We get back to sports this week, folks. Brady, Rodney Harrison, the Bruins, the Baseball Show. All are addressed. Don’t worry. We’re not all dogs, all the time.
Still, the e-mails kept pouring in from the dog nuts, and I just can’t ignore their efforts, can I? These folks really know how to throw around the insults. And at the end of the day, isn’t that what the d-bag mailbag is all about?
So let’s go, you loons: pretend you’re a pit bull and I’m the succulent leg of a two-year boy. Have at it.
I actually shouldn’t joke about that. The very day that last week’s mailbag was posted, Fox 25 ran a story about a one-year-old girl who was attacked by a pit bull in Haverhill. She took 50 stitches but was lucky. She lived.
Of course, the mother said the pit bull had never been a problem before.
Funny. None of the nut jobs from Narnia mentioned the story in their e-mails.
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Hey Mike,
Now that Rodney has made it official, I was hoping you'd reflect on some of your favorite Rodney moments and/or any behind the scenes info that would be interesting? Rodney was/is one of my favorite Patriots of all time. He was the second-most (or maybe the most) important player on the '03 and '04 championship teams. Where do you think he ranks in Pats’ history & league history?
Dave
Arlington
A: I think in those 2003-04 championship seasons he was the most important player on the defense. In fact, Harrison had one of the best two-year runs I’ve ever seen in those seasons. He made plays (278 tackles, 5 interceptions, six sacks, four forced fumbles combined over those two seasons) and he won games. He was huge in the playoffs -- picking off Peyton Manning in the end zone in the 2003 AFC championship game, bringing a pick back for a touchdown against Ben Roethlisberger in the 2004 title game and intercepting Donovan McNabb twice in Super Bowl XXXIX, just to name three. He made everyone else around him better (when Harrison fell off the map in 2005, so did Eugene Wilson). There were a lot of playmakers on those defenses (Tedy Bruschi was great those years; Ty Law was tremendous in 2003; Mike Vrabel, Richard Seymour and even Willie McGinest were bringing it) -- but I’d rank Harrison first on that list. Other than Tom Brady, no one on those teams was more important.
The Lawyer Milloy transition is another story entirely. Without Harrison taking the reigns as he did (the team made him a captain in Week 2), that season could have turned out much differently. I remember being in the locker room at Gillette a couple days after the blowout loss at Buffalo when Rodney called me over to an empty locker stall. He called me by name even though I don’t believe we had met at that point. In other words, this was a premeditated conversation. “You think we suck, don’t you?” he asked. “No chance this week, right?” Not really, I answered. “You watch,” he replied.
And that was it. That week at Philadelphia, he batted away four balls from McNabb and the Pats won 31-10. And you know the rest of the story. Rodney was the consummate example of talking the talk and walking the walk. The media loved him for it.
As for the Hall of Fame, I think he’s close in terms of resume, but he stands no chance because he was voted to just two Pro Bowls. The HGH bust won’t help him, either. Besides, there aren’t a lot of safeties in the Hall, and the top guy from this generation, in my opinion, is Ed Reed. But after that, I think Harrison and John Lynch deserve the same consideration. It will be a shame when Lynch goes in and Rodney doesn’t. I think that 30-30 stat that Rodney owns is incredible. He’s the only player in NFL history to have at least that many sacks and interceptions in his career. No one else has done it -- from any position. Not Ronnie Lott. Not Reed. Not Lynch. Not anyone. That’s pretty awesome.
One final note on the HGH thing. This is one of those cases where the football/baseball double standard when it comes to performance enhancing drugs is hard to ignore. It was just two
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