The NFL’s Week 13 is underway tonight with a Seabags-Shmeagles snoozefest, which means Skip Bayless has pissed you off three times and NBA fish out of water Stephen A. Smith has spent each hour since Sunday shouting down any and all Tim Tebow proponents. This also means it’s evaluation time.
This week’s target? Merrill Hoge, Tebow Enemy No. 1. Mr. Hoge is Herm Edwards-lite. He wants to be brash and berating, but his corn-fed quadruple Windsor knot is the loudest thing about him. In his role as expert last week, Hoge inaccurately picked four games out of 15.
Not too bad, right? Let’s see where he jacked himself up:
– SF over Bal (Result: Bal 16-6)
– SD over Den (Result: Den 16-13)
– Sea over Was (Result: Was 23-17)
– Phi over NE (Result: NE 38-20)
Likely reasons for Hoge-umental failure? Hoge too loyal to his own tweets. Picking San Fran over Baltimore is essentially picking Alex Smith, Gore, Crabtree and Ginn over Flacco, Rice, Boldin and Torrey Smith, because the defenses are a wash. At no point in your fantasy draft would you take any of those Niners over their respective Ravens matches. Hoge went San Fran on this pick because he has raved about Patrick Willis and company, and likely wanted to back himself up.
Picking the Chargers over Denver? Maybe a smart pick if analyzed weapon-for-weapon as above (Rivers-Mathews-Jackson-Gates over Tebow-McGahee-Decker-Fells every time), but you can’t pull that move off so easy under the circumstances. Read: Denver gutted out three toughies in a row (they’ll never be easy with a QB tossing end-over-end punt balls to his receivers), while the Chargers limped in with five straight for the “L” column. Surging defense against an ass-dragging QB? Swallow your Tebow hate for a minute, Merrill, and open your puppy eyes up to the blessed son’s shine: The Chargers are soft and the Broncs, while ugly, are not.
Coin-flipping Seattle over Washington? I’ll admit that I got this one wrong, too. Seattle at home against Sexy Rexy and the skidding ‘Skins sounds like easy pickins, so Hoge gets a pass here. Seattle’s a coin flip every week, and he flipped wrong.
Here’s the weird one. Going against the regular season hero Patriots AND also picking favor of non-traditional Vince Young? Hoge’s too old school for sprinkles on donuts, much less QBs who rock the sidearm. And given the Eagles baby-butt-soft D and the Pats offensive prowess, I’m a bit confused. Hoge’sopenly hating on VY and DeSean Jackson’s recent development of alligator arms make me think the dude was just shooting in the dark to give us the big “I told you so” if Philly pulled it off and to rile us up no matter the outcome (otherwise known as a “Bayless”).
So there you have it. Next week we’ll take on another talking head, to be determined tomorrow. Til next time.
