Big Lead Sports Bar

3/01/2007

Someone Has to Stop John Clayton

ESPN football analyst/know-it-all John Clayton just posted his list of underpriced and overpriced free agents, as the signing period is upon us. And for the 1,249th time, John gave us the same tired prediction that T.J. Duckett would go to the Steelers.
I think Clayton is an incredibly smart football guy, basically the pigskin equivalent of baseball Hall of Fame analyst Peter Gammons. But don't forget, Peter Gammons also picked Kris Benson to win the Cy Young Award in 2000. He's good, but he's not perfect. Neither is Clayton.
There have been rumors of Duckett going to the Steelers since the 2002 draft. The Steelers have had five years to make a move for the guy, which has never happened. His yardage has gone from 779 to 509 to 380 to 132 over the past four years. He languished on the Washington sideline last year in a season when Clinton Portis played in only eight games. Simply put, I don't see the infatuation Clayton has with Duckett, other than the fact that he weighs 254 pounds. As I've said before, everyone needs to get over the fact that Jerome Bettis retired and there is no Bettis clone available. Here's the original rant/article I wrote on this topic in December.
I thought Clayton would be smarter than to buy into the tired "Steelers need a big back" cliche, but obviously he's not. But even if the Steelers take the big-back route, I see no reason why they would invest in a veteran who has proven very little in the league as opposed to drafting a younger, cheaper, less-traveled version.
Of course, if they somehow do sign Duckett, I promise to re-post this article with the tagline "John Clayton Knows More Than Me".

4 comments:

Sean said...

I am outraged! It has been almost 24 hours and there has been no post about the epic Penn State victory over Iowa. Penn State broke its 13-game losing streak and now only needs to win 6 more wins to qualify for the NIT! Actually, with an RPI of 179 and records of 1-12 against the RPI 1-100 (the one win was against Iowa) and 0-9 on the road, I would be surprised if they did not get an at-large bid.

Justin said...

who's to say tomlin wants a big back? the cowher era might have needed a replacement for bettis, but this is a new team now. on offense no whisenhunt, no grimm, no hoak. who knows whats going to work well with this new unit

Justin said...

plus we signed najeh for two years today. decent amount of money too.

Adam said...

as i see it, PSU's first game in the Big 10 tourny will be the smokable Northwestern Wildcats. Next p would be OSU as the #1 seed, another tema PSU matches up well against. If they somehow pull that off, the 4 seed is Indiana, who Penn State was up huge on in their first meeting before Wilmont went Bonkers. The first 3 rounds of he Big 10 tournament could no have fallen any better for PSU. Instead of a 1.2% chance of getting to the dance, this maybe upps their chance to 10%. If they get that far though, I dont see anyother teams we could beat in the championship game save Iowa and MAYBE Purdue. Do I tin this will happen? no, but as a team that will finish last, the seedings couldt have fallen better for PSU.