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Reprinted from Sept. 5th at Rick's suggestion. All comments past #16 are comments that follow the 49er detonation.  - Jeff

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Dr. D was taken aback, on that read-option play which resulted in a bizarrely-open Ricardo Lockette.  As Lockette raced down the sideline for paydirt, Wilson during live action ! turned back toward the bench and gleefully shouted out the coach who set up the play.

Imagine how the coach felt.  ... Pete Carroll was asked about Wilson's cheesy rah-rah antics, and Carroll shot back "We all know it's from the heart."

And:  when Wilson does it during live action, there is a sincerity associated, don't you think?

And:  that's a little different from bicep-kissing.

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Dr. D isn't above visiting the 49ers' blogs to chuckle over their attempt to dismiss the way the Seahawks crushed Green Bay like a pop can.  "Well, what we learned is that Green Bay is terrible."  

What Dr. D learned, is that Aaron Rodgers couldn't do much better than Peyton Manning and Drew Brees.  That is 3 HOF quarterbacks in 4 games, burned in effigy and hung from the rafters.  Yes, they all had game film to study.  At what point do you concede the obvious?

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Particularly, the 49ers fans saw Wilson's performance as "meh."  To me, that is genuinely a garbage swing at the pitch, a complete failure to see the point.  NFL quarterbacking, in the 21st century, is quick reads and seeing the seams in the defense.  

It is not about dropping back, planting the back foot like a cannon strut, and howitzer'ing the ball downfield.  NFL quarterbacking is now about quickness.  Not speed:  quickness.

It seems to me, as a casual NFL fan, that Russell Wilson has been doing 1-2-3 defense reads his whole life, and that he works extremely hard at it.  In year three, it appears to be jelling for him.  Steve Young has made the assertion that Colin Kaepernick never moved past his first simple read, and now it's catching up to him...

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Moving the little metaphor over to baseball, Bill James made an observation from his strongest suit, that being baseball history.  Almanac stuff, templates, pattern recognition.  This is Dr. D's favorite aspect of sabermetrics also.  As they say in chess, "Whatever position you've got, it has been played before!"

He said that players like Wally Joyner are extremely common in baseball.  This is the player who comes up, lands with a splash, and then goes into a glide ratio down into mediocrity.  He gave you his best, right at the start, and you assumed he would gather momentum.  Not always, and maybe not even usually.

"David Cassidy," quipped James.  (If you just joined us, at like age 17 Cassidy wrote a couple of neat pop jingles for The Partridge Family, became a shooting star, but the world passed him by two years later, and he had nothing else in the tank.)

You think that Colin Kaeperncik has a little David Cassidy in him?  :- )

I'll guarantee you that Russell Wilson doesn't have a David Cassidy bone in his body.  And the Seahawks-49ers Wars of the '10s are already looking like they could become less than advertised.

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Here is a question for you guys who know the NFL a lot better than I do.  ... I flat out would not want a childish punk like Colin Kaepernick running my franchise.  Has there ever been a punk who led a great NFL dynasty?  Do you still have to have a mature, responsible man at quarterback, or in the 21st century is that obsolete?

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Richard Sherman

His detractors, in their sour grapes, claim that you "neutralize" Sherman by lining up your weakest receiver on the right side, and then just play on the left side of the field.  Did you notice?  Aaron Rodgers never LOOKED right during the game.

Two more questions for my NFL mentors.

1.  Is there any way these fans could be serious?  Or is that STRICTLY, ENTIRELY sour grapes?  Playing 10-on-10 in a phone booth is the "neutralization" of one defender?

2.  Aren't QB's still supposed to "look off" the safety and all that?  How come Thomas and Chancellor aren't exploiting that "left side only" playbook more than they did?  Or was that just Aaron Rodgers' incredible greatness, that he could use 60% of the field and still go 23-for-33 dinks?

Not that I'm complaining.  Green Bay had as much chance of a deep ball, or a broken run, as Dr. D has of running an ML ballclub.

Your friend,

Dr D