It's Going to be a Really, Really Long Season

After the Oakland Raiders game, I blogged about how it was going to be a long season. I now believe I was far too optimistic. Last Sunday, the chefs played the Philadelphia Eagles. The Eagles are an okay team. On Sunday the Eagles were missing two of their offensive play makers, but it did not matter. Rotating 3 quarterbacks into play, (one was a guy who spent the last few years in prison), the Eagles handed the chefs their rear ends.

It was not the magnitude of the loss that has me reconsidering the chef's eventual won/loss record. Instead, it is what happened to begin the second half. The chefs received the second half kick off down by a score of 24-7. Sounds like they needed to let their $60 million dollar man (Matt Ca$$ell) loose, air it out, right? No, the chefs ran the ball on 20 of the next 28 plays.

That message was heard loud and clear. It was "we know we cannot win, so let's work on the ground game for a while." You don't see a professional team give up often, but that is just what happened last Sunday. I guess another message might be "we don't want to get our $60 million dollar man hurt", which arguably is a coherent thought.

But the fact remains that my chefs will see many 17+ point deficits in the next few games. Some may be at the end of the first quarter, or even first 5 minutes of play. Will they concede those games also? I think we will get that answer this week when the chefs play the New York Giants. Eli Manning will have not seconds, but minutes of pocket protection. Eli will pick the chef's secondary apart and the Giants will build a large early lead. So large that some will wonder why Eli is not benched in the second half. The answer is that he is safer on the field against the chef's defense, than on the bench where he could be struck by an errant throw, or hit by a chef safety missing a tackle.

There is only one game the chefs might win. Late in the season they will face the Cleveland Browns. That game may be the considered the "First Pick of the Draft Bowl". And knowing how the chefs can screw anything up, I will pick them to win that game and lose the #1 pick. The chefs will go 1-15 this year.