So, the 2008 NFL Draft is over and done. The Patriots needed to get younger and better on defense. At the moment, they appear to have gotten younger. Whether or not they're better remains to be seen. Even if the young players step in and contribute on defense, it's hard to see the Patriots not taking at least one step back next season.

It seems highly unlikely that the AFC East won't improve at all in the coming season. Adding Jake Long should make the Dolphins offensive line (which was probably their biggest weakness among many, many, many weaknesses) considerably better. Granted, they still have a long way to go to be good in that area, but it's a start. Buffalo and the Jets should be slightly better than they were last season as well. All this points to the Patriots cruising to another division title, but it should be a tougher run and 16-0 isn't happening again.

The mid to late first round was the most interesting part of the draft, what with the trades and the run of mediocre offensive line prospects coming off the board the way they did. If I had to pick one team to blame for that crime against good taste, I think I'd have to blame the Lions. I don't see the sense in their trading down two spots to take Gosder Cherilus four rounds too soon. But that's just me. Apparently it was vitally important that they give Boston College something to brag about with two Eagles going in the first round.

After the Notre Dame game, I posted something to the effect that Cherilus had played himself out of millions of dollars in guaranteed money with the way Kerry Neal and Brian Smith blew past his feeble attempts to handle their speed rushes. Granted Cherilus was playing left tackle when people assure me that he is a natural right tackle. But if two true freshmen linebackers from an historically dreadful Notre Dame team cruised by him repeatedly as though he were Matt Light with a perfect season riding on his ability to block Justin Tuck or Osi Umenyura, how long will it take NFL defenses to exploit this flaw in Cherilus' game? But what would April be without the Lions making an inexplicable and indefensible pick?

I also think Atlanta gave up an awful lot to trade into the first round to draft their left tackle of the future in USC's Sam Baker. It is essential to protect a rookie QB's blind side, or any QB for that matter. But Baker wasn't so dominant in college that he was worth that risk and his injury history is a cause of some concern.

But the Falcons must be praised for picking up a temporary fix at QB until Ron Mexico clears up his legal issues and resolves his indefinite suspension. As I watched the draft coverage, I found myself unimpressed by the deep throw over the middle Matt Ryan completed against Maryland and Ron Jaworski broke down from two angles. And yet the same clip had to have been shown something like 20 times.

The first problem I had with the clip is that Maryland wasn't exactly a dominant team in the ACC last season. Then no mention was made of the fact that Maryland's defense was shifting around and looking very confused before the snap. Finally, with all the talk of throwing the receiver open, Jaws didn't bother to mention that NFL middle linebackers drop into their zones with a lot more precision and much better technique than the Maryland defender showed on that play (his shoulders were turned in such a way that he could do everything but cover the receiver on the play).

With the receivers and offensive line awaiting him, I don't see a very promising future in Atlanta for Matt Ryan. Yes, he was head and shoulders above the rest of the quarterback class of 2008, but that could just as easily be due to the weakness of that position group as a whole as opposed to a ringing endorsement of Ryan's potential.

I think the Cowboys dropped the ball big time when they passed on Rashard Mendenhall to draft Felix Jones. When the dust settles on this choice, I think we'll all be amazed that they passed on a better runner to draft a guy named Jones from the University of Arkansas because they were owned by a moron named Jones who went to the University of Arkansas. And I don't want any nonsense about Jones having breakaway speed. After watching the Rose Bowl, it should be readily apparent that Mendenhall has as much speed as any back with a ball under his arm.

Maybe the Steve Youngs of the world couldn't see why Brian Brohm plummeted the way he did. Personally, I think it's due to the fact that most teams didn't want to risk their future on a 23 year old with a receding hairline, a creepy pink shirt that made him look like he was auditioning for a dinner theater version of St. Elmo's Fire and bowl cut to top it off. He and Aaron Rogers would be set for the weakest QB competition in recent memory if it weren't for Miami taking a QB in the second round for the second year in a row. Chad Henne and John Beck are going to be a running punchline this season, just wait and see.

The Bears draft started fairly promising, at least they finally tried to get younger on the offensive line. Why they drafted a running back in the second round when they had much more critical needs at quarterback and wide receiver is beyond me, however. Yes, Cedric Benson hasn't produced the way the team desperately needs him to produce. But part of that has to be due to the inferior offensive line play last year and the fact that the team wasn't a serious passing threat.

