After five years of writing this NFL column, I'm lodging an official protest.
Every week during the season, I bang out my research on Wednesday and Thursday afternoons, watch all the relevant shows, grab a post-"Survivor" coffee and write until the wee hours of Thursday night. That's my routine. And over the years, I came to grips that things can change from Friday morning (my last chance to change a pick) to Sunday morning (when games start on the West Coast). Six or seven times a year, I'll get screwed by a late pregame injury or an unforeseen weather report. I'm fine with this.
But I'm drawing the line with last week's Tommy Maddox debacle. On Sunday morning, right around 9:48, my daughter and I were watching the pregame shows when we saw a chilling graphic flash on the bottom of the screen: "MADDOX TO START FOR STEELERS."
Now ...
You know how I feel about Maddox. During the 2002 season, when the Kordell Stewart Era was threatening to cause riots in Pittsburgh, Maddox assumed the quarterback job and played out of his mind -- including a 473-yard game against Atlanta -- before nearly getting paralyzed by an awkward hit against the Titans in mid-November. He's never been the same. Not even remotely. To be honest, I didn't even know he was still in the league. When Roethlisberger was injured last week, Chaz Batch was supposed to start for Pittsburgh. I'm fine with Chaz Batch -- you can win with him, his Detroit years were better than anyone remembers, and he won't single-handedly kill you. So I picked the Steelers giving three to the Jags, never imagining ...
"MADDOX TO START FOR STEELERS."
Whaaaaaaaaaaaaat????? Maybe it was too late to change the column, but I still had a chance to take the Jags in my picks league ... so I threw my baby in her Baby Einstein Activity Center (she started crying, but whatever, this was important), turned on my laptop and waited for Windows to load. At 9:54, I was online. At 9:55, I called up ESPN's "Pigskin Pick'Em" site, which hosts our league and was loading slower than usual.
Suddenly I realized something: There were probably 3 million people online right now who saw the Maddox flash and scurried online to change their pick. This was horrible. Who would have ever thought that Tommy Maddox could potentially crash ESPN.com? Finally, at 9:58, the site loaded and I changed my pick with two minutes to spare -- although the baby was throwing a full-fledged Cowher-like tantrum in her Baby Einstein thingie and needed another 20 minutes and a right breast (not mine) before she calmed down.
How did this turn out? If the Steelers-Jags game was the Pitt-Aniston marriage, Maddox would have been Angelina Jolie. He single-handedly changed the course of the game. It was unprecedented. Forget about the interception TD in overtime that lost the game, or the preceding fumble that squandered a certain game-winning field goal, or the other two interceptions, or all the other terrible plays he made ... near the end of the fourth quarter, he threw another potential game-losing interception that a Jags linebacker dropped on his way to the end zone. Meanwhile, Bill Cowher was standing on the sidelines frantically pressing the RESET button on his PlayStation to no avail.
Here's the point: If this ever happens again -- and by "this," I mean, "I pick the Steelers on Friday, and over the next 48 hours, we come to find out that Maddox is starting the game" -- let's make a gentlemen's agreement that my pick switches to the other team. And I don't care if the other team is the Sex Cruise Vikings, the Dead Man Walking Texans, you name it. He made my baby cry, he made Steelers fans cry, he nearly made me cry. I'm never, ever, ever, EVER getting stuck backing Tommy Maddox again. We're calling this the "Maddox Corollary."
Five other quarterbacks qualify this season: Jonathan Quinn; Chad Hutchinson; JP Losman; AJ Feeley; and, of course, Mr. Jamie Martin. If any of them are announced as the starter for a 2005 game after my picks column is handed in, the pick switches to the other team because of the Maddox Corollary. I can't have this happen again.
Classic
