NFL Week Eleven – The Levi Onwuzurike Cup

 

 

 

Greetings Tipsters

What’s in a name? The USA has had presidents named Ulysses, Grover, Millard and Woodrow so it’s little surprise that footballers should have some unusual names too.

Colt McCoy was coached by his dad in high school, won MVP every season at Texas U, was a third round draft pick. With a name like that you’d hope he would have been a champion. Instead, he bounced around the league for 13 seasons, playing for five lousy teams. 21 of his 36 starts came in his first two seasons with the Browns (of course), he had a career total of 34 Tuddy passes, 2 rushing Tuddys and 32 interceptions.

Kenneth Gainwell edges out D’Andre Swift for the most appropriate surname for a running back in the league, especially cos D’Andre isn’t that fast. There’s a lot of regular names among running backs, like James Cook, but Alvin Kamara has the best, it’s a rock star name that goes well with his long dark dreads.

Levi Onwuzurike’s parents emigrated from Nigeria. There’s a number of NFL players whose parents or grandparents did so, some beautifully musical names like Noah Igbinoghene – his parents are Festus and Faith, Olympic athletes. He isn’t the only Noah on the Washington roster, tho Noah Brown isn’t near as cool. His teammates include Javontae Jean-Baptiste, Phidarian Mathis, Julian Good-Jones, Zane Gonzales and Haggai Ndubuisi.

John Brown was a two-time Mr Universe in the early ‘80s. He didn’t want his sons to have such a dull name. Amon-Ra St Brown has the best name on the Lions roster, older brother Equanimeous is on his third team in New Orleans and younger brother Osiris didn’t play past college. There’s a shedload of reasons for Black Americans choosing outstanding names, way beyond the confines of this column. Interestingly, Amon-Ra’s wiki page describes him as German-American, cos his mum is German – he speaks fluent German and French – despite him having being born and living in California until being drafted to Detroit.

Pittsburgh Steelers is generally considered to be one of the most stable and professional franchises in the league. Mike Tomlin is a well respected coach and the team never has a losing season. He called a time out just as the Ravens were about to go for a two-point conversion, which blew up their plans and got the Steelers a second touchdown-free win this season.

A few kickers missed field goals this week that cost the game. Justin Tucker of Minnesota Vikings holds the record for longest field goal (against the Lions 2021, it bounced off the crossbar and the refs missed an obvious penalty on the previous play which would’ve put Vikings back 10 yards) and has been superbly reliable for many years. He slipped a bit last season, has slipped further this one and he’ll celebrate his thirty-fifth birthday this week, which is young for a kicker. Hanson and Vinatieri played into their forties and were good in their last seasons.

It’s been a long time but kickers are now starting to get the respect they deserve. They score a quarter or more of a team’s points. There’s kiddie kicker training now, cos if you’re good you can earn a few $M a year and not get your internal organs displaced three or four dozen times every weekend. Allasame, it’s weird that some teams can go a few years without a good, reliable kicker.

Detroit Lions did, until this season. Rookie Jake Bates is 15 from 15 on field goals so far. He’s on a team with a fantastic O that can get him in range, but he kicked two important goals last week from 52 and 58.

Jake only kicked one field goal against the Jags this week. Lions scored a touchdown on each of the first seven drives and racked up numerous records on the way to inflicting the worst loss of Jax Jags history, 52-6. I love the stats in American Football, it’s a lot like cricket, every snap or every ball is a discrete moment of the game.

As of writing, Doug Pederson is still the Jags coach. Maybe cos they had to play the backup QB, Mac Jones was drafted by the Pats and played in a dysfunctional team before being traded, who wouldn’t want to spend winter in Florida rather than Massachusetts? Trevor Lawrence, Jags’ starting QB has had little more chance than Mac. He was supposed to be a generational quarterback but has played on lousy teams, now has his quarter-billion contract so why try too hard if the GM can’t figure how to draft/recruit a decent O line and the HC and OC can’t come up with anything to work around it? The DC can’t organise a stop and…

Your correspondent got to thinking, what if Shad Khan figured “Bugger this” and made a random flick thru social media and handed the team over to me? Gosh, there’s a few hundred words in that, for now, let’s just say that first order of business, I’d get myself a 1971 Pontiac Firebird Trans Am.

 

Image: Wikimedia Commons

 

Cheers Tipsters

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