FanHouse RonJaworski

Tony Kornheiser gets very mad when I sit in his chair, pick up his personalized bobblehead from the studio set and shake the doll. In fact, even when I don't have the privilege of sometimes subbing for him on ESPN's Pardon The Interruption, he seems to dislike me -- maybe because I have a full head of hair or, more likely, because I'm intellectually beneath him.

That's OK. I am grateful anyway.

I thank him because he did the sportswriting profession proud in his three years on Monday Night Football. Kornheiser technically isn't a sportswriter anymore, having escaped the dying newspaper business like many of us, but when he was hired for one of the most high-profile assignments in sports television, he was dismissed by many viewers and critics as a columnist painfully out of his league.

---

---

On Wednesday, word leaked that the Redskins were actively pursuing Jay Cutler. The Bears (the Bears!?) would eventually land him, which meant that a) Washington, perhaps for the first time in the Dan Snyder era, didn't outbid another team for a player's services, and b) the organization had some fence-mending to do with the guy caught in the middle of all this: incumbent quarterback Jason Campbell.

Yesterday I called Campbell the new Cutler because in publicly lusting after the Cutler, the Redskins would have to move Campbell to avoid the situation the Broncos found themselves after word leaked that they were interested in Matt Cassel.

The offseason got underway Thursday, and the Patriots wasted little time in franchising Matt Cassel. What they plan to do with him remains a mystery, but there are plenty of teams in need of quarterback help.

In fact, if you believe National Football Post's Michael Lombardi, nearly a third of NFL franchises could stand an upgrade at the position. The Lions and Vikings top the list, obviously, but Lombardi also thinks the Redskins could be in the market for a new quarterback, if not this offseason, then in a year's time.

Former Eagles quarterback Ron Jaworski is the best in the business at breaking down the technical aspect of playing the quarterback position, and in an appearance on ESPN Radio, Jaworski raved about the Super Bowl performance of Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger.

I feel confident in writing that if the Cardinals are going to win Super Bowl XLIII it'll be because of Larry Fitzgerald. Nobody is expecting much from Arizona's running game, including, I'd imagine, Edgerrin James.

Arizona's best chance comes in the form of No. 11 who, in three postseason games, has racked up 23 receptions for 419 yards and five touchdowns. But during the Super Bowl edition of ESPN's NFL Matchup show, Sal Paolantonio brought up a point that -- at least to hear Sal explain it -- nobody all week has talked about:

Ron Jaworski was an NFL quarterback for 15 seasons, and even made a Super Bowl appearance. He took his last snap in 1989, and is now better known for his ability to break down game film on ESPN's NFL Matchup show.

Greg Cosell of NFL Films, who works closely with Jaws, also has an amazing knack for Xs and Os (watching 80 hours of coaches tape six months a year probably helps). And in his Super Bowl column for Sporting News, he writes that while the Cardinals have had an amazing run, their high-powered offense will have trouble with the Steelers' top-ranked defense.

TAMPA, Fla. -- The best Super Bowl pregame show on TV comes on at the ungodly hour of 6:30 AM ET on Super Bowl Sunday, but it's worth getting up early (or setting the DVR) to see ESPN's NFL Matchup, the show that goes beyond highlights and analyzes the game with the same tape that coaches use. Today I watched the taping of the Matchup show that will air Sunday, and it was an Xs and Os education.

Matt Millen has stopped running the Detroit Lions into the ground and started offering "expert" analysis on NBC, and I know I'm not alone in having a hard time taking anything he says seriously. When Millen offers an opinion about a player, why should I believe it? He demonstrated every year in free agency and on draft day that he doesn't have a clue which players are good and which aren't.

But Millen is, indeed, now a TV analyst again, and one of his fellow analysts, Tony Kornheiser of ESPN's Monday Night Football, offered a surprising opinion about Millen's analytical skills. On today's Pardon the Interruption, Kornheiser claimed that if Millen returns to doing color commentary in 2009, his booth will be the best in football -- even better than Kornheiser's Monday Night Football booth.

"It's fair to ask the question, 'If you're so smart, why didn't you ever win?'" Kornheiser said. "But Matt Millen is great on TV. Not good, he's great. The booth that he walks into will become the best booth. Even if he walks over my body and sits in my seat, it's going to become the best. He's just great at it, and in six months or less people will forget."

Personally, I think Kornheiser's partner, Ron Jaworski, is a much better analyst than Millen is. And while I thought Millen was a solid announcer in the 1990s, that was a long time -- and a lot of Lions losses -- ago. Kornheiser is wrong. People aren't going to forget that Millen was an incompetent general manager, and that simple fact will follow him where ever he goes.

At an ESPN event today in Chicago, I pulled Monday Night Football play-by-play man Mike Tirico aside to ask him a few questions about his preparation for the games, Ron Jaworski's film study, and whether Tony Kornheiser talks too much about Brett Favre:



Tirico, Jaworski and Kornheiser conclude their season with tonight's Packers-Bears game.

After the Redskins' season-opening no-show performance against the Giants, I wrote that Jim Zorn's West Coast offense might not be the best use of quarterback Jason Campbell's talents. That was probably a tad reactionary -- it was the first game of the year in a new scheme, after all -- and Campbell would go on to play well enough for ESPN's Ron Jaworski to call him his midseason MVP.

Campbell has struggled in recent weeks, which, perhaps predictably, has prompted some people -- fans and media -- to call for backup Todd Collins. The same guy, you may remember, who played extremely well in Campbell's absence late last year, but looked absolutely lost in Zorn's fancy-pants offense this preseason.

That's probably why, after the Week 1 loss in New York, fans were clamoring for rookie Colt Brennan to replace Campbell. (Hey, they may be irrational, but at least they pay attention.)

Thankfully, Zorn is sticking with Campbell for what should be obvious reasons: he's the team's best quarterback.

From the Washington Post's Jason La Canfora: