THE KICKING TEE

By The Grazianimal

Dallas is 5 and 0 after squeaking past Buffalo on Monday night. I have never seen a team so successful while almost ignoring what I see as their best offensive player, Marion Barber. In the second half of the Buffalo game Barber looked like Brian Westbrook minus the pulled everything. He has regularly looked like a superior player compared with Julius Jones who has continued to get equal playing time. It almost bit them in the [butt] on Monday. Why? He is on the team. Play him. We will see how much time Dallas wastes playing patty-cake this week with New England on the docket.

Much as I wished it, the Jets could not really play with the landlords in East Rutherford last Sunday. Chad again threw a late game INT ending any chance of an upset. He has looked terrible this year. The arm strength issue is front and center. Chad can’t exploit his receivers (who are way above average) and that gums it up for Tom Jones who has yet to have a really great game. The cheers that met Kellen Clemens on his way into the game three weeks back don’t seem so insensitive at 1 and 4. With a playoff berth becoming a super long shot Mangini should be looking at the post Chad era. Atlanta, San Fran, even Miami could use a stop gap game manager like Pennington. 4th rounder? Maybe from Miami, but Mangini should pull the trigger on almost anything if he can move forward.

The Redskins ruin Farve’s little fairy tale this week in Green Bay. Yeah, I told Al Saunders what was up and the offense responded to my written lashing with their best game in who knows how long. The Redskins had been sucking longer then a 3 dollar whore with a fifty in her fist. This game is a big referendum on the young season. Green Bay is good and will be looking to rebound after that fold job against Chicago. The Skins will need to exploit the return of Santana Moss with Randle-El aching. Jason Campbell made a move last week to be more then that guy that looks like the dude from ER. Morency helps a question mark backfield in Green Bay as long as he is on the field. This one should go down to the wire with the announcers raving about Brett right up until that pick off with 0:42 seconds left.

Dallas.

Man I hate the Giants. They should have lost last week, but…crap. On Monday with all the hullabaloo and so forth watch them take a Falcons team for granted and get bit. This one should not even be close, but the line is only 3 and a half. Why? Because of that big Atlanta home field advantage? This might be their only big crowd for a while. Harrington? Can you believe this guy is about to lose his job to Byron Leftwich of all people? You think that they would prize a little stability, Harrington has not been horrible. Leftwich on the other hand got fired for some reason. Whatever, should be a baseball game on somewhere.

Just to kick the Yankees while they blame Joe Torre for their inability to get it up. The way Boston is playing, these are the worst Yankee teams ever. NY dominated for 90 years. Where is that Pinstripe pride? Not that Joe doesn’t deserve it, but fire the whole crowd. Cashman should be first in line. Shake it the hell up already.

Thank God Vinny is back. Better to lose with him then that light weight Carr. Vinny should be at least good for a few highlight reel shots downfield to Steve Smith. That was all that Delhomme was getting done lately. Carr just sucks.

Enough of this already. Is it 1:00 yet?

grazianimal@columnist.com