Checkdown Chatter

Reggie Wayne is at the forefront of the receivers lost on Revis Island this year, but he'll get his chance to break out in a big way for the Colts this weekend.

It was a pretty sweet gimmick to begin with, but Revis Island has gone to a new level.

With New York City, as it always seems to do, rallying behind its team as it strives for playoff glory Mayor Mike Bloomberg renamed Manhattan Revis Island. As far as lame playoff gimmicks go, this one is pretty good, at least its fun.

As they point out at PFT, its nice that a cornerback is getting this kind of recognition – its been hard to ignore Revis’ contributions all year, and with the Jets making playoff waves thanks in no small part to their defensive prominence, he’s making headlines.

The great season won’t be forgotten any time soon, as Revis has emerged into (if not a no doubter) one of the top cover corner’s in the league, and he’ll be around playing the role of shutdown corner for years to come, but all will be for naught, at least as far as the outcome of the 2009 season is concerned if he can’t continue his dominance against Reggie Wayne and the Colts this weekend.

He was able to shut Wayne down in their Week 16 contest, but of course, that game marked the beginning of the end for the Colts’ perfect season and the now infamous Paintergate of 2009 which is a big reason the Jets even got this far. It will all be on the table in the Conference Championship and if anyone can break out of Revis Island it will be Wayne. (Although, Kurt Russell/Snake Plissken did a great job 30 years ago in Revis Islands’ more traditional namesake).

Update: The coverage of the Jets’ conference game appearance just keeps getting better.

Though some fans embrace the game, the Toronto-Buffalo link needs to iron out some wrinkles to be successful

The game was competitive, with the Jets coming out on top 19-13.

As I mentioned in an earlier article there wasn’t a whole lot of reason’s to be hyped up about this game. By December, as usual, the Bills were out of playoff contention – as were their opponents, the New York Giants. The game had little meaning, other than it was played North of the border.

Owens had picked up his game in recent weeks, but blanketed by cover corner Darrelle Revis there wasn’t much to see (3-31). Braylon Edwards scored a nice touchdown for the Jets, but it was preceded by a few drops/missed plays and one huge drop where the ball hit a wide open Edwards in the hands/face rather and fell incomplete.

I had the opportunity to buy decent seats for 75 bucks or so. I guess that’s cheap? considering that the over priced game featured obstructed view top level seats for $100, but it just doesn’t make sense. Why would Toronto fans pay to watch a transplanted game, where they can’t choose the teams and they are asked to overpay, when they can make the quick drive to Buffalo, for reasonably priced tickets, a real NFL atmosphere, and choice of opponent (Dec 20 upcoming against the Patriots would be nice).

There are problems with the game, no doubt, but at least Toronto came off looking pretty good in the NFL spotlight, and the game was competitive. Cheers to Rogers for trying to get involved, but it won’t work in its present context. Bring an October/November game where the Bills aren’t knocked out, against an opponent worth watching, and – get this for an idea – rather than having to give away endless numbers of seats to ’sell out’ why not just drop the prices and sell them?

Works for me…

The above post shows you a number of things a) I play Yahoo! Fantasy Football as part of my Fantasy palette b) my team names pay homage to a portly former backup catcher for the Houston Astros and a rare coloured pigeon and most relevant for fantasy purposes c) an alarming number of people (8500 and counting) have given up on Jerricho Cotchery.

Now, I know that things are changing pretty quickly in New York. The addition of Braylon Edwards moves Cotchery down the depth chart, and Mark Sanchez is not looking like the quarterback that he did the first few weeks of the season. Both of these facts likely hurt Cotchery’s fantasy relevance. However, if we recall that Cotchery played well alongside Laveranues Coles last season and assume that Sanchez will eventually stabilize to the point that he’ll have some success in getting his receivers the ball, this seems like a hasty decision.

Cotchery has been ruled out of play for week 7, so a percentage of those owners probably needed the roster space given the bye week/injury situation, in certain circumstances Cotchery is a necessary drop, but he should still be near universally owned. When Cotchery was healthy (and the Jets were Edwardsless) weeks 1-4 he didn’t have a game below 70 receiving yards. The touchdowns were a little light, but the performance was consistent. Again, things have changed a bit, but once he gets back up to speed there’s no reason to think that Cotchery can’t return as a viable every week WR3. Keep him rostered.

(Update: the number continues to climb, now over 10000 fantasy users are cutting ties…)