here we go again...

against my better judgment i've decided to start season 8 in madden. so after some careful drafting to bulk up the offensive line and replace some key offensive personnel (and some wrangling over the three holdouts i had, including bunting demanding 11 million a year instead of his already-high 8.5 million), the niners kicked off the preseason against the falcons...and they actually won a preseason game. it might have had something to do with the fact that michael vick threw four interceptions in the first half...

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it was 14-7 niners at halftime, due to the fact that the falcons defense locked bowes up and bunting was throwing the ball for the first time since week 12 of last season (he was decent, but not great). the falcons tied it up early in the third, and then the niners retook the lead early in the fourth when this third-and-long pass was deflected off of a DB's helmet and into the new FB's diving, sliding, arms.

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a few punts and a matt stewart field goal later, it was 24-14. the falcons scored almost immediately, making it 24-21 with six minutes on the clock, but the niners responded by immediately shredding through falcons defense to score another touchdown.

the falcons managed to get another field goal, but failed to recover the onside kick. final: 31-24.

wesley jordan, super bowl champion?

unlikely, yes, but tonight the improbable became reality and the niners won their 4th super bowl in 7 years. they defeated the new england patriots for the second time, 23-19 in one of the best games ever seen in the FUCKING UNIVERSE.

the game started with a lot of what would characterize pretty much the first 50 or so minutes: defense. tom brady was intercepted on the first play of the game:

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and then wesley jordan (playing for the still-injured bunting at QB) threw the ball right back to the patriots. both teams punted once, and then brady threw another interception.

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this continued for quite some time. except for one sustained drive in the second quarter that ended with a bowes run:

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the teams totalled (between them) less than 100 yards in the first half, and only picked up 6 first downs. by halftime, the patriots' punter had punted 8 times. it was 10-3 at the break.
things were worse in the third quarter (or better, if you like defense). the pats tacked on another field goal, making it 10-6. but otherwise, things were scoreless. midway through the fourth quarter, the pats kicked another field goal to make it 10-9 when wesley jordan fumbled it to them twenty yards out during a QB scramble. it looked like it might stay that way until the end, but finally the defenses collapsed. the niners strung together a good drive, but "missed" a field goal when the kick passed through the uprights:

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real life, ftw!
the pats then drove down and scored another field goal, taking the lead for the first time in the game, 12-10. with only five minutes left on the clock, the niners started a drive at their own 12...and promptly seemed to blow the game when wesley jordan fumbled into the end zone on a sack and it was recovered for a touchdown, making it 19-10. with only one timeout, the niners trailed by two scores with less than five minutes left.
unexpectedly, backup QB jordan was up to the challenge. his first drive ripped the pats defense apart and resulted in a touchdown pass to bowes with 3:10 still left on the clock. the pats got the ball back, and picked up a seemingly game-clinching first down on the ground. they were forced to punt with 40 seconds left, and the niners took over 82 yards away from victory with no timeouts left. they threw two incomplete passes, and then, with 27 seconds left, this hail mary pass hit prewett on the left sideline:

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the safety covering him went up for the interception (for some reason) and he was only in single coverage (for some reason). one broken tackle later, it was all over:

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prewett was off to the races, scoring the game-winner and NFL-winning touchdown in a game that looked to already have been decided.

what a weird season...i was thinking of updating to a post-2003 madden after this season, but none of my custom players are retiring yet, and i like obsessively building stats. so...maybe i'll give season 8 a go...

the de-try-out-for-a-different-sport lions

okay, that might be my worst ever.

the conference final opened with the lions making an 80 yard run 40 seconds into the game to take the lead 7-0. they soon made it 10-0, and the niners seemed incapable of making any yards, let alone points. they got a field goal that made it 10-3, but it almost seemed like an accident. then it was 13-3, and it was late in the first half.

somehow, wesley jordan decided that he was just going to stop sucking huge amounts of dick, and suddenly there were a few minutes left in the game and it was 38-13. the niners took the lead with 10 minutes left, 17-13, and on the very next play joey harrington threw an interception that was run back to the 2 yard line. it was all downhill (for the lions) from there.

we'll be playing the (surprise!) patriots in the super bowl.

sometimes we don't get what we deserve

in this case, the niners deserved to be eliminated by the cowboys. the cowboys scored 30 points on 140 total yards, we gave up 17 points off of 4 turnovers, and played the majority of the game with our third string QB (bunting was already knocked out with his tailbone break, and wesley jordan went out with bruised ribs in the second quarter). bowes put up almost no yards compared to his usual output (i think he finished with 60).

fortunately, we still gained almost 500 yards, mostly through the air, and when we punted it away with 5 minutes left, trailing 30-27, the cowboys obliged by giving us the ball back and the following drive ended on an incredible scrambling, wobbly, third down touchdown pass...

