2012 NFL SEASON: WEEK 1

NFL 2012 Week 1 TV Distribution Map

Another season, another season of picking games with Monica Roberts. Let’s get this started!

Kickoff Times are Central Time
Picks Indicated in BOLD
Sunday Day Games for the Dallas-Fort Worth Area are indicated with (DFW)

KICKOFF GAME (WEDNESDAY 9/5)

Dallas Cowboys at New York Giants, 7:30 PM NBC

SUNDAY (9/9) FOX DOUBLEHEADER

NOON FOX

Washington Redskins at New Orleans Saints (DFW)

Atlanta Falcons at Kansas City Chiefs

Philadelphia Eagles at Cleveland Browns

St. Louis Rams at Detroit Lions


NOON CBS

Miami Dolphins at Houston Texans (DFW)

Buffalo Bills at New York Jets

Indianapolis Colts at Chicago Bears

Jacksonville Jaguars at Minnesota Vikings

New England Patriots at Tennessee Titans

3PM FOX

San Francisco 49ers at Green Bay Packers (DFW)
Seattle Seahawks at Arizona Cardinals
Carolina Panthers at Tampa Bay Buccaneers

SUNDAY NIGHT

Pittsburgh Steelers at Denver Broncos, NBC 7:20 PM

MONDAY NIGHT (9/10)

Cincinnati Bengals at Baltimore Ravens, 6PM ESPN

San Diego Chargers at Oakland Raiders, 9:15 PM ESPN

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2012 NFL SEASON PREVIEW AND PREDICTION

First a recap of the previous season…

Last season, the Giants were 6-6 going into their Week 14 matchup at Dallas. It was an opportunity for the Cowboys to seize control of the NFC East. New York was in the middle of a x-game losing streak. Dallas had a 12 point lead with 5 minutes remaining. The Giants scored to cut the lead down to 5. And then this happened…

The Giants scored again to take a 37-34 lead, but Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo drove his team in position for a game tying field goal. It appeared that the game was heading towards overtime…

Following the win at Dallas the Giants followed it up with a loss to the Redskins. It appeared that the Giants were heading towards the off-season and a possible coaching change. Their playoff run would have to start next week on the road… at the Jets.

Even though quarterback Eli Manning had a lackluster game, wide receiver Victor Cruz was the difference catching x-passes for y-yards and z-touchdowns.

The highlight of that game was this play:

From that point on, the Giants never trailed and “Cruzed” to a 25-14 win over their cross town rivals.

Under the NFL’s television rules, the Sunday night contest for Week 17 is left vacant so that a matchup with the most playoff implications is scheduled. This is also the 256^th and final game of the regular season. The matchup chosen was the Giants-Cowboys game at MetLife Stadium.

The Giants jumped out to a 21-0 lead before the Cowboys scored two touchdowns in the second half. New York scored 10 more points to close out the game, win 31-14, and claim their second NFC East title in five seasons.

The Giants continued their winning streak with a 24-2 win over the Falcons at home, followed by a 37-20 win at Green Bay in the divisional round, and Lawrence Tynes kicking the Giants into the Super Bowl with a 20-17 overtime win at San Francisco.

Super Bowl XLVI was against the New England Patriots who won 10 straight games en route to their second Super Bowl appearance in four years. Their last loss was in Week 9 when Eli Manning drove the length of the field for a game winning touchdown at New England to give the Giants a 24-20 win.

Also, who could forget Super Bowl XLII:

With the Patriots clinging to a two-point lead with four minutes remaining, it appeared that New England was on their way to their first Super Bowl championship since the 2004 season and exercising the demons from their last championship appearance.

Until…

Just like in Dallas in December, the Giants seized their opportunity. With 3:46 remaining and the ball on the Giants 12, Eli Manning launches a pass down the near sideline to a streaking Mario Manningham.

8 plays later, Ahmad Bradshaw capped the drive with a rushing touchdown with 57 seconds remaining to give the Giants a 21-17 lead.

