Upon Further Review: Is Kevin Kolb ready to take over sports betting?
In the first in a series of specific scouting reports, Shutdown Corner investgates whether the Philadelphia Eagles are in good hands with new starting quarterback Kevin Kolb(notes). With Donovan McNabb(notes) in the nation’s capital and Michael Vick(notes) possibly on the outs, how can the Eagles ensure the success of the man they have designated as the the future of the franchise?There were several things that prevented the Philadelphia Eagles from going to the Super Bowl last season. A torn ACL cost linebacker Stewart Bradley(notes) his entire 2009 season, and replacements were hard to come by until the team traded for ex-Rams defender Will Witherspoon(notes) in October. Whatever plans the offensive brain trust had for Michael Vick seemed to go awry; for the most part, Vick was less a “Wildcat” option and more a speedbump for every offensive drive in which he took part. Depending on what happens with Vick’s current legal issues, he may not be on the team in time for the 2010 season. The Eagles scored just seven rushing touchdowns in the red zone (as many as little-known Cardinals running back Tim Hightower(notes) did all by himself), continuing a longstanding issue with short-area conversions. Most of the blame for a season that ended in a 34-14 wild-card loss to the Dallas Cowboys fell on the shoulders of quarterback Donovan McNabb, which is something McNabb got used to a long time ago. (Perhaps the Eagles should have looked harder at a defense that allowed five straight scoring drives in the second quarter of that game). Despite his status as the best quarterback in franchise history (and a 2009 season that saw him throw 22 touchdowns and just nine interceptions), McNabb had seen the writing on the wall for a while. First, when the team drafted Houston quarterback Kevin Kolb in the second round of the 2007 draft, and second, when head coach Andy Reid benched McNabb in a Week 12 loss to the Ravens in 2008. Eventually, the Eagles wanted to see what they had in Kolb, and they cut bait with McNabb after the 2009 season in order to move forward with the man they perceive to be their next franchise quarterback.But did the Eagles move too quickly in going to Kolb full-time? He was the first quarterback in NFL history to throw for at least 300 yards in his first two starts when he took the helm early in 2009 as McNabb recovered from a rib injury. But in those two games, Kolb faced the moribund Kansas City Chiefs defense (in Week 3) and the defense of the eventual Super Bowl champion New Orleans Saints (in Week 2). The word on Kolb is that he will present more short-level accuracy than McNabb, but against New Orleans, he looked better throwing longer to his own receivers on a first-quarter touchdown to DeSean Jackson(notes) than he did throwing short on a fourth-quarter interception to Darren Sharper(notes). The touchdown came on the Eagles’ first drive, with first-and-10 at the Philadelphia 29-yard line. The Saints lined up with a three-man front and one of defensive coordinator Gregg Williams’ patented weird blitzes, with end Bobby McCray(notes) (93) in the slot where you’d normally see a nickel back against a twins receiver set like the one in this play. When McCray blitzed, that left Jackson with little interference on a deep post over the middle. While Kevin Curtis(notes) (80) cleared the left cornerback, Jackson headed upfield and made his break past linebacker Scott Shanle(notes) (58). Jackson then ran past free safety Darren Sharper (42) and beat strong safety Roman Harper(notes) (41) for the pass that Kolb hit Jackson with at the New Orleans 40. Jackson then ran all the way for the score. It was a great throw by Kolb, but he didn’t have to beat coverage for his first NFL touchdown pass — he just had to wait for Jackson to beat that coverage. Had the Saints run a standard 4-3, or a nickel set, it could have been a very different story. The first of Kolb’s two fourth-quarter interceptions came with 1:10 left in the game and the Saints up, 41-22. The Eagles had the ball at the New Orleans 11-yard line, and they went three- wide with tight end Brent Celek(notes) (87) in the flex position against the Saints’ compressed red-zone nickel defense. Kolb took the short shotgun snap with the intention of throwing a quick pass to Celek. Unfortunately, Kolb telegraphed the pass like a veritable Samuel Morse — he didn’t look off at all — and Sharper used his veteran acumen to jump the route and take the ball back 97 yards for a touchdown. Short routes may sound simpler, but if receivers can make more happen on longer plays that take more time to develop, young quarterbacks can find more opportunities to be productive. The jury’s still very much out on Kevin Kolb — he’ll have the benefit of Reid’s West Coast Offense and talented receivers around him, but as it is with any NFL quarterback, he’ll have to learn the subtleties of the game (like how and when to look off a smart defender) the hard way. Until then, the Eagles would do well to draw up plays with route complexity and personnel advantages. Making young quarterbacks create on the fly is usually a recipe for disaster.Based on the Eagles’ current offensive production and efficiency, and Kolb’s familiarity with that system, Football Outsiders projects a 2010 season for Kolb that looks like this: 324 completions in 518 attempts (62.6 completion percentage) for 3,968 yards, 24 touchdowns, and 14 interceptions. As Kolb learns to fool veteran defenders with his eyes, he’ll be a better bet to keep those pick numbers low and the fantasy numbers high.Sign up for Fantasy Football ‘10 today! Auction drafts, online sports, scoring, and an iPhone app — all for free!