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that was at first ruled incomplete due to being out of bounds:

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but upon review was ruled a touchdown with 34 seconds left on the clock.

next up is detroit, who upset seattle in the other conference final game. here's hoping we play better against them because if not, we WILL be slain.

into the playoffs...

after losing bunting to a tailbone injury, the niners went 2-2 (though they probably should have gone 0-4), and got a bye through the first round of the playoffs.

i had to replay the second half of the buccaneers game because i'm an idiot and don't know how to save properly, but we ended up winning again (this time in overtime) after blowing a 14-0 halftime lead by giving up 21 points (14 of them defensive). we managed to come back and force overtime late, and then bowes ran us into field goal position.

the second-to-last game was against arch-nemesis st. louis, and we lost. not badly, but aggravatingly. things were back-and-forth all game, and there were a lot of solid defensive plays like this forced-fumble screen pass:

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we pulled away briefly after this 85 yard touchdown pass:

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but it was mostly all defense on both sides, and the rams snuck in a last-second field goal to get the victory.

the last game of the regular season was against the bears, and again the defenses seemed to own the field...at halftime it was 13-9 in favor of chicago, but finally in the second half the offenses picked up. we missed a few field goals and botched one red-zone fourth-down-conversion attempt, but added another field goal and 2 touchdowns to go ahead 26-20. the bears got the ball back with 4 minutes left, but had to punt, and bowes, who had been having trouble with the bears' linebackers all day, managed to run out the clock, picking up 23 yards (which put him at a total of 2005 for the season) before we punted away with 15 seconds left.

we finished the season at 13-3 and will be playing the cowboys next in the conference finals. winner faces either detroit or seattle (detroit?! yeah, i know...)

the record-breaker gets broken.

sad, evil days in fake san francisco.

partway through a back-and-forth game against rival seattle, bunting was sacked hard and was taken off the field with a broken tailbone. needless to say, he's done for the season, which sucks because he was putting up numbers that were easily better that his previous six seasons (highlighted by the fact that he got voted into the pro bowl before getting injured, four weeks before the season actually ended).

the team pretty much fell apart after that, and backup QB jordan was decimated by the seattle defense. the niners went on to lose 35-28. bowes was also kept to 50 yards on the ground in the snowstorm.

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the now 12-2 niners next faced the buccaneers, a team that not too long ago elimated them from the conference finals. this time, despite 2 fumbles, 2 interceptions, a missed field goal, and giving up a defensive touchdown, the niners just could not suck enough to lose to the buccanneers. early on, both teams had a few ludicrously obvious chances to score that somehow went awry, and then finally late in the first quarter, michael faulk, the bucs' QB, fumbled and it was run back by the 9000 pound lineman harold minter for a touchdown.

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on the very next play, faulk threw an interception (one of many), but the niners weren't able to turn it into any points as stewart (who recently made 4 50+ yard field goals) missed a 29 yarder.

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up 17-0 early in the second half, the niners made what was surprisingly their biggest mistake of the game: knocking out faulk and forcing the bucs to put in their second-string QB. he turned out to be approximately 19 times better than faulk, and got the bucs to within 3 points, 20-17, before the niners found the end zone again.
the bucs would score one more time with the clock running out, but would fail to recover the onside kick. the somewhat battered niners (11 injuries in the last two games, with 6 of them coming among the secondary) went on to win 27-24.

thy valor shall be determined by the length of thine shanks, longshanks.

i'd like to say we destroyed the cardinals. the fact is, we barely survived with our lives.

both teams played great defense, but the niners took an early 9-0 lead on three matt stewart field goals. of 51, 52, and 54 yards. yeah. that's got to be some kind of record.