The Patriots had one last chance as they drove to midfield. With five seconds left, quarterback Tom Brady launched a Hail Mary Pass to the end zone…

And for the second time in four years, the Giants defeated the Patriots in a Super Bowl and Eli Manning was named the game’s MVP.

The top stories in the NFL’s off-season was quarterback Peyton Manning’s release from the Colts and signing with the Denver Broncos, the Saints “Bounty-gate” that resulted in the season long suspension of head coach Sean Payton and linebacker Jonathan Vilma and indefinite suspension of defensive coordinator Greg Williams, the quiet return of Jeff Fisher to sidelines in St. Louis, Mario Williams signing with the Buffalo Bills, and the Broncos trading Tim Tebow to the New York Jets.

And it starts again tonight with a re-match of the final regular season game between the Super Bowl Champion New York Football Giants against the Dallas Cowboys.

Here are my predictions for division winners and wild card teams:

	AFC	NFC
EAST	New England	Philadelphia
NORTH	Baltimore	Green Bay
SOUTH	Houston	New Orleans
WEST	Denver	San Francisco
WILD CARDS	Kansas City, Pittsburgh	Carolina, Chicago

NFC Championship: Green Bay over Philadelphia

AFC Championship: Houston over Baltimore

Over the past three seasons I have gone with Green Bay as the NFC favorite and there is no reason to not see any change. Green Bay was 15-1 last season and had a rather embarrassing exit from the playoffs by eventual Super Bowl champion New York. This is still the same team that won Super Bowl XLV a couple of seasons ago. The 49ers are a good team, but it’s going to be tough to repeat the defensive performance they put on. The Saints have too much drama and it going to be tough for the Giants to repeat. Again, the Packers are my NFC favorite.

In the AFC, I think the Texans are good enough to make a Super Bowl run. All the top teams in the AFC have some serious flaw that I am not comfortable with. New England: being a previous Super Bowl loser and their defense. Baltimore is getting older on defense. Pittsburgh’s running game is a concern. Even though the Broncos have a new quarterback in Peyton Manning, it’s still the same team it was last year. And the Jets are all hype.

Super Bowl predicition

The game is in New Orleans this season, so I am going with Green Bay over Houston.

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19TH AMENDMENT

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MATTHEWS > PRIEBUS

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Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s Hardball, confronts RNC Chairman Reince Priebus about his party’s attack on President Obama being not American.

This stems from a comment Mr. Romney made on Friday during a campaign stop in Michigan where he recounted about his wife and he living there and says:

“No one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate. They know that this was the place where we were born and raised.”(crowd cheers)

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NEIL ARMSTRONG (1930-2012)

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THEY’RE CALLING IT LOW… THEY’RE ONE TO TALK

In the last week, Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have condemned the statement made by Vice President Joe Biden on Tuesday about the Romney-Ryan Economic Plan calling it “low.”

Hmmm…. Interesting…

I have compiled a short list of quotes from well known Republicans and those in the conservative movement over the last 4 years.

"I hope it prolongs the failure. I hope it prolongs the recession. Because people are going to have to figure out here that this is not how economies recover. Government is not the central planner… Of course I want Obama to fail. And after this stimulus bill package passes, I want it to fail."- Rush Limbaugh, 13 February 2009, regarding Obama’s stimulus plan

The opening pages of the book Do Not Ask What Good We Do talks about a dinner held by prominent Republicans in Washington, DC about how to retake the Congress and White House after the 2008 elections. Among those in attendance from Congress: Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy, Paul Ryan, Pete Sessions, Jeb Hensarling, Pete Hoekstra, Dan Lungren, Jim DeMint, Jon Kyl, Tom Coburn, John Ensign, and Bob Corker. Also in attendance was Newt Gingrich and communications specialist Frank Luntz.

When did this dinner take place? 20 January 2009

“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” – Senator Mitch McConnell (R- KY), addressing the Heritage Foundation in October 2010

Michele Bachmann has several classic quotations. Here is list of her Top 10 up until June 2011.