I won't deny that I have probably been Cedric Benson's biggest supporter. Nor will I deny that he's disappointed my prediction that he would become a 1,500 yard rusher in the not too distant future. But no matter how you feel about Benson, it doesn't change the fact that the Bears top three receivers are Mark Bradley, Marty Booker's preserved remains and Devin Hester (who is at least another year away from being something beyond a novelty act in the passing game). And the less said about Bears' QBs the better. But maybe their later picks will turn out better than I think.

As a final note on this draft, why did the top two picks from Notre Dame have to go to teams I hate? I like John Carlson as a football player, or at least I did. Now I have to root against him because no one in their right mind wants to see anything good happen to the Seattle Seahawks. And why did Trevor Laws have to go to the sinking ship that is the Eagles? Putting a quality run stopper on a team like that is like putting a lace doily on a bowling ball. One can only hope he becomes an excuse for Donovan McNabb's inability to put the team over the top and he goes on to a team where he can thrive.

In other matters, it's been too long again since I've ripped Bill Simmons. First, I need to point out something from his piece on the Bruins Canadiens series. This is the verbal indictment of the Boston sports fan I've been waiting for, and true to form that jerk Simmons thinks it's a good thing, but here's a sentence he wrote:

We won an emotional Game 3 in overtime, followed by a number of postgame brawls on and around Causeway Street between Boston and Montreal fans, at least 50 of them involving guys named Sully and Murph teaming up to beat the hell out of someone named Pierre.

That's one more reason Boston sports fans are overrated. It takes two of them to beat down a French Canadian named Pierre. General Patton would be rolling over in his grave if he gave a damn about Red Sox Nation. If it takes two to beat up a lone Canadiens fan, how many does it take to throw a piece of pizza off the back of a Canadiens fan's head? On the plus side, I suppose I should thank God for the shanty Irish, otherwise Irish Americans might look like they make a contribution to American society instead of being degenerate drunken bullies. Thanks for bringing our ethnic group down once more, people of Boston.

Now consider this paragraph from Simmons' playoff awards column:

The Brian Fantana Memorial "Hey, Champ, Maybe You Should Stop Talking For Awhile" Award
To Charles Barkley for declaring last weekend that Rasheed Wallace is the most talented player in the league and could have been the greatest player ever if he wanted it. Chuck Wagon, we love you ... but you can't possibly believe that, right? Rasheed couldn't handle the responsibility of being great every night, true, but part of being great is that you've made a conscious choice to accept that everyday responsibility and live up to a different standard of pressure and expectations. It's like a chicken/egg thing. If Vince Carter was wired like Michael Jordan, he would have been Michael Jordan. If Derrick Coleman was wired like Kevin Garnett, he would have been the greatest power forward ever. If Sam Jones was wired like Jerry West, he would have been the NBA logo instead of what he was -- a top-50 player and one of the NBA's memorably clutch shooters. Rasheed was much closer to the Sam Jones camp than the DC/Vince camp, but all of them had one thing in common: They didn't totally want it. And that's part of being great.

Is it just me or did he rip Barkley and then go on to make exactly the same point Barkley made which made Simmons rip him in the first place?

Happy trails to Pat Riley, who has given up his coaching duties in Miami. When Dwayne Wade becomes this generation's Michael Ray Richardson three years from now, I'm sure every one will blame Star Jones, but a few of us might wonder what might have been had Riley given up after the 2006 title run or at the very least hadn't acquired spare parts like Shawn Marion and Ricky Davis (two very talented players but more concerned with stats than wins or team play).

And way to go Roger Clemens, thanks for having an alleged ongoing affair with a mediocre singer starting when she was 15. That really helps my effort to defend you against all logic. At least TO has been well behaved lately, so I have that going for me. Which is nice...

I find myself feeling very depressed at the moment. And it has remarkably little to do with the unfortunate collapse of the Texas Rangers earlier this afternoon. Rather like last season's impressive Mother's Day Miracle, this was a substantial comeback against a terrible team who probably never should have had that lead to begin with when compared with this version of the Red Sox.

This was shaping up to be a very average weekend anyway. There was good news tempered by bad news from the NFL Network. Bryant Gumbel has done the right thing and left the broadcast booth to pursue other challenges, presumably he will go on to bore and frustrate an entirely new audience in an entirely new venture. Good riddance.

Alas, that news can only be greeted with a moderate smile. In the same article, the NFL Network revealed that they are searching for a new partner to call games with Cris Collinsworth. Perhaps they can fulfill Bill Simmons' ultimate fantasy and pair Collinsworth with Gus Johnson. Not that it matters.

