Hello everyone, thought I'd introduce myself to the blog with the story of how I spent the Finals last year. It was one of the most rewarding sports experiences of my life.

I grew up in the Northern Panhandle of West Virginia. Been a Pens fan my entire life. I remember going to one of my first games back in the mid 80's and watching Rod Buskas's nose get plastered on the glass right in front of me. Oh, the good old days when you could get a seat right on the ice for nothing! Anyhow, I joined the Air Force and met my wonderful wife while there, and although she is wonderful....she convinced me to move to Michigan with her. I'm now in the Michigan Air National Guard, and last year during the finals I was deployed in the Middle East with my unit.

Needless to say, I was the only Pens fan. All I heard about was how this year was going to be just like last year. During the Game 5 nightmare, I was flying and didn't know the score until I got back from my flight. Of course, as soon as I landed, one of the many Red Wings fans instantly told me that they had destroyed us 5-0. The series was over, and they were ALL rubbing it in my face. No way could the Pens come back from being down 3-1, especially now that Datsyuk was back. The season was over, and another cup was coming to Hockeytown. I told them all that they better not get too cocky, because in sports...especially hockey, it's not over until the final game is finished.

After Game 6, I could feel the unease of everyone I was with. My unit filmed a little short video of everyone cheering on the Red Wings (which of course I didn't participate in) and it was actually played during Game 7 up in the Detroit area. Everyone continued to make fun of me, but I could sense that they were a bit scared.

Game 7 was a surreal experience. Luckily I wasn't flying that day, and me and about 20 Red Wings fans packed into a small room to watch the inevitable coronation of the latest Red Wings dynasty. When Max made it 1-0, the entire room went silent. Then when he made it 2-0, you could almost feel them giving up. When Detroit scored their only goal, they began to get cocky again. Of course they were going to come back. In the 3rd when that shot hit the crossbar, it was one of the funniest moments of my life. Everyone saw all the fans in the Joe jump up, so of course everyone jumped up and turned around and screamed at me. When I finally convinced them that it had not gone in, and it had hit the crossbar, they all sat down and didn't say much the rest of the game.

I spent that final faceoff and flurry on my knees, and when Flower made that stop on Lindstrom, the tears started to flow. Within minutes the room was empty other than me and a few good sports. Watching Sid lift that Cup on the Wings home ice was a moment I'll never forget!

Anyhow, sorry about the wall of text. Just thought that story might interest someone out there. Great blog, and hope to contribute to it much more in the future. Go Pens!

For years, Michael Vick disgraced the Pro Bowl with his average QB play and spectacular running back play. Now Eli "Bus Driver" Manning makes it in over Romo?

Just look at the numbers:

Manning: 261-433  60.3%  2938 yards  20 TD  10 INT  86.4 rating

Romo: 231-366  63.1%  3013 yards  24 TD  11 INT  98.3 rating

Manning is 11-3 as a starter, Romo is 8-3. Manning has 1 300 yard game, Romo has 6.

Manning averaging 6.8 yards per attempt, Romo 8.2.

So basically what they're trying to say is, you have to play a full season to go to the Pro Bowl. Nevermind that this team was NOTHING without Romo, as we all painfully learned. He came back and sparked a dead team to a potential playoff run.

I hope Tony uses this as motivation (doubt he needs it) for a Super Bowl run.

With 15 sacks this season, Demarcus Ware now holds the Dallas Cowboys record for the most sacks in a single season. Since the sack became official, the record was 14...set by Jeffcoat in 1986 and Demarcus last year.

I'm not sure that I've read anywhere that he set the franchise record. I guess the mediots in the Dallas media are too worried about Pacman coming back than our franchise defensive stud setting a team record.

I just wanted to do a little write up of some of the things I've been looking up regarding Tony Romo incredible start to his career. Some of his career stats are skewed by 2 games. 1 in 2005 where he came in and took a knee twice, and another in 2006 where he threw 2 passes. They unfortunately count as games played. Here's some amazing numbers:

Currently has a QB rating of 98.2, which would be the highest in NFL history. You need 1500 career attempts to qualify, so he needs 343 more. Steve Young is currently #1 at 96.8.

Kurt Warner set the NFL record for fastest to 10,000 passing yards, doing it in 36 games. Romo has 9,673 yards in 37 career games (1 of which he only knelt the ball twice, and another he threw only 2 passes in mop up duty).

Romo currently has an 8.4 yards per pass attempt for his career. This places him 3rd all time, behind only Sid Luckman and Otto Graham (which both played in the 40s and 50s).

His completion % is currently 64.6% for his career, putting him 3rd in NFL history behind Kurt Warner and Chad Pennington.

Including the 2 crap games that count, Romo has an average of 252.4 yards per game, which ranks him 4th all time behind Warner, Peyton Manning and Dan Marino. Take out those 2 games (just for my fun) and it goes up to 276 yards per game, which would be 10 more than the #1 guy Warner.

His winning percentage among active quarterbacks is .712, which trails only Tom Brady at .787.

I'm sure I could dig up more, but I think everyone knows what he means to our football team.He's by far our team MVP, and I think the league MVP. What a future we have with him leading our team.

Consider this the opposite of the O'Reilly Factor. This is the Spin Zone. I'm going to spin this like the homer I am, because I don't think we got fleeced at all.

First of all, name one receiver coming out in next year's draft, that would have been available when we picked (anywhere between 20 and 32, hopefully 32 lol) that would be better than Roy? Roy will be better than ANY receiver, no matter how good they are, for at least 3 years. With very, very, very rare exceptions, WR is the most volatile position to pick early in the draft. They usually take awhile to develop, if they do at all.