Here is a compilation video and I warn you, your IQ will drop 10%.

Newt Gingrich and his claim of President Obama being “The Food Stamp President”

That claim made by Gingrich was false. Nothing more than a racist, dog-whistle lie to stir up white paranoia. I am sad to say some members of my mother’s family who are surprisingly one generation ahead of me believe this nonsense.

“One thing I'm sure of is that there are people in this country… there is a radical strain of Islam in this country… it's not just over there… trying to kill Americans every week. It is a real threat, and it is a threat that is much more at home now than it was after 9/11.”
- Rep. Joe Walsh (R-IL, Deadbeat Dad), August 2012

This other quote from Deadbeat Dad Joe Walsh pisses me off because you hear people chuckling while the Congressman said that Tammy Duckworth’s service meant nothing.

Tammy Duckworth served in Iraq as a helicopter pilot. She was shot down and lost both of her legs. Even though she is a double amputee, she is still serving in the Illinois National Guard.

I wonder how many of them would chuckle to her face.

Oh, and once again, he’s a Deadbeat Dad.

Who could forget this during President Obama’s address to a Joint Session of Congress in 2009 about health care reform back on 9 September 2009?

You know Jon Stewart had something to say about this on his program on Wednesday Night after the always irrelevant Sarah Palin had something to say about this.

The Daily Show
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In the montage clip, Palin asked if there were five Republicans that have ever said such hateful things.

I gave her more than five, but I don’t think she would ever get there. She has a problem getting past two.

And Mitt Romney is one to talk…

This coming from a man who has a long, well documented history of saying whatever in order to get elected.

This is not the first instance of “Republican Freak Out” in this campaign and it certainly won’t be the last.

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ROMNEY-RYAN 2012: THE PATH TO DESPARITY

It has been barely a week since that Saturday morning at the Battleship Wisconsin near the Nauticus Naval History Museum in Norfolk, VA, when the Republican Party’s Nominee Mitt Romney selected Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin as his Vice-Presidential nominee.

Representative Ryan gained national prominence as the Chairman of the Committee on the Budget in the US House during the 112^th Congress. The budget passed by this committee, referred to as either its official name of “The Path to Prosperity” or its common name of the Ryan Plan, contains controversial measures behind it.

It proposes in turning Medicare and Medicaid, one of the most successful government programs for the elderly and poor, into a voucher system. “ObamaCare”, which was found to be Constitutional by a Conservative leaning Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision back in late June, would be dismantled of key provisions as part of the Republican’s goal of repealing it. VoteVets.org made an observation that the Ryan Plan makes no reference to our Veterans and their benefits. Other draconian cuts include slashing Pell Grants for college students and kicking people off the food stamp rolls. It should be noted that a good percentage of people that benefit from the food stamp program are children.

Even though this budget passed the Republican controlled House of Representatives along party lines, the bill was DOA in the Democratic controlled Senate as it failed 57-40 with some Senate Republicans crossing over to strike it down.

The most glaring of the Ryan Plan is how the government draws in revenue as specified in Article I, Section 8 of the US Constitution. Under this budget, the plan to draw in revenue would be to keep the Bush Tax Cuts and then an additional $4 trillion (yes, TRILLION) in tax cuts for the Top 1% wage earners in the hopes that by some miracle that will stimulate the economy.

In the 30+ years that this country has enacted Supply Side Economics (AKA “Reganomics”) as its primary economic policy, the only people that have benefited from this are those at the top while the rest of us have seen our incomes stagnate at best.

For instance, under the Ryan Plan, Mitt Romney would pay less than 1% in taxes. According to returns for 2010, Mr. Romney and his wife, Ann, paid an effective federal tax rate of 13.9%. The burden of payment for the services we need to function as a society would shift further to those at the lower ends of the income ladder.

In the days since Mr. Romney picked Representative Ryan as his running mate, he has done what he can to distance his campaign from the Ryan Plan.

Well, it’s his now.

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