Unless they pair Collinsworth with a person who will backhand him whenever Collinsworth sees fit to remind us that he was probably the single most spectacular receiver of all time who never made a difference on the field and is the second biggest fraud ever to attend the University of Florida (and believe me, that is some stiff competition) behind only Steve Spurrier, this will not bode well for football fans.

Collinsworth is a terrible broadcaster and a dick. He also has a penchant for dressing as though he were the Man from U.N.C.L.E. or auditioning for the lead in a dinner theater version of the Ghost and Mrs. Muir. And sadly, he brings more to the table than any other member of the NBC NFL studio crew, which speaks volumes to the degree to which Olberman, Costas, King and Barber have elevated sucking to a form of high art. I didn't forget Bettis, but I still have a problem with bad-mouthing a man who turned in two transcendent performances in bowl games for the Fighting Irish.

That is my nightmare situation at the moment, that the NFL Network would pair Collinsworth with Tiki Barber. Perhaps two such massive egos couldn't coexist in a booth for four hours at a stretch, one can only hope. What a disaster that would be for fans. Especially since neither one of them ever brought enough to the table to justify having such prominent egos. I don't fault people for self-involvement, but those two guys' selves aren't anywhere near as impressive as they would have us believe.

In other news, two strange stories came to my attention recently. First, Dwayne Wade might be dating Star Jones. All I can say is...yikes. She, even more than Charlie Weis (who almost died in the procedure), is the poster child for what's wrong with gastric bypass surgery. She has a massive fat face on top of a grotesquely skinny body and a turkey neck. It's creepy.

But it serves D-Wade right. He became infatuated with the image the media projected on him during his first couple of wildly successful seasons, particularly the championship run of 2006. He took that "me against the world" suicide drive mentality to the extreme last season and into this year. His body is breaking down because of it. He's alienating fans because his style of play (when he plays) is no longer fun to watch and his team made the Titanic's sudden sinking seem like a relatively mild disaster. And apparently his judgement in other areas has taken a hit as well.

The other story that disturbed me was Michael Westbrook's recent revelation that the perception that he was gay damaged his NFL career. Apparently it had nothing to do with the fact that he was overpaid and underperformed. Maybe he just wasn't as good as we were led to believe, even in spite of his physical gifts. Now he's involved in mixed martial arts in Arizona. Rolling around on mats with strange men in varying stages of undress will go along way to convincing us he's straight. Not that there's anything wrong with that...

And one more completely unrelated matter... I recently found out that I am expected to fulfill every one's favorite civic duty. I have jury duty in July. And I opened the notice while I was watching Twelve Angry Men (the original version). And that coincidence is what is really depressing me at the moment.

Even though the Red Sox managed to come back against the Mariners tonight and win the single most impressive game a team has ever played in their 27th contest of a 162 game season, today was still a good day in Sedition in Red Sox Nation world. Tom Brady was seen walking through NYC sporting a jaunty Yankee cap. Bob Halloran wrote an uninspired post for his blog, and there was a mind-numbingly dull piece in Red Sox Times on how to socialize with other Sox fans down in New York. And best of all, Steven Jackson and the Golden State Warriors routed the mighty Dallas Mavericks out of the playoffs.

First, Red Sox Nation is in moral crisis because their football hero Tom Brady is wearing a Yankee cap to conceal his receding hairline while he's out gallivanting his Brazilian supermodel companion. And he's spending his time in New York City when he could be in Boston cheering on the Sox. Maybe he could have been seen in green Sox regalia, after all, isn't it his duty to make sure that he spend every waking moment figuring out new ways to do everything New England fans want him to do?

That's just one more reason to love Red Sox fans. This is a huge non-story. After all, Brady came from California and went to school in Michigan. His ties to anything remotely connected to Red Sox Nation didn't even begin until the Pats drafted him. So why is it incumbent upon him not to wear a Yankees hat?

If Brady does in fact, as I fear, harbor political aspirations for his future after football, doesn't it make sense for him to curry favor in New York? It's a bigger, richer market than New England. And he already has Patriot fans in his corner. Hell, he'd have to start breaking in to season ticket holders' houses at night to smash their possessions and kick their children to alienate them.

Then there is our old friend Bob Halloran, who is not convinced that the NFL pays enough attention to on-field performance in the rush to draft workout warriors who put up impressive numbers at the combine. The vertical leap in particular concerns Halloran. I'm sure it never occurred to him, but the vertical leap is one of the better ways to measure a player's explosiveness from a standing start.

