Boston Sports Review
Friday column for Boston Sports Review:
Thursday night thoughts
By Dave Doyle
Contributing columnist
Random thoughts, roughly in chronological order, while flipping between the Patriots and Red Sox games on TV Thursday night:
* It is almost disorienting turning on a Fox broadcast and listening to Joe Buck call a game with Troy Aikman, which was the case for the Patriots-Saints matchup, instead of Tim McCarver. Whenever I hear Buck talk about the Patriots, I half-expect McCarver to pipe up about how the Patriots do things wrong and the Giants or Jets are classy organizations.
* Remember the last time the Patriots played the Saints? November 25, 2001. It was Week 1 after Bill Belichick decided Tom Brady had the starting quarterback job over Drew Bledsoe, period, for the rest of the season, whether or not Bledsoe was healthy. Some at the time compared this to Belichick benching Bernie Kosar for Todd Philcox in Cleveland a few years earlier, which in and of itself ignored that Kosar never again started anywhere unless someone ahead of him got hurt.
Either way, the Pats won 34-17 that day; Brady had four touchdown passes to no picks. They're 52-11 since. Think they made the right choice?
* OK, Brady threw an interception in his first attempt of the evening. But the second time out, he marches the team about 76 yards in roughly six seconds for the first touchdown. So much for the hurt shoulder.
* Those who were hinting at a leadership vacuum with Tedy Bruschi on the sidelines, Ted Johnson retired and Ty Law in New York must have missed the memo about Rodney Harrison's role on the team.
* Sophisticated football fans are supposed to understand that the National Football League is a cold, hard league and that the salary cap trumps all notions of loyalty. Even so, it just seems right to see Troy Brown still in a Patriots uniform.
* Same for Adam Vinatieri.
* And Willie McGinest.
* A brief change in the original programming plan. Zach Duke is pitching for Pittsburgh tonight, which requires a spin through DirecTV. Duke, the 22-year old lefty called up in July, is plowing through the Mets. He doesn't allow a hit until the fifth and holds them to two hits over seven innings. He's 6-0 in seven big league starts. If you like baseball, you have to make it a point to watch both Duke and 19-year old Mariners rookie Felix Hernandez, because they are the two next big things in pitching.
* Back to the Pats. Joe Buck makes a crack at the end of the first quarter about how they just went 15 minutes without mentioning Terrell Owens. I'm starting to like Joe Buck.
* Buck just asked Aikman who he would pick if he could pick just one person in a fantasy draft. Aikman said Peyton Manning. Fair enough. Joe didn't ask, "if you had to have one player to win the Super Bowl ..."
* Methinks Ellis Hobbs is going to be that guy that comes out of nowhere every summer and plays his way onto the team in the preseason.
* You know what? If you're between the ages of 30-40 or so, and you didn't get a rush out of watching Doug Flutie make it look easy on the way to a second-quarter touchdown, then you obviously didn't grow up in the Boston area.
* Sox are on. Did anyone ever made a bigger impact in as short a period of time on the Red Sox in our lifetime as Orlando Cabrera? Maybe you could say Dave Roberts, but his contribution was one specific play. Mike Boddicker? He was huge in 1988, but he hung around for a couple years. Cabrera came to town, locked down the defense, got some clutch hits, and was gone to Anaheim just as we started to get to know him.
* Hmmm … last year the Patriots showed the Bengals nothing on defense in the exhibition season and lost. Then they came out and beat Cincy in the regular season. This year, they play New Orleans in the regular season. And the defense has been nothing to speak of tonight. Hmmm.
* DirecTV is using the Fox Sports West feed of Red Sox-Angels. Amazingly, the Angels crew doesn't feel compelled to crack bad jokes all day; cram non-stop plugs for their network into the broadcast; go off on lengthy non-baseball tangents; or have a pet rally monkey in the booth. They apparently have the idea in their heads that baseball in and of itself is worthwhile product without bells and whistles. Just in case you thought every team in baseball used the NESN approach.
* OK, I was going to stick around for the Sox game, but in a short period of time I've gone from the Saints' big finish to flipping back to the Sox and seeing them unravel, finishing off with Tim Wakefield getting drilled in the ankle and leaving the game. I think that's my cue to call it a night.
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