In Which We Pretend to Care About the NFL Preseason

-Ha, they mispelled "Eepsw". Those jerks.-

Cole

The Boston Red Sox' season* came to a crashing halt Sunday night, as the Sox did their best to remind fans of the infamous Boston Massacre. If only there were some way to distract from this so I didn't have to write ab -- oh look! It's the NFL!

Yes, the Tennessee Titans and Buffalo Bills clashed in the annual Hall of Fame Game this weekend, kicking off a month of meaningless exhibitions. If you missed it, don't worry: I started my preparations for the upcoming season by watching the whole first quarter before sending in a backup. There were a couple of highlights though, chief among them the AFL tribute uniforms.


This year is the 50th anniversary of the American Football League, so the league's original eight franchises will be donning awesome throwback jerseys throughout the year to celebrate. This means everyone's favorite public drunk Patriots' logo will be making an occasional reappearance. Paul Lukas over at Uni Watch blog did a better job detailing the throwbacks -- refs included -- than I could ever do, so go check that out.

Equally awesome was the play here, the first score of the new season. Football, I think, is unique in the use of trick plays. Oh sure, baseball has the hidden-ball trick and whatever, but if you pull that kind of stuff in baseball, you're known as a bush-league amateur. In football, you're known as a bold visionary (and then some). So NFL coaches (because I'm POSITIVE Bill Belichick reads this blog all the time), incorporate more trickeration on a weekly basis, especially on fourth down. Look at it this way: the games will be more interesting, the fans will talk about the team more, and the media will be slower to call for your head if the team doesn't perform well.

Assuming the trick plays work, that is.

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* - Not to go all George Carlin on it, but is that right? "Red Sox' season"? Are we sure it's not "Red Sox's season"? "Red Socks' season"? "Passers by"?