Live text – US Open day five
Venus Williams and Rafael Nadal play in the night session on day five of the US Open, while Andy Murray storms into round three at Flushing Meadows.

Davis stands by criticism of Crabtree (AP)
Vernon Davis’ frustrations with Michael Crabtree finally came to a boiling point, and the San Francisco 49ers’ Pro Bowl tight end let his teammate have it — and for everyone to see. Davis angrily confronted Crabtree during Wednesday’s practice and coach Mike Singletary had to step between them.

Broncos’ Tebow outplays Vikings’ Jackson (AP)
Tim Tebow’s first two series had rookie written all over them. Then he started playing with the veteran-like poise that helped him get drafted in the first round by Denver in the first place. Tebow outplayed Minnesota’s Tarvaris Jackson in the backup quarterback comparison, but the Vikings forced four first-half turnovers and beat the Broncos 31-24 on Thursday night in the preseason finale…

The 10-man rotation, starring the NBA’s best power forwards
A look around the league and the web that covers it. It’s also important to note that the rotation order and starting nods aren’t always listed in order of importance. That’s for you, dear reader, to figure out.C: 48 Minutes of Hell. Debating Dwyer’s Pau over Duncan choice.PF: Wyn Douglas. NBA transaction flowcharts are simply amazing.SF: Sneaker News. Part 1 of the history of Air Jordan commercials. Here’s part 2.SG: Hooped Up. Yao Ming, still joke-a-loking.PG: BBC. Excellent piece on Luol Deng’s first return to his native Sudan. (via Ziller)6th: HP. A cheap way to get big-time free agents.7th: Posting and Toasting. Can someone get a hold of Eddy Curry please?8th: The Painted Area. An excellent preview of Team USA’s FIBA World Championship group.9th: Fear the Beard. Yeah, Baron Davis is definitely not 260 lbs.10th: Banana Times. Why Jeremy Lin matters.Got a link or tip for Ball Don’t Lie? Holler at me at trey.kerby (at) yahoo.com, or follow me on Twitter.

