Inventing Recipes: Pumpkin and Black Bean Enchiladas

I'm not entirely certain what gave me this idea. Pumpkin and black beans are both good with cumin, but in enchiladas? Whatever gave me the idea, these have quickly become a favorite of mine (when I can actually find pumpkin). Rich, cheap, and healthful as well as original, they're a great choice if you want a change of pace or are looking to surprise someone. They're also pretty quick. Unfortunately, measurements for all seasonings are again rough estimates. Try the amount listed, taste, and reseason until it tastes the way you like.


Sauce:
1 6 oz Can Tomato Paste
1 cup water
3-4 Arbol Chiles -- toasted, seeded, and ground
2 tsp Cider Vinegar
2 tsp Garlic Powder
1 tsp Ancho Chile Powder
1 tsp Cumin
1/2 tsp Onion Powder
1/2 tsp Salt

Combine all ingredients in a small sauce pan, whisking into a smooth consistency, and let sit over low heat.

If you want to take an easier approach, combine tomato paste, water, your preferred hot sauce, and Worcestershire sauce.

Filling:
1 Medium White Onion
1 1/2 Cups Cooked Black Beans
1 Cup Pumpkin Puree
6 oz Spinach or Preferred Green (I like Mustard Greens)
1 Tbsp Cumin
1/2 Tbsp Garlic
2 tsp Worcestershire Sauce
1/2 tsp Salt
1/2 tsp Black Pepper
6 6" tortillas
One bunch green onions
Cotija cheese (feta should work)

Finely dice onion and saute over medium heat. When it's soft, add the black beans and cook for another five minutes.

Mix in pumpkin puree and spices and combine until things are distributed equally. In a separate pan, cook your greens (or boil separately earlier if using something woody like kale). When greens are thoroughly wilted, combine with pumpkin/black bean mixture.

Scoop the mixture into the tortillas, rolling each one up and setting seam-down in a 13x9 pan. Cook at 425 for 12 minutes. Remove, top with sauce and garnish with cheese and scallions.

Serves 3

Christmas Time is Here

After years of putting it off, I'm finally getting around to reading Flannery O'Connor. I'd heard a lot about the impact of her faith on her writing and about her sacramental understanding of creation. It can be a bit tricky to see in much of her writing, because so many of her stories are about people who ultimately lack these things. I finally did pick up on it, though, and about that time, as if to reinforce things, I hit the penultimate paragraph of "The Artificial [Black Person]", which reads as follows:

"Mr. Head stood very still and felt the action of mercy touch him again, but this time he knew that there were no words in the world that could name it. He understood that it grew out of agony, which is not denied to any man and which is given in strange ways to children. He understood it was all a man could carry into death to give his Maker and he suddenly burned with shame that he had so little of it to take with him. He stood appalled, judging himself with the thoroughness of God, while the action of mercy covered his pride like a flame and consumed it. He had never thought himself a great sinner before but he saw now that his true depravity had been hidden from him lest it cause him despair. He realized that he was forgiven for sins from the beginning of time, when he had conceived in his own heart the sin of Adam, until the present, when he had denied poor Nelson. He saw that no sin was too monstrous for him to claim as his own, and since God loved in proportion as He forgave, he felt ready at that instant to enter Paradise."

This is Christianity, as I understand it, in a nutshell. This is the freeing power of surrendering to the truth of your guilt and brokenness and, in accordance, the inexplicable blessing that is God's mercy. This is coming to grips with the enormous power of God's grace and its ability to fill you to whatever extent you allow and the futility of trying to live without it. This, strange as it may seem, is joy.

Today is Christmas. It is a day for recalling the fullness of God's love, that He would come helpless among us to suffer and bear away our guilt. It is the initiation of a promise of which we are not worthy, but that's the point. If, in our unworthiness, God sees fit to come and serve us, why should we feel as though we ought to be anything better than servants ourselves?

