Introducing the 2009 Preseason Challenge

It begins in just 24 days when the third- and fourth- strings of the Buffalo Bills and Tennessee Titans clash in the Hall of Fame game in Canton, Ohio. Almost half the guys who'll be on the sidelines that night won't be good enough to make their team, which will certainly show in the quality of that game and the 64 others to follow before the NFL regular season starts September 10th.

It, of course, is the NFL preseason, which means it will once again be time for RamView to undertake the Preseason Challenge, mainly made possible by NFL Network: to watch all 65 preseason games.

I've definitely lost my fastball at this since acing it in 2004, when I accomplished the holy grail of preseason football-watching on my very first try. I haven't been the same since (maybe being unemployed in the summer of 2004 had something to do with my success.) 2005 never got off the ground because my satellite receiver blew up. I got through 3 weeks of 2006, but in 2007 and 2008, I failed to even get through week 2.

I'm vowing this year will be different. I'm getting through another Preseason Challenge here in 2009 even if it gives me an aneurysm. It's the Drive for 65. I'm driven. I can do this. I have to do this. (Hmm, I'd better get more than five hours of free space on my TiVo sometime pretty soon.)

The goal is to watch every preseason game, blog it "live" while I'm watching it, and get a nice summary page up on RamView for every completed week.

Why do it? Two words: Brett Ratliff. Brett's the rookie free agent QB out of Utah who was stunningly good in preseason games for the Jets last year. I've argued more than a couple of times that the Rams should have tried to deal for him. No one has played more like Kurt Warner on a gridiron besides Kurt himself. Ratliff was the sweetest passer of the 2008 preseason, throwing ropes all over the field, generating explosive offense for the Jets with perfect TD bombs. Unless you saw a Jets preseason game last year, though, you never saw him play, which was your loss. The kid was dynamite. (Need proof? See here.)

Yes, I know Ratliff never got above third string for the Jets last year. You know what? Warner was a third-stringer his first year as a Ram. And if you wonder what I'm smoking, Eric Mangenius must be smoking the same stuff. The Jets' coach in 2008, now in Cleveland, insisted on Ratliff being included as part of the trade between the Jets and Browns that gave NY the #5 draft pick in April, which they used to take Mark Sanchez.

Sounds like the Mangenius knows something. It's the kind of thing you can't learn as a fan without watching a ton of preseason games. Yes, they're dull. Yes, there will be 15 million dump-off screens on third-and-long. Yes, you're more likely to see real NFL stars talking to Suzy Kolber on the sideline than making some kind of play on the field.

But it's still football. And I love it.

Let the games begin!