unfortunately, one play after this play:

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the cardinals intercepted mr. bunting and got a touchdown a play later. this would be a recurring theme, as they intercepted bunting 3 times. the second time set up an 86 yard touchdown reception that made it 13-9 (on a missed 2-point conversion, in case you were wondering).

fortunately, the niners had two more field goals up their sleeves, kicking the last one with a minute on the clock and then intercepting the cardinals' QB to keep the score at 15-13 as time ran out. this might be the first and only time the niners won a game without getting into the end zone.

this might be the first time lasers came out of my fingers instead of mustard.

just making sure you're paying attention.

niners keep on rollin'

i have no pictures for any of these games, and i don't even really have very clear memories of them; a symptom of brutally cramming a game into my schedule here and there when i should have been sleeping after like 16 hours of work. sorry.

anyway, the eagles fell, as always with difficulty, 42-39. next up were the bengals, who made a fairly sad showing of themselves, but because bunting left the QB post early in the second quarter with knee bursitis and wesley jordan filled in by mostly getting sacked and throwing the ball to the other team, the game ended up being pretty close. 31-24 was the final, and it was 24-24 with about eight minutes left. seven of those eight minutes were a pretty intense back-and-forth midfield battle more reminiscent of a soccer game than a football game. then wesley dumped a pass over the secondary's head, and raymond scholl caught it and ran 80 yards for the winning touchdown. is it a coincidence that his name is one letter away from "school"? no. it's not. last to get mutilated were the steelers. this one was fairly sad until the end, the steelers doing a lot of nothing and finding themselves down 38-14 starting the fourth quarter. sadly, the "madden engine" kicked in, making the niners suck ass and allowing the steelers to get two quick scores. fortunately, 38-28 was the closest they would get, as they spent the last five minutes blowing deep-pass opportunities and getting their QB sacked.

10-1, next up is the cardinals, who we've already beaten 37-15 once.

bowes has 1433 yard with five games left...that means he needs slightly over 100 yards a game to break the 2000 yard mark for the third time in seven seasons. better get him some massive buckets of good and plentys.

martyring the saints

so, the rule of the niners season since the week four loss to the panthers? don't go up on them 3-0 early in the game. the rams did it, and ended up losing 63-26. this week the saints did it and ended up losing 49-16.

there's not a whole lot to say. their QB threw four interceptions (three of them to sparks), and they fumbled once. they missed two field goals and at halftime had mustered a brain-destroying 43 yards. the niners scored 800 touchdowns and sacrificed the remaining saints fans on a golden altar at the end of the game.

honestly, our QB was under constant pressure from the saints' linebackers, and he scrambled for over 50 yards, but only in attempts to save his own life. for the second game in a row, he was sacked at least six times, including this humdinger.

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luckily, he made it out alive. we're 7-1, and there are two other 7-1 teams and a 9-0 team, but everyone else is comfortably behind, especially in the NFC West. lookin' good for the run to the playoffs.

madden overload

so instead of spending last night from 12am to 4am catching up on some of the work i'm letting slip further and further through my fingers, i played two entire madden games back-to-back. to be fair, this is the first time since...uh...july or so that i've stayed up until almost-sunrise playing video games, and as history shows this is something that i must do at least like once a month for my mental well-being. so it's all good. i think.

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so the first game was against archrival st. louis. now usually (and especially against st. louis) if bowes gains less than 50 yards on the ground OR the other team scores around 30 points, we lose. there were extenuating circumstances in this case though, as our quarterback threw for 8 touchdowns and over 500 yards. four of those touchdowns were over 30 yard passes, two were 75 yards apiece (both to raymond scholl), and bowes tacked on a 60 yard run as i was trying to just run the clock out to make the final 63-26.

the rams' QB (not warner) was under pressure all game, and it didn't help that he had 60 pass attempts, so we basically knew every single play from scrimmage was going to be a pass and could adjust accordingly (read: four interceptions). here's one particularly memorable impact:

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prewett continued his habit of making infrequent but impossible catches:

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not only our biggest win ever against the rams, but possibly our biggest win in general. the sad thing is, at one point they were winning 3-0. right before halftime it was 28-20. then the floodgates opened.

our next victims were the ravens. there was a bit of derring-do at the end of the game that made it interesting, but we held on to win 44-38. how the ravens scored 38 points, i know not. on our very first possession, we punted to this raven dude brackens and he, like, totally dropped the punt and donny smith totally ran it into the endzone for, like, six points.

