monday afternoon quarterback

Peter King, over at Sports Illustrated writes a weekly column called "Monday Morning Quarterback," or "MMQB."  I read it pretty much every week.  And pretty much every week, it's an irritating experience in some way or another.  I don't mean to sound snobbish (I will, anyway), but the banality of his blind love (and written adulation) of Starbucks hazelnut-lattes is neither poignant nor interesting.  

Thankfully, this week wasn't really all that bad.  Neither Starbucks, nor a heartwarming-story-of-a-soldier-abroad made it into the column.  More importantly than that, even, PK devoted plenty of column-inches to the beloved Purple.  A sample, from the teams-whose-draft-he-liked section:

3. Minnesota. In a span of five days, the Vikings added the best available pass-rusher in football (Jared Allen), the best safety in the draft (Tyrell Johnson of Arkansas State), and a good challenger to put a little heat on Tavaris Jackson, USC quarterback John David Booty.

Like I've said throughout this Allen deal, long-term it has some real risks I would not have taken. But on opening day 2008, one of the top five defenses in football will have the biggest impact acquisition of the offseason in Allen, and it will also have either the best special-teams gunner or best young tackling safety in football in Johnson.

It's good to see the national media give some love to the Vikes on occasion.  Even so, I have to break out my red pen.  The awkwardness of this sentence — "But on opening day 2008, one of the top five defenses in football will have the biggest impact acquisition of the offseason in Allen, and it will also have either the best special-teams gunner or best young tackling saftey in football in Johnson" — astounds.  The phrase "in football" appears twice.  The second clause, the one about Tyrell Johnson, doesn't have much to do with the first, aside from the observation that both new Vikings tackle people well.  

King does make the salient point that Jared Allen will make about the same amount of money this year as the combined salaries of the six best starters on the Vikes' defense.  How might Pat Williams and Kevin Williams feel about that?  I'll venture that they'll mostly be happy about their newfound lack of double-teams, salary be damned.  Perhaps I'm being too optimistic.

The one thing that REALLY got under my skin, however, was this: "I think, if you gave him sodium pentathol, Chris Long would tell you he wishes he had gone to the Patriots, even if it would have cost him a lot of money to do so."  Sure, maybe Chris Long would have preferred to go some other place than St. Louis.  But, Mr. King, your Patriots homerism borders on outright projection here.  I'm sure that you would have preferred Long to the Patriots, but I'm not sure that he would have.  In about three weeks, said star defensive end will graduate from the University of Virginia, where there is a strict and dearly-held honor code.  Students who are caught and convicted of lying, cheating, or stealing at UVA are asked to leave.  Somehow, I don't think that a team whose first-round draft choice was revoked as a punishment for cheating would be a good fit for first-rounder Chris Long.