And as for the question of whether the teams don't watch enough game film, that is ridiculous. In the process of media build-up, individual workouts and interview sessions, teams seem like they do more and study more than they should as opposed to less. It's hard sometimes to tell everything you need to know about a player from the game tape. There is a very fine line between the player with a great head for the game and a guy who was in the right place at the right time against inferior competition.

If you are a Red Sox fan and you want to network with other colossal tools, there are a number of places in New York City in the heart of Yankee Country where you can meet fellow travellers. Read this Fist Magnet's Guide To Rooting For The Sox In New York to find out where to go. Use extreme caution, however, and do not operate a motor vehicle or heavy machinery after reading it. The boredom it inflicts could be lethal in large doses.

I particularly enjoyed the story of the author's meeting with Jonathan Papelbon's mother. Oh, to be a fly on the wall for that encounter which I'm sure must have been painfully awkward. Not having a child who pitches for a professional team, I can't say for certain how uncomfortable it would be to meet a random stranger who just happens to root for said team and wants to have a nice chat about my son. But I'm willing to be that it would call to mind visions of Ted Bundy, or at the very least the Robert DeNiro character from the terrible movie The Fan.

And in case you're wondering in Red Sox Nation, there is a touch of grey to the silver lining of tonight's impressive come-from-behind win over the Mariners. First, the Mariners starter should have been pitching to Artie Lange in Beer League. And Matsuzaka walked the bases loaded in the opening frame before he recorded an out. Yeah, JC Romero recorded his first save in a long, long, long time, but lost in all of that is that Jonathan Papelbon might have overstressed his arm throwing those thirty five pitches while blowing the save the other night. That won't be good for the Nation.

Finally, the real story of the night is that the NBA, the Bilderbergers, the Trilateral Commission and the Rand Corporation can rest easy for another year. Mark Cuban and his Dallas Mavericks have just been eliminated from the playoffs by the Golden State Warriors. For the first time under the current playoff format and just the third time ever, an eight seed has eliminated the one seed. It's only the second time a team which had won 65 games in the regular season failed to win the championship, and the first time a team with many wins didn't reach the conference finals.

Google and YouTube are in the process of retreating to the hills. Since the NBA has eviscerated the lone voice of reason on basketball issues by fining Cuban hundreds of thousands of dollars for his crying out in the basketball wilderness in blogMaverick, the Benefactor can but vent his spleen on media conglomerates. With any luck, Cuban will be too depressed to buy the Chicago Cubs in the wake of this catastrophe.

Dirk Nowitzki's performance, especially in the second half, was abysmal at best. I remember a quote attributed to Napoleon that said "scratch a Russian and you will wound a Tartar." Nowitzki has inspired me to offer this version: "hit a German in the mouth and you will make a gutless bully cry." I'm sure Angela Merkel will give Dirk a national holiday to console him, as rolling over in a playoff game is still the most tangible achievement of any German since a ghost in the machine ruthlessly shanghaied a four week old child into the German army.

Even better, Don Nelson led his team past the owner who fired him. Steven Jackson who did his best to take the mantle of worst citizen in the NBA (based on the way the media covers him) or guy who really needs some help with his decision making off the court from Ron Artest as long as Jackson stayed in Indiana is now somewhat vindicated. At the end of the day, Dallas was outplayed and outcoached, they were beaten as an organization. And it put a smile on my face, if it's any consolation to the Benefactor.

All I have to say on the Western Conference playoffs as they progress is this...

Be looking good Warriors. Be looking real good.

And good luck with that, as Baron Davis reminds us that a guy really shouldn't have a beard that's longer than the hair on his head.

Who is Travis Buck? Up until tonight, it seemed like he was nobody. Then he came up to bat in the hallowed stadium in the Fens this evening, facing the single greatest closer in the history of the world, provided of course you limit that history to April-July of 2006. Travis Buck committed a cardinal sin, one for which the Universe will exact a horrible vengeance. He dared hit a home run off of Jonathan Papelbon, handing that fearsome reliever his first blown save of the season.

Having the best record in baseball in April is all well and good, and going through a whole month of baseball without a blown save is the first step on the way to a World Series win. But could it be that there are some flaws beginning to emerge in the mighty Red Sox facade? They started out strong, taking a four run lead bu the end of the third inning. And then they allowed the As to score five unanswered runs.

And in blowing his first save of the season, Papelbon threw 35 pitches. That's an awful lot for a guy with arm concerns. It's even more when you consider the fact that the team is taking every conceivable measure to limit his appearances and keep him from overtaxing his mighty arm. Sooner or later, the team will need more out of its bullpen than it can deliver.