I really think we would have gone WR in the first round next year. So I consider Roy to be that WR. So we are upgraded from anything we would have gotten in the first round.

I'll skip now to the 6th round pick. It wasn't even ours. Through the risk Jerry took, and the careful negotiations that he had with the Adam Jones trade, we got that pick back just yesterday when Adam was suspended. I still think he comes back this year, so we gain a troubled, but talented CB, and a 5th round pick, for our 4th round pick last year and the 6th round pick we sent to Detroit.

The 3rd round pick now. We traded our 3rd round pick in this trade. We still have the Browns' 3rd round pick, which will be higher than ours obviously. We traded last year's 3rd round pick for what ended up, through 2 other trades, Detroit's 4th rounder in 2009 and Cleveland's 3rd rounder in 2009.

So in the Spin Zone, the trades net us the following:

Trade 2009 1st round pick, 2008 3rd round pick, 2008 4th round pick, and 2009 6th round pick for:

Roy Williams, Cleveland's 2009 3rd round pick, Detroit's 2009 4th round pick, Tennessee's 2009 5th round pick, Adam Jones, and Detroit's 2009 7th round pick.

And to make things even better, while I'm on the subject of the trades...follow this train ride....

We trade Anthony Fasano and Akin Ayokdele for the Dolphins 4th round pick. We trade that pick to Oakland for their 4th round pick and their 7th round pick. We then trade Oakland's 4th round pick to Cleveland for their 4th round pick and their 5th round pick. With Cleveland's 4th round pick we select Tashard Choice.

We then trade Cleveland's 5th round pick and Oakland's 7th round pick for Jacksonville's 5th round pick. With that, we select Orlando Scandrick.

So we trade Anthony Fasano and Akin Ayodele for Tashard Choice and Orlando Scandrick.

Jerry Jones is my hero.

We need to get a little perspective on what a team's goals in the NFL should be. No team, no matter how talented, is automatically put into the playoffs. Here are the Cowboys goals in my opinion...

1). Earn a playoff spot

2). Win the division

3). Get a first round bye

4). Homefield throughout the playoffs

5). Win a playoff game

6). Win the NFC

7). Win the Super Bowl

This is October, and this is the NFL. This is not college football. We need to quit talking about the Super Bowl, being Super Bowl contenders, or whatever such nonsense people like to boast about. Our goals are listed above, in that order.

Starting off 4-2 goes a long way to helping us achieve #1. Sure 6-0 would be better, but at least we're not the Seahawks, a supposed playoff team who is now 1-4.

So quit talking about the Super Bowl. The expectations ARE too high. I don't care what some fantasy football book, or expert on ESPN that you now talk crap about, or some blogger told you. This is October football.

We need to worry about the Rams.

Take a look at this article from the DMN.

http://cowboysblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/08/stewart-got-emails-about-the-blitz.html

It seems after the preseason game against Denver last year, Stewart got emails from offensive coordinators all around the league telling him he broke some 'preseason code of conduct' by blitzing so much. I'd be willing to bet that was in the back of his mind this game, and explains why in Grizz's evaluation he says we got no pressure.

So tell me BTB nation, if we are actually blitzing the Broncos, does Cutler have the time to tear our secondary to shreds?

Blitzing = pressure on the QB. That means the secondary plays better. That means the entire defense plays better. That means forcing the QB into possible mistakes.

Don't put too much into games where the playcalling and game planning are so vanilla.

We'll be fine.

The replay of the game T.O. had 4 touchdowns against the Redskins is on the NFL network right now. There's 1 thing that just jumps out and screams at me from this game.

Everyone raves about the game that Jason Campbell had. Watching this game, the only reason that he had such a big game is because he continuously picked on Jacques Reeves. It's amazing how everytime there was a big 3rd down conversion (there were alot of them) it was against Reeves.

This will not happen to us this year with the CB's we have now. Especially if Pacman gets to play. Demarcus Ware is his usual unstoppable self in this game, and imagine what he will do with more time because the secondary isn't giving up quick passes.

This will be a monster year for Demarcus, and bad bad news for opposing offenses. I have a feeling Campbell won't be nearly as successful against us this year.

I'm off to the middle east for a few months this week, and I'm going to be lost without BTB.

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I'm beginning to think that Tom Brady's saliva could cure cancer, and that he could devise the ultimate plan to finally capture Bin Laden (even though he's probably dead of the kidney dialysis he's been dying from for 6 years). I'm so sick of hearing about the Patriots. Sure they're really, really good. So were the Colts when they came to Dallas last year. We keep hearing how the Cowboys opponents are 3-13, while the Patriots opponents have a whopping 4-12 record. Color me unimpressed. Let's look at some numbers:

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The commish has lost all credibility with this one in my opinion. Wade Wilson gets 5 games, and now this. There's no way Belichek shouldn't be suspended at least 5 games.

(Update) I added in a link to a story comng from Eagles players. I think alot of this second guessing will happen now. It's really interesting to think about it, it could have been happening all along.

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It seems that the new Commish isn't only going to come down hard on players, but organizations as well. It's being reported that 'multiple draft picks' may be taken from the Patriots for breaking these rules.

And this is the model franchise of the NFL?

The league is also looking into the 'number of radio frequencies' used by the Pats on Sunday. Is it possible they were trying to steal the offensive plays as well??

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