Jeff Hart: Wednesday Linkfest for November 9, 2011

By: Jeff Hart | Posted: November 09, 2011

I figure the parking lot outside The Linc is just chock full of characters like this freestyle rapping former prison guard.

Let’s catch up on some polling data, shall we? According to studies released by Forbes, Michael Vick is the most disliked player among fans, with 60% of respondents still holding a grudge for those dogs he killed. Coming in second is Plaxico Burress, which is strange considering he only shot himself in the leg. Jay Cutler also made the list, likely based on the notion that he quit on the Bears in last year’s NFC Championship. Although we now know Cutler was seriously hurt, the Forbes article linked to the poll fails to mention that, and instead spends its entire closing paragraph elaborating on the Cutler=quitter narrative.

Meanwhile, NFL players were polled on who is the league’s dirtiest player. Unsurprisingly, Ndamukong Suh wrestled the crown away from James Harrison.

You know who doesn’t seem like a dirty player? Buffalo’s Kirk Morrison. He bribed some kid also named Kirk Morrison with airfare and game tickets in order to exchange Twitter handles. According to the unreasonably mad comments section at that link, what Morrison did is actually against Twitter policy. Is Morrison the NFL’s dirtiest Tweeter?  

The Super Bowl odds have been updated, with the Chicago Bears improving their odds the most from last week (50-1 to 33-1 – lock it in!). More importantly, I just discovered this Accuscore thing that scores the probability of teams making the playoffs, even if that stands in opposition to the outcome of all NFL games basically being a statistical coin flip. And no, my skepticism toward Accuscore has nothing to do with the declining percentage they’ve assigned the Bills playoff hopes. I’m totally unbiased.

Finally, we close with some number-crunching that could be soul-crushing for Bears fans (lot of Bears stuff today, sorry about that), as the eggheads at Advanced NFL Stats argue against signing Matt Forte to a new contract. Does their thinking mirror that of the Bears front office? 

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