Montrose's Chris Snee excited about starting today's Pro Bowl
Normally, Chris Snee and his family would be spending this week getting their lives back to some normalcy and enduring the biting February cold.
This has not been a normal year for the New York Giants offensive lineman.
Today, the former Montrose High School and Boston College standout will take the field with his NFC teammates for the annual NFL Pro Bowl in tropical Honolulu.
Kickoff is scheduled for 4:30 p.m. and the game can be seen on NBC.
"It's exciting," Snee said in a telephone interview. "This is my first time here. I feel like I have about three weeks of football left in me, since we lost in our first playoff game.
"It will be nice to play one more time."
A fifth-year year professional, Snee was voted into the all-star classic as a starter after helping the Giants to the NFC East title before losing to the Philadelphia Eagles in defense of their Super Bowl championship.
He is on the island with his wife and children, his three brothers and in-laws.
And they are all enjoying the 80-degree sun-filled days.
"It's been nice," the 27-year-old Snee chuckled. "I'm hearing that it's supposed to stay this way for a couple of more days."
The 6-foot-3, 317-pound right guard earned his way to the Pro Bowl this season, playing a major role in the Giants bruising running game.
He had been an alternate for the game three times.
Joining Snee on the starting offensive line will be Minnesota guard Steve Hutchinson, Carolina tackle Jordan Gross, Washington tackle Chris Samuels, and Dallas center Andre Gurode.
Arizona quarterback Kurt Warner is the starter, along with teammates Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin.
Minnesota running back Adrian Peterson, Washington fullback Mike Sellers, and Dallas tight end Jason Witten complete the NFC starting offense.
"It's been pretty neat," Snee said. "The more I think about it, the more I realize what a reward this is for the accomplishments of your team and you as an individual.
"I'm really just getting to know everybody and it's been a lot of fun."
(c) The Scranton Times Tribune
A history-making Super Bowl for sure
TAMPA, Fla. -- When Steelers wide receiver Santonio Holmes finally jumped to his feet after that mesmerizing touchdown catch, he pretended to pour chalk out of the football into his hand, then threw it into the air as an imitation of NBA star LeBron James' pregame ritual.
How perfectly appropriate. How superbly symbolic.
Yes, we are all witnesses. But on this day, Holmes provided the magic.
When the game's MVP came down with that pass, when he managed to tiptoe the sideline to produce a magical catch that will forever live in NFL folklore, he didn't just cap off another Steelers' Super Bowl championship in a 27-23 win against the Cardinals.
He managed to keep Arizona from making history of its own. No longer would this go down as the greatest comeback of all time. No longer would the Cardinals lead a game that they once were losing by 13 points.
So dramatic. So intriguing. So Super.
"Steelers football is 60 minutes," coach Mike Tomlin said as he accepted the Lombardi Trophy after Sunday's epic win. "It's never going to be perfect."
It might not have been the perfect performance, and it might have had plenty of hiccups along the way, but the story lines within those 60 minutes still managed to set up a perfectly epic ending.
"We never doubted ourselves - not for a second," Steelers wide receiver Hines Ward said. "We stayed the course. Santonio Holmes really made a name for himself Sunday. This is all what we were preaching about.
"We are the Super Bowl champions."
HISTORY FOR HARRISON
For much of this Super Bowl - one that will be remembered not only as the longest but also as one of the most crippling to an opponent - the defining play seemed at the time to be all too damaging.
Linebacker James Harrison, the NFL's Defensive Player of the Year, jumped in front of quarterback Kurt Warner's attempt at a touchdown pass. And he didn't only intercept it - which would have been detrimental enough - he also rumbled 100 yards the other way, tumbling into the end zone.
Arizona, which set itself up to potentially go into halftime with a four-point lead had it scored on the play, instead was down by 10. As the Cardinals headed toward the locker room for halftime, it was a wonder how they ever would come back.
Then again, it also was a wonder how that play ever could be matched.
