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Cavs’ Trade for Baron Davis Was All About the Draft Pick

February 24, 2011   Pat McManamon   No comments

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INDEPENDENCE, Ohio — What does a rebuilding team do when it wants draft picks to help recover from the departure of the league’s two-time MVP? It trades another of its popular players for a first-round pick, and agrees to take on almost $28 million in salary for an aging, oft-injured point guard.

Such is the fate of the Cleveland Cavaliers that it celebrated a trade Thursday that took point guard Baron Davis from his home in Los Angeles and dropped him in Cleveland in the middle of winter. Davis goes from playing on the same team as Blake Griffin to joining a 10-47 team.

And the Cavs were exultant — because they acquired a first-round draft pick that will give them two lottery picks this summer. They said they were happy about acquiring Davis, too, but sending Mo Williams and Jamario Moon to the Clippers was much more about getting that first-round draft pick.

“Our scouting department just got a little busier, which is a good thing,” said GM Chris Grant.

 

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Tickets Snafu and All, NFL Goofed on Super Bowl Week

February 07, 2011   Pat McManamon   No comments

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DALLAS — Remember a few years back when the now infamous wardrobe malfunction took place at the Super Bowl?

Paul Tagliabue was apoplectic, and the NFL huffed and puffed and pounded the table and threw their shoes at the entire Janet Jackson entourage. It was the moral equivalent of Tiananmen Square.

But when the NFL jams extra seats into a venue, sells actual tickets for that seat, then realizes more than a week before its premier event that these seats might not be up to safety codes and does too little about it, what does it do?

It tries to buy off the offended parties.

Perhaps the NFL has good intentions with its offer to the group that from here on shall be known as the “Displaced 400,” folks who spent thousands of dollars to get to a game only to learn they couldn’t watch the game at the game. The NFL’s intentions may be completely good. Problem is, we all know where the road of good intentions sometimes leads.

 

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Was Troy Polamalu Playing Injured in the Super Bowl?

February 06, 2011   Pat McManamon   No comments

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Troy PolamaluARLINGTON, Texas — Troy Polamalu sat at the podium to answer questions following the Pittsburgh Steelers loss in Super Bowl XLV, and twice the NFL representative standing next to him asked if he wanted to go.

“I’m fine,” Polamalu said, and looked back to answer more.

Polamalu did not look fine on the field, though. In fact, the way he played made it seem as if he was anything but fine.

On some plays he was a step slow, on others he guessed wrong. And at some of the most important times of the game, Polamalu was playing deep center field and not rushing the passer with fierce abandon like he often does. Not having Polamalu in position to rush the passer seems to indicate one thing: He was not his usual explosive self, and he was not able to accelerate like he needed to.

Polamalu played like a man injured, and for a good part of the season he struggled with a strained right Achilles’ tendon. Polamalu initially hurt the Achilles in a loss to New England on Nov. 14 but kept playing. He reinjured and aggravated it in a win over Cincinnati on Dec. 12 and missed the next two games. He returned for the season finale against Cleveland and played in the playoffs, but did not seem like his usual self.

In the Super Bowl, he candidly admitted that the defensive failures were “especially me in particular,” and that “I was a step off here and there.”

 

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Bruce Arians Went Against Grain to Get Steelers to Super Bowl

February 04, 2011   Pat McManamon   No comments

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Bruce Arians DALLAS — Certain situations tell a lot about a team, a coach, an assistant coach.

So it was with the Pittsburgh Steelers in the AFC championship game when Mike Tomlin and offensive coordinator Bruce Arians were faced with a choice. The Steelers had seen a 24-0 lead dissipate to 24-19, and the New York Jets had only to stop the Steelers in the final three minutes to get a chance to advance to the Super Bowl.

Pittsburgh made a bold choice. The results propelled the Steelers to an appearance in Super Bowl XLV on Sunday against the Green Bay Packers.

In the Championship Game, Pittsburgh took over at its 41-yard-line with 3:06 left. New York had all three of its timeouts, and all the momentum. In the patterned and predictable world of the NFL, a team in that position runs the ball three times, punts and takes its chances on defense.

But not Arians.

 

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Bad Weather Continues to Plague Jerry Jones’ Super Bowl

February 04, 2011   Pat McManamon   No comments

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Dalas snowDALLAS — The bad luck for the unluckiest Super Bowl ever continued Friday, as Dallas woke up to six inches of snow.

The blanket of snow closed both of Dallas’ two airports and turned downtown Dallas into a ghost town, with the sound of sirens the only thing heard during what normally would have been rush hour.

