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Saturday is D-Day For Varitek, Sox

January 27, 2009 By

If you’re tired of this ongoing Jason Varitek/Red Sox catching saga, take heart, it may be coming to an end.

Michael Silverman says that the deadline for Varitek to accept the one year contract offer (which has an option year) from the Red Sox is Saturday. Tony Massarotti says that Varitek might actually prefer just a one year deal from the Sox. Joe McDonald has former teammate Kevin Cash talking about Varitek’s value in the clubhouse. Kirk Minihane just wants the ballad of the captain to end. Mike Fine urges Varitek to take the deal from the Sox.

Silverman and Richard Weir report on Dustin Pedroia’s older brother being arrested for alleged child molestation. Bill Reynolds has Joe Torre roiling the very same waters he used to calm. Ryan Trepanier has former Red Sox prospect Brian Rose being named special assistant and pitching coach for the New Bedford Bay Sox.

Super Bowl

After carefully watching the Senior Bowl last weekend, Chris Warner has a self-admitted ridiculously premature Patriots mock draft on Patriots Daily.

Michael Felger offers up four items, three of them football related. (The other is Varitek.)

Christopher L. Gasper says that despite appearances to the contrary, “Anquan Boldin is not a self-centered wide receiver like Terrell Owens or Chad Johnson.” Karen Guregian looks at the Cardinals other superstar receiver, Larry Fitzgerald, and how his background gave him a head start on stardom. Ron Borges has a piece on Steelers safety Troy Polamalu, while Mike Reiss and Guregian have Hines Ward determined to play on Sunday despite a bad knee.

I’m not sure Tom King has it right. He seems to think Patriots fans are angry at the Cardinals for their performance in Foxboro and will root against them this Sunday. I’m pretty sure the opposite is true, most Patriots fans are going to root for the Cards against the hated Pittsburgh Steelers.

The Globe notebook has Fitzgerald talking about the influence of Randy Moss and Kevin Garnett on him when he was younger. Guregian’s notebook has Ben Roethlisberger denying any rift with his former offensive coordinator, Cardinals head coach Ken Whisenhunt.

Julie Onufrak has a profile of Cold Hard Football Facts founder and lead writer Kerry J. Byrne.

Celtics

Steve Bulpett and Frank Dell’Apa try to sort out Stephon Marbury’s claim that the Celtics have made a verbal commitment to sign him if the Knicks ever buy out his contract. Robert Lee has more on Marbury’s claims of the Celtics interest. Jeff Howe says that the Celtics supposed interest in Marbury just doesn’t make sense.

Paul Flannery says that the Celtics success all starts with the defense. Jim Fenton has a look at Eddie House’s ability to score in bunches. Bulpett’s notebook has Doc Rivers campaigning for his players to be named All Star reserves.

Bruins

Stephen Harris has a midseason Bruins report card. Mick Colageo says that the second half of the season will be a challenge for the Bruins. Mike Loftus has the Bruins set to renew hostilities with the Capitals. Kevin Paul Dupont has the Bruins trying to get back to business as usual. Rich Thompson has Milan Lucic ready to rumble once again.

Lenny Megliola and Bud Barth have Harry Sinden holding court – and changing his mind on Marc Savard.

Filed Under: Morning Links
  • Tiffany

    “I’m not sure Tom King has it right. He seems to think Patriots fans are angry at the Cardinals for their performance in Foxboro and will root against them this Sunday. ”

    You’ve got it right, Bruce. There will never be a situation where I would root for the Steelers. I have nothing against the Cardinals, why would I? At least we would be able to say we absolutely creamed the team who won the Superbowl, that’d be a nice afterthought to the season.

    • Lance

      Exactly.

  • sam the butcher

    I can’t believe that for the first time I read a Felger posting at weei.com. I should have known better. He takes the hiring of Dom Capers, and turns it into the Pats must have cheated and they were scared, so they hired Capers. I’ll know better next time.