Who could have guessed the second half would have managed to effectively accomplish both? Not only did the Cardinals march back into the lead, but Harrison's magic also was equaled by Holmes' miracle.
Really, considering how crippling Harrison's interception return was, it seemed improbable that the Steelers would even require the late touchdown. But a Cardinals surge pinned Pittsburgh into a drastic situation.
With 11 minutes left in the fourth quarter, Warner began to find his groove, orchestrating an eight-play touchdown drive that took less than four minutes. Adding to the Cardinals' fuel, the Steelers later ended up with bad field position, which resulted in a safety because of a holding call in Pittsburgh's end zone.
On Arizona's next series, Warner hooked up with the same player who has made magic all postseason. Wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald caught a pass and blazed 64 yards for a touchdown that gave Arizona a four-point lead.
But there was one problem with Fitzgerald's play: It happened too fast. The Steelers still had 2:37 left to overcome a four-point deficit. And quarterback Ben Roethlisberger was the player leading that drive.
BIG-TIME BEN
Since 2004, Roethlisberger had orchestrated 18 game-winning drives in the fourth quarter or overtime - the most of any quarterback in the NFL. Suddenly, he found himself embracing No. 19.
Roethlisberger completed 6 of 8 passes during the drive, including a 40-yard pass to Holmes. Two plays later, though, they connected on a pass that will be remembered even more than any of the others.
With three defenders surrounding him, Holmes pulled down a high pass thrown by Roethlisberger in the back corner of the end zone with 35 seconds left. Amazingly, he was able to keep both feet in bounds.
"We talk about moments," said Tomlin, 36, who becomes the youngest head coach ever to win a Super Bowl. "We talk about games that are decided by situational football. We probably practice those situations more than a lot of teams. When you watch highlight shows, that's the football game. We embrace those moments.
"We believe we're built for those moments."
On Sunday, they proved it.
bnd.com
Former WMU assistant football coach to be named Baltimore Ravens defensive coordinator
OWINGS MILLS, Md. -- A pair former Western Michigan University assistant football coaches will now hold two of the top coaching spots for the Baltimore Ravens.
According to the Associated Press, Greg Mattison will be named the Ravens' defensive coordinator today, replacing Rex Ryan who took the job of head coach of the New York Jets.
Mattison had been with the team just one season, coaching the linebackers.
Baltimore's head coach is John Harbaugh, who coached with Mattison at WMU during the mid-1980s on the staff of Harbaugh's father, Jack Harbaugh.
Mattison has an extensive background as a collegiate defensive coordinator, including holding that job at WMU, Michigan, Notre Dame and Florida. When he headed up Gators' defense in 2006, they won the national championship.
According to the AP, Mattison coached 11 collegians who were drafted by the NFL, seven of them in the first three rounds.
(c)2008 Michigan Online LLC
Kurt Warner's Unlikely Return to the Super Bowl
Kurt Warner's unlikely return to the Super Bowl is something many didn't expect to see in 2009. The Arizona Cardinals went 9-7 in the 2008 NFL regular season, only making the playoffs due to the lackKurt Warner's Unlikely Return to the Super Bowlof good teams in their NFC West Division. With a mediocre defense, no running game and bad play on the East Coast, few "experts" gave them a chance.
But the Cardinals and Coach Ken Whisenhunt believed in themselves and played a "Us versus Them" theme to the hilt. They beat the Carolina Panthers in Charlotte for a big win and whipped the "East Coast Jinx" at least for the game that mattered. Beating Atlanta in the first round in Arizona wasn't completely unexpected. But beating Carolina on the road and then the Eagles at home were upsets.
Kurt Warner probably played his way into the NFL Hall of Fame this season and more specifically against the Eagles. Warner is 37 years old and has a reputation of fumbles on contact and being slow and easily sacked. But Warner caught fire in the 2008 NFL post season, with some help from all world receiver Larry Fitzgerald.