Okajima has massively exceeded expectations, to my disappointment, but there is no guarantee that he can sustain this performance level over 50 appearances. Timlin is not a spring chicken anymore. Brendan Donnelly is a fearsome competitor when it comes to getting into shoving matches with Jose Guillen, but he took the loss tonight. Who knows when they'll need a big performance out of Papelbon again? And who is 100% convinced that a guy who looked pretty tired in his lone inning of work tonight can keep pitching at the level the Red Sox require to sustain this momentum? Plus the Yankees are playing the Rangers right now, and looked like they might come alive any day now.

The Dallas Mavericks managed to stave off elimination tonight, winning Game Five in their series with the Golden State Warriors. It's depressing, but I can't shake the feeling that they are poised to make a run in the next two games entirely too reminiscent of the run Miami made right over them in last year's Finals. I really don't want to see that happen, but for some reason I can't get too motivated to root for Golden State.

I'm not sure why. They play a very entertaining brand of basketball, in fact their style is very close to what basketball ought to be. Plus I really hate Dallas. I think it's Baron Davis that is turning me away from the Warriors. Look at this video of Baron Davis clapping in the process of being ejected from Game Two of this series. I don't really know how to describe it, but it's eerie. I've never seen anyone clap in such a maniacal fashion. Watching the guy clap like that got me thinking that he just might have a freezer full of body parts (human, animal, both) in a garage somewhere in the suburbs of the Bay Area.



Just a bit more on the NFL Draft, I was not particularly impressed with the Bears top pick in the recent draft. I think Greg Olsen has a chance to be a very good tight end in the NFL, but I think they had bigger problems to address. I think they could have used Alan Branch, even though Mel Kiper wasn't in love with his work ethic. They very nearly lucked into him with their second round pick, but Arizona made a crafty move to trade ahead of them.

I was also hoping they'd get a chance at Joe Staley when Kansas City didn't take him. I, or more precisely my fantasy team, badly needed Kansas City to take the best available offensive lineman. Larry Johnson was the centerpiece of my team for the last season and a half (it's a keeper league). Now, there is the fact that it's been many moons since a back who set the NFL record for carries in a season came back strong the following year. Signs do not point to LJ having a very good year behind a makeshift offensive line which has not recovered from the retirement of Willie Roaf and now Will Shields is gone. Bad times, but I can't let LJ go at the moment.

But back to Greg Olsen...

After today's revelation that Olsen was part of a group of nitwits who recorded an obscene, sexist rap song as freshmen at the U and Jay Mariotti's "effort" to waddle his way to the moral high ground on the subject, I'm inching my way closer to supporting him. In the interest of full disclosure, since I did not own up to the fact that I called out a Red Sox pitcher in my tirade against said team's proclivity for beaning opponents to send messages because he's hit more batters than any other pitcher since 2003 without mentioning that the pitcher in question throws knuckleballs and a fastball that is slower than most changeups, Greg Olsen forsook the University of Notre Dame to play for Miami. So I'm still not particularly inclined to empathize with him.

I know I piled up some tool of note segments yesterday, but believe it or not, I have more. Check out this hilariously disappointing video of a tool trying to power slide/burn out in a Barbie convertible. It's disappointing because there is no audio and it's difficult to tell just how fast he was going at the time of the incident. What a shame.

Perhaps I'm being cruel in enjoying what appeared to be a fairly painful injury as much as I am. But it serves him right. The odds of me experiencing a similar injury have to be in the trillions to one against. There is no way that I'd get into a Barbie car in the first place. I certainly wouldn't allow any observer to record the moment for people like me to mock. And if by some ghastly set of circumstances I broke one or both of those restrictions, I sure as hell wouldn't try some Fast and the Furious style nonsense whilst driving a roofless vehicle designed for little children. So this nitwit deserves to be mocked.

Then there is this video. I'm not sure if it qualifies as a tool of note segment. But it's worth watching. Some unknown person operating under the moniker Leeroy Jenkins is roaming the World of Warcraft landscape and leading unsuspecting gamers into ambushes. I have to salute him for the industry he has exhibited in his quest to tool on tools.



However, World of Warcraft is reeling from being mocked in South Park last year and a recent episode of the Simpsons. Plus it seems like a hell of a lot of time and effort for about 15 minutes of genuine entertainment.

