Mariucci is impressed with RG3

'Mooch' as he is afffectionately known was impressed w/Robert Griffin III beyond the athletic measurables and liked his recall ability and football acumen. The rest of the broadcast crew speculated on where he would go in the draft with STL getting several picks from another team for the right to pick the second person in the upcoming draft which could be RG3.

Earlier Kurt Warner was on the broadcast and commented on the ongoing topic of what will Manning do. He did bring up an interesting point and of course, the counter point came from Jamie Dukes. I guess it was another episode of the Smartest Two Guys at the Table. Mooch had his say as well and reminded us of prior great QBs that weren't allowed to retire or end their career with 'their team'.

Another WR from Georgia Tech had a great day and will shoot up the draft boards. Watching the RB's David Wilson looked explosive with a 41 inch vertical leap, Doug Martin confirmed he is a good RB, and passing the eyeball test is Robert Turbin looks like he should be able to pass protect, plus he had 28 reps at the bench press (they didn't count 2, but I didn't see the whole session), ran the 40 in the 4.4 range and weighed in at 222lbs, looked good as well in the passing drills. I'm thinking LaMichael James will be not be an instant success only because there a few schemes in the NFL where he would fit in immediately and make an impact. Sure maybe as KR/PR they can use that 4.3 speed, but where else? Teams like their WRs with blazing speed. When/if he comes into the game, DC's will be able to figure out what's coming after a few drives (can you say screen?).

Looks like Chris Owusu out of Stanford also will be climbing the boards, since he had a 40.5 vertical, football is becoming basketball on grass, so I could see Chris in the endzone with highlight TD catches.


I think their are way too many pro days and the regional combines are where the athletes that did not compete today should be going to complete their assessments by the NFL teams. If these Pro Days continue it'll become unmanageable as their 120 FBS teams, how would you schedule for all these teams in the time between the end of the Super Bowl and draft day? I also think the NFL should really enforce projected high drafts and projected highest drafts by position should compete at all the combine events. I think if a penalty was enforced such as non-compete draftees can only be drafted beginning in the 2nd round would stop alot of this advice from agents to not compete at the combine due to this could only hurt your draft status if all the analysts/scouts are stating you're  #1 at your position.

Personnel people should be keeping in mind that potential draftees could have an off day, that's why they review numerous game day tape to have a better assessment of that player. If the potential draftee has a 'bad day', then let him have another chance at a regional combine, forget the Pro Days they are doomed to create scheduling conflicts and thus the scouting department will have greater expenses and spend even more time than needed to review players. It's just inefficient, this is like a test, if the participant wasn't satisfied with the results, schedule a make up test. In this way it'll be much more fair for all involved parties and would allow the analysts/scouts to spend their resources/time of digging up better players by being to look at more players. Analysts/scouts could find those hidden gems much easier, if you just increase the number of players you review, but you need time to put in the effort and Pro Days are a waste of time and thus a waste of effort.

Steve Wyche and the Smartest Two Guys at the Table

Oh the combine, among the great insights or table talk (if you want to call it that) that occured on Day 1 was when the topic turned to QB Peyton Manning. Steve was joined at the table by NFL Network analyst Jamie Dukes and current Indy center Jeff Saturday. They each bring their own thoughts of what will most likely happen with current Indy QB Manning, will he stay? will he go? and why. After listening to each of them, my take is that it's not likely Manning will remain at Indy. So where will he go? Jets? Dolphins? Chiefs? who knows, but Mannings days at Indy are coming to an end.

I also watched Bucky Brooks with his distinct voice and nice insights, sadly I didn't recognize his partner. Michael Lombardi stopped by as well to lend his insights as well. My insight is that I'll take twice the time I thought I would watching the combine with the two camera angles, lol.

The strength and lack of strength by O-linemen and Tight Ends had a few notables. You could tell some are big athletic guys by pure numbers and watching verifies this fact. Kalil, Castro really strong and surprisingly quick, the former Georgia and former Stanford players are strong. Molk (former Michigan) topped the field with 41 reps, he may not be a first round, but he'll definitely make a team.

As far as disappointment former Ohio St Adams in my mind had only 19 reps, who'd had thought?