  • Quantum Mechanic

    1) There’s not a single Pats fan in my circle who is rooting for Pittsburgh. King is out of his skull.

    2) While conceding that Felger is Borges’s Mini-Me, I also have to concede that I had exactly the same feeling about Capers when the Pats hired him last February. And still do.

  • Bill

    Well, I can’t speak for anyone else…but I find it difficult to pull for the Cardinals because of their lay-down in Foxboro.

    That doesn’t translate into pulling for the Steelers, though.

    So I’ll just watch the game.

    • Bruce

      Well, I actually look at it not so much as rooting for the Cardinals, as against the Steelers.

  • Tony

    I’m sorry, but I’m not buying the “Spygate” insurance nonsense in Felger’s piece.

    Remember, the Patriots bit back HARD after the Tomase story hit the paper on the day before the Super Bowl. They denied it unequivocally.

    What could Matt Walsh, who hadn’t worked for the organization since 2003, possibly have on Belichick that would have contradicted everything he had given to Goodell or told Goodell earlier in the season? Sneaky guy or not, the guy had nothing, and the Pats had to know that he had nothing. He was as low-level video assistant for God’s sake!!

    And remember also that Goodell, after making the entire world think that what the Pats’ did was some heinous crime because of the severity of the punishment, spent pretty much the entire time between the Tomase story and the Matt Walsh meeting backtracking and saying that the punishment was “for the totality of their taping practices going back to 2000″.

    Is Felger really suggesting that there was a walkthrough tape afterall and that the Pats feared Walsh would produce one? In his own testimony he said that he never taped the damn thing, so if there never was a tape, what did the Pats have to fear?

    Of course, Felger is the same a-hole who defended Tomase after the story turned out to be false, by saying, “it was really a matter of semantics….Walsh was at the walkthrough, he just didn’t tape it, so if Tomase had written that the Pats monitored the Rams’ walkthrough, the story would have been accurate.”

    Yeah, right….it was semantics Mike.

    Isn’t it just possible that Capers was hired because Belichick thought he’d be a good addition to the staff, and then it just didn’t work out?

    I used to like Felger back when he was the anti-Borges in the early Tom Brady days. He did his job back then like Reiss does his now.

    But ever since he decided to become a media whore, he has, in fact, become Borges’ Mini-Me.

    Douche.

    • Quantum Mechanic

      I think Capers was “insurance”, but I think he was “insurance” against crazed vigilante Goodell going off the deep end and handing out another ridiculously unwarranted penalty.

      I think the Pats were (a) pretty sure Walsh had nothing, but (b) worried that Walsh would lie and say he did have something and that Crazy Goodell would use that as an opportunity to screw the Pats over.

      • Tony

        You might be right.

        Goodell was a wild card in the whole thing, because in addition to overreacting to the videotaping and over-penalizing the Pats in the first place, he also took the incredible step of going on satellite radio the day the Tomase story broke and basically saying that Belichick would be suspended if the story–which was based on a single, unnamed source–turned out to be true.

        That was simply incredible.

        After he realized just how much of a firestorm he created with his over-the-top punishment and rhetoric, he finally began backing off, finally began admitting that it was basically just stealing signals, which every other NFL team does without a video camera, and tried to cover his butt by claiming the punishment wasn’t for the single offense committed in the Jets game in September, but for “the totality of their taping operations” going back to 2000—never mind the fact that he wasn’t the commissioner back in 2000, and that he didn’t even send out his first precious memo about videotaping until 2006.

        He completely mishandled the entire thing from Day One.

  • http://masshysteriasports.blogspot.com DaveR

    Um… can someone please tell me why I, as a Pats fan, would EVER be angry at/resent the Cardinals for laying down in a game the Pats had to win to stay in playoff contention?????

  • howzie

    Cards are a great story. Steelers I hate with the heat of 10,000 suns. Why wouldn’t I root for the cards (and betting them on the money line and ATS)?

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