BDL Review: ‘Jordan Rides the Bus’
Right off the top: “Jordan Rides the Bus,” which premieres tonight at 8 p.m. to kick off the fall slate of ESPN’s acclaimed “30 for 30″ documentary series, isn’t really a basketball movie. Most the film’s 51 minutes deal with Michael Jordan’s retirement from the NBA after the 1992-93 season and his decision to pursue a professional baseball career. The flick is much more about breaking balls than crossovers.Frankly, “Jordan Rides the Bus” isn’t particularly compelling, especially when lined up next to some of the other excellent “30 for 30″ presentations – it doesn’t have the dramatic flourish of “Winning Time,” the challenging scope of “No Crossover” or the poetic narrative of “Guru of Go.” There are no new interviews with Jordan himself. There’s no one moment that wows you. At times, the tale of Jordan’s stint with the Birmingham Barons feels procedural. Boring, even.There’s something bigger here for hoops fans, though, because the film also attempts to examine (if not directly answer) the question of why the quintessential basketball figure of the past quarter-century chose to walk away from the immortality he’d earned on the court.In a personal statement featured on the film’s Web site, director Ron Shelton, an ex-minor leaguer himself, says he has “a unique appreciation” for just how great a challenge Jordan accepted. At the time, Jordan’s willingness to submit to the tyranny of the quotidian (“The bus rides, the lack of days off, the daily routine of it all can be brutal”) as a farmhand with the Chicago White Sox’s Double-A affiliate captured Shelton’s imagination. Nearly two decades later, there’s something that still sticks in the craw of the writer/director behind “Bull Durham” and “White Men Can’t Jump” – how severely we’ve miscast Jordan’s choice of the come-up.At a personal level, I’ve always felt that this chapter in Jordan’s life was misunderstood. Instead of being an exercise of his ego, it was quite the opposite. … There’s nothing like this in sports history: The greatest player of all time in one sport submits himself to the gauntlet that mere mortal athletes have to go through daily.The thesis is given voice in the film by David Falk, Jordan’s former agent, who notes the “enormous amount of courage [it takes] to walk away from being a king and sort of walk with the common man.” Shelton smartly leavens the line by juxtaposing it with a clip of Jordan signing frantic fans’ autographs at the ballpark, and then follows it with a low-angle, “Citizen Kane”-style shot of Jordan that makes him look like a striding colossus in sunglasses. The choices highlight the obvious: No matter how many ex-Barons swear by Jordan’s “just one of the guys” commitment and hard work, he could never actually be common people, underscoring the unique nature of the endeavor.And make no mistake, it was unique. Other legends have stepped away in the primes of their respective careers for one reason or another – Ted Williams and Willie Mays leaving the diamond to serve in the military, Muhammad Ali losing three years in the ring for his conscientious objection to the Vietnam War, Barry Sanders retiring from the NFL at age 31 because losing was killing him, etc. But none of those quite fit; Jordan falling back after a three-peat to go bush league doesn’t have a clean analogue.(I do think Jordan’s journey might map onto Joseph Campbell’s monomyth framework – his father’s challenge to play ball as the call to adventure, then-Barons skipper Terry Francona as his guide, Birmingham as belly of the beast, etc. – but trying to hammer it out here would probably be an analytical overstep. Plus, you don’t want this wordpile to spin into an MJ/Siddhartha/Odysseus tale of the tape.)The unprecedented nature of the story seems to make it fertile ground for a film that can teach us something. By the time the credits roll, though, viewers who were already up on the basics of Jordan’s stretch in the minors aren’t likely to feel they’ve learned much more about the episode. (Quickly: He stinks at the start, he improves as a hitter and quiets some haters through relentless work in the batting cage, and he bounces back to the Chicago Bulls after balking at being a replacement player during baseball’s 1994-95 work stoppage.)But if they’re open to it, basketball fans might feel like they’ve gotten something valuable – a rare glimpse of Jordan the Athlete’s failings, and not just to stay north of the Mendoza Line.The film opens with Jordan as conquering marauder, his indomitable will on display as his Bulls defeat Charles Barkley’s Phoenix Suns in the 1993 NBA Finals. NBC announcer Marv Albert extols Jordan’s virtues as he celebrates the Bulls’ third straight title, both on the court and in the locker room. The focus then shifts to Jordan as dutiful son, pouring champagne on his father James as they pose together for photos.But just as quickly as we’re introduced to Jordan: Master of the Universe, the rug’s pulled out from underneath him. The joyful father-son moment is interrupted by a voiceover from Michael’s childhood friend, David Bridgers: “I first found out about it when I was sitting home, watching TV. They found Mr. J. in a creek, face down.”We see Jordan weeping