The Death of MNF

Well, it’s done!! Start the trumpets playing “Taps”. …ESPN has officially murdered Monday Night Football.

There I was…, I had my drink, my chips and dip, and my big TV tuned to the game and then it started…

For the second consecutive week, Ron Jaworski declared a QB ready for the season based on watching him throw one pass. Did anyone else catch this?? Jaws declared Carson Palmer ready for the season and called him one of only three “elite” QB in the NFL(more on that in a minute). If memory serves me correctly, he did the same thing last week with Rex Grossman of the Bears, after which, Grossman fumbled twice and threw an interception. Now back to the “elite” QB issue, the other announcers were stunned that Jaws thinks that Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, and Carson Palmer are the only top tier quarterbacks in the NFL. They even mentioned McNabb and Brees by name, but he wouldn’t back up. Are you kidding me?? Does he have any idea how stupid he sounds??

After all that, the entire show revolved around the Michael Vick story. Now, I’m not so naive as to think that we would escape it completely, the game being played in Atlanta and all, but OMG!!!! Every statement from the booth and every sideline interview was related to Michael Vick, to the point that a nice touchdown run by the Falcon’s Jerious Norwood happened during a sideline interview with Chris Mortensen and they talked right through it!!! …Wait, I want that to sink in…They Talked Right Through A Touchdown!!! …On Monday Night Football!! At this point, I had to turn the sound off. This was a very well played preseason football game, but the coverage absolutely killed it for me.

This can not be the kind of coverage the NFL had hoped for when the MNF contract was awarded to ESPN, but I guess this is what happens when you have 24 hours a day to fill with news. Let me know how you felt about it.