It's funny to see the way professional sports franchises operate sometimes. The Celtics sinking ship let Sebastian Telfair go because his off court behavior gave them a convenient excuse to drop him without much fanfare. The Patriots reversed field on their operating mantra during this season's draft weekend, forsaking the traditional high character guys fans have grown accustomed to over the last decade and a half for riskier, sketchier players. The NBA equivalent of a chicken running around with its head cut off is trying to take the high road while the NFL's shining city on a hill is suddenly trying to recycle bad citizens. Funny, indeed.

Of course, we all learned recently exactly how significant the decision to cut Telfair is. Bob Ryan emerged from his lair and wrote yet another piece to kick a man while he was down. Anotine Walker, Butch Hobson and Nomar have all merited this treatment in the past, and now it's Telfair's turn. The only thing that amazes me in all of this is that it took an eminent basketball mind like Bob Ryan nearly 10 months to see the flaws in Sebastian Telfair's game.

I suppose I am being somewhat unfair to Mr Ryan and not presenting his entire argument, but this is my blog and I can say what I want. And anybody who has read any of my past material probably can anticipate where this post is heading. Cutting Telfair is just one more in a long line of spectacular personnel failures in this Celtic regime.

The Sebastian Telfair catastrophe is one more step Ainge has taken to step out from under the albatross that was the Antoine Walker trade. Ainge didn't like Walker's game, so he traded him to Dallas for Jiri Welsch and Raef LaFrentz. Jiri added very little value. And Raef's contract was such a nightmare that Ainge unloaded him for a glass menagerie of failure and helped enable Portland to pull off a draft day coup and land Rookie of the Year Brandon Roy.

In the end, I am somewhat disappointed that the Celtics have let Telfair go. He was paid too much, produced too little and served to remind the last few people that really care about the Celtics that the team was in the hands of incompetent morons. Every time he took the floor for the Celtics he was a walking dilemma. He either embodied the fact that the people running the team have no practical conception of how to assemble a basketball team or that the people running the team are deliberately assembling a bad team. Either way, it suited me.

And now the Patriots are rolling the dice with Randy Moss, who has promised to revert to the Randy of old. People can take that one of two ways. Randy Moss will either burn up the league, catching passes, scoring TDs and delivering in big situations or he'll burn down Gillette Stadium. I am more inclined to believe the latter than the former, although the fact that the CHB has thrown down a gauntlet on this deal makes me far less certain of that than I was at this time last night.

I am not now, nor have I ever been a Patriots fan. And even though reports have Moss wowing the assembled luminaries by clocking in at an impressive 4.29 in the 40, I do not find myself convinced that the Patriots are the prohibitive favorites in the AFC. I remember the old Randy from his days with the Vikings. Nobody could run like he did, catch the way he did or terrorize defensive backfields the way he did. But there was always something missing. I think it was courage.

At least, by that I mean the courage to go out and put everything on the line to win a big game. Say what you want about Terrell Owens being a miserable, selfish cancer. But let's not forget that he came back from a broken leg in a month and a half to play in the Super Bowl, signed a waiver and outplayed eventual Super Bowl MVP Deion Branch. And let's not forget that there is no moment like that in the Randy Moss highlight reel. There are no postseason moments in there at all.

That's the Randy I remember. As I talked to my man who is a Patriots season ticket holder, I couldn't help but think of the Randy moments I will never forget. And none of them involved that famous Monday Night game where he punished the Cowboys for passing on him in the draft.

No, when I think of Moss, I'll remember the day a dreadful Giants team earned the right to be destroyed by the Ravens. They shut out the Vikings 41-0. And in all of that, rumor has it Randy sulked all game and didn't perform because he was upset that the powers-that-be in Giants Stadium wouldn't let his kid on the sideline. Truly that is the heart of a champion.

Then there was the tail end of the 2003 season when the Vikings needed to beat the Bears in Chicago to clinch a playoff spot. The Vikings drove down into the red zone, in a goal to go situation, and they looked to Randy Moss on a corner route. The TD would give the Vikings the lead, which would have put them in prime position to make the playoffs. And what happened? Charles Tillman, an unheralded rookie at the time, took the ball away from Randy, who didn't put up much of a fight for the ball and the season, in the end zone. The Bears won the game, the Vikings got a jump on the offseason.

Maybe all the optimism is warranted. Maybe the Patriots can awaken in Moss the fire that never seemed to be there when it really, really, really mattered. Or maybe his production over the course of the regular season will be enough to get the team in prime position for a first round bye and home field throughout the playoffs, so it won't matter if he disappears in the playoffs. Or maybe he won't enjoy playing in balmy Foxboro in November, December and January. Not to mention trips to Buffalo or New York in the dead of winter.

