Well that didn't take long, did it?

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Simple title, simple fanpost. It's not big secret that talented free agents go where they feel they have the best shot at success. With our recent youth kick, a champions league victory could go a long way in legitimizing Chelsea FC as a place where young, dynamic footballers have a shot at winning European silverware. Or will it? Are our coffers enough of an incentive to come play, even if we don't have a CL trophy in the cupboard? Vote and explain your stance.

I realize that the almost-goal will be a sore spot for many fans, so I've broken it down for convenience.

Note the ACTUAL SIZE of the ball here. Click on the picture to enlarge for an even better look.:

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Now, note how much of the ball you can see here. Again, click on the picture to enlarge:

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Now, does THAT look like the ENTIRE ball is over the line? Obviously not. The definition of a goal is that the entire ball has to be over the line. Even though the camera is slightly off, the angle it caught the ball from actually makes the ball seem smaller than it really is by filling out the rest of the shape with the white frame of the crossbar.

I rest my case.

This is a question I've been meaning to ask Chelsea fans at large for quite a while, and now that I've joined WAGNH I have the proper forum to ask it. This fanpost will be simple -- no formatting, no poll. Just a pointed question: What in God's name is so good about John Terry?

For years, I've felt like a living contradiction, struggling with an internal conflict too shameful to share with most Blues. I am quite possibly one of the only Chelsea fans around who does not like John Terry. Since I began to follow the club (which was shortly after the watershed purchase by Abramovich), it has seemed to me as though Terry's talent was largely a creation of the racist English media. Chelsea needed a "homegrown" captain to parade in front of the camera and "England's Brave John Terry" was a natural fit. But did his talent ever really match his face time? I've never really seen it.

During those early successes under Mourinho, I couldn't shake the feeling that Carvahlo was very much the superior half of their midfield partership. Now, with the CL final approaching and Terry's absence a certainty, can someone please explain to me why this loss actually matters? If Cahill and Luiz are both healthy, are we really that much worse off?

And what exactly is it that John Terry does better than Vincent Kompany/Thiago Silva/Nemanja Vidic/Carles Puyol/Lucio/Ricardo Carvalho/Jerome Boateng/any of the other CBs considered to be elite?

http://nbaplaybook.com/2011/06/03/the-play-that-sparked-dallas-comeback/

NBAplaybook is a great website that I highly recommend to anyone who wants to learn more about the game.

The link above is a great breakdown of how it is they won.  Basically, they sprang a play we'd never seen before, and it worked.  We still outplayed them for the majority of the game, and will likely continue to outplay them.

Don't be surprised if the Heat takes both games in Dallas.

So there we have it, folks. A rematch of the American Airlines championship.   It's been a long season, and the Heat have come a long way.  We've been hyped, injured, written off, re-hyped, etc. As fans, we have probably run the full gamut of emotions.  Yet somehow, as the boys begin to prepare for the Mavericks, I find myself strangely confident. Why?

1. Weak Dallas Defense

Dallas lives and dies by its offense, which often covers up for the lack of quality in its aging zone defense.  I am fully confident that the Heatles can take advantage and put up a quality scoreline.  The matchups they can throw at us will be honorable at best, but ultimately there is nothing they can do to keep us from scoring.  To be fair Miami has a bad habit of getting stuck in ISO offense and watching one man play basketball while the other four stand around; exactly how not to play the zone. But when the chips are down, Miami has repeatedly shown that they are willing to move and make cuts off the basketball. As long as we overcome our natural laziness, we're going to carve Dallas up.

