NFL 2005 Season:
Who can stop the Pats?

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The 2005 season has too many plot lines to begin to follow but we’ll delve into them nonetheless. The NFC East is going back to their old ways,the Super Bowl champs got even better, Ricky Williams retired then came back to the fins, and the Bengals are one of the sleeper picks of the season.

The NFC East started the way back machine two years ago when The Tuna jumped into the saddle for the Cowboys vacant head coaching job. In a move that can only be called a copycat move by Redskins owner Daniel Snyder the ‘Skins brought back Joe Gibbs. Gibbs then brought back the old running ways in the capital when he brought in the Broncos super running back Clinton Portis in an NFL rarity called the “Blockbuster Trade.” He did give up his Champ in the secondary to get him but the ‘Skins will be better for the move. Look for the NFC East to be one of the most competitive divisions in all of the land.

In the NFL Draft Peyton Manning’s kid brother, Eli Manning, shook everything up. In a John Elway-esque move Eli (well actually his dad told them) told the Chargers, who had the number one pick, that there was no way he would suit out for them even if it meant that he would have to sit out the entire season and wait to get placed back into the Draft pool the next year. So, of course, the Chargers drafted him and Eli walked up to the podium and refused to wear a Chargers hat and was later traded to the Giants for Phillip Rivers, a first, third and fifth round pick. While the first round of the draft was still going on Manning was standing in the middle of Giants Stadium with his new team.

Remember when the Patriots dominated the league last year and won 15 games in a row including the Super Bowl? Well they got considerably better when they added running back Cory Dillon to their roster who is a huge upgrade from a very solid Antowain Smith. Dillon had rushed for over 1,100 yards in each of his first six seasons for the Bengals before missing three games last year due to an injury. On top of that the Pats got him pretty cheap, he was tired of losing in Cincinnati and wasn’t healthy all year last year, so all New England had to give up was a second round pick. Good luck to the rest of the league now that the Patriots will have a power running game to go along with a great passing attack defenses will need all the help they can get. Can you say dynasty?

In one of the stranger moments of the off-season Ricky Williams announced to the world that he would be retiring from football after he failed another drug test by testing positive for marijuana. Williams said the rules of the NFL were too rigid for him and that he needed to take some time off to travel the world and find himself. Speculations have been made that Williams just wants to go and smoke his doobies around the world and in an interview with SI.com he told them that the only way he would come back to the NFL is if he played for the Raiders. He’d fit right in with all those Raider fans who paint their faces and wear shoulder pads with massive spikes on them.

In a very disturbing development two perennial doormats in the NFL will challenge for their division and are dark horse candidates for a berth into the Super Bowl. The Seattle Seahawks aren’t a bad team at all. They made it into the playoffs where quarterback Matt Hasselbeck’s statement of “We want the ball and we’re going to score” after the coin toss in the overtime game against the Packers blew up in his face. On the Seahawks second possession of the OT he threw an interception that got returned for a touchdown, thus ending the game. The team has a veritable cornucopia of young talent with Hasselbeck, running back Shaun Alexander, and wide receivers Darrell Jackson and Koren Robinson. The Bengals are in the same boat. They had been the laughing stock of all of sports for years and all of a sudden new coach Marvin Lewis comes in and they’re the hottest thing in football. They failed to make the playoffs last year but they have all the pieces to be a Super Bowl contender. Then if they meet in the Super Bowl we’ll really have to enjoy because it will probably be the last one we ever see.

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