Today, we bear witness to God's mercy taking root in the world, and we ask it to snuff out our pride. We open our eyes to our sinfulness and consecrate ourselves anew to servitude under the grace of God. In doing this, we make ourselves available to the promise of our own redemption and to the work that will redeem creation. Today, we are told that no matter how sad and undeserving we are, we are gifted boundless Love, and we struggle against ourselves to reflect that love so that we may better glory in its undeserved culmination on Easter.

Merry Christmas.

Skyrim

In the less than 3 weeks since it's launch, I've played far more of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim than is healthy or wise -- especially considering I'm technically still a graduate student with projects and research to work on. I'm level 40, deal 30x damage with daggers when I sneak attack, and can warp the mind of anybody I feel like. Obviously, this says something something about the overall quality of the game.

I like the improved design of the world, which feels sprawling and real and waiting to be explored in a way that Oblivion and even Morrowind didn't. This is especially true in the case of caves and dungeons, which feel much more intentionally designed instead of assembled piecemeal -- which, in turn, makes it a lot harder to resist heading towards every little landmark that pops up while wandering the countryside. I like the mechanical tweaks in terms of leveling, especially the perk tree borrowed and enhanced from Fallout 3. I like the new deathblow animations and heft they add to the otherwise traditionally floaty combat.

What I don't like is the strange way that this otherwise very open game suddenly foists an unreasonable amount of structure on you as soon as you begin a quest line.

By and large, Elder Scrolls games leave you free to pursue them however you like. You can join factions, become the champion of cities, or act as an unattached wanderer picking up odd jobs as you see fit. You can approach missions and jobs whatever way you like -- sneaking around, befuddling enemies, and stabbing them in the back; launching off explosions; and quaffing strength enhancing potions before crashing the gates with your broadsword are just a handful of options.

What you're not allowed to do, though, is make any sort of impact on the gameworld beyond activating the specific series of flags that the developers put in place.

For example (spoilers, obviously):

I joined the Thieves' Guild because, well, that's just something that I always do. I discovered pretty quickly that, in Skyrim, the Thieves' Guild regularly acted as pawns for Maven Blackbriar, a local noblewoman who had the connections to keep them out of trouble. I didn't like this. Not one bit. I actively messed up the first job I was sent on for her, burning down more beehives than I was supposed to, in the hopes of incurring her wrath and maybe starting to turn the guild against her. The result was me not getting paid and her husband sending some wussy assassins after me*

The next mission involved me poisoning the product of a competing mead maker. I tried to think of ways that I could subvert this task -- cleaning out the rodent infestation but keeping the poison to contaminate the Blackbriar brewing vats. No dice. No option to lie to my superiors or report the task as finished before I'd done the final step. I couldn't even kill Maven if I wanted to because, as a quest-giving NPC, she is rendered invincible by the plot.

(end spoilers)

This lack of options defines all of the long-running quest lines of the game. For single jobs and fetch quests, it doesn't seem like such a big deal. But when I'm interacting heavily with a smaller cast of characters for a prolonged period of time, it's strange that I don't really have many options for how my character can behave. Maybe I get a couple of dialog options, but they have no impact, and I'm given no macro-level control over my character's actions.

When a game is telling a story -- even with this game is telling a story, as with the main plot -- this isn't such a huge deal. I can get behind the fact that I'm just an agent driving along the actions that must happen, maybe with a couple of opportunities to change the outcome. When a game actively attempts to be open and leave you most of the control, it's more than a bit frustrating to have that control ripped from you on issues that feel important. Joining an organization, in my mind, shouldn't just be an opportunity to act out a subset of the plot and change the comments that guards make to me as I walk by. It should be a way to define who my character is and make the game world, and not just the game, my own.

I spent over 100 hours playing Oblivion without even really getting started on the main plot. Maybe I was just less sensitive to this phenomenon, but I felt like I was having a truly unique experience in that game. I'm well under that in Skyrim and I'm now to the point where I'm ready to just plow along and finish the story. This doesn't feel like my story in the same way that did, and as much as I've enjoyed playing, I'm ready for it to be over.