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prewett did that impossible thing again:

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and suddenly it was 21-7 and it seemed like another blowout was coming. to their credit, though, the ravens stayed with us (partially thanks to two bunting interceptions deep in our own territory), even when we were completing touchdown passes like this one (you can see the quarterback getting slammed in the upper right corner as he lets go of this crazy wobbler that barber shoestringed):

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and this (again, getting hit on the release):

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and to put us ahead for good was bowes throwing his first touchdown pass:

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even though he paid for it a few minutes later:

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we were up 41-24 with about 8 minutes left in the game, when all of a sudden the ravens remembered how to play football and then it was 41-38. fortunately they used up all their time outs and had to punt to us from their own end zone, which set up a 50 yard stewart field goal to make it 44-38. with no timeouts, the ravens got the ball back and actually completed a few passes with under a minute left before throwing three incompletes in a row and then a hail mary that fell short at about the 20 yardline as time ran out. good times.

saints up next.

cardinal beat-down

some might say that after going 1-3 in the preseason, winning two of their first three games in barn-burner overtimes against mediocre teams, and then losing to a decent-at-best panther team, the niners could be 1-4 just as easily as they could be 4-1. one might say that. if we were talking about real football, and not madden football.

but we're talking about madden football.

and i destroyed the cardinals last night.

despite a shopping-cart-ful of dropped passes, bowes gained 150 on the ground and the cardinals were unable to get much of any offense going (their 15 points were three looooong field goals and one touchdown that game right at the end of the game on a hail mary pass). at the end of the first quarter, we had two 7-minute drives and two touchdowns and they had run 6 plays and gained -3 yards. ray scholl had two touchdowns in the game, and his first one was a brilliant catch right in the corner of the end zone.

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things evened out a bit after that, and it was 14-6 going into the half, 17-6 immediately after. it was 30-9 in the fourth quarter when the cards scored their first touchdown and looked to be attempting a comeback, now down 30-15, but on the second play from scrimmage on the next drive the niners used the bunting-to-bunting connection on a 50-yards-in-the-air pass for a touchdown to put the game out of reach for good.

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next up are the rams, perennial rival for the NFC West's affections. but interestingly enough, they're currently 1-3 and rate lower than the niners for the first time in seven seasons. it would feel nice to completely annhilate them.

ahhhhh...the fucking panthers

there are three teams in the universe of my madden franchise that can make me shoot fire of fury out of my eye sockets on a regular basis. one team is the rams, who at least earn my fury by showing up and playing well and sometimes beating me. then there's the seahawks, who are pretty good (but not good enough), and yet somehow always seem to either pull off a win or put up an unacceptably difficult fight (see week one of this season for evidence of this). then there's the carolina panthers, who are absolutely fucking horrible but through any number of random contrivances always seem to beat me. like in last night's game, where they were leading 14-10 at halftime despite the fact that i had 250 total yards and they had 15. i had 14 first downs and they had zero. zero. i'll just let that sink in...

they went on to win 34-27 while garnering a mind-numbingly low 200 total yards. almost 100 of those yards were gained on 2 separate pass plays that both involved the ball bouncing off someone else's helmet before it was caught. 21 of their 34 points came from either special teams or defense. it was unacceptably ridiculous. yet, here we are, 3-1, and another year of undefeated awesomeness possibility is out of reach.

here's a picture of something that ernie did good before everything went to hell:

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madden update

okay, so it's been awhile (obviously) since i've had time to do anything even remotely resembling playing madden 2003 on my aging home computer, let alone had time to actually do that exact thing.

when we last left our heroes, they had completely mutilated the falcons, a team they hadn't met in years, 38-10 in falconland...

bunting pulling in one of many touchdown throws:

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only god knows who this pass was intended for:

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so, coming off a falcon-beating and an OT win against the seahawks, i figured we would roll right over the cleveland browns. right? RIGHT?!

well, it turns out that even though i managed to shut down zack osbourne (a feat i utterly failed to accomplish in the preseason), william green ran for over 150 yards...but i'm getting ahead of myself.

