Bye Week Blues

As I picked over the still warm corpse of the Steelers/Browns game yesterday, I thought, “Could anything be more miserable than Bye week Sunday?”.

The answer, “Yup.  Bye week Monday”.

Normally on Monday, there’s a bevy of fun recap articles to read.  There’s analysis to criticize.  There’s articles to link.  There’s something to do…

Today, however, my excitement was limited to waiting for the Monday Morning Hangover to come out.  That was only exciting because I wrote the part about Baltimore having a terrible defense, which is a point I’ve been making to every thing that moved since week 1, but only just now got the chance to hammer home to a wider audience.

If anything, yesterday just taught us a bunch of crap we already knew:  The Pats will win the East, the Steelers are still the best team in the Central North (though not as good as a year ago), the Saints are for real, and the Titans are the most done team in the history of football.

I admire BBS’s enthusiasm over the trade market.  I have to confess I’m too beat down by that slate of clunkers yesterday to generate any myself.  Well, that and it doesn’t feel like a trade kind of year.  Everything BBS says is true:  the Colts often make a minor deal, Cribbs or Rudd would add something for sure, Polian has to think this team is right on the cusp of something huge so making a move would make sense.  Even so, my hopes are low just because my mood is.  It would be great just have something to say.

Instead, my team has back to back bye weeks.  Oh I know there’s a game this Sunday, but let’s be real.  I’m better off analyzing Tom Brady than worrying about the Rams.  By the way, I’m utterly unfazed by that beating he gave the Titans.  I said a couple of weeks ago that Brady looked fine to me.  Now after one game against the league’s worst team, his numbers are back to normal.  His YPA is normal, his completion % is actually high for him (64%), his TD % is a little high (but essentially normal), his pick % is a little low, and his rating is a little high.  He’s on pace for the second best year of his career, but that will level off now that the Titans game is behind him. He’ll wind up with a typical Tom Brady year:  28-30 TDs, a completion % around 63%, a rating of 90 and a YPA of 6.8.  That’s who he is.  That’s who he’s always been. Yawn.

See what I’ve been reduced to?

Sigh.

I hate the bye week.