No One Wins Weekly Hard Hat Award (Game #2, at Kansas City)
No one is the winner of our weekly Hard Hat Award, given to the Stiller player who best embodies the iron-tough, hard-as-steel attitude of the steel workers inside the blast furnace of a still mill.
First, let me apologize for the tardiness of this report. See, I had no internet access in KC and�Ok, Ok, I wasn't really in KC for the game. Sounds like I missed a really fun time. And btw thanks for the plug of my pass D article, Diesel. I have, however, been agonizing over this for the last few days during the 12 hour workdays I have been putting in. You see, the committee was faced with the choice of either: a) awarding no HH this week; or b) awarding a HH to one or the other of two players (Hines Ward, James Farrior) who both played tough, but noticeably flawed games. Tough call, let me tell you. Had either of them made one less faux pas than the other, then surely he would have taken it. But both of them had egregious miscues. Hines allowed two catchable passes to slip through his fingers like a greased piglet. And Farrior, in the inimitable words of our very own Mill, "got trucked on that Priest Holmes TD" (the one featured in the Dong report wherein Jason got bullied out of bounds like a schoolgirl). Yes, Hines did put up a big number of receiving yards. But just as a QB is rarely lauded for big yardage when throwing against prevent defenses in a game that is already decided, neither should the WR's who catch those balls be praised for what amounts to little more than meaningless stat padding. And yes, Farrior did make an excellent grab on his INT. However, he only recorded 5 tackles, all in the first half, and only one of them was for negative yardage.
In the end, it comes down to the fact that (as opposed to the Patriots game last year when NO ONE, and I mean absolutely NO ONE played well) in this game, neither Hines nor James had enough of meaningful impact on the outcome of the game to warrant winning the coveted HH this week. And no one else even came close. Thus, we are further saddened that not only did the Stillers get trounced, but no one was able to earn a HH even in defeat.
Kudos to no one for winning the weekly Hard Hat Award. Don't wear it proudly, fellas.
Previous winners of the coveted Hard Hat Award in 2003:
Game #1 (vs Baltimore): LB Clark Haggans ( http://www.stillers.com/article_show.asp?ID=990)
(note: all stats used in this report come from careful reading of the official gamebook at NFL.com. We here at Stillers.com NEVER rely on the notoriously inaccurate box scores posted on that site or any other.)