NFL Final Week: Talk is Cheap

It’s essential for sports handicappers to sift through talk by players and coaches to find the meaningful stuff from the baloney. For instance, here are a couple of quotes from NFL players this season. "We're a better team than we were last year and we expected to come in here and win this game." "We planned on coming back this year and beating Pittsburgh two times."

The players? Bengals RB Rudi Johnson and WR Chris Henry. Those comments came after Week 3 when Cincinnati won at Pittsburgh, 28-20. The Bengals were 3-0 at the time, the second straight season they started 3-0. And Cincy players continued to talk trash that week, many talking about great they were and their team was. But a funny thing happened. The Bengals lost the next Sunday, 38-13 as a 6-point favorite at home to New England, which started a stretch where they lost 5 of 6 games. The moral? Talk is cheap.

Talk doesn’t mean much, it’s what you do that’s important. Too many professional athletes don’t understand this. Football is very much a team-oriented game, with so many players, coaches, execution, and game plans needed to win. Here’s another comment from an NFL quarterback: “There’s too much talent in this locker room for us to be sitting at 7-8." That was said by Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick. Again, it doesn’t carry a lot of weight, as he may think they have talent, but this has been a bumbling, underachieving team the second half of the season, on a 2-6 SU/ATS run.

Atlanta was only a dog twice during that run, and lost 4 times as a favorite. That’s why the coaching staff is under fire. Cornerback D'Angelo Hall said that even firing embattled coach Jim Mora would not necessarily fix things. "Even with a coaching change I don't know if guys will own up or accept responsibility; that's just how it is."

Tight end Alge Crumpler said the team, which started the season 5-2, lacks consistency. "I wish we would be consistent at something, anything," Crumpler said. "Early in the season, go back to the first game against Tampa Bay. I think I might have caught one ball, but we ran that ball and ran that ball and that was one of the more joyous feelings in the locker room, not just because we won, but just because of the way we did it. We were consistent at something then."

He may be correct identifying a problem, but that still doesn’t mean much if the coaches and players can’t fix it. You are judged by success in football by wins and losses, it’s that simple. Has their been a more disappointing team than the NY Giants? After a 36-22 loss to the Eagles, Giants coach Tom Coughlin said just before the next game, "We’re getting healthy. It's always good to have a full complement out there.” The next day they laid another egg at home, losing 30-7 to New Orleans. Yes, talk is cheap.

And speaking of talk is cheap, is there are greater joke of a management situation than the Detroit Lions? The Lions have won 23 games and lost 72 since president Matt Millen was hired in 2001, and he still has a job. That is astounding. What’s even more astounding is that the Lions were actually decent before he got there, at 9-7 in 2000 and making the playoffs in 1999. Which means we will hear in the offseason from Millen about how well things are going and what a great draft they had. Just like drafting Joey Harrington. And Charles Rogers. And on an on.

Don’t read too much into what athletes say. Rather, it’s more important to find the talk that IS meaningful and truthful, about how healthy a team is, how motivated, how together or cohesive a team is, etc. Because too much talk is cheap, it’s the results that count.

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