Cowboys Amassing Losers at an Alarming Rate

Anthony Henry Sent To Detroit For Veteran QB

The Dallas Cowboys sent starting CB Anthony Henry to Detroit for Jon Kitna. A starting corner back for a backup QB from a team that lost ALL of their games in 2006.

Aside from looking like a skinnier version of Private Pyle from Full Metal Jacket, he's actually an upgrade from noodle arm Brad Johnson and probably the best option amongst all the available free agent QB's out in the market. Also, this is a cap friendly deal, the Cowboys freed $3.6 million off of their books for 2009.

Now that was the good part. The bad? Why would you give up a starting CB for someone who the Lion mostly would have cut in a few days anyways? If Kitna had hit the open market, it would be a huge stretch that a massive bidding war would ensue for a backup QB from a 0-16 team.

Who needs a backup when your I.Q. is 130? What? You don't think so? Who are YOU to argue with the Internet?!!

Now the Cowboys have fortified their backup QB spot (which most likely had cost them a playoff spot in 2008 - and the chance to lose again in the first round), they have seriously weaken their defensive backfield. Once again, veteran Terence Newman is the only proven commodity at the position. If he should miss games like he has in the last few years, the Cowboys are left with a bunch of second year players and possibly rookies or Pros vs. Joes Pacman Jones. In a related note, this opens the door for me when I win a spot in the Cowboys training camp; the probability of a 5'-6" Asian man with 5.63 40 speed playing corner back for the Cowboys has increased tenfold.

A trade that would have made more sense would be trading Safety Roy Williams for Kitna. The Cowboys are probably going to release him to gain cap space anyways, but then the Lions probably knew that too; and the prospect of being able to copy and paste names from their 2008 game program templates for the 2009 season was not enticing enough for them to pull the trigger.

Oh well, it could be worse. I have had a recurring nightmare in the last few weeks that Jerry Jones backed up the Brinks truck to lure Farve out of retirement to play for the Cowboys.

In other news, columnist Jay Mariotti is calling on Roger Goodell to investigate the Cassel trade.

Mariotti is arguing that the trade is too one-sided, too much of a sweetheart deal for the Chiefs.

Now I am probably the biggest Beli-cheat hater in the New England area and completely agree with people who believe Belichick got off light for Spygate, even I have to say Mariotti is completely off base here.

Investigate what? The fact that Belichick is not his usual complete cheating asshole who would stab his own grandmother to improve his team? What league rule has he broken really? If making bad executive decisions is against NFL rules, Matt Millen would be serving a 100 game suspension right now, if not banned from football completely.

The fact that Belichick may or may not have play his hand to the fullest is not up to the NFL to investigate, it's between Kraft and the the Grey Hoodie. Who knows why Pioli got the sweetheart deal? Maybe he has pictures of Belichick drawing swastikas and penises on drunk college boys.

C-A-S-S-E-L, one L

Breaking news: Pats trade Mike Vrabel AND Matt Cassel to the Chiefs for a second round pick.

Second round pick?! One single second round pick. Plus they have to throw in Vrabel to sweeten the pot. Not mentioned in the transaction log is the copies of the DVD's from the Belichick video library or the part of Matt Cassel's new contract requiring Pioli to pay for all the dinners that Cassel plans to buy for Bernard Pollard.

I know the people who refers to Pat's transactions as "We should get.." or "they will trade us" will spin this as "Well, it's the 34th pick - that's almost like a first round pick", or "Vrabel is on the downside of his career, and at least we get something out of this and cleared some cap space".

Look, anytime you get more than a bag of used jockstraps for a career bench warmer is a good deal, but it's pretty far away from the two first round picks for Cassel wet dream.

In my opinion, here are the factors at play here:

• The Patriots are the most hated team in the NFL. Try justifying to your fan base if you are perceived to have overpaid for Cassel and he doesn't deliver. Hence no one bit, and the only taker was Pioli.
  
• The track record for career backups going to another team after succeeding in relief duty is not good. Remember A.J. Feeley? Yeah, neither do I.
• Cassel took over a 18-1 team, played the easiest 2008 schedule in the NFL, and MISSED THE PLAYOFFS. Now Matt is not completely to blame for the Pats sitting home for the 2008 playoffs, but he didn't help himself enough to warrant a bidding war.

Overall, this isn't a bad deal for the Patriots. They gave up a career backup and a possible salary cap casualty for a second round pick, but it will still be funny to see the reaction of the people around here justify their gross overvaluation of Cassel's market price.

How gross you ask? About the same as this woman thinking that she would make the Pats cheerleader squad at the tryouts today.

Or this woman in her assessment of her ability to pull off the Captive Leia

McFilthy Signs With the Redskins

The Foreskins sign both the cheap shot artist Albert Haynesworth and the perennial victim DeAngelo Hall.

It's going to be a fun 2009.







Other NFC East News

Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Hank Baskett's fiance Kendra Wilkinson was out doing radio to promote the last episode of "Girls Next Door".

The former playboy playmate and Hef's (probably many others') sloppy seconds will be getting her own reality show where she will share her wedding preparation with the audience.

Yeah.. that could be interesting, if you're into that sort of things.

Anyways, here is the links and the summary of her interview(s).

Internet funny and the people who don't get it

"Romo-friendly"

In a Q&A session with the Star-Telegram this week, Jerry Jones was asked what is the high priority for the upcoming 2009 season.

His answer:

"I think being as Romo-friendly as our team can be. Romo friendly means let's utilize his skills to the fullest and make sure everything we do maximizes his abilities."

Romo-friendly? Come on Jerry, we know what you are trying to say; but "Romo-friendly"? It sounds like you are just going to coddle the guy. You might as well hand out "Romosexual" tee shirts to the coaching staff.

