Collinsworth opens the real season.

No, not the NFL season, but the Highly Paid Network Football Commentator Saying Something Monumentally Stupid season (or the HPNFCSSMS).

The situation: tie game, under a minute left. Hines Ward (WR-Pit) catches a ball at something like the 20 yard line, makes a nice move at the 10, and cuts back toward the end zone for what will surely be the winning touchdown, when from the back side comes a defensive back to make a one in a gajillion play and strip the ball, which was promptly recovered by the defense.

Collinsworth, new to his gig as the lead commentator for the marquee game of the week, lets fly that (I'm paraphrasing) Ward made a mental error by trying to score a touchdown...instead "all he has to do is kneel down and they kick the game winner."

On its face, this statement is factually correct. Had he knelt down at the 10 yard line, the Steelers could have run the clock down and kick the FG. But to suggest that a player should not try to make a reasonable effort to score so that they can kick a field goal later is so patently stupid and obtuse that it's almost hard to fathom.

First of all, it's not like he was dragging three defenders with him fighting for three inches. If the DB doesn't flail at him desperately, he breaks the arm tackle of the other DB and scores easily.

But Collinsworth isn't satisfied. "Even if he can manage to score a touchdown there, you've still got 51 seconds left for them to answer."

Ok, Cris, let's take that "education" you got at Florida out for a spin. What would you rather have, a 7 point lead with 50 seconds left (really 45 after the kickoff), when Tennessee has exactly one touchdown all night, and your pass rush can "pin their ears back" and go after the 36 year old immobile quarterback? Or a chance at a 30 yard field goal? Let's not forget there had already been one miss, one block (both for the other team's kicker), and one really ugly low line drive that went through. I'm doing all this by memory, so forgive me if I'm off by couple percentage points. FG accuracy in the NFL is like 80% overall. Drives that start from the 20 yard line (and there's no gurantee that they would start that deep, but they would likely have run any kick out of the end zone) result in touchdowns something like 15% of the time. Add in the fact that they had 50 seconds to do it? Well, I'll let you decide what you'd rather have.

I've often said (and I stole it from someone else from wayyyy back) that the single least qualified group of individuals to comment on the game of professional football are those who have in fact been hired by the networks to do so. Collinsworth, usually better than this, seems to be fitting in nicely.


P.S. No, it doesn't change my opinion that Hines Ward said "I need to get down there." Try to score, dude, it's your job.