Why so aggressive? What happened to the form tackle?

I watch too much professional football and as I observe defensive backs with arms too big launching themselves into ball carriers packing the force of a hatchback subcompact or demolishing pass receivers the moment they catch the ball, it makes me wonder - Why so aggressive? What happened to the form tackle which included use of the arms and a wide base with feet on the ground?

Now guys looked fired from the torpedo tube. It is sick! Eagles safety Brian Dawkins can’t run with the fast guys but he is sick and stupid when delivering the mail and I’ll guarantee you he is on his way to being a babbling granddaddy.

All-world safety Ed Reed showed me something in the Steelers game. He doesn’t want to hit anybody (why do you think he plays 20 yards off the ball?), and if you watched him Sunday on the Santonio Holmes touchdown you saw the worst attempt at a tackle this side of Joe Flacco reaching for Troy Palomalu.

Palomalu proved he is the best safety in football not only watching Flacco’s eyes the entire game but diving over the line on a fourth and one, grabbing Joe around the head then changing his forward momentum to negative energy. Ryan Clark, the other Steelers safety, rang the bell of Willis McGahee in a helmet to helmet collision that would kill most people on the planet. And then the players hang out and pray together and it does seem out of character.

TIRED OF IT - Young guys in Eagles shirts hanging in bars interviewed for late-night local sports television looking slightly blitzed from hours of beer drinking and misplaced hopes dashed lamented, “I’m just tired of it!” “You are tired of what exactly?” I would ask them. “Tired of seeing your team lose a championship game for the fourth time in five tries?

Tired of blaming McNabb because your Pop Warner blitzing defense can’t deal with grocery boy Kurt Warner?” Smart offense trumps gambling defense in big games because when you send five all they have to do is find one.

CHUCKLING AT CASPER- Look, I cover lots of basketball from middle school on up and many fans representing all hues of color not only believe that “white people” can’t play basketball but laugh at them when they come into the gym or exhort the coach to take the white person out! Internally on teams it’s all in good fun because athletes bond and battle together but low expectations of performance based on the race of the player is a classic textbook definition of racism. I don’t see this as a widespread problem but it is out there and kids who play pick up on it, and a few even believe it themselves or of themselves.

INTERVIEWS DONE - Cape’s committee of nine interviewed three candidates for the position of head football coach last Wednesday and a recommendation will go to the school board this Thursday. I am inside more loops than the night watchman at the hula hoop factory. Get a bigger hoop! The committee recommends and the school board approves is the way it’s supposed to work and sometimes actually does.

RESOLUTIONS- How are your resolutions going? I see heroic people all over my sports beat from those battling physical infirmities and medical calamities, people who realize that psychological salvation can be secured through fitness - you know, the old you owe it to yourself and your creators however many you recognize. I see myself as an assembly line type project. Special Olympians are out there training in the cold weather so I ask you, “How are you doing in your newly resolved quest for self improvement?” Ann Grunert, director of Delaware Special Olympics, asked me if I would plunge with Gov. Jack Markell for the upcoming Polar Plunge. I told her no, that I was injured and aquatic ambulation in frigid ocean waters undermined by huge stones was not in my game plan, but anyway I can’t be “kicking with my governor buddy guy” because the Lewes Bears may evict me from the den.

FOCUS ON THE FLY- How about that Capt. C.B. “Sully” Sullenberger, 57 years old, landing a powerless and gliding US Airways plane into the Hudson River?

How about no river boats getting big birded? The orderly departure of patient passengers from a slowly sinking fuselage also amazed me. Focus under pressure saves lives because if you throw your hands up and weep you are done. And pilot Sully doesn’t want keys to the city and doesn’t want a book deal or to make the dreaded talk show circuit; the man is all the way cool and refreshing and let’s hope he stays that way.

What’s this have to do with sports and athletics? Do you really have to ask?

SNIPPETS – “The dog days,” they are called by those on a school calendar, which is why the Lewes Polar Bears came into existence.

We needed something “not to look forward to,” which makes the time go faster. God bless the state police, fire and rescue companies and the rollback posse for all the professional work they do responding to accidents on our dangerous roadways.