Eeshirt-tay Ontest-cay
Mar 9, 2008 Dancing With the 'Tards, Houston Chronicle, Inanity, Richard Justice is a talentless hack., T-shirts
Considering I have been incredibly lazy around here lately (due in no small part to my sleep being in three-hour intervals), I am going to give myself a little credit for being only eight days late in announcing the winner of
The DGDB&D “Design A Richard Justice T-Shirt” Contest!!
The winning entry, submitted by The Count, will be made into a t-shirt shortly and I will post the link. I will also mail one of the shirts to Dick himself (and to The Count) and, with luck, some form of hilarity will ensue. (Note: The authors of this blog take no responsibility for any lack of ensuing hilarity.)
UPDATE:
Oh, yeah…about that t-shirt contest
Feb 5, 2008 Dancing With the 'Tards, Douchebag Tom, Houston Chronicle, Inanity, Richard Justice is a talentless hack., T-shirts
Friday marked the closing of entries in
The DGDB&D “Design A Richard Justice T-Shirt” Contest!!
With no further ado, I present all of the submitted designs. Vote in the comments with the following rules: 1. No anonymous votes will be counted. 2. Only vote once. 3. Feel free to try to circumvent #2, but be clever about it. Voting will close March 1, with the winner announced March 5ish.
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Two jokes, one design
Jan 30, 2008 Dancing With the 'Tards, Houston Chronicle, Inanity, Richard Justice is a talentless hack., T-shirts, You remind me of ____
With one day remaining before the deadline, Liston offers another t-shirt design for the
The DGDB&D “Design A Richard Justice T-Shirt” Contest!!
I will repost all of the designs on Friday. Remember, you have until Friday morning to submit designs. You know you aren’t doing anything productive right now (or else you wouldn’t be reading this); why not make a t-shirt design?
Gettin’ drunk
Jan 18, 2008 2007 Season, Bloggerating, Boobies, Colts Shmolts, Dancing With the 'Tards, Inanity, Overexposure, T-shirts, Teams that aren't the Texans
Five announcements before we get to this weekend’s picks:
1. DGDB&D is pleased to announce the addition of bigfatdrunk as a contributing author. I have no idea how much he will post and I will let him handle any sort of introduction he might want to do, but rest assured that this addition was done solely to keep this place from becoming too highbrow. Not that we were really in danger of it.
2. Speaking of how not-highbrow we are, according to two different sources today, it seems that this little corner of the blogosphere is being blocked by some corporate firewalls as “pornographic content.” This blog may be many things, but I think we can all agree that it is not being overrun with naked people fucking. Even former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart would not look at this site and say it was hard-core obscenity. Asinine, perhaps, but not porn.
3. Reminder: Richard Justice t-shirt contest is ongoing. Just under two weeks left to get your entries in. I would link to the other entries here, but I am lazy.
4. After checking some of the referral links and some emails and stuff, by my count, there are five females who regularly read this place. I am not sure if this is surprisingly high or surprisingly low. Either way, welcome.
5. Maybe I am crazy, but if the Colts are going so far as to say who “will be” the coach “if” Dungy retires, I’m guessing we won’t see Tony pontificating on the sidelines next year.
On to the picks…
Last Week: 3-1
Regular Season Record: 156-91
Playoff Record: 7-1
Playoffs Week 3 Picks:
San Diego @ New England. San Diego in the Super Bowl has about 1/1000th the attraction to anyone outside of Southern California, regardless of your stance on the Patriots. Even if you hate them, you’d much rather see them lose the Super Bowl and go 18-1 than go 17-1, right? And, if we get that Patriots/Packers matchup on Feb. 3, I don’t think it is a stretch to say it will break every conceivable sports television record. Pick: New England
New York @ Green Bay. I’m not saying that the powers-that-be want the Packers to win, but when you are scheduling a mid-January playoff game at Lambeau and you set the start time for 6PM EST, you are making some kind of statement. The wind chill at kickoff is expected to be somewhere around absolute zero and Brett Favre’s below-freezing home record is something like 562-1, so I really, really have a hard time believing Green Bay won’t win this game. I do, however, think there’s a fairly good chance that someone shatters upon impact like the T-1000. Pick: Green Bay
That’s my Quarterback!