Kurt Warner had a strange road to the NFL playing in the Arena Football League and NFL Europe, where he was backed up by Jake Delhomme of the Carolina Panthers. Joining the Rams as a backup he got a chance to play. Starter Trent Green went down with an injury and Warner stepped in and lit up the NFL. The Rams were called "The Greatest Show on Turf" due to their high powered offense that won Warner NFL and Super Bowl MVP honors.
After several years of success with the Rams, Kurt started getting injured often and fumbling a lot when sacked. Mark Bulger was given the starting job and Warner headed off to the New York Giants. There he started part of one season until Eli Manning was awarded the job, then Warner became his backup.
Warner headed to Arizona in 2005 and started but lost the job due to injuries and poor play. Matt Leinart was drafted and Warner was expected to teach him and be the backup. Leinart never really worked out and in 2007 he and Warner split time at the quarterback position.
In 2008 Warner won the job outright and resumed his NFL career as a top starting quarterback. He with the help of Anquan Boldin, Larry Fitzgerald and others, threw for 4,583 yards and 30 touchdowns in 2008.
Kurt Warner's unlikely return to the Super Bowl was a long bouncing road but he is going back. Facing the Pittsburgh Steelers won't be an easy task but in a way Warner has already won. Just overcoming all his tribulations to return to the elite at his job is victory enough.
(c)2009 Associated Content, Inc
Let's look at the bigger picture of the NFL MVP award
A couple of weeks ago, the NFL's "Most Valuable Player" was named. It was Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts, and everywhere for a day or two the news went out that he and Brett Favre were the only three-time winners of that award.
This is not true.
A short memory is at once the weakness and the genius of America; on the one hand condemning us to repeat a past we haven't learned from, on the other allowing us to move forward into our future without dragging the grudges and dead weight of history behind us. Living in an endless present while looking only ahead has been our national habit from the moment of our founding.
So when that MVP announcement came, and was quickly overtaken in our relentless news cycle by other stories great and small, not much was made of it. "Peyton Manning voted AP's NFL MVP" read the headlines one day, and folks online and in roadside diners and corner bars argued briefly and without much conviction over whether Manning was more valuable to the Colts than Adrian Peterson was to the Vikings or Philip Rivers to the Chargers or Kurt Warner to the Cardinals. It seemed reasonable to say he was, so those arguments ended long before the coffee cooled or anyone's beer went flat.
But in the eternal present of the American moment, and in the lead sentence of the Associated Press dispatch under that very headline, it was also stated that Manning and Favre were the only three-time winners of this honor. They are not. And here we find a problem likely to persist long after your coffee's gone cold.
What most of us are talking about when we talk about the "NFL MVP" is the award given annually by The Associated Press. The AP is a global news service, one of the last of the mammoths from the teletype age, and their Most Valuable Player award is as near an official NFL "player of the year" honor as we're ever likely to get. Other, smaller organizations vote for a series of football awards each season too, but the one we argued about down at the diner that day is the one given by The Associated Press.
The voting for this award is done by tallying the opinions of 50 or so members of the working football press within that big AP combine. These people know football, and are as reliable -- if blandly predictable -- a mechanism for highlighting NFL excellence as any that might be devised.
Not the problem.
The problem is that both Johnny Unitas and Jim Brown are also three-time winners of the AP NFL MVP. You may have heard of them.
So while a clarification of that point eventually filtered out from AP world headquarters to the rest of us, the moment of our initial interest had passed, overtaken by even newer news. Thus our understanding of our own history took yet another knee to the groin.
The confusion and failure of memory here arose from the troubles of language and transcription and the passage of time. Is a "Player of the Year" the same as a "Most Valuable Player"? The AP thinks not. Was their award first given in 1957 or 1961? The AP disagrees with itself on the point. Were the old records -- taken from clip files and microfilm -- entered correctly into the AP's computer database when they went digital years ago? Probably not.