at the funeral that followed James Jordan’s murder. (Daniel Green, one of the men convicted of the July 23, 1993 crime, recently claimed he would be exonerated.) The stage is set for change; now that Michael has lost his compass, we can understand his need for reorientation. Jordan references fulfilling his father’s wishes (“My father presented the challenge to me before he died – it was to try to play baseball – and I just wanted to try”) as a primary reason for his midstream change. One other potential explanation for his exit – that NBA Commissioner David Stern put Jordan on ice in response to his high-stakes gambling issues – is summarily dismissed. Former Bulls teammate Steve Kerr calls it “the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard in my life … because Michael was the golden goose,” and Stern would never willingly sacrifice Jordan-as-meal-ticket for 18 months. Longtime Chicago Tribune scribe and “The Jordan Rules” author Sam Smith dismisses the “ludicrous” notion of MJ’s banishing because “it’s not possible to keep a secret in the NBA.”The brief exploration is unlikely to satisfy conspiracy theorists and the relative lack of depth in the discussion won’t add much to fans’ understanding of the situation, but discussing the gambling angle also allows Shelton to take the press to task for their repeated references to Jordan’s baseball pursuit as ridiculous and for the speculative connection of MJ’s gambling to James Jordan’s death. “There’s no question that when Michael’s father died, it was right around when all the gambling was swirling around,” legendary hoops writer Jack McCallum says. “And we in the press, somehow being who we are, just couldn’t help looking to somehow put that together.”Mostly, though, the narrative steers toward Jordan needing to restore his hunger. Bulls owner Jerry Reinsdorf and then-coach Phil Jackson both say that Jordan told them burnout was the main reason for his retirement; in a clip, Jordan says he “needed a change, and I totally needed a break – I just felt I was being engulfed by the success that I’d gathered at that time.” He talks about how he lost a “sense of motivation and the sense … to prove something as a basketball player.” Late in “Jordan Rides the Bus,” he explains how his time in Birmingham rekindled the fire:… the new players who were 10 years younger than I am, maybe some of them 11 … they had an attitude toward the game that they truly loved. Because it was just a game, it was a dream that they were fulfilling. I kind of lost that in the realm of what was happening with me and with basketball. I mean, I was on a pedestal for so long that I forgot about the steps to get to that.The experience made Jordan a better leader, according to Jackson:… To be a really good team, you had to bring out all [of your teammates'] gifts and help [them] be better players. And I think he was capable of doing that much better in his second career as an NBA basketball player. I think he was much more generous with his time, I think he was much more encouraging as a teammate.Jackson’s assessment offers some interesting shading to Jordan’s legacy in Chicago and maybe adds a brighter shine to his second run in Chicago, (already damn shiny, what with its three rings and the all-time-great 72-10 run in 1995-96). It also casts Jordan’s previous triumphs, including the first three-peat, in a slightly different light.Though he was undoubtedly a more dominant physical force as a younger man, in the Zen Master’s eyes, he wasn’t necessarily the best he could be. He was lacking. He had to grow. How often do we think of Michael Jordan – not the GM, not the owner, not the man off the court, but the player – in those terms?It’s an interesting perspective that opens all sorts of doors to analysis of what constitutes the perfect player and contextualizes Jordan circa ‘93, as destructive a force as he was, as an incomplete monarch who had to learn the right way to rule to become the G.O.A.T. That fascinating piece of food for thought makes “Jordan Rides the Bus” worth a watch for hoop heads, in spite of its failings.

No. 7 not so lucky for John Elway on this day (AP)
John Elway pulled an Elway on the Elway hole. “Seven on 7,” the Hall of Famer said sadly after carding an even-par 72 Wednesday in his first senior golf tournament since turning 50 in June. Elway’s blunder came about when he played the wrong ball and ended up with a triple-bogey on the par-4 seventh hole at the Green Valley Ranch Golf Club, site of the HealthOne Colorado Senior Open.

Crouch out of England qualifiers
Tottenham striker Peter Crouch is the latest player to pull out of England’s squad for the Euro 2012 qualifiers against Bulgaria and Switzerland.

Scotland turn down Zimbabwe match
The Scottish cricket team will not travel to Zimbabwe for their ICC Intercontinental Cup match.

Childress: Jackson remains No. 2 QB (AP)
Tarvaris Jackson is entrenched as Minnesota’s backup to quarterback Brett Favre, despite sharp play in exhibition games this month by Sage Rosenfels. Coach Brad Childress confirmed Monday that Jackson remains No. 2 and Rosenfels is still No. 3. Childress said he’s seen “an evolution” and “a growth” in Jackson since the beginning of training camp.