Why has this got me so riled? Because it sums up the vapid, vacant, 'if-I-say-something-shocking-enough-people-will-give-me-money' atmosphere that surrounds the world of the NFL. The problem, of course, is that in a competitive environment dominated by alpha-males, a guy who makes reasoned points without shouting can simply be ignored by his colleagues, which in turn gives the impression that his personality may not fit in the vat of testosterone that is an NFL related broadcast.
Without further ado, here's the five worst analysts in the NFL today, starting with the man who 'inspired' this article:
Mike Florio (Profootballtak.com, Sportingnews.com, NBC Sports)
It's hard to write a critique of a man who is quite self-aware in many respects, but Florio is so persistently inane that it's about time somebody offered him a dose of reality.
I actually like this guy. he has a sense of humour, he offers a legal interpretation every now and then, and in total fairness, he has built his website from the ground up based almost entirely on his work. Who doesn't have time for a guy who has lived the dream that us armchair analysts could one day be taken seriously and referenced on respectable websites?
Unfortunately, Florio's ego has become a bit of a problem.
I don't know where to begin with the article above regarding quarterbacks being benched. There is so much wrong with the tone, the content, and the way it has been marketed ('LOOK HOW SHOCKING MY STATEMENT IS!!!') that we could spend all day on this crap. instead, let's focus on Florio's credentials as far as personnel decisions:
Oh. He doesn't have any. The problem with Florio is that he's believed his own hype to the point where he wants to be taken seriously without putting hard work in. You think you can evaluate a QB based on half a mini-camp in some cases? The guy literally suggests that Jimmy Clausen should replace Matt Moore and then backs it up with the baffling reasoning that 'Fox has to prove that Clausen is the long-term answer to save his own job'. What? But what if Moore is better? We don't actually know do we?
Fox doesn't need to be tied to Clausen as long as he's winning, which he has a better chance of doing with a guy who has actually won in the NFL previously, than with an untried rookie - no matter how talented. I struggle to comprehend the mindset behind this kind of writing, because it hasn't been thought through in even the most basic form. How can he be taken seriously writing something like (and this is a direct quote) 'if the Broncos thought enough of Tebow to trade back into Round 1 to draft him, they simply should get him on the field.'
Yes, that's the expert there, churning out rubbish that would embarrass a drunken barfly at 1am, shouting and drooling into some guy's ear about how his team should have gone after McNabb, regardless of how he may fit into the offence. Oh wait, he actually did do that about Arizona! Incredible.
A quick glance at the sportingnews.com site shows another of Florio's articles '10 possible landing spots for T.O.' Just the ten teams Mike? JUST A THIRD OF THE FUCKING LEAGUE? Wow, well that doesn't seem like you've just picked the ten worst teams and then thrown him in there regardless of their situation! This is another of Florio's tricks. He will try to throw in as many possibilities as he can so that when eventually T.O. signs, he can claim that he was right. This happens in other articles too, using the old 'here's my prediction in great detail, but I'll qualify that by putting the complete opposite as a possible outcome at the end of the article' trick.
Great work Mike.
Florio should be culled immediately. He has no basis to make these sweeping judgements, and he's become slightly confused, it would seem, about his role. Why do people visit FLorio's 'rumour mill'? Could it be for rumours? I think it could! Unfortunately, as traffic has boomed and NBC has pumped money into the rumour-mill, Mike has changed the tone of the site dramatically. The high volume of posts has been replaced with a group of staff writers who seemingly just keep the place ticking over until Florio churns out his 5 posts a day that are essentially all opinion. The ratio of rumour:opinion has changed to about 1:5, indicating Florio's belief that people were visiting his site because of him, rather than because of the content.
Here's the deal Mike: They weren't, and they aren't.
Nobody has any respect for your opinion on actual football matters. You have time and again exposed the fact that you don't actually watch that much football, so why bother embarrassing yourself by commenting on personnel, tactics, and in general anything to do with on-field issues. To be successful as a 'personality', you need to accept that you are nothing more than a mouthpiece for the rumours. Your 'league sources' are a handy asset, but your outlandish 'take' on their whisperings is often cringeworthy.
So stick to the rumours Mike, it's what you're good at.
Warren Sapp (NFL Network)
Ah the 'QB KILLA' himself. Warren Sapp. A beast of a man, one of the most dominant interior linemen to ever play the game. One of the worst analysts to ever grace our screens.