Last week I spent some time on the phone talking about all this with historian John Turney of the Pro Football Researchers Association. He had called for AP to clarify its own history even before the award was given this year, and he makes a strong case. For his detailed and well-researched explanation of the chain of likely mistakes that led to the absence of Brown and Unitas in those early stories, you should read his commentary here, at ProFootballWeekly.com.
To further confuse things, visit Jim Brown's page at Pro-Football-Reference.com. Among his many accolades, you'll note that in addition to the AP awards in 1957, 1958 and 1965, he was also named "MVP" by United Press International in 1963. UPI, now fallen on harder times, was for decades the AP's slightly smaller rival among the news services. But back in 1963, UPI was still considered very important. A case might therefore be made that Mr. Brown is actually a four-time winner of the NFL MVP award. That's how the Pro Football Hall of Fame refers to him.
As the greatest player in NFL history, this is as it should be.
The injury here, the insult, is not just to Jim Brown or Johnny Unitas and the mythology of their accomplishments. Rather, that missing history dims a little the achievements of Favre and now Manning by not including them shoulder to shoulder with Unitas and Brown whenever the topic comes up.
There are plenty of questions worth asking about the NFL "Most Valuable Player" award in the spirit of its improvement. Should it really be given before the playoffs? Wouldn't the "most valuable player" by definition be the one who got his team deepest into the postseason? As I write this late on the night of Jan. 11, has Manning been more valuable to his team this season than Joe Flacco has been to his? Or Donovan McNabb to his? Or Kurt Warner to his? And having handed the award only twice to defensive players in its 50-year history, and only once to a lineman, shouldn't the voters take a broader view of the game and the men who play it?
Or maybe the most significant improvement would be simply not forgetting to whom it has already been given.
While I wonder about the nature and benefit of awards generally, I suppose they're part of the impulse in us all to organize life into slightly tidier piles. Good, better, best; Oscar, Pulitzer, Nobel. A way to commemorate excellence before it slips down the memory hole.
As subjective as awards are -- define "outstanding performance," define "valuable" -- and as many of them as we now hand out in our kiddie-sports culture, because suburban no-fault self-esteem demands a trophy just for piling into the minivan one evening a week, there are plenty of awards and prizes that don't mean much, even to the people winning them. These merely cheapen us.
But there are a few we should all agree deserve our remembrance: small milestones of our progress on the way forward. We honor these, and ourselves, by not forgetting, if only as a way to catalog and keep handy what's worth aspiring to as we look ahead. Even if it's only football.
"This is important," Mr. Turney said last week at the end of our conversation. "History is important."
He then quoted me a popular aphorism attributed to Abraham Lincoln.
"History is not history unless it is the truth."
Historians still disagree over whether Lincoln ever said this.
(c)2009 ESPN Internet Ventures
Is it over for Dungy, Harrison?
INDIANAPOLIS - Tony Dungy will give it a week before deciding whether to come back to coach the Indianapolis Colts.
I'd hate to see him leave because he's one of the most honest, decent people I've ever met in sports. He's also a tremendous motivator, mentor and friend to his players. He's a proven winner. There's a spot waiting in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
And yet, if Dungy decides to retire, it might give the Colts the jolt they need to quit being postseason busts.
Then again, it might not.
See, that's the tricky part about calling for coaching changes and other reactionary suggestions of Colts fans depressed from the 23-17 overtime loss to the San Diego Chargers in the wild-card playoff round Saturday.
"Change isn't always a good thing," Colts linebacker Gary Brackett said.
Complete change isn't necessary. The Colts had a great regular-season run, despite rarely being fully healthy. But subtle change is needed. With the notable exception of 2006, the Colts spend too much time as a regular-season giant and a playoff gnat.
Dungy has earned the right to stay if he wants. He'll need to rebuild a running game and teach his defense how to tackle short guys, but he's earned the right to stay or go on his own terms.
It seems short-sighted to complain about the Colts' perennial 12-win seasons. But when they are followed by playoff disappointment, it's more painful for fans on many levels than a steady diet of mediocrity.