The Dallas area had already been hit hard by an ice storm on Tuesday that shut down the city and left sidewalks covered. Now the snow covered the ice and made the going slow.

Outdoor events planned for the weekend were turned topsy-turvy, and folks who were trying to get into Dallas found airports closed and flights canceled.

The Dallas Morning-News reported that tickets for some outdoor events were being sold at half-price.

The city of Fort Worth had planned many events for its downtown Sundance Square area, but hardly anyone had been present throughout the week when crowds of 5,000-10,000 were expected. The town hoped that weather in the 40s on Saturday might draw some people.

 

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Step by Step, Aaron Rodgers Making Packers His Own

February 03, 2011   Pat McManamon   No comments

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Aaron RodgersDALLAS — Green Bay is a football haven, charm oozing from every icicle and snow pile.

But even the most charming of Titletowns has its fringe elements. In 2008, quarterback Aaron Rodgers was booed in his first practices and in the first Family Night scrimmage as the team’s starter.

Another individual who clearly lacks life perspective keyed Rodgers’ car. Someone else wrote nasty comments on his driveway — in chalk — and somebody harassed him as he filled his car with gas, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Rodgers now smiles as he looks back. He admits that times were tough, but he has made it as a quarterback in the city by the Northern Bay. And just like so many other players before him, Rodgers has a chance to validate his ascension by winning a championship when he and the Packers face the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XLV.

That would be a big step for Rodgers, but just getting here required many smaller ones, all of which were important and logical, and all of which laid out a clear path to the Super Bowl.

 

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Big Chill Sends Shivers Through Dallas

February 01, 2011   Pat McManamon   No comments

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DALLAS — It was cold and icy in Dallas Tuesday morning. You might have heard that already, but we can confirm that indeed was the case.

Cold, wind, ice, snow, wind chill, and treacherous all dominated the city’s word balloon.

Folks in Dallas were horrified by ice on the roads (shown right) and temperatures in the 20s. Roads were open, but covered with a half-inch to an inch of ice. Much of the Metroplex — that’s what it’s called here — was shut down. Overpasses and hills were especially tricky.

But not too tricky for the NFL. For the king of the sports leagues, the show (almost) always goes on.

NFL VP Greg Aiello even tweeted that early in the morning: “The show goes on,” he wrote.

Did anyone really doubt?

 

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Dallas Still Working Out Kinks as Players, Media Arrive for Super Bowl XLV

January 31, 2011   Pat McManamon   No comments

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FanHouse Senior NFL writer Pat McManamon will be on the scene throughout Super Bowl week, covering all that Dallas has to offer — on and off the field.

Monday, Jan. 30, 5:40 p.m.:

Dallas did its best to welcome folks to town for the Super-Dee-Duper Bowl, the most festive event of the year.

People who stopped at a certain airport rental car counter were given directions to the media center by very kind workers. Get off at Pearl St. they said. Pearl, like the precious stone. Pearl.

Except that once folks arrived at Pearl St., there was no exit. Construction had shut it down.

 

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Mike Holmgren Knows What It Means to Win in Green Bay

January 28, 2011   Pat McManamon   No comments

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CLEVELAND — There is no other city in the country with a team like the Green Bay Packers, and there is no other city with a relationship with its team like Green Bay.

Mike Holmgren understood, but he really understood deeply when he worked as Packers coach from 1992-98.

“It hits you from the first step when you get off the airplane,” Holmgren said this week from Cleveland, where he is now president of the Cleveland Browns. “You drive down Lombardi Avenue to the facility. You see the pictures of Bart Starr and Jerry Kramer and Paul Hornung.

“If you know football at all, and I like football … I was kind of a historian … you can’t help it but feel it. You just can’t help it.”

 

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For Ben Roethlisberger, Winning Does Not Equate to Redemption

January 24, 2011   Pat McManamon   No comments

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Ben RoethlisbergerCHICAGO — The Super Bowl‘s story machinery can be overwhelming. Small issues become large, major stories become gargantuan. It’s part of what makes the game and the weeks leading up to it great, and not so great.

This year there is no shortage of good tales to tell as Pittsburgh and Green Bay prepare to play on the biggest sports night of the year. Two of the most aggressive and creative defensive coordinators match wits. Historic teams, founded in 1921 and 1933, play each other for the first time in this game. All will be dissected, as will running games, passing games and the story of the backup defensive back who was raised by wolves in the back garden of a London row house. That one always brings out the soft music on TV.

One story that also will be told over and over again is the one of Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger. Already ESPN has used the word “redemption” to refer to Roethlisberger.

Redemption.

Please.

 

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