*The best part of this pathetic assassination attempt was that they found me when I was chilling at the Wizard's College, where I was already archmage, and my buddies there incinerated them before I knew what was going on.

The Muppets

First thing's first: I left the theater last night after having seen The Muppets feeling almost exactly like this.

I grew up with the Muppets. The Muppet Movie and The Muppets Take Manhattan were family favorites when I was little. I absorbed Muppet Babies and reruns of The Muppet Show on TV when I was in elementary school. However, I recognize that this isn't the case for everybody in my generation. I had to orchestrate a mass viewing of The Muppet Movie my senior year of undergrad after realizing -- to my dismay -- that only a couple of my friends had ever seen it. All of them knew the Muppets. They'd seen Muppet Treasure Island / Christmas Carol / In Space growing up, but they didn't share my boundless love for these timeless pieces of felt. The reason, pretty simply, was because they'd never seen the Muppets under the direction of Jim Henson.

Henson's unexpected death in 1990 necessarily resulted in a shift in all Muppet related work. Without their chief visionary around, it was nearly impossible to recreate the whimsical sincerity that made the Muppets what they are. They could pull off the tongue-in-cheek goofy self-awareness, but there was something lacking in the joy department of everything that has come in the past two decades. The Muppets is a very strong step towards rectifying that.

The basic plot of the movie suggests that something has happened to fundamentally alter the relationship that the Muppets share, driving them apart. Into this world walk Gary, Mary, and, most importantly, Walter. These are agents external to the Muppet community who recognize the impact the Muppets have had on society, and who intervene to help the Muppets move beyond whatever happened and realize that they can still accomplish a lot of good together.

This could be seen as mirroring the making of this production. The event that drove the Muppets apart could, implicitly, be understood as the loss of Henson. There have been Muppet creations in the last 20 years, but plenty of people would be happy writing them off. Into this void walked Jason Segel and his partners (including plenty of writing and directing talent from Flight of the Concords), eager to show the world that it was still possible to capture the original spirit of the Muppets. Willing to show them the respect that they deserve both as performers and characters.

No matter what Rotten Tomatoes might say, The Muppets is not as good as The Muppet Movie. Henson's passing still weighs too heavily on this franchise for that to be the case. There's something obviously different about this movie than the Henson Muppet cannon. Chiefly, the Muppets themselves (or at least the original Muppets) aren't front and center they way they would have been years ago. They play a prominent role and take up much of the screen time, but by and large, this is a movie from the perspective of outsiders. But in a world without Jim Henson...it kind of has to be. We can't replicate his magic, his boundless idealism tempered by patient realism. We can only endeavor to describe how it made (and continues to make) us feel and provide our best recreation.

On that account, The Muppets succeeds as well as any effort could. Bolstered by incredibly eager contributions from the always sincere Jason Segel and Amy Adams, there is a hopeful, joyous quality to this movie that can only be described as Muppetacular. Having seen it once, I'm fully confident that I'll see it at least once more, and possibly twice before it leaves theaters.

Brewpub: Seriously Considered

Recently, I informed all of you that I'm not planning to complete my PhD. In that same post, I noted that I had a number of wildly divergent plans running through my head as to what I might do with my life when I finish up at CU. One of those ideas, which has been milling about my head and refusing to leave ever since I first started questioning my commitment to academia last spring, is opening a brewpub.

This sounds like a flight of fancy. Future Ted Mosby was probably right in claiming that "We should open a bar" is a sentence that every American man will say at some point in his life, but this isn't something that I just randomly came upon. This is something that I've thought about pretty intently for awhile -- if only because the thought just won't leave me alone. So, I'm going to publicly run through some of the reasons I'm stuck on this and the overarching plans I would bring to the table to try and make it work.

First thing's first: part of my problem with sticking with computer science is that it's just something I don't enjoy doing much of the time. The part that I enjoy -- designing systems -- is too passive and I'm easily distracted from it. The active part, coding itself, is plagued by the ease of incidental errors that have nothing to do with executing my idea and which cripple my motivation.

