Necessary Roughness with Kisha is a sports blog that focuses on football, both college and professional. However, no topic is off limits.

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Jun
14
2010

0

Mankins and the Patriots: A messy, ugly, bitter break-up | Patriots Insider: Roundtable!

 

Contracts, deals and trades. These three things tend to bring a lot of action the off-season in the NFL. Although I heavily enjoy watching how players’ true desires and motives surface, it’s never fun to see happen within your favorite team.  Case in point, earlier today Patriots  offensive lineman Logan Mankins (32nd pick overall in 2005)  refused to sign his restricted free agent tender  before tonight’s deadline and has pretty much demanded to be traded.

“I want to be traded. I don’t need to be here any more.” - Mankins to ESPN Boston’s Mike Reiss

(Read Mike Reiss’ full article here)

As you can imagine, twitter was blowing up all afternoon with comments about Mankins’ selfishness, burning bridges and bitterness.  This goes without saying that some fans that I’ve spoken to also expressed their unhappiness with the Patriots organization and their chosen way of handling this whole dilemma.  I can’t really say I’ve chosen a side during this whole debacle.

The Patriots offered Mankins about $7 million per year which would place him in the top 5 in salaries in his position.  Not bad, but its obviously not what Mankins had in mind.   He felt lied to, undervalued and mistreated. When I saw the report this afternoon, I felt like I walked into a heated discussion which would eventually lead to a nasty break up.  From the looks of what Mankins said about the organization, this is the end.  So say goodbye to the jolly lumberjack looking offensive lineman from Fresno State. It was fun while it lasted.

Photo from Boston Herald

Here’s what I do know about the Patriots:

  • The word “urgency” means nothing to them.  If their Super Bowl winning quarterback’s contract discussions have just been swiftly pushed aside, what makes you think that an unhappy offensive lineman’s contract is going to be first on the to-do list?
  • It’s not a love affair that they team has with their players…except for maybe Tom Brady.  Besides Brady though, they see the players as part of a business.  That’s it. Never anything personal.
  • A move like this by the Patriots isn’t surprising…at all.

On a more positive note…

Patriots Insider did a cool offseason roundtable discussion with all of their writers.  Of course, I got to include some of my opinions :) This is always fun.

Patriots Insider: Offseason Discussions

Some of the questions we discussed were:

Did the move to part ways with Adalius Thomas surprise you?  Who do you expect to fill that…

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May
12
2010

0

Battle of the AFC East and A New England Specialty

 

I’ve always been a fan of lists, tables or anything that puts things in numeric or alphabetical order.  Blame it on my small case of OCD, but these things always seem to make their way into my everyday life.  In fact, today’s update was on my list of things to do while hanging out at Starbucks at UConn in Storrs, Connecticut.  Other things on this daily list?

  1. Walk Rossi
  2. Make coffee
  3. Eat breakfast
  4. Organize paperwork
  5. Read articles/blogs/news

The fifth thing on the list is definitely one of the most important.  It’s strange because growing up, I really despised reading.  I blame it on the fact that I was forced to read entire series of books in elementary and middle school. God forbid we only read The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, nope it had to be the ENTIRE series. But, I digress. The point I was trying to make was that, now as a “grown up” I find a lot of joy in reading a lot every single day.  Perhaps it has to do with my growing thirst for knowledge and the fact that the majority of the things I read are related to football at the collegiate and professional level.  My friends tell me all the time to broaden my horizons but it seems like the football world always has so many things going on.

I promise to try to expand my sports interests soon….but for now, football is my main focus.

One of the more interesting things I read recently was a post by Tim Graham called:

The Big Question: Three Playoff Teams?

Graham briefly but rather accurately, discussed the major debate as to who will dominate the ever so competitive AFC East.  He also describes the very small possibility that the AFC East will produce three equally dominate playoff teams (Sorry Buffalo, maybe at some point we’ll consider you a threat).  We’re all familiar as to why this would come up as an issue.  The Jets have managed to sign every big name imaginable during this off season and to be honest, the Dolphins aren’t doing too bad either.  Last season, the Jets found success all the way to the AFC Championship Game…and the Patriots were embarrassed by the Baltimore Ravens at home (ouch.)