If he is so fragile that he coasted through two dismal seasons in Oakland because he wasn't happy, what will Randy Moss do if he experiences any adversity in New England. Will Stallworth be able to play a full season and be productive? Will Kelley Washington play up to his potential? Will the fact that the Patriots did nothing to shore up a weak offensive line come back to bite this team when they have to play the Colts again this year?

Only time will tell the answers to those questions, and the other fascinating conundrum... can Teddy Bruschi and Mike Vrabel combine to form a serviceable linebacker since they have lost very nearly two steps at this point? And before any Patriots fan reminds me that Matt Light contained Shawne Merriman and was a Pro Bowl alternate last season, think back to how that line held up against the Bears and Colts last season. I think I have a better chance of smiling at the end of this season than Patriots fans do.

This draft was very compelling, and not just because of Brady Quinn's humiliating Green Room experience. It seemed to me like a group of teams got together to see who could make the most spectacular mistakes. Kansas City may very well have pulled it off, passing on Joe Staley to take a wide receiver when they desperately needed to replace Willie Roaf and Will Shields more than they needed a wide receiver. But I think Philly took the cake, trading down to the second round to take Kolb, who looked to have a big future in Canada.

Let's not leave Miami out of this, either. Going with Ted Ginn Jr. will come back to haunt them. They faced a similar situation as the Radiers did this season. Both teams made the wrong QB decision last season, Oakland passing on Leinart and Miami signing Culpepper over Drew Brees. This time out, Oakland owned that mistake and took Russell over Calvin Johnson. Miami didn't own that mistake. In fact, they made it again. Instead of taking Quinn, they took a college receiver who will have more impact returning kicks than catching passes and went with the Mormon Chris Weinke in Round Two.

We also have a tool of note segment or three before I wrap up tonight. First, to Chicago fans who are enjoying the fact that Pat Riley gave them an easy victory in their opening round series, here is an action shot of the broadcasters of the second team in Second City performing the song "Summertime Blues" at a benefit concert. I get the feeling that this song probably made things worse for any one who found themselves feeling any blues, regardless of the season.

There there is this ____________ on Myspace. I really don't know which insult out of my vast store of insults to apply here. This tool transcends words like spaz and dork and tool and fist magnet. Maybe it's because he's Australian. Maybe this is considered cool Down Under. Either way, you'll have to supply your own insult for him, I am just too baffled.

And finally, there is this loser having a go at the eating of meat. Apparently eating meat is not eco-friendly. Apparently it takes too much energy and produces too many carbons. Just for the sake of argument, I wonder how many carbons it takes to produce the synthetic protein supplements that vegetarians often take. Not to mention the fact that there would be a bunch of cows running around once people like me stop eating them. And chemical castration is ever so much more humane and natural than killing them outright and feeding them to people like me.

Orwell himself had very little esteem for vegetarians, whom he deemed "food cranks." In The Road to Wigan Pier, he wrote:

"This kind of thing is by itself sufficient to alienate plenty of decent people And their instinct is perfectly sound, for the food crank is by definition a person willing to cut himself off from human society in hopes of adding five years on to the life of his carcase; that is, a person out of touch with common humanity."

Eating meat is part of what it means to be human. My ancestors scratched and clawed and invented their way to the top of the food chain. And they didn't do it so I could eat lettuce and pop protein pills. And I wonder how much energy and how many carbons will go into caring for generations of vegetarians living to be 100 when all the meat eaters like me have kicked off from coronary thrombosis at age 60.

So, the Patriots have been more active in this free agency period than they have in the past. It is and it isn't a surprise. It was obvious from the way they wore down in the playoffs that they'd have to reload. The loss against the Colts was the first time they'd given away a game of that magnitude when they led in the second half since the dynasty began. It was just a question of how the team would go about it, through free agency or the draft.

Apparently, they've elected free agency. It makes some sense, since they seem to have lost their mojo in the draft at some point in the last two or three seasons. With the notable exception of Maroney, last season's draft was a disappointment. Chad Jackson is delivering fifth round pick performance on a second round pick salary. He may get better, but then again he may not. There is no reason he shouldn't have emerged as the team's number one receiver this past season, not so much because he's amazingly talented but because it's a pathetic group against which to compete.

Stephen Gostkowski has made some big kicks to this point, but I think it's too soon to evaluate a kicker. Place kicking is a strange racket. There are some guys who burst on the scene like Matin Grammatica in Tampa Bay and then fade away. Unfortunately, careers don't often rebound the way his has with the Cowboys. There are guys like Vanderjagt who (before his career went into respiratory failure in Dallas this season) only miss two or three kicks a year, but they happen to be the biggest kicks. But the Pats got through one season and letting Vinatieri go did not prove to be their undoing, so I should give credit to the team for that.