Jan 18, 2008 Awesomeness, Fuck the Cowboys, Inanity, T-shirts
Man, I wish I could take credit for this T-shirt design.
Moron^2
Jan 13, 2008 Dancing With the 'Tards, Douchebag Tom, Fuck the Cowboys, Houston Chronicle, Inanity, Richard Justice is a talentless hack., T-shirts
SOLIS offers up four more t-shirt designs for the
The DGDB&D “Design A Richard Justice T-Shirt” Contest!!
Says the artist, “It’s based on the theory that Tom is acually Richard Justice.”
Vista View
Jan 4, 2008 Dancing With the 'Tards, Houston Chronicle, Inanity, Richard Justice is a talentless hack., T-shirts
The Count offers another entry in the Lil’ Dickie T-Shirt Extravaganza.
Off and running
Jan 2, 2008 Dancing With the 'Tards, Houston Chronicle, I really dig my readers, Inanity, Richard Justice is a talentless hack., T-shirts
I seriously love you people. Two more entries in the t-shirt contest, this time from reader Brent.
History is the distillation of rumour.
Dec 28, 2007 2007 Season, 2008 Season, Andre Johnson, Bloggerating, Casserly blows goats... I have proof, Douchebag Tom, Gary Kubiak, Rosie Rosenfels, Roster, Self-Referential Stuff, Shameless begging, T-shirts, Tempting Fate, The Future, The Schaub Experiment
I’m guessing we all sort of assumed as much but, in case you had any doubts, Kubes said yesterday that Sage Rosenfels will start Sunday’s finale.
I’m going to start Sage. Sage will be our starter going into the game. It will be a game-time decision on Matt on whether he’ll be our backup or the third. Over the course of the next couple of days, we’ll see.
Possible Translation: Sage’s trade value took a hit last week, so I am going to run him back out there, hope they play their second-team defense, and give him a chance to bring that stock back up. Also, I’d be a fool if I let Matt Schaub back out there before his shoulder was 100%. Since I already managed to get Andre Johnson hurt this year, I think I’ll pass on taking another stupid risk. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go remind everyone that Mario was the correct pick.
In all seriousness, though (or at least as much seriousness I can muster), this is the right move. As much as we would like to win this game, it would almost be a pyhrric victory if Matt did further damage to the separated shoulder (or suffered another concussion). Besides, right now, at this exact moment in time, I can’t honestly look any of you in the virtual eye and say that starting Matt gives us any sort of increased likelihood of winning.
Which is NOT to say that I don’t still think Schaub is the guy, both in terms of short-term competition with Sage and long-term health of the franchise.
Unless I am missing something, we have four answers to the question of “What about Sage?” 1. We can hold on to him, content in knowing that we have “The Best Backup in Football” should Schuab get injured. 2. We can take advantage of his reputation as “The Best Backup in Football” and use it to net ourselves players or draft picks to fill more pressing needs. 3. We can make him the starter based on what he’s done this year as compared to Schaub. 4. We can hold on to him and let him and Schaub battle it out next summer because we believe both of them are capable of being an NFL starting QB.
Numbers 1 and 2 both have their merits, but we’ll deal with them in a moment. To my way of thinking, #3 is asinine unless you really, REALLY believe that we messed up by trading for Schaub, which is a pretty hard position to defend and is generally shared only by the same sort of people that believe Tony Hollings was a smart pick. Number 4, though…that’s what this discussion is really about, isn’t it? Because there are intelligent people who honestly believe that Sage is capable of being the starter and that whichever one of the two QBs who wins the battle can be the future of this organization. To those people, I have to say that I respectfully disagree. (To the people in the #3 camp, I disagree, but there is no respect involved.)
I’ve said it before, but there absolutely had to be a reason that Matt Schaub was the most sought backup QB in the league before last offseason. True, he did not have much of a body of work to support that lofty position, but NFL heads had to have seen something they liked in him to drive his pricetag up as high as it went. And in his first two games of this season, when the team was reasonably healthy and there was a semblance of a running game, many fans (myself included) were thrilled about how great the Matt Schaub era was going to be. So, yeah, there have been flashes of starting-caliber ability from Matt. Additionally, red zone INTs notwithstanding, there is no substantial body of evidence that suggests Matt isn’t capable of being a starting QB.
