Ode to Chris Chambers

First off I'd like to say congratulations to Chris Chambers for his release from the maximum security prison that is the Miami Dolphins. I'd also like to thank the front office of the Dolphins for once again being stupid and inhumane by not ending the Miami misery of future Hall of Famers Zach Thomas and Jason Taylor, for if not for those two, I would have no desire to watch the Dolphins play on Sundays. I would also like to say shame on you to those same people regarding the same issue because those two deserve better. They have done everything imaginable for the franchise and deserve the chance to retire a winner. Trading them from an 0-6 team to a 3-3 team with a chance is the least the franchise could've done for two players that will one day enter Canton as Miami Dolphins regardless of where ever they were shipped.

But moving along, this entry is a fitting farewell to Chris Chambers. In sending off Chambers, I'm gonna play a game called Thank You/Damn You, because so often in his 6+ years in Miami, one minute you'd be thanking God he wore 84 for Miami and the next you'd be wondering why he was making $84 a year, let alone the $7M a year salary he was granted. So here goes, my first installment of Thank You/Damn You..

1. Thank you for your fantastic rookie season, which inspired so much hope into the minds of Miami fans everywhere that the franchise had finally landed the #1 receiver they had been searching for since the Duper/Clayton tandem, but damn you for sitting out the playoff game at the end of that season against Baltimore because of a sore knee. Fittingly we scored 3 points, lost, and havent played a playoff game since.

2. Thank you for never turning into the whining, whoa-is-me premadonna receiver that otherwise covers the landscape of the NFL. You had more to actually cry and complain about during the last 6 years then Terrell Owens and Randy Moss ever had at any stop in their careers. If Owens played for Miami, he may have actually went through with suicide and Moss would have likely just retired rather then playing "when he wants to." Damn you for the same reason because maybe if you were a bit more demanding and a lot more of a "me, me, me" player, you may have been given more opportunities.

3. Thank you for giving me what still to this day is the greatest catch I've ever seen in a football game week 1 of the 2003 season against the Houston Texans (now I know this blog is Ultra-Biased, but youtube this reception and see for yourself, if you don't you are just as biased as me and we dont want that now do we?). Damn you for being able to make sickly acrobatic, improbable one-handed snags such as this one, yet struggling to find the consistency and concentration to catch the basic slant that so often bounced off your chest and into the hands of the nearest defender.

4. Thank you for the finest season I've seen out of a Miami receiver in 2005- your only Pro Bowl season- where you posted 82 catches for 1,118 yards and 11 touchdowns. In the final 6 games you scored 7 touchdown and had the best single-game performance I've seen out of a receiver against Buffalo with 15 catches for 238 yards and the game winning touchdown as time expired to cap a 20 point 4th quarter rally. Damn you for putting up such incredible streaks as this, while at the same time disappearing in games and posting a string of performances that are equally as pathetic, such as the one you left Miami with: 14 straight games without a single touchdown reception.

5. And lastly on a personal note, Thank you for taking the time to meet and talk briefly with me at the Holiday Inn in February of 2002. I appreciated the autograph and you acknowledging my sporting of Michigan State apparel at the time of our meet and greet. And damn you for torching them time and again your junior and senior year as a member of the Wisconsin Badgers.

Farewell for now Chris Chambers, and thank you for all the highlights in an otherwise dismal time in Miami Dolphins history. I promise I won't be saying "damn you" if you win a ring as a member of the Chargers.

Until next time,
DTM