...In With the New

I’ve been MIA lately blog-wise with my Canes getting held out of the playoffs, baseball just starting up, brackets ending, and 2 friends of mine getting married, the latter of which involved a road trip. Rest assured I am back to updating now, following one of my favorite days in the spring turning into a 3 day long event.

The NFL draft is almost like Christmas (or now mini-Chanukah?) when you get to see who your team gets, hoping it’s something useful you will like, and give away your college guys, hoping their new teams will appreciate them as much as you have. Or maybe that’s just how it is for my friends and I. Either way, it’s exciting. I haven’t gotten to complete my analysis quite yet, and probably won’t till the season starts again in all its insanity, but here are my thoughts so far…

-- My Skins finally woke up and realized we need serious o-line help, picking up 4 guys with potential to make things functional. Hoping Shanahan has this under control after getting rid of a bunch of our guys shortly after his arrival… And speaking of getting rid of guys, poor Jason Campbell got traded to the Raiders (sad thing #1) for a 4^th round draft pick in 2012 (sad thing #2). This guy never had a shot when we threw him into the game with a shoddy o-line that couldn’t hold off a defense long enough for guys to run their routes, then got mad at him when he couldn’t scramble enough to make that work. Though Raiders fans scare the crap out of me, I hope JC works well with Louis Murphy and that together they can turn Oakland around some if they’re gonna have to be out there anyway.

-- At the end of the draft, 9 Gators had been drafted, 3 of them (unfortunately) going to the Patriots. Some of my boys still available have the potential to do well in the NFL, but if they get taken at all, they’ll have to go as free agents.

-- Now that the draft is over, I’m going to miss the little song that plays when they announce a selection, but more so, the “we can have a draft while we watch the draft” commercial with Ditka. You gotta love Ditka. If he teamed up with Shaq in a commercial, I would buy/watch whatever they told me to.

-- I was as surprised as everyone else when Tebow got picked 25^th by the Broncos. It made more sense later when I learned that Denver just did it to QB-block the Bills, but regardless of when he went, I’m glad he went. I’m also glad he went to Josh’s team and not the Pats, cause I don’t think I would have handled that well.

-- Not that Rex Ryan is my favorite person or anything, but I was bummed to hear that Leon Washington got traded to work under Pete Carroll in Seattle. Leon was one of my favorite Noles to watch play, and has done well in the NFL (and on my fantasy teams) until he busted his leg. Stephania said on ESPN during the draft today that he expects to be good to go by the start of the season, but I’m curious to see if he can play as well as he used to.

PATs:

-- The Sox got off to a bumpy start, but ever since I left my Ellsbury shirt behind in Gainesville accidentally, they’ve been doing better. If that’s what it takes, I’m fine with going back to my old Sox shirt. Being 5 games back isn’t where I’d like them to be ideally, but less than 20 games into a 162 game season, I’m not too worried about it. Yet.

-- Stanley Cup playoff quarterfinals have actually been pretty interesting so far. Only the Flyers have gone on to the next level at this point (yay for beating Jersey!), and the rest of the matchups are pretty close. I’ve been keeping track of what’s going on, but watching games isn’t nearly as exciting with my boys out of the running.

-- The Magic just won their 3^rd game over the Bobcats in the first round of NBA playoff games. Sweep, perhaps? Eastern conference matchups seem to be more decisive so far than Western conference matchups, but it’s still early.