I thought just Lions fans were this easy to impress.
Watching the Lions-Bengals exhibition game last night (btw, remember when they played SIX of these things every summer? ugh!), I was amused at how amazed play-by-play man Frank Beckmann was at the execution of an onside kick in the fourth quarter.
Beckmann, also the voice of U-M football, has watched the sport for years and years. Yet he just couldn't seem to get over the nature of the onside kick, courtesy of ... well, I can't remember the kid's name at the moment. It was a fairly typical technique: kick the teed up ball near the top, punching it into the turf so it will bounce high and well past the required minimum of ten yards downfield.
"What an unconventional onside kick!," Beckmann screamed into the mike. Broadcast partner Erik Kramer, who's seen his share, wasn't nearly as impressed. The TV folks showed us a closeup of the ball and the kicker's shoe striking it. It's an onside kick that I've seen dozens of times. There are many ways to do an onside kick, and this was just one of them. Yet Beckmann was beside himself.
"Let's get a look at that again," he said. Several plays later, dutifully, the crew in the truck showed us the replay -- from two different angles. But Beckmann seemed expecially enamored of the closeup of the ball version.
"What an UNCONVENTIONAL kick! Look at this!"
For the record, the ball, once it was pounded into the turf, did the usual thing a football does when struck in such a manner -- that is, a series of unpredictable, crazy bounces. I'm no football expert, like Beckmann, but I presume that the "not knowing" what the ball is going to do is what makes that particular onside kick technique attractive.
I'm going to give Beckmann the benefit of the doubt and chalk his over-exuberance up to a fit of homerism. Granted, it was a well done, almost perfectly struck kick. But Beckmann described it as if: a) the Lions had just invented it, and b) he'd never seen it before. I know "a" isn't true, and I hope like hell "b" isn't, either.
Earlier, Beckmann was falling all over himself describing the length of time a TD pass from Dan Orlovsky to Ron Bellamy took to complete. Orlovsky scrambled parallel to the line of scrimmage for what seemed like forever. But Beckmann took it upon himself to count the number of seconds.
"Eight...nine...ten....!"
The replay, however, was in slow motion.
Funny thing. I was watching the tape-delayed game late in the third quarter, the Bengals ahead, 19-10. Then I flipped over to ESPN, and, forgetting that I wasn't watching the Lions game live, I stumbled across the final score on the scroll at the bottom of the screen. So I knew the Lions won, 27-26 -- even when they fell behind 26-10. Believe me, it's a much more fun, stress-free way to watch football.
I was impressed by the Lions' fourth quarter comeback. I thought Orlovsky looked good, even though he was playing against a bunch of scrubs. The receivers, the scrub receivers for the Lions, caught balls and didn't drop them, even when hit hard. The scrub offensive line protected well. Still no running game, though.
Yes, I was impressed. I even liked the onside kick. But I don't think anyone could have liked it as much as Frank Beckmann. He needs to pace himself. He'll blow out an aorta by Week 3 of the U-M season.
Pray for no onside kicks, for his benefit.
No comments:
Post a Comment