If only Todd Gurley had performed a backflip into the end zone — while blowing kisses, flexing his muscles then pounding the ball against the nearest wall.
Last Sunday Gurley provided indisputable evidence that it’s OK — even wise — to play thoughtful, winning team football, to play like a professional.
Of course, he was widely ignored for it. After all, he deprived himself of a national TV opportunity to make a self-congratulatory, me-dancing spectacle of himself.
With 1:05 left in regulation, Gurley’s Rams led Green Bay, 29-27. LA had the ball, third-and-10 from the Packers’ 21. The Packers were out of timeouts.
Gurley took a toss from Jared Goff, sprinted to his left and was in the clear. He’d made a first down and would then score. He instead hesitated stopped at about the 4-yard line, doubly secured the ball then allowed himself to be tackled — in bounds.
First down, clock running. Goff took the snap, a knee, game over.
Fox’s Thom Brennaman and Troy Aikman at first seemed surprised but then realized Gurley was way ahead of the curve. He’d removed whatever tiny risk remained to lose the game. Special.
But we knew from that moment, this episode stood little chance of being identified the rest of the TV week as special, if at all. In exchange for ensuring the win, he had forsaken his opportunity to be a highlights reel showboat.
In fact, there were just two lasting impressions:
1) Gurley’s selfless smarts ensured that this would be recorded as a Rams’ red-zone failure.
2) Because everyone watching is now supposed to have bet the game, the Rams, laying 7½ at some sportsbooks, didn’t cover.
Great to have a seat next to Zim
To eulogize Paul Zimmerman as a well-known sportswriter, mostly about football, would be like squirting supermarket-brand mustard on a lean corned beef sandwich.
Zim, who died last week at 86, was a student of the game within the game, all kinds of games, including mind games.
I was a kid sports department clerk, circa 1975, when Zimmerman would make his weekly appearances in the office. A big, imposing man, he’d fill a roll-around chair, banging on a typewriter, growling orders without looking up to see to whom.
Given that I was the only clerk on that shift, those orders were for me. He made me seethe.
Then one day I pulled a Popeye to his Bluto, a “That’s all I can stands, I can’t stands no more!” I told Zim to get his own bleepin’ coffee!Silence. Even the wire service machines seemed to stop then gasp.
Zim turned his head toward me — just his head — and smiled. Our game was over. We were good — very good — after that.
Zim’s sense of humor was quirky, less an acquired taste than a required one. In 1978 he was assigned — unhappily — to write a column off the Tampa Bay Rowdies-Cosmos NASL championship Soccer Bowl in Giants Stadium. The Cosmos were my beat.
Zim walked into the long, multi-level press box, stood on the top tier and in a loud voice innocently asked, “Who is Rodney Marsh?”
Marsh was the Rowdies’ English star forward. When that was explained to him, he just flatly said, “Well, there has been a threat on his life.”
Those in the press box familiar with Zim just smiled and lightly shook their heads. Others, including most of the Florida media, bolted to chase a fantastic story that didn’t exist.
As reporters raced past Zim in pursuit of more info, he sat down beside me, and, looking straight ahead, said, “How ya doin’?”
Mike Francesa’s latest Al Alburquerque Waterloo came last week when a caller asked the college football know-it-all what he thinks of Syracuse’s third-year coach Dino Babers.
Clearly, Francesa had never heard of him, so he told the caller he’s far too smart to fall for such pranks then cut him off the line. What a boob.
This time, however, Sitting Bull didn’t excuse himself with the laughably transparent bunk that he knows Tigers’ Dominican pitcher Al Alburquerque as “Alberto Alburquerque,” establishing Francesa as the only one who did.
Monday, Francesa ripped into Fox’s Thom Brennaman for reporting from Sunday’s Packers-Rams that the site, the LA Coliseum, hosted the first Super Bowl — and between these two teams. Francesa did not mention that Brennaman quickly made good on his error — the Packers played the Chiefs.
As if Francesa, given thousands of opportunities, has ever admitted to being wrong.
Francesa next screamed at his WFAN serfs to find out if it was Brennaman or Matt Vasgersian who made that error. He grew angry that they didn’t know what he didn’t know — and he’d watched the telecast!
Meantime, the only way Francesa can rescue his app from the scrapheap of misconceived, self-important schemes is to give subscribers the number of his special bookie, the one who grants him those special NFL betting lines … that he still loses against.
Arrests follow Rutgers
Last week, 22-year-old junior Rutgers linebacker Izaia Bullock was charged in a plot to commit — yikes — double murder. Since the end of last season, 10 Rutgers football players have been arrested, including receiver Dacoven Bailey for the rape of a minor in Texas.
Ex-N.J. Governor and Rutgers rah-rah Chris Christie would explain this as teens-being-teens — the way he excused 2015’s rash of arrested Rutgers football recruits, some in their 20s, who were charged and convicted of on- and near-campus felony assault, home invasion and robbery.
Alas, Rutgers still doesn’t seem to grasp the ways and means of successful Big Ten football. If you’re going to recruit such players, you’re supposed to win a few games.
Excellent, applicable, between-periods, on-ice tutorial presented by Devils broadcasters Ken Daneyko and Bryce Salvador with rookie forward John Quenneville on Thursday on MSG, a taped session demonstrating the intricacies of playing the puck on the sideboards.
Giants radio voice Bob Papa has been afflicted by Silly Stat Syndrome. Before Sunday’s kickoff against Washington, Papa reported the Giants are “20-9 in games before bye weeks, second in the NFL to Seattle.”
Last Sunday night we had to choose between Cris Collinsworth, endlessly talking throughout NBC’s Saints-Vikings, and Fox’s John Smoltz, droning on throughout Game 5 of the World Series. Another untreated epidemic.
Get your ice-cold PSLs, here! Get your PSLs! … High-scoring Army — 28-21 losers at Oklahoma, then 42-13 winners on the road against a good Buffalo team — for the first time in a long time, should be favored against Navy.