Football is back

Thank God. It's been too long. I was starting to give you up for the NBA, following that offseason with a keen interest, but I can put that aside now. It's football season and I can start posting about a sport people actually care about now. Hard to get a true read on teams in the preseason, but there are some truths to be had, such as:

Truth #1 - Cleveland will be lousy. They were pretty bad against a 3-4 defense they should be seeing everyday in practice. Actually, this was against a Packers team transitioning to the 3-4 with guys learning new positions and with their top two corners sitting out. Yikes! On the road to another 4-10 season. Good luck, Mangenius.

Truth #2 - ESPN will only care about the following three players (in order): Brett Favre, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning. And they're starting to slip on Peyton. They only talk about Brett Favre, despite him being a washed-up retired has-been, and Tom Brady, who they gushed about and casually ignored the pick he threw in the preseason game. I would give up ESPN if they didn't have the rights to EVERY sport. That's probably a really bad thing, right? Too much power in one place and that place is too concerned with promoting itself at every turn. Deadspin has a good ESPN catchphrase analysis bit that they do every so often.

Truth #3 - Denver won't be good this year. Orton has looked like crap all throughout training camp and now the preseason. Their defense is a combined 1,000 years old, the secondary is really old especially, Jarvis Moss sucks at DE/OLB, they don't have a nose tackle and they're switching to a 3-4 defense. And they traded arguably the best young QB in the league this offseason and got back Kyle Orton. And their best receiver, Brandon Marshall, doesn't seem to give a shit about playing for the Broncos. Seems like Josh McDaniels might be a wee bit in over his head. If this was the Raiders, ESPN would be making a ton of cracks about all this, but they are strangely silent about Denver's slow swirl down the train.