On the other hand, for all Sage has done this year, can we really overlook the fact that in four years of mini-camps and training camps (not to mention the 13 games had played in) he couldn’t beat out such Dolphin luminaries as Jay Fielder, Ray Lucas, Brian Griese, AJ Feeley, and Gus Frerotte? Don’t you think that, if Rosenfels had shown even a glimmer of the ability to be a starter, that he would not have been the one constant on the roster as the Dolphins brought in all those other guys in an effort to find a real QB?
Is this dispositive? Of course not. There is nothing that says future performance has to be directly correlated with past performance. Besides, in theory, it is perfectly believable that a guy languished in an organization so bereft of common sense that he never really had a chance to prove his ability. But, while that sounds nice in theory, can someone point me to one guy–just one–who did next to nothing for four years on a winning team (the Dolphins were over .500 three of Sage’s four years) only to be reborn as a bona fide starter somewhere else? I honestly can’t think of one. The closest I can come up with off the top of my head is Rich Gannon in his four years with Kansas City, but that’s a crappy comparison because (a) Rich had already been in the league seven years when he got to KC, (b) he played much more during his time in KC than Sage did in Miami, and (c) anyone with any sense was screaming for Rich to remain the starter over Elvis Grbac. Still, I suppose Gannon is an example of a very late bloomer, so at least that part holds.
On the contrary, you can think of a number of guys who were thought to be better than they’d shown with their previous teams, only to also suck upon arrival at their new NFL addresses, even if they initially showed promise with the second team. David Carr had some Carolina fans calling for Jake’s head based on some training camp games. How’d that work out? People actually believed that Joey Harrington could be the guy in Atlanta based on…umm…I actually don’t know. Brian Griese has gotten multiple shots like this, always based on a couple good games he had in the preseason or in the previous season. So, do you really have enough faith that Sage is the exception to this pattern that you would let the future of the Texans ride on that belief?
Look, I’m not trying to suggest that Sage hasn’t had a good year, or that his year wasn’t objectively better than Schaub’s. Clearly, it was. I would suggest, however, that we are comparing apples and oranges when we put them side-by-side: one is a guy who came in with a ton of promise, lived up to it for his first two games, then saw his #1 weapon–one of the best three or four WRs in football–go down and his running game go kaput; the other guy is one that has a five year history of not being the best QB on a roster full of crappy QBs, led a nice near-comeback that caused people to ignore his turnovers in that game, then was at the helm when Andre Johnson was back at full strength and the defense began playing much better. Which, I guess, is my long-winded way of saying that Sage’s success this year can just as easily be chalked up to right place, right time as to anything inherent in him. There’s nothing wrong with that–a lot of guys get their initial breaks that way (Kurt Warner, Tom Brady, etc.). But how many of those guys previously lost playing time to Ray effin’ Lucas?
Trying again to make a long story short–if you had to bet your life on one of these two QBs being successful in Houston five years from now, would you take the guy who came into town with enough promise to warrant two second-round picks or the guy who came into town after four years of being the backup to guys who should never have been anything more than backups?
“But,” some of you are probably saying, “why not just keep both of them so we have a solid backup?” Thank you for segueing me into Numbers 1 and 2 from the earlier list. In a perfect world, where every Mario Williams is backed up by an Earl Cochran and every free agent WR can produce like Andre Davis, it would be a fantastic luxury to have a backup of Sage’s quality. Hell, it would be ideal. But, as we all know, this Texans roster is far from complete. Our highest paid player, Anthony Weaver, has been invisible or worse for much of the season. We don’t have a real first- and second-down running back. Strongside linebacker, nose tackle, center, right and left guard, free safety, all continue to be question marks as well. To make matters worse–at least when it comes to filling some of those holes–we don’t have a second-round draft pick this year.
