Mid-season stretch

Well. We sure got beaten on Sunday.

The final score was 24-10, but I don’t really think it was even that close. We hit a field goal on our opening drive, and then got shut out until late in the fourth quarter. Their running back, Derrick Ross—freakin’ beast—set a franchise record for rushing yards on us. He had 140 something yards.

I truly believe Ross is quite a football player to keep an eye on. It’s ironic that he was allocated by the Kansas City Chiefs, because I would best compare his running style to Larry Johnson. Ross just drags people, almost consistently gaining 3 or 4 yards after initial contact. He has tremendous burst for a back with such a strong frame, kind of like Johnson. He’s a good receiver, and when he has the ball in his hands, he exudes my favorite running back quality: anger. He runs angry. Very angry.

This raises an interesting point: one of the scouts told me during training camp that he believed the Kansas City Chiefs allocate some of the best players year after year in NFL Europa. Based on this season’s performances, I’m inclined to believe him. Ross leads NFLE in rushing yards by almost 150 over Berlin’s own, Chris Barclay. Our starting right guard, Rob Hunt, could possibly play in the League. He has that Denver Broncos kind of guard body: technically sound, but very athletic. The Chiefs also allocated Omar Jacobs, who was practically declared our starting quarterback in February, but injured his ankle during training camp. (Whether Jacobs would have been the starter anyway is debatable.)

Anyhoo, our kicker, Andrew Jacas, missed two more field goals, to drop to 5 for 10 on the season. Their quarterback, Erik Meyer, threw 3 touchdowns on us for the second straight week. Ugh.

My game report can be found here. Next week, we take on the first place Frankfurt Galaxy.

***

Our loss to the Centurions dropped our home record to 0-3. We’re 2-0 on the road. Fairly interesting.

Speaking of home, the Olympic Stadium experience has been pretty neat. The stadium itself is nearly 90 years old, having been built for the Olympics during Nazi Germany. It feels like it, too; no elevators from field level to the top of the stadium. That wouldn’t matter, except everything I need during the game is in the press box, which is located at the very, very top of the stadium, about 150 stairs away from where I spend the entirety of the game.

Suffice to say, my legs feel extremely, extremely sore the day after games. It’s a great workout.

We average between 10 and 20 thousand for our home games, which is slightly better than the league average. Rhein draws around 30 thou per game, while Frankfurt usually tops that. Hamburg and Amsterdam hover around 10,000, while Cologne says they get 10,000 per game—but that’s questionable. When we played there last week, the announced crowd of over 10,000 looked suspiciously like 5,000 to me. Maybe less.

Cologne’s stadium, RheinEnergieStadion, is the only other road stadium I’ve seen so far besides LTU (with the Rhein Fire). Cologne’s stadium looked kind of like LTU from the inside, just with no retractable roof, and about 25,000 less fans. To close off the middle section of the stands during the game, they put up a painted mural of what looks like an ancient Roman democratic meeting; all of these robed figures with spears, screaming. (As Beth noted, “Maybe their 10,000 counts the painted people.”)

With my NFL Network headset on, I couldn’t hear any of the fans. …oh yeah, I wear a headset during games. I hear the NFL Network production feed, and in theory, I chime in with injury updates or helpful things from the sidelines. I generally just listen to people getting chewed out by the producer during the game (which is pretty entertaining, actually).

Even though we only fill Olympic Stadium to about one fifth of its capacity, it gets decently loud in there. My dad said, “This is the loudest empty stadium I’ve ever seen!” I’m sure the drums/whistles/horns contribute to that, but, hey, we take what we can get.

I’m pretty pumped to see Frankfurt. All I’ve heard since training camp was that Frankfurt was the loudest place to play, with the craziest fans. I love that atmosphere.

Frankfurt is, from what I understand, the financial capital of Germany. A bunch of banks, I guess. I’ll have to report back when I see it myself.

Oh, by the way—I got to see the ancient cathedral in Cologne, which is a pretty big tourist site. It was built by the Romans, and it is HUGE. I’ve got pictures of it in the Second Photo Album (see the links to the right). I convinced those with me to take the stair trip to the top—all 550-plus, steep stairs. That was an unbelievable workout.

***

It's rained almost every day for the last week. I went to the Berlin soccer team's home finale, and it poured. They lost, too, which had nothing to do with the rain; they're just bad. In the three games I went to, they went 0-2-1.

***

I haven’t had a chance to address this yet, and a few people have asked, so, here we go…

Yes, I got a chance to see the results of the NFL Draft. It actually started the exact moment we kicked off against the Amsterdam Admirals at home.

