A Look at my Sports World

As of October 28, 2007 the Buffalo Bills are 3-4, the Buffalo Sabres are 5-5 and the Boston Red Sox are one win away from winning their second World Series this decade. The Buffalo Bills are playing some inspired football right now. Their defense has been pretty impressive the last several weeks. Today they had 3 sacks, 2 interceptions, and 1 forced fumble recovery. But what is this team without some controversy? JP Losman came in for an injured Trent Edwards during the fourth quarter and threw for a 85- yard touchdown pass to Lee Evans for the eventual sealer in a 13- 3 win over the New York Jets. Edwards left the game with a wrist injury. I can not imagine what the coaching staff of this team is going to decide to do next week when they take on the Cincinnati Bengals. If you watch the play that Evans scored on, the ball is originally caught by the Jets defender than stolen away by Evans who then parades into the end-zone, so this ball is not perfectly thrown. Right now though with the way the defense is playing I think the Bills will win with either Edwards or Losman in the lineup. If I had to decide I would still go with Edwards. There is also the option in which the Arizona Cardinals decided to take where they played 2 quarterbacks per game; sharing the amount of snaps per quarterback.
As for the Sabres, last night against the Tampa Bay Lightning was in my opinion the best game I have watched so far this season. The Sabres showed some determination last night that I have not seen all year. Funny thing is that last year right now this team was 10-0-0 and everyone was talking about them breaking all of these kinds of records and winning the cup. At this point this year this team is certainly not a playoff team, but luckily the season does not end until April and the games don't start to count until December and January. One player on this team though that continues to tick me off every time I see him out there is Jochen Hecht. There was one play in particular that really got me peeved. It was on Friday night in Florida when he gave up on an odd man rush. I DON'T CARE IF YOU ARE AT THE END OF YOUR SHIFT, IF YOU'RE ON AN ODD MAN RUSH YOU NEVER EVER EVER GIVE UP ON A PLAY. That was disgusting. I'm really surprised that the Sabres actually won that game because of that. I mean that could be very demoralizing seeing your capitan which you decided to chose give up on a play like that. Another player on the team who I have not been to impressed with who actually played a good game was Maxim Afinogenov. Max scored a goal, was creating opportunities for teammates, and drew at least two penalties. This is something you expect out of this guy every night, but because I am not seeing this out of him consistently I want him gone. I think the Sabres could get a decent player for Max though. I was thinking of names and I came up with Olli Jokinen. The guy brings leadership, scoring abilities, he's good at face-offs, he can play the pk, and he is physical. Face-offs have been a problem for this team because of the lack there of at that position and adding a guy with offensive talent with some grit is always a plus to have during the playoffs. The Sabres obviously do not have this with Afinogenov. I think Nolan Pratt right now isn't a bad idea either. I think this might be a definite right now from what I have read in the paper. The guy brings grit and experience in the playoffs. They were showing some highlights of this guy during one of the intermissions and Pratt a couple highlights showed him knocking Briere on his ass. Hey if this guy plays for our team and ends up injuring Briere I would have to say this might be one of the greatest signing ever by the Buffalo Sabres. I would also like to add the Sabres were really lucky to win last nights game. Two plays in that game really decided the outcome and they were the goaltender interference call that actually negated Vinny's go ahead goal for Tampa in the third on a powerplay and then in OT when Vanek scored the winner how offside Buffalo was on the 2-1 break. Nathan Paetsch was about 2 strides offside on the play and for some reason the linesman didn't call the play offside. Very lucky, but a win is a win I suppose.
As for the Red Sox, it is probably going to end tonight. This team is very lucky and I do not think they deserve it. The Rockies were white hot and sooner or later you just knew this streak was going to end. I was hoping it was going to come against the D'Backs but that is history now. One more thing on baseball. This idea has been in the back of my mind and it was something I did not want to think about until the ALCS was over partially because I did not want to jinx the Indians run(like that mattered) and also because I felt like I was overly biased until I read this today in the Sports section of the Buffalo News-- Why is it that the national media had to come out with the whole Paul Byrd HGH thing right before Game 7 of the ALCS against Boston. This could have easily thrown Cleveland off their game and this is why I think the media did it. The nation wanted Boston in the World Series and so they received it. Reason number 1 of three things why I think America is so screwed up. Politics, the media and sports run the show here and in my opinion always raises that question in my head that sports, which I extremely enjoy could be fixed.
I hoped you enjoyed this edition. I put some real thought into this post. Peace, John aka Ronnie James Dio aka Holy Diver