There aren't a lot of things that I actually can do for hours on end without starting to hate myself a little bit. Historically, cooking is one of those things. Obviously, spending 8 hours in a day making food for people on a couple of isolated occasions is not the same as working in a kitchen for 10-12 hours a day 5-6 days a week. I would need to get real kitchen experience before I could commit to this sort of plan. But that's okay, because that leads me to another point.

This isn't something that I would just run out and do. This is something that's 5-10 years down the pipeline. I would need experience. I would need savings. I would need a business plan and a reasonable menu of recipes I can consistently recreate to within a small margin of variability. I would need people who know the brewing side of things, and I would need business expertise. These last two are things that rest completely outside my own experience and even my specific interest (though, being fundamentally fascinated by just about everything, I would certainly be invested in these sides of the undertaking).

Again, though, this isn't a huge problem. Why? Because I keep on running into other people who legitimately seem to share this dream, and maybe we just need a support group to rally ourselves to make a go of it. I know at least three people who would love to brew for a living and a couple more who would gladly help manage the kitchen. Business expertise isn't there yet, but we would have time to develop it or to find somebody to help us out. We just need to start taking the idea seriously instead of talking about it as some unrealistic ideal.

So, then, what would my plan be for this awesome-est place where everybody would know my name? Read on, if you dare.

It makes sense to start with what I'd be chiefly responsible for bringing to the table: the general idea of the menu. Stick to simple food. It should be possible to eat 75% of the menu with your hands, with the remainder being split between heavy comfort food and some lighter salad sorts of options. I've had the dubious honor of spending a fair amount of time in Ogden, UT recently, and I've been to two brewpubs there that attempt to make up for the watery 4.5% ABV beer with higher end food. It doesn't work. Even though the food wasn't bad, it just felt out of place and overpriced.

We mostly want foods that are comfortable. A well made burger and fries are a necessity, as are wings. Any brewpub worth its salt will also obviously serve fish and chips with a batter made from a house beer. In order to control costs and prep time, we're going to need to be able to create a diversity of recipes from a number of relatively stock ingredients. That's going to limit stylistic diversity, but that's okay. We can be playful and offer up new ways to eat old flavors. If I'm running things, this will probably mean a lot of southwestern foods, like the shawarma al pastor or huevos rancheros burger recipes I've been working on.

There will also be a heavily seasonal rotation of soups. We will always have a vegan as well as an omnivorous soup options and a chili. I would ideally feature a different chili every day with soups likely rotating less frequently. I say this because 90% of the chili recipes I've made share 90% of their ingredients. It would incur minimal overhead to rotate daily as most of the differing 10% of ingredients have long shelf lives. How often we could rotate soups would depend on which soups we have on the menu and how much overlap there is.

Second up is atmosphere. I'm calling this a pub. Not a bar, not a club. I like places that are chill. So for now, since this is my fantasy, this is going to be a chill place. No speaker system pumping music in at unnecessary volumes, interior organized for minimal noise bleed. Maybe this means segregation into many rooms, maybe this means having giant wooden booths that absorb a lot of sound. I don't know, but I want to be able to hear the people at my table, even when the place is busy. I want to have space for people to sit by themselves and not feel awkward. I want maybe a small library of books and boardgames that people can borrow. If we're in a cold climate, I want couches and fireplaces, dammit!

Speaking of climate, I have no clue where this is going to be. We need a place where people are going to be willing to pay the slightly higher price for what is effectively pico-scale brewing. This likely means someplace with a liberal/possibly academic bent, but at the same time, we don't want to go someplace where the market is nearing saturation or where the cost of business is going to be unreasonable. Personally, I adore the Midwest, and if I could make this happen in Minneapolis or Chicago, I couldn't be happier.