My only other comment..... the site is slow to load as well as change pages, sigh... TMI? (too much information) maybe more like site design if you ask me. This is where the concept 'less is more' should be followed to allow for faster load times and navigation, but until enough people say something in the negative vein we're just going to live with it, sigh.....  So the featured menu Combine Tracker doesn't really work for me. Site optimization really needs to be done.... sigh....

ain't it great? Watch the Combine online for free!

You just gotta love access to the combine that the NFL has now brought to an even larger amount of  the public. In prior years, even the news media wasn't allowed in, then with NFL Network broadcasting combine you had better access than the news media. Now the audience just got larger as the NFL Network was will broadcast online as well as it's own network. This level of transparency will enhance the status of the NFL as the #1 sport in the US. Watch at http://www.nfl.com/combine/live It starts tomorrow @9am EST.
I'm just loving it as a football fan and since I don't have the NFL network, this is great. WHAT!? A NFL fan without the NFL network? Can't call yourself a true fan? Sure you can it's not your fault or the NFL fault that many of the retransmission companies are blocking the acceptance of the NFL network due to $$$$. With internet access you too can watch it for free. I know I will. :-)

Manning is done

I just listened to this http://www.yahoosportsradio.com/audioplayer/?id=http://www.yahoosportsradio.com/?p=17342 which is an interview with SI's Don Bank and Peyton's medical procedure's for his neck discomfort. Judge for yourself, he's doesn't say he's done, but if you've been following football long enough, you know he's done. I think Peyton would make a great QB coach at any level and or even an OC he should do fine, but will some one give him the opportunity?

I'm unable to share my original Quattro Pro spreadsheet online using Google Docs

As an afterthought I've tried to post/share the spreadsheet created using Quattro Pro saved with a .wb3 file extension that I've made for the 2011 season and have failed. Here's a list of problems encountered.

At first I thought I could just upload to this blog as an attachment, no can do.

Next I thought of using google docs, but it doesn't recognize the .wb3 file extension (unsupported format, sigh....)

So then I tried converting .wb3 by opening in MS Office 2010, that failed as well.

Next I opened file in Quattro Pro then did a save as .xls file and was able to do so, but I lost most formulas as they were converted to values.

So now with an .xls file I again tried to upload/convert to google docs again this failed.

So I thought why not open the .xls file using MS Office 2010 and save as .xlsx? This worked, but I lost more formulas as they were converted to values and column headers as well were changed as I was able to have headers such as +6 (useful for teasers) which were changed to _+6_  (sigh...)

and again I tried to upload/open with google docs, but now I found there is a limit of 400,000 cells and I couldn't read the rest of the message as it appears to be truncated due to space limitations on screen I think.

Thus I've ended this adventure of trying to share my quattro pro nfl 2011 spreadsheet online. If anyone wants access to the spreadsheet, simply add your e-mail within the comments and I'll send it.

Yes, you'll need Quattro Pro to open the file with .wb3 extension, the .xls and .xlsx versions lose most of the formulas and formatting. Why do I still use Quattro Pro? Partly due to familiarity and partly due to limitations I found using ms office excel such as nesting IF statements, referencing named areas/cells, ease of creating a database, floating buttons, macro creations, formatting multiple sheets at a time and editing multiple sheets at a time.

2011 week 21 - Super Bowl XLVI results

Post game thoughts; NYG did it again, making their opponent pay for their mistakes and their opponent unable to capitalize on NYG's mistakes. NYG was the better team throughout the playoffs and won with their willy's and joe's and not as much with their x's and o's. Some are saying the game belongs in the top three of superbowl games, but I'll give it top five. The crowd and media were pro-NYG leading up to the game, I'd like to see less TV time outs, less advertisements, less half-time events, just a more normal flowing game.


The under occurred just as I thought it would and low and behold a safety for the first score, it paid 50-1 at some casinos. I didn't go over props this year, maybe next year...


regular season results:

ATS/TOTAL
W-L-P/W-L-P
131-116-9/137-115-4


post season results:

ATS/TOTAL
W-L-P/W-L-P
3-1-0/2-2-0 wk18
1-3-0/3-1-0 wk19
0-2-0/1-1-0 wk20
0-1-0/1-0-0 wk21

4-7-0/7-4-0 total post season


accumulated totals for the entire season

ATS/TOTAL
W-L-P/W-L-P
135-123-9/144-119-4


12 games up on sides and 25 games up on totals, not bad picking ATS, even better picking totals, onto next year....