Hey Wade, good luck on your "get tough" endeavor this year.

The Roach Motel

I was required to be in sunny San Diego for two days of training this past week.

As with all of these trips, I like to maximize my good times as well as getting work done. In order to achieve both goals, I decided to fly out on Monday evening and work out of my hotel on the day before the training begins on Wednesday.

In order to support my President's call for "personal sacrifice" in his inaugural speech, I decided to book the cheapest hotel I can find for Monday and Tuesday night. With a quick search on hotels.com, and careful deliberation , by careful deliberation I mean "sort by price - low to high". I settled on Hotel 500 West.


As you can see from their site, it doesn't look too bad. Clean, hip lobby, got the catch phrase "hybrid" in their slogan, and a picture of a fetching young lady using her Mac on the bed (conveys the message that she has no time for searching for device drivers and dealing with Windows viruses - she's too busy banging random guys. At least that's the message I got - your millage may vary).

Fiddy-five dollars a night. SOLD! sign me up. I booked the mofo for Monday and Tuesday night.

After a six and a half hour flight on JetBlue, in which I was only able to watch the Food Network clearly on their in-flight DirectTV system, I arrived both dehydrated and HUNGRY. After checking in and dropping off my crap, I query the front desk clerk for the nearest restaurant. The answer I received was "take a left out the door, and keep walking". So I did.

For those of you who are familiar with downtown San Diego, I am walking eastbound on West Broadway, towards the bus station; for those of you who are familiar with American urban development and Poison songs knows what it means to see a bus station. Undeterred, I kept walking. Son, I play BOTH flag football and slow pitch softball - I am a finely tuned athlete, they should FEAR ME. Two blocks away, I see several check cashing places; that my friends, means I should turn around (Come on, even Superman has Kryptonite).

Just as I was turning, I saw a restaurant across the street. It's name was the Yard House. Walking in the door, I see a sign informing me that they have over two hundred beers on tap. Two hundred - for those you who know me, this conjures up the scene in Gladiator where Maximus says "If you find yourself alone, riding in the green fields with the sun on your face, do not be troubled. For you are in Elysium, and you're already dead!".

I think I had a few yards of cheap American swill, and met some nice people from Seattle and Sweden, and headed back to the 500 West. Not surprisingly, I had no problems sleeping in the what I later learned - the meager accommodations.

The next day, three of my coworkers arrive, one man and two women. Immediately, they were horrified by the hotel. Apparently, they had trouble with the fact that the showers/bathrooms were communal and they saw a can of "bed bugs" spray on the cart of the cleaning staff. To be fair, I had sold them pretty hard on this joint, because I didn't want to stay at crapland by myself, and I wanted to have an adventure. Going in, I had pictured this place to be something that you would see in a movie where the burnt-out cop would live, you know - the glowing neon sign outside of your window, elevated train rumbling by every few minutes, and perhaps a chalk outline body on the floor - like Highlander or where Briar Gates stayed in Next of Kin.

I got the train rumbling, but the neon light outside of our windows was of the $165 a night glow of the Westin Hotel. In fact, that Westin Hotel sign mocked my two female coworkers all night as they had to call each other to make their trek to the bathroom at 4 A.M.

Instead of giving you the nancy-boy and obvious biased opinion from my coworkers about the 500 West, let's go to tripadvisor.com for some reviews by some experienced travelers:

From Rizzodublin - Dublin, Ireland:

What we didn't anticipate were BED BUGS, a filthy room, that looks nothing like the room advertised, TWO hours SLEEP due to constant noise from the trolley, train and cruise liners that pass less than a block away all night. ... Upon speaking to the manager he advised us the hotel was "not for everyone", and he would offer us a discount of 20% off our 150$ per night rate. We stated we were extremely unhappy with same, would not be paying for the room and checked out.

You paid $150 PER NIGHT? You should be car bombing the bastard who book you that rate.


From breakslikeglass - Portland, Oregon:

i get that it's a hostel, but for nearly the same price as a hotel, i expect a level of decency to match the praise of some of the previous reviews. ... i am a very small, reasonably decent looking girl and was continually yelled at/asked out by men who were so drugged up they could hardly form sentences. it was scary.

Just on a hunch, I used her user name and looked for a profile on MySpace. I don't know, Miss BreaksLikeGlass, but I think you are the type that gives off the "I would totally bang a homeless person" vibe.

Here are several room shots from one of my coworkers:


As you can see, the rooms are not bad. Overall, I think I scored on several fronts. One, I stayed at a crappy hotel, and showed my willingness to sacrifice to improve the company bottom line. Two, had a nice adventure, communal bathrooms? I don't think the other guests had a problem with me running around in a towel. Three, I am able to observe the pickup techniques of the homeless/transient community - I thought their grammar was adequate and quite acceptable.

Update 2/26/2009 -

I knew there was a good reason why I chose the 500 West.

You're welcome.

I Am a Complete Asshole

As many of you guys know, I am in San Diego this week. I stayed at a crappy hotel for Monday and Tuesday (post coming soon, awaiting pictures from my coworker), and I stayed at Loews Coronado Bay Resort for Wednesday and Thursday.


As you can see, pretty damn sweet digs.

Before I left, I set the alarm clock to go off at 2:43 AM, with both the buzzer and the radio set on FULL BLAST.

Now some poor soul who stays in that room after me will get a nice surprise in the wee hours tomorrow morning.

I have no idea why I decided to do this. Oh wait, I know - it's because I am a complete asshole.

Travel Update One

At the airport food court - I just lost one of my fillings on my tooth biting into a McDonald's hamburger. Fuck you karma.

Travel Update two

Some sucker had to leave this in the bathroom outside of the security check point.