2. One-Dimensional Dallas Offense. 

Coming from a Heat fan this may be ironic, but the workload Dallas places on Big Daddy Deutschland is obscene. The vast majority of the Mavs' shots begin with Nowitzki, with Jason Terry contributing here and there. Already, that lends itself to a natural heat advantage -- they have 1.5 players who can create their own shots and we have 2.5 (Bosh counts as half). Aside from that, look for Dirk to either handle the ball across half-court and begin the play, or come from behind and set the screen.  We won't be able to hang in the back-court like we did against Noah's screens because, unlike Noah, Dirk will actually shoot the ball in the absence of a passing option.  But we probably aren't going to double-team the pick-and-roll, leaving the screener open. The key to stopping Nowitzki is checking him at the top of the key with tough defender. In our case, that's probably going to be Haslem. He did a great job on Dirk in the regular season and, with Dirk, Haslem doesn't have to worry about guarding someone who plays with his back to the basket.  Look for LeBron to play a defensive role in the final minutes. If we can curb production from the offensive node that was Derrick Rose, we can also stop Dirk.

3. Depth is no longer an issue.

I assumed that Chicago would bury us because of their deep, young bench.  As it turns out, Haslem and Miller's return have lightened the load on our superstars considerably.  With Haslem, we can maintain a size presence on the court while resting our limited bigs, and Miller allows for greater depth at PG than the lackluster Bibby/Chalmers combination.   I don't think exhaustion on the part of our franchise players is a concern anymore -- or at least not as much a concern as it used to be. Also, bear in mind that Caron Butler is not going to play.  Whereas we were missing Udonis in our regular season series, the situations are now going to be reversed. 

Conclusion

The only way we can lose this game is if the Mavericks use their naturally creative sets and make it rain shots. With our defense being one of the best in the league, we have a much better chance at stemming the tide than they do. Wade is averaging something like 7 rebounds a game in the playoffs. If you do a traditional position-by-position match-up, you'll find that the Mavs don't really do anything better than us besides shoot. If they were offensive rebounding monsters, I would be worried. But even with Dirk's size, they aren't.

Forget the token six game generosity.

Heat in 5.

History has a way of letting reason win out in the end. So it is with the Miami Dolphins. I watched for months as people drove themselves crazy, debating over which quarterback we should take, busting a nut over Ryan Mallet, etc. All the while I was smiling to myself, knowing that it was just another case of D-fans doing D-fan things. Chad Henne was always going to get one more year. Logic dictated it and the draft confirmed it.  As my last blog post (and many since then) have confirmed, the collapse of our running game was THE main reason our year collapsed. Now that QB fever is over, it's time to think about the real question -- not of quarterbacks, but of running backs. We have our goal line bruiser in Daniel Thomas. But with Ronnie and Ricky both in free agency, it's time to discuss which FA running back is the best move.

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When discussing the offensive line of the Miami Dolphins, there are many points of contention. However, aficionados generally agree on two points --- that the line has a lot of talent, and that it underperformed in the 2010-2011 season. But can we break this failure down statistically?

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Submitted For Your Approval: Some Stats From 2009 and 2010 for the Cleveland Browns

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So by now, everyone has heard about the FO's alleged strategy of moving Randy Starks to NT and running a hybrid defense. In context, this makes the Odrick pick look much more sensible, as he is one of the better (if not the best) 3-4 rush DE in this draft. He's also versatile, able to move inside if need be.

But lately I have been pondering the question of whether or not the Dolphins possess the proper linebacker mix to execute this defense properly.

When we're in our standard 3-4 formation, Cameron Wake would probably play on the strong-side with Koa Misi potentially taking over on the weak-side. If Starks shifts off-center, that means Wake is going to come forward into that SOLB/DE space, correct?  That would imply that Cameron is now responsible for covering TEs.

Not an appealing vision.

What is the alternative? Based on  the various scouting blurbs, Misi is not great against the run. Coverage is his forte, which leads me to believe he'll stay at WOLB to guard against the screen.

Then we have the x-factors; Edds and Dobbins (I'm obviously not worried about Dansby, as he will probably be the most familiar with the scheme).

Thoughts? What are your renditions of musical linebacker?  Do we have a versatile enough LB-corps to effectively pull this off?

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