Hours are the next thing to look at. I imagine that the kitchen would offer a full menu from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. for lunch and then from 4-10 p.m. for dinner. The bar and a limited menu of soups and certain appetizers would be open for full business hours while available. Obviously, long days. If a kitchen opens at 11 a.m., I would expect to be there by 8 at the latest to get mis en place ready and start prepping longer cooking items that will be used throughout the day (roasted meats, soups, etc.). If doors close at 2 a.m., then you couldn't expect to be gone until at least 3.

I want to have a family. I want to see my family. Running a bar/restaurant, as you can see, is a good way to keep that from happening. That's part of the benefit of having a number of people on board at the top level, though. We'd each get a smaller cut of profits, but it would be easier to rotate and provide one another time off (so long as we have well defined policies). People could take the shifts that best fit their own productivity and sleep habits, and, in time, we could hire competent youngsters to help manage the day-to-day. The first year or more would be killer, though.

That's why we need a Sabbath. Not open at all on Sundays. Pick another day of the week to not serve lunch and wait to open at 4 when the kitchen opens for dinner. Yeah, maybe people wouldn't love it, but we've got to take care of ourselves. I would also plan to make up for the lack of lunch by doing a simple brunch buffet once weekly. We could serve a selection of low maintenance egg dishes (quiches and frittatas), fresh fruit, and muffins/pastries from some local partner. Maybe do Waffle stations while we're at it. Saturday would be an obvious choice for this, but I somehow like the idea of a Thursday brunch. Keep it low key, make it a business friendly thing.

Speaking of Sabbath, I'm a Christian. Many of the people with whom I've talked about this are Christians. As such, we need to intentionally work to benefit our community. I say we tithe from our profits. Not to the church (save that for personal giving), but to local organizations. Support the arts in our schools, give to homeless outreach. Look at what else the people we're serving need and help meet it. Instead of a direct tithe, we could allow charitable organizations to select a dish to sponsor for a time. We would advertise that profits from that menu item (and some smaller percentage of general profits) go to the organization. Again, how often this would rotate is something to do research on, but it seems like a good potential way to actively give back.

I also say we build as many partnerships with other local companies as we can. Again, buy our bread (and brunch pastries) from local bakers. Stock our library from a local bookstore (if they even exist). Do cross promotions, offering savings to customers who patron our friends and have them do the same -- assuming this is legal. Sometimes the law is stupid. We could also bring in live music if we actually have a usable space for it (I've been to too many bars that try to cram musicians into awkward performing spaces just to say they have live music) or showcase local artists, though that starts to border on the pretentious end of things.

Perhaps the most important thing, since this is a brewpub, after all, is the beer. Unfortunately, I know little about brewing, so I'd leave that to others, but it's worth pointing out the obvious. We need a variety of regular taps covering broad styles (something dark, something hoppy, something smooth, maybe a sour beer and/or a regular cider) and several seasonal taps. I haven't even been drinking beer for a year, so, again, I'm not the best person to trust here for details, but that's why I'm not in this alone.

I'm saving nearly $1000 a month right now as a "poor, underpaid" grad student. I'm serious enough about this that I'm going to start carefully looking at what I have and see what I can put into medium term investments for the next 5-10 years with the intent of using it to get this going once I've had time to work out a legitimate plan. I know that some of you seem serious about this, too. If you are, let me know. Maybe we can start talking in more detail. Maybe you can start saving as well and we can reduce the debt we'll incur getting this thing off the ground. A lot could happen and change before we get a shot, but, hey, at least we'll focus on something that makes us happy and improve our finances!

Fixing the Vikings

I'm still numb after last night's soul crushing 47-7 loss to the Green Bay Packers. I've never watched a game this bad. If not for a fumbled punt by Randall Cobb, this would have been a shutout and, officially, the worst loss in franchise history. Instead, this was just the second worse loss by the numbers, made all the worse by the opponent.

First thing's first, I want to see Aaron Rodgers' birth certificate. I don't care where he was born, just that he was. I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the dude is actually a robot designed to be the perfect quarterback, and that's just not fair. For the sake of everybody else's self esteem, he should not be allowed to suit up and step on that field.