I like Graham’s points, especially that the Patriots have the 6th most difficult schedule in the league.  Whereas the Dolphins, Bills and Jets are hanging tight tied at the 16th most difficult.

With the Patriots…

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May
2
2010

4

Quantity over Quality?

 

I was never much of a schmoozer.  Actually, I was just never that good at it.

In college, all my accomplished professors made sure that it was instilled in our brains that the sports industry feeds off of networking.  We’ve heard it before so many times, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know” and so far, at least from my experience, it’s been true.   This is why being able to attend the Boston Blogapalooza today was such a GREAT experience.  I want to extend a big thanks to Joe Gill for all his hard work and unrelenting marketing of Blogapalooza. It worked, I was really excited to attend!  And before I forget, I want to say thanks to Kristyn G for being such an awesome friend(entourage) and attending this event with me.  Hope you had as much fun as I did :)

Besides getting a little lost around Boston (which happens a lot for me ), my Sunday started out wonderfully.  Walking into The Baseball Tavern was a little overwhelming at first considering I had no idea what to expect from the event, other than beer, sports and food of course.  What I was curious about was how a bunch of sports bloggers would interact with one another.  Some people were brave and flew solo to the event, which I admire.  Even in a situation like this,  sports always manages to bring people together and before we knew it, everyone was talking like they’ve known each other for years.
There were so many people that I recognized from Twitter, Facebook and other miscellaneous blogs that I read on a daily basis. I won’t lie, it was pretty great when I would introduce myself to people and they’ve either read my work on Patriots Insider or have stumbled across my blog somehow and really liked what they read. It takes a lot to make me blush and comments like that definitely do the trick.

Some of the coolest conversations I had were with these fellow bloggers:

Kat from …On Being a Sports Girl

Soxy Lady

Dan from Dan Sullivan Sport Management

Ian Logue of PatsFans.com

Going into Blogapalooza, I knew that there was so much more to learn about the world of blogging and sports. The best things about this event? I had the chance to sit and talk to many respected journalists and sportswriters from the New England area.  One of the topics I wanted to really ask…

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Apr
30
2010

0

2010 NFL Drafted and Blogapalooza

 

3 days and 7 hours of sleep later, I was on a irregularly packed 9:00 AM Amtrak train back to Providence, Rhode Island this past Sunday.  I looked less than fantastic and I was EXHAUSTED.  There was so much more involved with this trip besides the Draft.  I was making a stop at to see one of my best friends from college and another stop in Brooklyn to celebrate a dear friend of mine’s birthday.  This wasn’t the calmest weekend but it has definitely been one of my best this year so far.

Just like the old days at JWU

DAY 1.

Made it on an early train to New York City. I tried to get some sleep the night before but I failed miserably. Calm me crazy but I was psyching myself out for the fun filled weekend ahead. While I was at the station, an old, angry man looked at me and scoffed as he informed me to “Put on more clothes!” (Note, I was wearing a tank top, jeans and flip flops.) The weather was nice enough and I’d like to think it was pretty conservative.  I’m not one to judge and I’m usually really good with the elderly, but this man had no authority to scold over my wardrobe decision. He was sporting some John Stockton shorts circa 1990′s.  If you aren’t sure which shorts I’m speaking of, it’s these:

Who wears short shorts?

Ah, the old school NBA uniforms are always a fun flashback.   So Old Man Rivers (Erica’s term) was sporting those shorts with a wicked tight shirt. And he was judging me? Oi vey.

Other than that, the first day was relatively calm.  Had a fantastic lunch at the Tick Tock Diner with Carlos and Eric where we caught up on some news and gossip. From there, I took a train to Bayonne, New Jersey to spend the evening with Erica and Anthony.  Best part was as soon as we got to Anthony’s apartment, we both claimed a couch, flipped on the Draft and watched the rest of the Day 2.  It was amazing, we chatted about who got what and I even taught him a few things about blogging and twitter.  Later in the evening and after the Patriots picked up a total 2 more Florida players, my editor at Patriots Insider suggested I try to write up a quick piece on the Florida team and their…

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