Weekend Onions!

Ok, this is just unacceptable. THREE weeks without "Weekend Onions!"? All I can say for myself is, like Mark McGuire, I'm not here to talk about the past.

Moving on, two weekends ago, the "Mangenius", Cleveland Brown's head coach Eric Mangini, decided to break into the weekend onions report with a delicious fake punt.

Let's set the stage for the Mangenius' trickeration:

• Leading the New Orleans Saints 10-3 in the 2nd quarter, the Browns are facing a 4th and 6  pinned back on their OWN 23
• With only 5:32 left in the half, the conventional wisdom says kick the punt and play defense
• The Mangenius bucks conventional wisdom and goes for the final move to complete the road upset: a huge play on special teams
• The end result: this 68-yard run by the punter Reggie Hodges right down Main Street to the New Orleans 9

The ensuing drive only resulted in a field goal  for the Browns (and a 13-3) lead, but the Browns showed their intentions and eventually won 30-17. No, we're not gonna go drop the Browns off at the Super Bowl, but congratulations to the Mangenius and the Browns for an Onions! play call

Also, I would be remiss if I did not mention the Onions! decision by LSU head coach Les Miles a few weekends ago (October 9th 2010) against the Florida Gators.

Not too long ago, Disney remade Alice in Wonderland (I didn't watch it, so I'm gonna exercise this thing I'm learning about called "self-restraint" and keep all opinions of this movie to myself). I only bring this superb demonstration of cinematic brilliance (tongue firmly in cheek) because of the character the Mad Hatter. I don't know why the executives at Disney sent out a casting call for the Mad Hatter. The real life Mad Hatter resides in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and "coaches" the Louisiana State University Tigers. I use the term "coaches" loosely here because what Miles does on the sideline is closer to letting a drunk fratstar in Las Vegas with his dad's black card than the contemplative, rationale exercise I presume coaching to be.

I'll set the stage for the Mad Hatter's return to glory

• 35 seconds left in the game and LSU trails by 3 points 
• The Tigers face a 4th and 3 from the Florida 35 yard line and need a 53 yard field goal to send the game into overtime
• Field goal kicker Josh Jasper needs to nail this kick, a career long in distance if it happens
• Les Miles has better ideas than leaving this game in the hands (er, feet) of a kicker and reaches into his bag of crazy and produces this magic

Let the record note that the ball BOUNCED on the NO-LOOK heave over the shoulder by the holder before the kicker picked it up (noted). Les Miles knows Onions! A few years ago we did an x-ray of Les Miles and found this:



No wonder this guy is a favorite here at Gimme Some Onions!

(Ok, so we didn't actually do this x-ray, it was made by LSUfreek for one of our favorite blogs "Every Day Should Be Saturday". Original post from EDSBS can be found here)

Also, this isn't the first time that Miles has called this particular fake field goal. Against South Carolina in 2007, Miles dialed up this play call and things ran more smoothly. The kicker received the no-look toss perfectly and ran into the end-zone untouched. Check it out here. To paraphrase one of my favorite lines in Forrest Gump, "Crazy is as crazy does"