On a more serious note, though, this is simply proof positive that the Vikings have an incredibly amount of rebuilding to do after fielding a Super Bowl caliber team just two years ago. It's time to take a good solid look at just what needs to be done, unit by unit (ignoring the looming fact that we're franchise free agents come February and God knows what will happen with the stadium issues).

Quarterback
I still have hopes for Ponder, but yesterday is going to make people question the things they've been praising him most for. For the last two games, we've been celebrating his poise and his ability to make plays on third down and in the fourth quarter. Yesterday, he struggled all night against constant pressure and couldn't get much of anything going. I'm going to hopefully insist that he wasn't the big problem there, but we're going to need to see some more flashes of life from him in the rest of the schedule. For now, though, we hope to be set at the most important position.

Running Backs
We still have Adrian Peterson, and he's still a force to be reckoned with. He doesn't seem to get battered the way most RBs do, so there's a chance we may still have 4 more years of serious production from him -- enough time to make this team competitive again and take another run or two at things. On the backup side, I'm higher on Lorenzo Booker than Toby Gerhart. Gerhart is a hard, between the tackles runner, but Booker is shifty in space and strikes me as the superior 3rd down option. We're not going to give up on Gerhart after trading back into the second round to grab him two years ago, but his best position may be at Full Back if he can improve his blocking (where he's already better than most of our skill players). Again, we seem to be set here and shouldn't make any major moves unless something falls into our lap.

Tight End and Full Back
I predict Shiancoe and Kleinsasser leaving after the season. They're both still productive players, but Kleinsasser is lagging this season after being one of the best blocking TEs in the game for most of his career, and Shiancoe almost certainly wants to put his athleticism to use on a team that can compete in the couple of legitimate years he has left. We do have hope, however, in Kyle Rudolph, last year's second round pick. The kid has fantastic hands, a great work ethic, and a solid relationship with Ponder. We also have a kid named Allan Reisner on the practice squad who everybody loved coming out of camp and who could be a real option with a full off-season of development. We could stand to grab a solid blocking TE late for depth, but Rudolph and Reisner will hopefully be enough to fill the position from a receiving standpoint. I see us running a lot of detached TEs next year.

On the FB side, Ryan D'Imperio has been next to worthless since we promoted him off the practice squad. He let Matthews run by completely unblocked for his first sack last night and has struggled leading downfield in all but a handful of opportunities. As I said earlier, I'd like to see if Gerhart can make the transition more fully (he plays a fair number of F snaps as it is), but I'm a big fan of two tight sets and would be fine with leaving the position unfilled officially. We managed that way for the first chunk of the season, and we were actually competitive in those games.

Receivers
A well documented area of major need on the offense. Right now we've got Percy Harvin and...that's it. I think that Greg Camarillo could do more for us than he's been allowed to do, but we don't need him fighting with Harvin over the slot. Aromashodu and Jenkins have both been competent, but neither of them are a real answer as number one or even number two receivers. Both can walk once their one-year contracts expire. Stephen Burton has reportedly impressed after a rough training camp that was hindered by unreported injuries, but he's only played a handful of snaps after being activated from the practice squad a couple of weeks ago. It would be fantastic if he develops into a real option for next year.

We could also see a bit of help if we can work yet another miraculous conversion: backup QB Joe Webb. The kid claims he can catch fine and that he did plenty of receiver work at UAB, but word is that his hands are awful. He pulled down a 9-yard toss yesterday, though, and if he can play the position, his athleticism would be a real gift for us. He could still occasionally line up in the Wildcat with the option to pass, and we could get a veteran backup for Ponder who isn't a former star and makes sense in the role. This isn't a RB to FB or Center to Guard conversion, though. It's not likely, and I see us making a big move at this position in the offseason -- either with a second or third round pick or a significant move in free agency.