Sapp's unique selling point seems to be his ability to... er... shout in a funny manner? He just shouts. That's it. What is most frustrating about this is that we saw during his playing career that Sapp had a personality that should have transferred to the small-screen quite well. Instead, he's an overbearing loudmouth who's jokes seem contrived and unfunny.
Even when discussing D-line, the position he played, Sapp offers little. He rarely gives us the kind of perspective that say, Rod Woodson can. Woodson is able to say a lot without talking very much, and often gives you the insight into what a DB may be thinking given a certain situation. Sapp is the opposite, falling back on cliches and bonhomie in an effort to disguise the fact that he is unable to articulate why he was any good at football in the first place.
Warren Sapp has a small body of work compared to some of the names on this list, but he has not done anything to suggest he belongs as a long-term fixture on our screens. Oh, one last thing - GOOD ANSWER! (at this point Warren claps his hands until Rich Eisen somehow cringes his way into ending the segment)
Gene Wojciechowski (ESPN)
Woj (I'm just calling him Woj. You understand, I'm sure) shouldn't really be on this list. I'm not being gracious here, the idiot shouldn't have been allowed the soapbox to invade our sport with his trite and incredibly sycophantic lunacy.
Whoever employed Woj as senior national sports columnist should have done so on the proviso that he never again post his anus-suckling 'columns' whenever he realises that an issue is big enough for him to comment on. Here's a great story that Gene wrote recently:
Clausen's fall linked to Big Ben fallout Gene Wojciechowski, ESPN.comThe fallout from Ben Roethlisberger's troubles had a big impact on Casey Clausen in the draft, Gene Wojciechowski writes.
April 23, 2010
Of course, having read the first name on this list of morons, you will be aware that the QB in question is named Jimmy. I feel like I've insulted you by pointing that out, but hey, that's the kind of respect I have for you. A fully blown idiot like Woj just plain old forgets what the hell he was talking about half way through the initial sentence of a story.
The biggest issue our friend Woj confronted, was that of Brett Favre. When Favre flip-flopped on his decision to retire - quite unfairly in most sane people's eyes - Woj backed him to the hilt. He wrote damning character assassinations on Green Bay Packers GM Ted Thompson, based on nothing more than... well... um... the fact that Gene loved Brett Favre.
You see, Gene REALLY loves Brett Favre, I mean REALLY. When he was traded to the Jets, Woj lambasted Thompson for trading away their best QB. Was that true? Maybe, but Aaron Rodgers turned out pretty good huh? Well surely Gene could accept that Rodgers' statistically better season in '08 was at least some vindication of the move right? Wrong! Gene says that the Packers may still have been better with Favre.
The point is, he may be right, but it's the manner in which he blindly defends Favre and his melodramatic ways, the way he castigates a young player like Rodgers purely because he has the nerve to have earned the faith of his team, and the way he saunters into the NFL world to defend people on things he knows nothing about. Woj was wrong about Rodgers because Thompson kept his job, the Packers made the playoffs, and they now have a solid basis for the next 5 years at least. Even the Vikings don't know where they stand with Favre now, even if he did lead them to the NFC title game. Would the Packers change their decision knowing what they do now? I doubt it.
Woj has a long list of players in various sports that he has authored books on, co-written with, and generally cupped the balls of, over the last decade or so. Unfortunately, everything he writes is tainted by the knowledge that he would defend his favourites with such desperate lines as "Even if you can't stand the idea of another Favre unretirement, you have to admire him for working his way around a system usually stacked in favor of the teams, not the players. "
Yeah, great work Gene. Shame you weren't so idealistic when you were calling for a 25yr old Aaron Rodgers to lose his job (and many millions of incentive dollars) back in 2008 huh?
Next.
Mel Kiper Jr. (ESPN)
Unlucky Mel, not even an NFL analyst if we're going to get pedantic, yet still worthy of inclusion on a list like this due to his sheer volume of on-the-record mistakes.
Mel is a bit of a popular target for people looking to make a trendy statement about how little the talking heads know about the draft. You will often hear people talking about him, rattling off his mistakes and laughing at his ridiculous haircut (Peter King, consider yourself lucky that you are quite good at your job) and general demeanour. These are all worthy things, and these people should be congratulated wholeheartedly. Perhaps buy them a beer!
That's it. I suggest you buy people who slag off Mel Kiper jr a beer. What? You want more? For fu...
