Archive for November 4th, 2008

WATERCOOLER CHAT: STEELERS WIN OVER REDSKINS IN MNF, SHAKEUP IN NBA

NFL

It was domination in Washington D.C.  But it wasn’t the home team doing the dominating.  No, the Pittsburgh Steelers came into Redskin territory and absolutely destroyed them.  They even held the league’s leading rusher, Clinton Portis, to just 51 yards.  It wasn’t all good news for the Steelers, as they lost QB Ben Roethlisberger at halftime.  He’s still suffering from a separated shoulder injury.  However, back-up QB, and former Jaguar, Byron Leftwich stepped in and led to the Steelers to two touchdown drives.  One a 50-yard pass to Nate Washington, and the other a 5-yard strike to Santonio Holmes.  Leftwich might be the Steelers lead guy going forward, but if he plays as well as he did last night, they’ll be just fine.  Pittsburgh 23, Washington 6.

Finally, in one more NFL note, the Browns have finally decided to turn
the ball over to their 2nd-year QB, and former Notre Dame heartthrob,
Brady Quinn.  Quinn was drafted by the Browns in 2007, and was expected
to be their franchise QB.  However, a miracle happened, and the Browns
were spectacular with Anderson at the helm.  So, going into the 2008,
they decided to stick with Anderson and wait on Quinn.  Well, Anderson
has looked awful this season, and the Browns have chosen to roll the
dice with Quinn.  He might stink too, but at least female Browns fans
will have something to cheer for.

NBA

A BLOCKBUSTER trade.  It’s always good when the league shakes it up a bit, and puts different faces in different places.  The Detroit Pistons sent their all-star point guard, Chauncey Billups, and back-up Power Forward, Antonio McDyess to the Denver Nuggets for the always interesting Allen Iverson.  The thought process from the two teams is this:  Detroit knows that they’re not getting any better with their current unit.  They’ve had it in place for the last 4 years and it simply is what it is.  They can’t win a championship at status quo.  Therefore, they bring in a huge scorer in Iverson to ramp things up a notch; the trade-off being that they are potentially sacrificing solid team chemistry for a scoring machine (albeit a scoring force they’ll need in the playoffs).  From Denver’s point of view, they realize the Iverson experiment isn’t working, and there’s really nowhere to go but down.  Plus, Iverson is a shoot first guy, and the team wants their star to be Forward Carmelo Anthony.  Therefore, they take a risk, ship Iverson out of there, and import an incredibly intelligent, pass-first point guard in Chauncey Billups.  He might be able to get both Carmelo and the team as whole to a new level.   For once the Nuggets might advance past the first round of the playoffs, as opposed to being a playoff-practice squad for the Lakers, Spurs, or Rockets.

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