Offensive Line:
Wow, this is a mess. They proved yesterday that they're incompetent against pressure (Ponder had to deal with unblocked rushers all night long), and they've been inconsistent in the run blocking game all season. We don't have a true left tackle, and I'll bet you money right now that this is where our top draft pick will go. Charlie Johnson hasn't been as bad as people feared following the preseason, but "not awful" isn't going to cut it at such an important position, especially with some very strong prospects in the pipeline.

Phil Loadholt is turning into another Bryant McKinnie, a guy with all of the physical tools to succeed at his position but none of the motivation. Anthony Herrera is never going to come back 100% after all of his injuries, and Steve Hutchinson is no longer a dominant force at Left Guard. He can still play at a better than average level, but he and Herrera are both on the wrong side of 30. It's time to find their successors soon here. On the brighter side, John Sullivan has been acquitting himself fairly well at Center, but he's undersized and will always struggle against the bigger Nose Tackles in the game no matter how good his technique.

We have a couple of young guys in the wings who have shown well in limited opportunities and could still develop into viable starters, notably backup center Brandon Fusco and OT Demarcus Love -- who projects better at guard. If we can find a way to make Loadholt get himself into gear and shuffle the interior of the line a bit, we might be able to make this a passable unit with just one high draft pick and a lucky hit late. That would be a miracle.

Offense Overall
It's a mess, but there's mild hope. If we have the guts to show people the door and make a couple of major investments, this could be viable again as soon as next year. When you have AP and Harvin and players with the potential Ponder and Rudolph have shown, that's always going to be the case. Development is essential, though, and the position conversions that could seal the deal are unlikely. With a bit of luck along the line, we're a year away from competency, two years away from real success.

Defensive Line
Jared Allen leads the league in sacks this season and still has the match-ups left on the schedule to challenge for the single season record. I'd say he's still got a number of productive seasons left. Brian Robison has largely disappeared on the Left End after a very promising start, but showed enough early that I'm still hopeful. Everson Griffen has proven on special teams that he has a motor that doesn't stop and has managed to provide his share of pressure in a reasonable number of snaps at End.

It's the interior where we have a bit more concern. Kevin Williams is showing age, and Remi Ayodele has done nothing but take up space this season. Christian Ballard, a rookie out of Iowa, has shown some good things, especially against the pass, and actually played Nose for most of yesterday. Letroy Guion showed promise against the run in the preseason, but hasn't done a whole lot this year. Both could potentially be options for next season, but we're going to be a long way off from the Williams Wall at its prime. Still, our run game has been stout this season, so I'm not too worried about the line as a whole.

Linebackers
E.J. Henderson is showing plenty of wear from his reconstructed knee and the titanium rod in his leg. There are worse linebackers starting in the NFL, but his time may have come. His brother Erin, on the other hand, is making an alright case for himself. Chad Greenway has dipped some since last season, but he's still a rock solid OLB, leading the team in tackles, and just got a significant contract extension. In an ideal world, he'd be better than consistent and would turn into a real play maker, but this soft Cover 2 defense doesn't give him many opportunities for it.

The rest of these guys are career special teams sorts, so we really need a lift at the position. There was talk for awhile of moving Everson Griffen into a stand-up role at least part time, which could be exciting to see, but would leave us short staffed at DE. It's easier to get deals on linebackers than on DEs in free agency. Just look at the improvement the Lions have had in the position this year. I'm guessing we make mid level move at the position in the offseason and possibly try to find value with a 5th or 6th round pick.

Defensive Backs
We have two legitimate players in our secondary right now. One is 34 and just broke his clavicle. The other is currently undergoing investigation and trial for felony domestic assault. This is why we're so far away from truly contending on defense -- especially in a division where we play six games annually against Aaron Rodgers, Matthew Stafford, and Jay Cutler.

Cedric Griffin has shown that he won't fully come back from a pair of knee reconstructions; Asher Allen is never going to be better than a dime guy; Husain Abdullah is spotty and does his best work against the run; and our Strong Safety rotation of Jamarca Sanford and Tyrell Johnson is going nowhere. We have two young players in Marcus Sherels, at CB, and Mistral Raymond, at FS, who have shown they might be able to play. But Sherels will likely never be better than a slot guy in the nickel, and Raymond hasn't been good enough this year for the coaching staff to be comfortable playing him regularly.