Ok so first of all Mel has a difficult job. You ever tried doing a mock draft? Guaranteed 99% of mock drafts will be wrong by pick 7, the rest will be done by pick 10. The problem is, Mel and his fellow draft gurus build up players to believe in their own hype, in the media's evaluation of them, when in reality, NFL teams are looking for very different things from a player to what these so called 'experts' are looking for.
This may mean nothing to us as fans, but what about the players? Imagine a guy like Kiper talks you up to be a second round pick, like Central Michigan's Dan LeFevour. What do you do on day one of the draft? The crushing disappointment of being taken in the sixth round must really be quite painful. The same can be said for Andre Woodson, the Kentucky prospect who was tabbed as a first rounder by Kiper, only to slide all the way to the sixth. Woodson is now out of the league, playing in the UFL.
Is that fair on a kid? Most people will argue that they should know from their experiences with teams whether they're likely to get drafted, but that is rubbish. They are guys of 21, 22. They will watch a guy like Kiper and take his word as gospel. Unfortunately, for many of them, the riches they were promised never materialise. But why is this?
Part of Kiper's problem is that he is evaluating the college game and then has absolutely no ability to transfer what he sees into an accurate assessment of the player in the NFL. This is because the guy doesn't have the same passion for the pro game, seemingly. If that truly is the case, then why bother doing a mock? Why bother ranking the players in terms of the NFL? Surely the answer for Mel is to rank players based purely on their college play and leave the question of where they fit into the NFL ranks for those who know what they're looking for in a kid?
Sadly, this doesn't give Kiper his three days of airtime in Spring, where he gets to rattle off just how much he knows about a kid from Bowling Green. He needs to make predictions, because predictions are what idiots feed on. If he stuck to what he saw, people might actually realise that someone like Mike Mayock watches enough NFL and film of prospects to be a far more legitimate 'draft guru' than Mel.
Oh, and those predictions? What about claiming that the 2001 New England Patriots would finish 0-16? The bumbling Pats, of course, would vindicate this assessment by winning just one of the super bowls they played in during the season.
I'll tell you the rest at Mike Williams' hall of fame ceremony
Deion Sanders (NFL Network)
Oh god. I didn't want to do this, I really didn't.
Let's just be clear: If you don't like watching Deion most of the time, you must be nuts. The guy has more charisma in a single pubic hair than most of us can imagine having in a lifetime. He brings insight into the game as far as the position he played and the aspects of fame that he has experienced first-hand. With on-air chemistry like he has with Steve Marriuci and Rich Eisen, the guy should be a wet dream of an analyst.
But he isn't. Sanders has become almost unbearable on his NFL Gameday and NFL Total Access appearances throughout the season.
Deion's heart is in the right place. I do not for a second think he is a bad person - quite the opposite actually - and I certainly don't think he is a bad analyst. His problem is that he considers himself to be a mentor to dozens of players in the NFL, many of whom will at some point go through disputes with management and/or the league at some point. I don't have a problem with Deion defending a player, or even shouting 'PAYDAMAN!' when a guy deserves a new contract like Cleveland WR Josh Cribbs last season.
What I do have a problem with is not knowing exactly who's success Deion has a vested interest in. Sanders is in a privileged position, able to influence viewers and the media with his engaging personality on a TV show that is watched by a lot of NFL fans either on TV or as part of NFL.com's web videos.
When Deion was forced to expose the relationships he has with a large group of (un-named) NFL players as a result of the investigation into Oklahoma State WR Dez Bryant last year, it revealed the massive conflict of interest that Sanders has in the pro game. His meddling in Bryant's college career cost Bryant a year of football - probably his most crucial year - and potentially millions of dollars. It's hard to imagine that Deion won't attempt to make this up to young Dez by talking up his performances on NFL Gameday isn't it?
Bryant is just the beginning. Almost nothing that Deion Sanders says can be taken as 'analysis', he is simply trying to protect his select group of friends and adopted sons. The examples are literally too numerous to mention, but we all know by now Deion's signature line: 'PAYDAMAN!'. He is almost constantly looking to gain more money for a group of guys that he has personal links to. Is that fair?
His constant abuse of his privileges has sullied his reputation, and it is gutting as a fan of both Deion and the NFL to say this, but Prime Time is over. Sooner or later something will happen that pushes this issue beyond having a nice friendly chat with Mooch on NFL Network about it, as he did after the Bryant scandal, and having a formal, serious discussion with Roger Goodell about his huge conflict of interest in how the NFL is presented to the public.
