Ira Miller, my friend and former colleague, phoned me a few minutes ago. He lives outside Chicago these days and we often speak on Monday mornings to go over Sunday’s NFL action. It is one of my great pleasures in life to talk football with Ira, the dean of NFL writers.
Before I get into this blog I want to remind readers that, before this season began, Ira told the Cohn Zohn that the Niners and Raiders stink and Lane Kiffin and Mike Nolan would get fired. So far, he’s right on three of four predictions — and Nolan is sinking fast, although Ira thinks he might limp through to the end of the season.
Anyway, Ira first talked about the Bears game — the Bears are a big topic in the Chicago area. He said he assumed the Bears would win after they went ahead by one point with 11 seconds left and then the Bears mangled the game. “On the kickoff they hit a squib kick,” Ira said. “Just kick the ball into the end zone. They gave Atlanta the ball at the 44 yard-line. Kicking the ball out of bounds would have been better. The Falcons would have gotten the ball at the 40. And then they let a guy catch the ball at the sideline and go out of bounds to stop the clock. It was a textbook way to set up Atlanta to win. Give them the one pass you absolutely can’t allow. And then the Falcons kick the winning field goal. Their rookie quarterback (Matt Ryan) sure is good.”
Ira worked his way around to the Niners. “Now you see why all those teams gave up on O’Sullivan,” he said. “He’s a backup quarterback. Bill (Walsh) used to say a good backup is someone who can come in and change the pace of a game. That’s what O’Sullivan does. He runs around and gets things going. That’s good in a backup, but it’s not what a starter does.”
Ira told me to wait a minute, he had a few JTO stats for me. I heard him clicking the keys on his computer. “Get this,” he said. “He ranks 37th in the league for fourth-quarter passing. He’s ranked 37th in a 32-team league.”
We agreed that isn’t very good.
“Oh, here’s another one,” he said. “He leads the league in fourth-quarter interceptions. You want to know who’s second?”
I said I did.
“Jon Kitna. That’s quite an exclusive club.”
Indeed it is.
— Lowell