Our only hope at this position is that Cook turns out to be innocent of the awful things he's accused of and Cedric Griffin can resurrect his career at Safety, where he was projected to be best suited in the NFL, anyway. No matter the case, though, this is where our second round pick almost certainly needs to go. And maybe a third. And a fourth. We really just need to find as many kids with potential as we can and have a battle royale for the starting jobs in our secondary. Starting quality DBs generally don't hit the free market, and if they do, they go to teams that are championship contenders for a price tag we can't afford.

Defense Overall
Our line, while still strong, isn't what it used to be, and that means we won't be able to get away with the wishy washy secondary we've been fielding for years. Our linebackers are adequate but could use a boost. The secondary is a nightmare, though. Depending on how things pan out, we could be two years away from being merely competent in that department. It will take a minor miracle for us to be competitive again next year. Two to three years away.

Special Teams
Ryan Longwell is slumping after years of being rock solid. I won't blame last night's 52 yarder into the wind on him. It was right on target but simply died in the air. That doesn't change the fact that he's missed more field goals this season already than all of last season. It might be time to test new blood.

People who know me know that I love Chris Kluwe, so I may be a bit biased, but I'd still call him top 5 in the league. I've only seen one real botched punt all season, and the big returns have been the result of spotty coverage, not placement.

Spotty, by the way, is about the only way to describe our coverage. We're capable of making fantastic special teams stops, but the serious return guys in the league -- Hester, Cobb -- give us as much trouble as they do anybody else. Our return game, on the other hand, is strong. We've had 60+ yard kickoff returns from three different guys (Harvin, Booker, and Sherels), including Harvin's TD on the opening kick of the season. Sherels has made some poor decisions on both fair catches and returns in the punt game, but he's also made some big plays there.

Coaching
We've seen a handful of interesting things from Bill Musgrave on the offensive side. End-arounds, double reverses, even a poorly executed flea flicker last night. Especially with Ponder driving instead of McNabb, we're starting to get an idea of what this offense is supposed to look like, and it could be good. It's very West Coast, but seems to emphasize the intermediate slightly over the short. With better blocking and more talent at receiver (and more time for Ponder), it could be all right. The play calling in the first few weeks was iffy, but it's getting better. I'll wait to pass judgement until we see how things go next year.

On the defensive side, we're just too married to Cover 2. We're sitting in an era of amazing quarterback play, and that means constant zone coverage is just going to get carved up. We tried some more Cover 1 man last night, but we don't have the personnel for it in the secondary. Frazier needs to let Fred Pagac unleash things. If our secondary is going to get carved up no matter what we do, I see no reason to not get more creative and aggressive with the blitz. We don't have a whole lot left to play for this season, so let's see how much havoc we can cause if we let the dogs loose. We're already top 5 in sacks because of Allen's efforts. Let's give him some help.

Summary
We're a long way off, but things can turn around quickly in the NFL if you hit at the right spots. I don't have great hope for next year. Our holes in three separate units are just too big. We could still elevate ourselves back to a .500 team, though, instead of the 4-12 we'll be likely to get to this year. If we get incredibly lucky with development of this year's rookies -- who didn't get real training last year -- and some unlikely position changes, we could even be better than .500 next year. We play in the strongest division in football, though, and better than .500 won't be enough. In two years, maybe, we'll be able to win a game against the Packers again.

Bill Keane is Dead

It's no great secret that I'm not a fan of Family Circus. That doesn't change the fact that a great many people were. Neither does it change the fact that the motivation behind Keane's work was admirable. He dedicated his life to providing a daily snapshot of the world as he hoped it could be: where children are free to be naive and precocious and where families are endlessly patient. Hell, every now and then it made even me smile.

Thank you, Bill Keane, for all of the laughs, whether they were intended or not.