The other picks left something to be desired. Yes, David Thomas caught a big TD in San Diego, but the Patriots were fairly well stocked with TEs. For my part, I do not believe that Thomas made Daniel Graham expendable. Graham did that to himself, looking for top of the line TE money on a relatively parsimonious team which already had a much better TE in Ben Watson under contract who just happened to be younger to boot. I can't figure why they drafted another TE in the fourth round (Garrett Mills), but that's just me.

Ryan O'Callaghan started the first few games of the season, but he was far from inspiring. I guess any evaluation of his performance will be tied to your opinion of the team as a whole. I am not a Pats fan, so I think he was a bust. A Pats fan might say that his contributions were what you can reasonably expect from a fifth round pick. He might be in trouble if DeBrickishaw Ferguson is just the first in a trend of lighter, more athletic tackles to counter the smaller, speedier defensive ends like Dwight Freeney.

We'll have to wait and see on the other picks from last season. The draft is important, but not the only way to build a team. After all, the 1979 Steelers were the only team to win the championship with a roster of players who had only played for the Steelers at that point in their careers. It's still important, though. To keep playing at a high level, an NFL team needs to have significant contributions from its late round picks. Consider the Bears, their leading sacker was Mark Anderson, a fifth round pick. Or the Saints, with wide receivers like Marques Colston and Terrence Copper.

Although it wasn't necessarily the case in past years, this Patriots team needs immediate veteran help at a number of positions. Their linebacking corps in particular needed an upgrade. Age and health problems have taken their toll on Teddy Bruschi. More surprising was the decline of Mike Vrabel, who looked like Imhotep in the Mummy after he'd lost his supernatural powers at the end of the season. And of course the wide receiver position was not exactly a strength.

The Patriots have, to this point, made two moves to upgrade their linebacking corps. First, they signed Baltimore OLB Adalius Thomas. Perhaps more importantly, the team engaged in the underrated process of addition by subtraction. Tully Banta-Cain who was probably the 37th best linebacker in the AFC last season has departed for San Francisco. Alas, I couldn't ascertain by my astute investigative reporting whether he had flowers in his hair or not.

Patriots fans seem delighted with the Thomas signing. I am not as disappointed as you might expect. Unlike the average person who follows football, I have a very long memory. I can recall the strange case of Edgerton Hartwell. For those of you who don't remember him, he was once a promising inside linebacker playing next to Ray Lewis in the Ravens defense. He parlayed that into a 6 year contract with Falcons worth $26.25 million. Unfortunately for him, and the Falcons, Hartwell couldn't stay healthy. This offseason, as his former teammate Thomas made the big splash signing with the Pats, Hartwell was a footnote on the transaction wire as the Falcons cut their losses and released him.

At least I'm not the only one bringing up concerns in the wake of the Thomas signing. This writer on SI.com has a piece of his column on the Pats signing devoted to the list of free agents who have left Baltimore for greener pastures only to leave their mojo behind. It is not a short list, either. Gery Baxter, cornerback for the Ravens, turnstile for the Browns is just one of its members. I take issue, however, with the inclusion of Anthony Weaver. Yes, he had half as many sacks in 2006 as he did in his last season in Baltimore, but he only had 2 sacks that year. Of course, my defense of Weaver just might be related to the fact that he played at Notre Dame.

I am not convinced that Wes Welker is a significant upgrade at the wide receiver position. As you read this, if you are new to this blog, I guess I ought to point out that I have a significant antipathy to Wes Welker. Due to the bizarre priorities of the "people" who established the default scoring system for Fox Sports Fantasy Football, return yards were worth as much as receiving yards and more than rushing yards. So I ended up losing a game by 3 points when Welker went for 19.7 for my opponent. I blogged about it at length in the wake of that catastrophe, so you can read it if you want here.

Welker's career stats aren't overly impressive. One could argue that he is a more proven commodity as than what the team could expect from the two picks the team gave up to get him (2nd and 7th rounds). That may be true, but then last season's best return man, Devin Hester, was a 3rd round pick. I think the most important aspect of this pick is that it should free Maroney from returning kicks. I guess that's nothing to sneeze at, but I think that the Patriots will end up regretting the last few drafts, and giving up picks in this one, three or four years from now. Remember it when it happens that you heard it here first.