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it was 0-0 late in the first quarter, and it looked like it would be one of those slow, drudging, field-positiony games (and it was raining, which doesn't help the passing game). at one point, osbourne was 1-10 passing and our QB was 2-11. then shit got crazy. we went up 7-0, then they got a field goal after a ridiculous play involving donnie smith intercepting a pass that bounced off kevin johnson's helmet which somehow resulted in sparks getting called for pass interference as donnie smith ran the interception 70 yards for a touchdown (interception called back, browns got the ball back on our 10). then they took the lead 10-7 after stewart missed a 41 yard field goal and green ran 30 yards for a TD shortly thereafter.

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suddenly, green went nuts and by the two minute warning it was 17-7, cleveland. thanks to a few no-huddle plays, we scored to make it 17-14 at halftime. this is where things got really ugly. after punting back and forth a bit, we scored again to make it 21-17, then got a field goal to make it 24-17. on the next drive, osbourne threw a screen pass that green dropped (ruled a fumble) and we recovered. but, poised to make it 31-17, bowes fumbled and the browns worked down the field and scored to tie it at 24-24. then, on our very first play of the next possession, they intercepted and ran it in to put 14 points on the board over 5 seconds of clock and take the lead 31-24. they held us, then we held them, then we scored with just over 2 minutes left to tie it up. we held them at midfield again, and green fumbled on a third down run. we recovered and ran it upfield to get into field goal position with 10 seconds left. then, on a dive play to bowes to center the ball, he fumbled the handoff and the browns got the ball back and ran the clock out.

fortunately, as usual, we won the toss in overtime, buzzsawed through the defense, and kicked a field goal 3 minutes in to win 34-31. jesus.

next up...umm...i can't remember. somebody not good. oh, the panthers. who i still have a sore spot for from the time they ruined our undefeated season 12 games in. kill.

absolute mania, football-stylee

the season opener against seattle was ridiculous. they started out getting a field goal on their first drive, then we scored and made it 7-3. from there it was back and forth until halftime; it didn't hurt that they had three turnovers in the first half. it sort of offset the fact that they were raping our pass defense. it was something marginally untoward like 24-17 in their favor at halftime.

the second half was a comedy of mis-calls, wasted challenge flags, poorly-timed penalties and the like. we got the ball after a rather incredible turn of events involving an interception by the seahawks' brady blade in which the pass richocheted off of three guys before rolling off the arm of my running back, squirting six yards across the field in the air and right into his arms. however, once we had driven halfway down the field, on a quarterback scramble for first down on third and long the quarterback simply dropped the ball (he wasn't hit or anything) and turned it back over. the seahawks were still up by seven at this point, and we marched downfield and scored to tie it with a minute left. not to be outdone, they somehow managed to cover 67 yards in three plays and not use a single timeout (the facts that we got called for a totally bogus pass interference and then their receiver made a catch with essentially half a foot in bounds that we couldn't overturn because we'd already used our challenge flag both helped). they kicked the game-winning field goal as time expired, only to be FUCKED when they got called for holding while the kick was in the air. they moved back 10 yards, time expired, we went into overtime. in which we promptly won, 41-38. freaking seahawks. they always give us the craziest games.

le touchdown strike:

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bowes runs it in from 48 yards out with 5 minutes on the clock for the tie:

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preseasoning

it's fall. and you know what that means. it's time for me to embarrass myself by posting madden screenshots again. no screenshots yet, but i played through the preseason of what i suppose would be 2010 (my seventh franchise season) in the game this weekend. we didn't do too badly, considering we've gone 0-4 in the last two preseasons. then again, we did go 1-3 and lost one game 58-27 and one 43-14. the team is not very good this year.

nonetheless, we're opening against perennial pain-in-the-fucking-ass seattle. sometime this weekend, if i can drag myself away from all this rewarding work i'm doing and sit my ass in front of the television, you'll be seeing screenshots dropping like jason mcaddley was dropping passes in the last game...that metaphor didn't work so well.

until then, adieu. oh, and if anyone has a secondary that doesn't completely suck, send them my way.