Trestman used to working with the best
| Alouettes’ Calvillo has outthrown Favre, Marino, Manning
New Bears coach Marc Trestman is a genius when it comes to working with quarterbacks. This is lore.
None of us had ever heard of his guy up there with the Montreal Alouettes of the CFL, Anthony Calvillo, the no-name quarterback Trestman had for five years and groomed into a two-time MVP of the league and double Grey Cup champ.
But I did a little stat digging, and what I found is that Calvillo, 40, who went to Mount San Antonio Junior College and then Utah State and was undrafted by the NFL, has passed for 78,494 yards in his 19-year career.
That’s more yards than anyone, anywhere, ever.
Before Trestman arrived in Canada in 2008, the undersized Calvillo already had passed for more than 53,000 yards. He had won the Grey Cup and been named its MVP. In 2004, he passed for a ridiculous 6,041 yards. Indeed, in the four seasons from 2002 to 2005, Calvillo averaged 5,625 yards per 18-game season. That’s more than anybody in the NFL has ever thrown for in a single season.
Brett Favre ended his career with 71,838 total passing yards, the NFL record. Dan Marino had 61,361. In third place is Peyton Manning, with 59,487. At 36, the still-active Manning has a chance to break Calvillo’s all-time, multinational pro football record.
But guess what? Calvillo isn’t done. He just signed a two-year deal with the Alouettes. The dude might finish up near 100,000 yards, at age 50 or so.
Sure hope Trestman sees a little Calvillo in Jay Cutler, who has never led in anything.
MEANT TO WRITE ABOUT this quite awhile ago because it’s amusing. And I need amusing.
Anyway, late last summer, St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Matt Holliday had to leave a game against the Los Angeles Dodgers because a moth flew into his right ear. The Cards were leading 1-0 in the eighth, with Matt Kemp batting, when Holliday abruptly bolted. He went into the clubhouse, into a darkened room, and the training staff tried to lure the insect out by shining a bright flashlight into Holliday’s ear canal.
That right there is the amusing part for me. Moths are generally nocturnal and will use the moon to orient themselves. That’s why they fly around bright parking-lot lights, which appear to them as tiny moons fallen from the heavens.
But this moth wasn’t suckered into following the flashlight. So trainer Barry Weinberg eventually used tweezers to remove the bug from deep in Holliday’s ear. It was still alive. The moth. Holliday was fine. End of story. Can’t wait for spring training.
THIS MANTI TE’O THING could not be any weirder.
I hesitate to discuss any of the ‘‘facts’’ involving the Notre Dame linebacker’s dead or not-dead fake girlfriend because they seem to change faster than Phyllis Diller’s face. Oops, she’s truly dead. My bad.
But when I heard staid and proper Notre Dame athletic director Jack Swarbrick explaining to the masses the new meaning of the word ‘‘catfish,’’ I knew we had entered fresh territory. (If I could venture my own definition of ‘‘catfish’’ — not the animal — it is this: A repellant 400-pound male or female sits in a nasty basement room and pretends, over the Internet, to be a beauteous/ handsome female/male who needs all your love, for reasons that likely border on the psychotic.)
Chalk up one more hell hole for the Internet.
THE BULLS JUST PLAYED the Celtics in Boston, winning in overtime, 100-99. It’s interesting to focus in on Celtics big man Kevin Garnett. The guy is incredibly talented — a Hall of Famer, for sure — but he has an annoying, let’s just call it low and dirty game.
Fake entanglements, cheap shots, trash-talking — it’s easy to see why New York Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony waited after a game recently to get a piece of Garnett, a display for which he was suspended a game.
Oh, and in this era of linguistics lessons, Garnett helped the world understand the new, dicey meaning of ‘‘Honey Nut Cheerios.’’
LANCE ARMSTRONG. What can we say?
The dude is just getting fried. The Oprah thing was a disaster. ‘‘This is the truth,’’ he says now, lying more.
What Armstrong doesn’t seem to get is that there are dozens, maybe hundreds of people who know what he did as a dirty cyclist, and many of them already have been deposed, made statements, written books, etc. The United States Anti-Doping Agency knows. So do teammates he almost forced to take EPO and steroids.
I just wish he would properly apologize to team masseuse Emma O’Reilly, whom he suggested was telling tales about him because she was a ‘‘whore.’’
It would be nice.