"It's funny, but no matter when you lose in the playoffs you always feel terrible," Dungy said. "You feel worse than teams that are 4-12 and won their last game. We have to use that feeling to build on next year, get ourselves better and not make wholesale changes."
With the Colts, it's forever a tease. Every year, fans are thrilled by regular-season excellence, bolstered by dreams of glory and floored when it ends abruptly.
No one's giving back the Super Bowl trophy from two years ago, but it seems awful solitary in the midst of an unprecedented six straight 12-win seasons.
If we're going to praise Dungy for his unmatched consistent ability to put teams in the playoffs, we have to assess some blame for his too-frequent knack for leading his team out of the playoffs.
Dungy made an NFL-record 10th straight playoff appearance this year. But his exit with a fourth one-and-done postseason in seven years left him with a 9-10 playoff record. That's a glaring deficiency in the Dungy resume.
There are some mitigating circumstances, as there always are. There was not a lot he could do to keep Chargers punter Mike Scifres from having the day of his life. There was not much Dungy could do about losing a coin flip before overtime.
But what of some of the other glaring mistakes in the loss to the Chargers?
Dungy lost an early long-shot challenge and passed on a better possibility. He went for a first down at midfield in the first half when a punt (and a possible deep pin) was the logical call. His offense kept trying to run when it so obviously couldn't.
The Colts used an empty backfield with a chance to run out the clock and win in regulation. On third-and-2 at their own 9, the Colts practically invited the Chargers to bring the heat on a virtually unprotected Peyton Manning. I don't pretend to have the football mind of Dungy, offensive coordinator Tom Moore or Manning, but what was up with that?
I can't blame Dungy for the Colts' inability to tackle San Diego running back Darren Sproles, who is apparently Maurice Jones-Drew's evil playoff twin. Sproles burned the Colts for 328 all-purpose yards.
I can't blame Dungy for Joseph Addai forgetting how to run the ball. But I will blame Dungy for not using the more powerful Dominic Rhodes more often. Rhodes was simply the better runner all season. He should have passed Addai on the depth chart.
Dungy's playoff coaching was not up to his regular-season standards. The Colts' defense made enough plays to win the game, from Tim Jennings forcing Sproles into a fumble into the end zone to Bethea picking off a pass in the end zone to Robert Mathis delivering a big sack on what should have been San Diego's last possession. The Colts offense, even with MVP Manning, couldn't capitalize at key times.
I wrote a couple weeks ago that this season was Dungy's best coaching performance. And it was, right up until Saturday night.
Then, it turned into an all-too-familiar postseason rehash of missed opportunities.
Maybe that's the best argument for Dungy to return: more unfinished business.
(c)2008 - The News-Sentinel
Long road back for NFL's "Cadillac"
TAMPA, Florida (AFP) -- Tampa Bay Buccaneers running back Carnell "Cadillac" Williams has a torn patellar tendon in his left knee but should be ready for pre-season workouts in July, coach Jon Gruden said on Monday.
Williams, who was sidelined for 14 months by a right patellar tendon tear last year, suffered the latest injury in Sunday's 31-24 loss to Oakland, a defeat that kept the Bucs out of the National Football League playoffs.
"All indications are he has a chance to be ready for training camp," Gruden said. "It's a long road to recovery."
Williams, who did not return from the prior injury until November 23, told the Tampa Tribune that he is confident it will take less time to recover from this injury than the prior one.
"It's more of a tear off the bone, so the rehab process should be much easier," Williams told the newspaper. "My right knee, which is now my good knee, was feeling good. It's just a freak accident. I have no luck right now."
Williams had run for 78 yards and two touchdowns and caught five passes for 37 yards by Sunday before the latest injury.
"He scored a couple of touchdowns, caught the ball out of backfield, showed elusiveness and swagger again," Gruden said. "For it to all end like that, it's just awful. It's probably the most sickening feeling I've ever had as a coach."
The Buccaneers lost their final four regular-season games to miss out on the playoff championship chase.
Copyright (c) 2008 AFP
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