A few NFL thoughts for a fall Tuesday evening.

Being the diehard Giant fan that I am, I possess almost an unnatural admiration of Bill Parcells as a football coach. Out of the 3 greatest game coaching jobs I've seen in all of my years of watching pro football, Parcells authored two of them. (both in the same year -91 Championship game + 91 Super Bowl and Belichick authored the other one- 2001 Super Bowl). I have great respect for the job he did resurrecting the Jets organization. And I can listen to this guy talk football forever. Which makes it so hard to point out what I'm observing from him this season. He's lost something off of his proverbial fastball.
Over the years, Bill has lost his temper plenty. But you always got the impression on the sidelines that it was a controlled, strategic rage. Not two weeks ago in Seattle. He literally threw a punch on the sidelines at his receivers coach Todd Haley. I hate to say this, but it wasn't much different than what got Buddy Ryan run out of football. The Parcells I grew to love never would have lost control like that on the sidelines.
But its not only his temper. He's making football decisions I've never seen him make before. A few weeks back against the Giants, The Cowboys recovered a fumble at their 1 yard line with 1:26 left in the game. The Giants had 2 timeouts left. The Cowboys ran on 1st and 2nd down into the line for no gain. After each play, the Giants used a timeout. On 3rd down, with the Giants having no timeouts, Bill called a pass play and Bledsoe was forced to throw it away. With 1:12 left on the clock Parcells pissed away a chance to run 40 seconds off the clock with a 7 point lead. Its not like that 40 seconds mattered when Shockey scored the game tying touchdown with 25 seconds on the clock. No one talked about this anywhere because Dallas won the game, but thats a mistake you see Mike Martz make, not Bill Parcells.
Then we have the next week in Seattle. The Cowboys get the ball at their own 41 with 33 seconds left. 1st down, Bledsoe hits Glenn for 6 yards. 2nd down is an incomplete pass with a 10 yard holding penalty on Dallas. Now its 2nd and 14 with 19 seconds left and Bledsoe hits Glenn for 7. So with 3rd and 7 from their own 44, Bledsoe throws a sideline pattern 13 yards down the field thats woefully underthrown and intercepted and run back to the Dallas 30. Now although you can't blame the coach for a badly thrown ball, whats the purpose of the pattern?? At most, you'll have time for 1 more play, and the pattern was only called to the Seattle 43. Even if the pass is completed, it does nothing for you. Its a play that carries all risk and no reward. You're too far for a field goal. So the best you're hoping for is risking a turnover to set up a Hail Mary. Parcells always prided himself on his teams being better and smarter late in games, but he's making mistakes himself that he never made in his career. With all that said, I still think Dallas is a playoff team, but these issues Parcells has had bear watching since he's got 4 games remaining against the other 3 great coaches in the NFC East.

Interesting thing happened this weekend in the Giants/Redskins game this past weekend. The Giants defense looked like the 85 Bears. The only problem is that the Giant defense is probably an average defense at best. They had their best game of the year because they knew all of the plays. This past offseason, the Giants added ex-Redskin QB Tim Hasselbeck and ex-Redskin middle linebacker Antonio Pierce. Hasselbeck is only in the league because of a superior mental approach. His physical tools are on the lower end of most NFL quarterbacks, but he's much smarter than the average bear. Pierce was the captain of that defense who made all of the defensive calls. It was extremely obvious that these two played an enormous role in preparing this football team on both sides of the ball. As I heard Daryl Johnston discuss it during the game on Sunday, I thought to myself why you don't hear more about this kind of thing and do general managers sometimes target players in free agency who played in their divisions for this reason. The tonight on the internet, I see the headline, "Palmer sings with Niners." Mike Nolan signed Jesse Palmer for this week's Giant game. He needs a quarterback and this guy gives his team a big time preparation edge. It's a very smart move by a coach who could be a future coaching star. Everyone connected to the league has the greatest things to say about this guy. Moves like this make me it easy to see. Keep in mind, Gruden won a Super Bowl because he knew all of the Raiders plays. Its an advantage that functions as a great equalizer.

So in an earlier post, I lamented cleaning up the dreaded accident in your child's pants. And thats pretty gross, but not as gross as cleaning the "NDZ". But you know whats worse than both. The playdate accident. When your kid has a playdate who dumps in his/her own pants. When its your own kid, you can deal with the smell and the cleanup a little easier. The smell is nothing new to you. But the smell of another kid's poop is a foreign smell that can put your nasal passages into toxic shock. And if its your own kid, if you don't feel like handling the soiled clothes, you can throw them out. We refer to this as "the cost of doing business". When its another kid, you've got to bag the clothes up and send them home with the kid. The sight of the bag normally is enough for your imagination to conjure up th horrific odor and each time you inadvertently look at the bag, you get nauseous all over again.