bad feelings left, watch this, and get better.  Oh, and the Packers and playing the Redskins on Sunday.

Comments

[Stimp]

Hey Pat,

How can we (The Pack) get back on the right track?

Also, did you ever make a promise to your parents about never smoking pot again? That's what I thought.