First: I am one of the many who felt shocked that the Dolphins passed on Brady Quinn. It wasn’t so much that they actually let Quinn slide; it’s who they picked instead of him. Didn’t they learn from the Vikings’ pick of Troy Williamson a few years ago, or the Panthers’ selection of Chris Gamble before that? They essentially took a kick returner in the top 10. I’m not saying that’s a worthless pick—obviously, Devin Hester showed how important a returner can be—but, taking a return specialist who’s very raw at his natural position in the top 10 is not a very good idea.

Case in point: Ron Jaworski, one of my favorites to watch on ESPN, tried to show off Ted Ginn’s route running skills by showing off three fly patterns (that’s when the receiver just runs deep). What does that prove? We know Ginn is fast. Showing that he can run deep doesn’t tell me he can play wide receiver, and that’s what I’m not convinced of.

Besides, I’ve kind of given up on taking anyone that touches the ball from Ohio State.

Curious about that one? Take a look at all of the former Ohio State skill players that have been drafted in the last few years: Michael Jenkins, Chris Gamble, Maurice Clarrett, Craig Krenzel, Santonio Holmes (who wasn’t awful in his first season, but did have legal problems and took most of the year to get on track), Drew Carter (who could be incredible if he stopped getting injured), Jonathan Wells…beyond that, the names get slightly obscure. Like quarterback Steve Bellisari, who I’m pretty sure does TV now, or wide receiver Reggie Germany, which is funny because I’m in Germany right now. David Boston was good for a while—he was picked 8th overall in 1999—but he got way, way too huge and tore up his knees. I’m fairly certain he had some steroid allegations against him as well.

On defense, or on the offensive line, the picks are solid. (I included Chris Gamble in the group above because he played both offense and defense, and he has done little at this point to prove he belongs at cornerback.)

…anyhoo, the Browns were wise to give up next year’s pick to nab Quinn. Granted, that pick next year could be a high selection—Quinn might not be ready to lead this team to a 12-4 record next year—but, Quinn appears to be one of the most pro-ready prospects since…uh, I guess Matt Leinart last year.

Crap, the Patriots are going to be good next year. I’ll stop there.

***

I had a really cool moment on Saturday, the night before our game.

The other two games last week were both on Saturday night. Once we finished up our NFLN conference call, I hopped on the office computer and pulled up the games on the NFL Europe version of Gamecast, when our head coach, John Allen came in.

We pretty much stayed in here and “watched” the Rhein Fire-Frankfurt Galaxy game, while we talked about the result of the earlier game (the Amsterdam Admirals, his former team, lost a close game to the Hamburg Sea Devils), why they lost, how the Admirals’ head coach differs from him, and what his offensive philosophies are.

It was awesome. It’s one of those things that the average football fan really kills for: I got to pick the head coach’s brain about his football philosophy.

Coach Allen is considered one of the brighter offensive minds in the league; while he was offensive coordinator of the Admirals over the past 3 seasons, his offenses were generally at or near the top of the league. Last year, with Gibran Hamdan at quarterback, his offenses threw for…a lot of yards per game.

But, like some of the best coaches, he doesn’t force an identity on a team; he lets the personnel dictate their identity. Sure, he may love to spread it out and run a Playstation offense, but if he has a few great running backs, he’s not going make them into Texas Tech just because. That’s a very smart way to coach an offense, and a theory I personally believe in.

I got to run a few situational play calls by him to see what he thought, and surprisingly, I thought mostly correctly on most of them. I mean, when you’ve watched over 170 hours of football practice over a 7 month period and you play Madden for 10 years, I guess you pick a few of these things up.

***

This season has gone really, really fast. It’s funny—I’m excited to be here, excited to see my friends when I go home, and excited to go back to San Francisco. I suppose that’s a good thing.

I’m fairly certain that I won’t be driving out there this time around. I’m figuring that I’ll get back to the States around July 1. Last year, I started the drive to San Fran on July 8. Granted, I got there early, but leaving early gave me some space in case I needed extra time; it isn’t like I would want to leave later this time around.

So, it would give me around 8 days to relax, then pack my car and drive across the country. I’d also probably be doing it alone, because I can’t make Chris miss two anniversaries in a row.

All of that put together, means I’m probably flying. I’d ship my car back to SF, much like I shipped it from SF back to NY. I’m going to guess that I’ll probably even live in the same place.

I think that's all I've got for now.