Sporting Madness

I had a difficult time finding a Colts blogger who was available for an interview for this piece , but I found a great pinch-hitter in Samer Kalaf , a colleague of mine from The Rookies and the editor of the excellent NFL blog Second-String Fullback . . Samer really knows his football and gave some great insight into the Colts' matchup this weekend. My questions and his responses are below. Andrew Bucholtz: The Colts were criticized heavily by many for playing some backups in the last few weeks of the season, including against the Jets, instead of going for a perfect season. What did you think of the decision at the time, and has your opinion changed at all since then? Samer Kalaf: I feel like that the decision by Colts head coach Jim Caldwell to rest the starters against the Jets was an incredibly terrible decision. I wrote long-winded posts about it, and how I feel it disgraces the history of the NFL, but I'll try to condense it. The Colts had a chance to be the se...

For the part of my AFC Championship preview focusing on the Jets, I spoke with my Fanball colleague Joe Caporoso . Joe's a great writer who runs Turn on the Jets and knows the team as well as anyone. His Turn On The Jets TV episode focusing on this weekend's game is particularly worth a look. My questions and his answers are below. Andrew Bucholtz: At the start of the season, did you think the Jets had a chance to make it to the AFC Championship Game? How about at the start of the playoffs? Joe Caporoso: At the start of the season, I picked the Jets to go 10-6 and make the playoffs as a wild-card team. I figured they might steal a game in the playoffs, but back in August, it was hard to picture a team with a rookie head coach and rookie quarterback going to the AFC Championship Game. At the start of the playoffs, I felt confident because of how well they were running the ball and how their defense was playing. Also, I loved the matchup with the Bengals in the first rou...

Today will feature the NFL's conference championship games, and I'll have plenty of coverage of them here. For starters, I wrote a pair of pieces for The Good Point talking to notable football bloggers about some elements of this weekend's matchups. You can check out the preview of the AFC contest between the Indianapolis Colts and the New York Jets (3:00 p.m. Eastern, CBS) here and the preview of the NFC clash between the New Orleans Saints and Minnesota Vikings (6:40 p.m. Eastern, FOX) here . To go along with those pieces, I'll be posting the complete interviews I conducted with each of the bloggers here. The AFC ones will be up shortly, with the NFC ones to follow in the morning. I'll also have my breakdown of each game with predictions up in the morning. Finally, I'll be live-blogging both games right here. Feel free to stop on by and join in the fun!

I'm finally back from this weekend's softball tournament in Golden, B.C. It was a lot of fun, and our team won our division, placing fifth overall out of 16 teams in the process. Anyway, I should hopefully have some fresh content up tonight. Until then, here's the final part of my interview series for my unconventional thinking piece at The Good Point . Today's instalment features my full interview with Frank Mineo (drinkyourmilkshake) of the great Steelers' website, Behind The Steel Curtain . You can also check out my full interview with Minnesota Vikings blogger Brandon Peterson over at his excellent site , Vikings' Throne . Read on for Frank's thoughts on the Steelers, Dick LeBeau 's defensive innovations, the zone blitz and the 3-4. Andrew Bucholtz: Many have attributed much of Pittsburgh's success over the last couple of decades to Dick LeBeau 's zone blitz scheme. How important do you think it has been to the Steelers? Frank Mineo: D...

In the next instalment in my extended interview series for this piece on innovation in the NFL for The Good Point , I present Steve Sheiner of the Miami Dolphins site Blog With A Porpoise . Steve is also a senior editor at Fanball.com , the network I run Canuck Puck for. He had a lot of interesting comments on the Dolphins, the Wildcat offence, former B.C. Lion Cameron Wake and innovation in the NFL in general. Read on for the full interview! Andrew Bucholtz: The Dolphins obviously made a huge turnaround last year, going from the league's worst record to AFC East champions. How much of that success do you attribute to their implementation of the Wildcat offence? Steve Sheiner: I certainly think that played a role in their success as they caught a lot of teams off-guard that were ill-prepared to defend against such an unfamiliar attack. But more realistically, the Dolphins had one of the cushiest schedules in 2008 and the loss of Tom Brady in the division certainly didn’t hur...

Once again , I've written a massive piece for The Good Point on the NFL. This one looks at the role of unconventional thinking in the league, specifically with reference to the Wildcat offence, the zone blitz and the 3-4 defence. For this piece, I spoke with Steve Sheiner , the senior editor of Fanball.com and the editor of the Dolphins' site Blog With A Porpoise , Adam Best , the senior editor of the Fansided blog network and the co-founder and senior editor of Arrowhead Addict , Frank Mineo (drinkyourmilkshake) of Behind The Steel Curtain and Brandon Peterson of Vikings' Throne . As before, I got some great information from them that I wasn't able to squeeze into the article, so I figured I'd continue my On The Ground interview series with some of the extra information from each interview. First up, Adam Best . The other full interviews will follow later this week. Adam's a very knowledgeable sports fan, as anyone familiar with his blogging at Fan Ad...

