Random Mid-Week News

Hey everyone, hope your Labor Day weekends went well and you had plenty of time to enjoy the first meaningful football that has been played in months. I had the pleasure of attending last night’s Florida State-Miami classic, and the hangover and laaaaaate night would have been worth it early this morning at work if it hadn’t been coupled with such soul-crushing defeat. But I doubt a sports board for a Miami sports team is going to yield me much sympathy, so I’m going to just move right on… [Edit: Obviously this made it up a day after I wrote it. Bear with me]

Dolphins Waive Davon Drew

Well I’m sure we’ll all look back on Davon’s two day tenure with the Dolphins nostalgically someday, but for now it seems like we never even got to know him. After coming from Baltimore, Drew was waived by the Dolphins today two days after he was signed. The early report seems to be a lingering ankle injury rendered him too much of a risk for the Dolphins to hang on to.

Crowder Works on Free-Lancing

Apparently, according to the Sun Beach Sentinel, Channing Crowder’s tendency to take liberties in the defensive scheme and roam out of position from time to time has come up before as a bit of an issue. I know it’s been discussed on this board and I’m sure at times the coaching staff may have… mentioned it to him, but now it appears the Tuna has weighed in on Crowder’s propensity to free lance.

"“Parcells talks to me a lot about it, to be honest,” Crowder said. “He always says, ‘Don’t go out there playing street ball.’ He’ll say it Thursday or Friday, ‘Don’t go out there playing street ball now.’"

Crowder has always been a very talented linebacker, but dating back to his time at UF the knock on him has been he relies a bit too much on athleticism and sometimes gets out of position. I had hoped that the free-lancing would work itself out with maturity and experience. But some players never do grow out of the tendency. Lavar Arrington comes to mind as a great example of a player with tremendous ability who just wouldn’t bother to stick to his assignment. Lavar Arrington also used to like to fight punters (Freddie Capshaw, for instance). He may have had some issues.

Power Rankings

I’m not going to bore you with Joe Blow Sports Blog’s power rankings because those are usually pretty biased and I’m not going to kid you into thinking I’m going to bother checking them every week to keep you updated. But I will keep up with the major media’s rankings to try and gauge where they have us in comparison to the league’s other 31 teams. I love how off-base some of the national reports are when compared to the local reports.

ESPN: 16, Despite going 4-0 in the preseason it seems the Dolphins have actually dropped a spot since the preseason list came out. John Clayton, whom I like much better in print because he is so very ugly, says of the 2009 Dolphins:

"The Dolphins hope to avert the three-game drop that usually hits a team that goes from worst to first in a division."

CBS: 19, Pete Prisco isn’t making much of a secret as to whom his sleeper pick for 2010 just may be. In his AFC East preview he praises the way Miami is being built and in his first power rankings of the season he adds:

"They’re a year away. The schedule is tougher and they will come back a little to .500. They will be a force in 2010."

Fox: 19, This hasn’t been updated since August 5th… so it’s a month and four days recent. I mention this because despite Fox’s cutting edge technology with regard to shameless crossover promotions and dancing robot graphics they apparently can’t be bothered to actually update this list or make sure the players they’re highlighting ARE STILL ON THE TEAM:

"Despite losing two starters from last year’s solid secondary, the Dolphins deftly restocked in free agency (CB Eric Green from Cardinals, S Gibril Wilson from Raiders) and the draft (CBs Vontae Davis and Sean Smith)."

NBC: 17, NBC seems to have bought out Pro Football Talk, which is currently running its own power rankings. Each team get it’s own article and Miami is currently ranked at 17th.

Sports Illustrated: 15, Actually the best of the bunch and still not anything to glow about. Don Banks is still preferable to Peter King who would’ve put the ‘Fins in the 20’s, spent a good portion of the article fellating Tom Brady and could very possibly have forgotten to come up for air. Incidentally SI also has a Season Predictions Feature up and I’m beginning to wonder whether or not Sports Illustrated has ever even heard of the Dolphins (they haven’t if you go by their predictions). Or maybe after all these years it still has something to do with this…

Random:

-Apparently Vontae Davis will now wear 21 and Sean Smith will wear 24 for the regular season. So if you were silly enough to buy a jersey in the preseason for this year’s number one pick, that item is now worthless for the next thirty years at which point it will become vintage. Also apparently Quentin Moses is now number 93. I’m too drained to come up with a sarcastic remark about how no one would ever care that Quentin Moses changed his number but I guess the joke is really on me for giving it this much space…

-Cameron Wake is unsure whether or not he’ll be active for the regular season opener. A Dolphin’s coach said he needs to set the edge better on run plays rather than pinning his ears back and selling out towards the quarterback every play and that his special teams contributions must improve (paraphrasing). Also he has apparently not watched TV since the Super Bowl…

-According to Channing Crowder, Paul Soliai is the most improved Dolphin…