Even if you don’t buy the idea that Sage’s past gives us any sort window into his abilities, the mere fact that we have so many spaces to fill should suggest that, if someone is willing to give us any kind of a package that includes the words “third-round draft pick” we owe it to ourselves to make that deal. We would be letting someone else take the chance that Sage 2008 will be more like Sage 2004 than 2007 and we would be addressing actual, pressing needs.
I have to believe that Smithiak realize this need to get something for Sage and that this is what is driving all the talk about Sage being a quality NFL QB. I mean, otherwise, by telling the fans over and over that Rosenfels is a starting-quality QB and will “push” Matt to be better, they would be creating an instant QB controversy as soon as Matt had one down game. I might have bought that the previous regime was that short-sighted, but I tend to think this group understands these things and would not set Matt or Sage up to fail. Besides, given that Kubiak is by all accounts a huge Matt Schaub fan and has been since the kid arrived, any scenario that doesn’t revolve around getting the best team possible on the field around Matt Schaub would be incongruous with what they’ve been telling us.
Wow…I really didn’t mean to write that much when I started this post. Sorry about that. And I realize that a lot of this is rehashing some old points, so I don’t know that much of it is comment-inducing. Such is life.
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In other, non-related bits:
- You know how I use the Texans’ logo at the top-left of every post? Well, after seeing that the NFL “asked” HPF to remove team logos and whatnot (and factoring in that there have to be at least a few people out there who are unhappy with their respective portrayals herein), I’m beginning to think that I should get rid of that. Now, this place is pretty graphic-free as it is, so I kind of like having a little something up there for visual interest and to make it easier to see where new posts start if I am scrolling down the page. I think it’s pretty well-known that I am awful at photoshops (right, BFD?), so if any of you can come up with some sort of graphic roughly that same size that “embodies” this blog in some way, I’ll, like, give you my undying love. And a free DGDB&D t-shirt, if you want one. To the extent this is a contest, it ends as soon as I pick one.
- Two different people have asked me if I am rooting for the Titans this weekend since I hate Peyton Manning with such a passion. No, I am not. I am rooting for Albert Haynesworth to kill Manning and then get kicked out of the game for violating Peyton’s corpse, but I want Sorgi to lead the Colts to the win. My reasoning? Seeing Vince choke away a playoff birth would make Mario’s breakout season extra sweet. (Also, if we can’t make the playoffs, I don’t want those turds to make it, either. I am selfish like that.)
- Douchebag Tom the douchey banned commenter is still a douchebag. Which is not really news, but still seemed worth mentioning.
Blue Steel
Jul 18, 2007 Awesomeness, David Carr has Post-Concussion Syndrome, T-shirts, Teams that aren't the Texans
It’s rare that another blogger does something so cool for me that I feel the need to mention it. And, by “it’s rare,” I mean “it has never happened before.” Today, that changed.
Stephanie Stradley, aka Texans Chick, procured for me tickets to the Saturday morning and afternoon and the Sunday morning practices for camp’s opening weekend. So, it looks like I shall be in the heezy (fo’ sheezy).
But, that wasn’t her only piece of awesomeness today. Oh, no. She also sent along this link. Which, you may rest assured, will be turned into a t-shirt as soon as I finish this post.
(Speaking of t-shirts, I’m picking up the bar tab for the first person I see wearing one of the DGDB&D shirts. Offer void in Rhode Island and where prohibited by law.)
Darcy Maeda strikes again!
Jul 18, 2007 David Carr has Post-Concussion Syndrome, Self-Referential Stuff, Shameless begging, T-shirts
If you are the observant type, you might notice that down near the bottom, over on the right side, is a section entitled “DGDB&D Gear.” And, though it’s a little hard to see in that thumbnail, you might also notice a certain, slightly famous photo available on a t-shirt.
If you click on that shirt, there are a couple others available, too.
I suppose I should mention that I am not doing this to make money. (In fact, that store is set up at 0% commission, so that I don’t make a single dime on any of them, that you might get them as cheaply as possible.) I am doing this because (a) that picture makes me laugh and (b) I think the thought of someone wearing a DGDB&D t-shirt is beyond awesome. You know… someone other than me.