In the last part of my interview series for this piece on left tackles at The Good Point , I present my full interview with Jason Brewer , who covers the Philadelphia Eagles for the excellent SB Nation blog Bleeding Green Nation . My previous interviews with KC Joyner and Bruce Raffel can be found here and here . Hope you've enjoyed this series! Andrew Bucholtz: What do you see the left tackle's role as in today's NFL: mostly pass protection, mostly run-blocking or a combination of the two? How would you evaluate a left tackle's importance as compared to the rest of the offensive linemen? Also, do you think this role's changed over the last decade, and if so, how so? Jason Brewer: I think that's entirely dependent on the team he's on. We all know that some teams, like the Eagles, pass more than others. However, I would say that primarily the role of a LT is be a great pass protector. The biggest reason the guy playing on the left is more important t...

Time to continue my series of supporting interviews for this piece I wrote for The Good Point on the importance of the left tackle. Today's interview subject is Bruce Raffel , editor of the excellent Ravens' blog Baltimore Beatdown . The Ravens' tackle situation is quite an interesting one; they used the first draft pick in their history in Baltimore on Jonathan Ogden , who turned out to be a great franchise LT. Recently, they brought in Jared Gaither to replace Ogden after his retirement. This year, they drafted possibly the most famous left tackle out there, Michael Oher of The Blind Side fame, 23rd overall. Raffel has some very interesting things to say about the Ravens' moves at tackle over the years, so read on! Andrew Bucholtz: How important do you consider the left tackle position, especially compared to the other positions on the offensive line? How important is a good left tackle to a team's overall success? Bruce Raffel: While the center position ...

For the last couple of weeks, I've been working on a piece for The Good Point about the importance of the left tackle in the NFL, particularly concerning the different views espoused by Michael Lewis and KC Joyner . I finished it up this morning, and editor extraordinaire Austin Kent already has it posted, so you can check it out here . It features interviews with Joyner, a famed author who also writes for ESPN and The New York Times , Brian Galliford of Buffalo Rumblings , Jason Brewer of Bleeding Green Nation and Bruce Raffel of Baltimore Beatdown . As with my previous piece for The Good Point , I got a lot of interesting information that I wasn't able to fit into the piece, so I've decided to again present extended interviews as part of my ongoing On The Ground interview series. I'll present my full interview with Joyner today, with Raffel's to come Wednesday and Brewer's on Friday. Almost of Galliford's quotes made it into the piece, so there ...

Here's the final post from my series of interviews for this piece for The Good Point on free agency in the NFL, featuring an extended interview with Kevin Ewoldt of the great Washington Redskins site Hogs Haven . Previous posts in this series include my interviews with Sean Yuille of Pride of Detroit and Michael Bean of Behind the Steel Curtain . My questions and Kevin's answers are below, with minor edits for clarity. I also highly recommend this recent post from his site, comparing the Redskins' front office to those of the Patriots and Colts, and this older interview with Washington Capitals owner Ted Leonsis about the Capitals' franchise-building philosophy and how that might translate to football. Andrew Bucholtz: Is there any free-agent signing by the Redskins over the last two decades that stands out as particularly bad to you? Did it seem like a bad idea at the time, or did it prove that way in retrospect? Kevin Ewoldt: There are a lot: Deion Sanders ...

All the hype at the moment is around tomorrow's NFL draft, but it's important to remember that free agency plays just as important of a part in the offseason. One team that will be watched closely in both the draft and free agency is the Detroit Lions, who went 0-16 last year and are in full-on rebuilding mode. They hold the #1 and #20 overall picks, plus a second-rounder, two third-rounders, two sixth-rounders and a seventh-round pick, so the draft will be a key part of the turnaround; they've already agreed to a deal to give anticipated #1 pick Matthew Stafford more guaranteed money than any player in NFL history [ Kevin Seifert , ESPN.com]. The team may be active in the free agent market as well, though, and it will be interesting to watch and see what they do there. As part of the preparation for this piece on free agency at The Good Point , I spoke with Sean Yuille of Pride of Detroit , the SB Nation Lions blog, about the team's historical moves in free agency ...

I've been working on an extensive piece for The Good Point on NFL free agency for most of the last month, and finally finished it off the other day; check it out if you're interested in a look at how different NFL teams view free agency and the strengths and weaknesses of certain approaches. Tremendous thanks are due to Will Leitch of Deadspin and New York Magazine , Michael Bean (Blitzburgh) of Behind The Steel Curtain , Sean Yuille of Pride of Detroit and Kevin Ewoldt of Hogs Haven for taking the time to answer my questions. They all have a great understanding of the NFL and how their teams approach free agency. Of course, space restrictions and the thematic approach I took meant that I couldn't fit all the information I received from these guys into my article, so I figured I'd run some of the interviews here as companion pieces. First up, Michael Bean . Michael runs Behind The Steel Curtain , one of the best and most popular Pittsburgh Steelers blogs on th...