Tag: sports

Yeah, it pretty much is

Florio trolls the NFL world in search of clicks:

No, this isn’t click bait or trolling or whatever other term the cool kids have come up with. It’s a legitimate question given the current state of the Denver roster.

Should they bring back Tim Tebow?

Manning finished the year averaging 6.8 yards per pass and throwing nine touchdown passes against 17 interceptions, with a passer rating of 67.9. In 2011, Tebow averaged 6.4 yards per pass, threw 12 touchdown passes against six interceptions, and had a passer rating of 72.9. He also added 660 rushing yards and six touchdowns; that’s 666 more rushing yards that Manning (minus-6) had this year.

No, it’s not a legitimate question. There is no way that is happening. Tebow did nothing with the three other opportunities afforded to him post-Denver, and hasn’t played in two years. I refuse to even dignify the absurdity with a link.

Elway got rid of Tebow because Tebow’s inability to throw the ball caused the Hall of Fame rifleman genuine psychological pain every time he watched his offense take the field. And while I was genuinely pleased to see Tebow’s unexpected success, particularly in the games against the Jets and Steelers, I can’t blame Elway at all.

They say if you’ve got 2 QBs, you’ve got no QB

But I always took that for a metaphor, not a literal statement. Denver proves otherwise.

Brock Osweiler followed the money when he left Denver for Houston.

According to multiple reports, Osweiler’s contract with the Texans will pay him about $18 million a year. The Broncos were offering about $16 million a year.

Adam Schefter of ESPN reports that Osweiler’s deal with the Texans is a four-year, $72 million contract, or an average of $18 million a year.

Troy Renck of the Denver Post reports that the Broncos’ offer was $16 million a year, with more than $30 million guaranteed.

It seems strange to take leave a Super Bowl champion over a 12.5 percent raise, but perhaps there were other factors involved. I wonder how long Peyton Manning will stay retired?

Peyton Manning hangs it up

Peyton Manning is officially retired. The Broncos announced this morning that Manning has informed the team he’s calling it a career. A ceremony in Denver is scheduled for Monday.

He’s making the right call by going out on top. I can’t say I was a fan; I never liked him even a little bit. But you had to respect him. He was, without question, an excellent quarterback and one who will not be quickly forgotten. Was he the best quarterback of all time? No, I don’t think so. But he was, almost certainly, the best-prepared quarterback of all time and one of the top ten to play the game.

I think he was, not-so-secretly, somewhat of a choker because he put so much pressure on himself and on his teammates. He was almost the exact opposite of Joe Montana; he never seemed to understand that in the moments of highest pressure, you need to let the game and the moment come to you, you cannot force them. Peyton Manning did not feel the force, he relied upon his talent and his extensive preparation instead.

But in some ways, that actually makes me respect him more, because unlike so many other talented chokers, he managed to surmount that weakness through persistence and the sheer force of will. And it did not escape my attention that after an entire career of being a prima donna with the weight of the team on his shoulders, he managed to step back, be a role player, and allow the team to carry him.

For me, the signature Peyton Manning moment will always be when he chewed
out his running back, Donald Brown, for making a mistake while the play was still in
progress. “Godammit, Donald!” That, for me, summed up both his strengths and his weaknesses in a nutshell. Then again, you have to appreciate a man who can laugh at himself.

PFT Commenter goes to the Super Bowl

I just thought this account of a taxi ride at the Super Bowl was funny:

My first night here I deicded to skip dinner in lieu of drinking, which yes, its a common theme for me- but you stick with the devil that you know, and with all the foofooraw about E Coli these days I figured it was better to drink brown liquor instead of eating red meat. It was a great meal and then I got a ride home from a cab driver who immedately started talking politics. Guess I just give of that vibe of a professonal political pundent. Lots of folks consider Frisco to be a extremeley liberal city but this guy started in with the “we need to build a wall” stuff and it kiond of snowballed from there untill by the end of the ride he was educationg me about how Bernie Sanders is a pawn by the Jews to install one of there Elite banker friends as the head of the United States so they can take over the world. Went a little to far for my taste in a 10-minute cab ride. Thats more of a 30 minute cab ride conversaton that you break out as soon as you’ve covered the weather, favorite sports teams, and which colleges his kids are thinking about going to. Very cool guy.

It’s both exciting and strange to see the X-Files back. Hearing Mulder go on about a conspiracy of human globalists makes me wonder if Chris Carter has been reading this blog over the last ten years. Anyhow, my thoughts on Denver’s recent Super Bowl victory:

  • Manning had less to do with it than Lizzi the cheerleader did. Lizzi was also at the game and she threw for as many touchdowns and one less dumb interception than Peyton did. I’m just glad they didn’t give him the MVP because quarterback.
  • Apparently the difference between the #1 defense and the #3 defense was considerably larger than I had appreciated.
  • Wade Phillips is probably the best defensive coordinator in the league. He should stick with that; why be a mediocre head coach when you can be a great coordinator? Stacking five on the line to keep the running game in check while trusting the three corners to shut down Carolina’s unimpressive receivers was a great game plan.
  • Cam is a frontrunner. That’s not a bad thing, it’s just a reality.  It will be interesting to see how he comes back from this.
  • People getting on Cam about not diving on the football forget that a QBs first, second, and third responsibility is to not get injured. Yes, it was the Super Bowl. That doesn’t change the fact that the guy has had it repeatedly drilled into his head that he is NEVER supposed to a) dive into the pile or b) try to tackle anyone. See: Andy Dalton. I suspect that training is why he instinctively started to go after the ball, then checked himself.
  • I think Ted Ginn may have cost Carolina the game. For me, the most crucial play was when he burned Talib across the middle, then ran out of bounds for a 40-yard gain instead of a) trying to beat the safety down the sideline, or b) cutting back inside him. Ginn is supposedly among the faster players in the league, and it looked to me as if a) was a legitimate option. That may have cost the Panthers 7 points, given the way Gano missed the subsequent FG attempt.
  • If Manning doesn’t ride off into the sunset with his second Super Bowl ring, he’s lost the plot. It’s a great ending… so let it be the ending and retire.

Super Bowl L

Let’s revisit what I said on Championship Weekend:

New School NFL over Old School NFL for the 50th Anniversary Super Bowl,
thereby symbolically denoting the transformation of America into the New
America. Predictive programming calls for Carolina.

It’s Peyton’s Last Ride rather than the Dynamic Duo’s Last Hurrah, but the symbolic narrative remains the same. Ergo, Carolina.

This happens to be supported by the football analysis: great defense plus good offense beats great defense plus mediocre offense. Considering that Denver couldn’t beat Seattle when Peyton Manning was just as wily but his arm was still good, I don’t see how Denver is going to beat Carolina.

I expect a reasonably comfortable Carolina win, and because I am an old school NFC fan, I would welcome that. But regardless, this is your Super Bowl 50 thread.

Do you doubt the narrative

As I said, it’s old school versus new school; it’s all about the quarterbacks, or perhaps, what the quarterbacks symbolize.

For Super Bowl, Focus Is on Passing, Perhaps of a Torch

There was a sense of farewell to each conversation. Manning even used the past tense when asked what he had said, answering that he told Brady and Belichick that it had been an honor to compete against them.

It was an interlude that might have summed up an epoch of N.F.L. playoff football, a period that the 39-year-old Manning is about to leave behind.

Manning’s next game, fittingly in the 50th Super Bowl, will be contested in a new pro football era, and the proof of that will be found on the opposite sideline, where his counterpart on the Carolina Panthers will be the new-age quarterback Cam Newton…. The contrasts between the quarterbacks will be the main story line.

“Fittingly.” It’s all about the narrative and the predictive programming, in the end:

“I still don’t get why he has to (be criticized). And maybe there are some people out there who are concerned with who he is, which I think is terrible. I really do.You think in this time, this day and age, it would be more about who he is as an athlete, as a person more than anything else. Hopefully we can get past those things.”

“Hopefully”, the Lacedaemonians said.

Championship Weekend

I’m going to go with the conspiracy theorists. New England over Denver, because Brady is the better representative of the Old School NFL. Carolina over Arizona, because Cam Newton is a better representative of the New School NFL.

Then New School NFL over Old School NFL for the 50th Anniversary Super Bowl, thereby symbolically denoting the transformation of America into the New America. Predictive programming calls for Carolina.

One could, of course, reach the same conclusion simply by comparing teams, but it’s more fun to prognosticate The Game of Pigskins via the NFL Narrative.

Yes, Green Bay should have gone for 2

ProFootballTalk considers Mike McCarthy’s decision to settle for overtime:

Three days later, the sports world continues to buzz about the epic Packers-Cardinals playoff game. And one of the many questions that continues to bubble up from time to time is this: Should the Packers have gone for two after scoring on a :00 Hail Mary pass?

In hindsight, absolutely. But if coach Mike McCarthy had opted to go for two and if his team had failed to convert, he would have become a pin cushion for criticism in the aftermath of what would have become his team’s latest failure in a playoff game. Apart from the fact that coaches who do the conventional and fail get a pass while those who do the unconventional and fail don’t, a McCarthy decision to go for two would have been directly responsible for the fifth straight failure to get to the Super Bowl despite having one of the best quarterbacks of the Super Bowl era on his team.

It’s not hindsight. It was the obvious thing to do. In 2015, the Packers went for it 6 times and scored the conversion 4 times for a 66.7 percent success rate. The league average was 47.8 percent.

But Mcarthy’s decision is even worse than the statistics indicate. The Packers were underdogs. The underdog should ALWAYS go for the winning two-point conversion. I was at a Vikings-Cowboys game in 1995 when the Aikman-Smith-Irvin Cowboys were the defending Super Bowl champions and the dominant team in the league.

The Denny Green-coached Vikings managed to tie the game with 30 seconds left. It was a chance at a huge upset; the Cowboys were clearly the better team and the only reason we were in it was due to a very rare Emmitt Smith fumble. The two-point conversion was our one shot at winning the game.

But like Mike McCarthy, Denny Green choked, and played to continue the game rather than to win. Sound familiar?

The Cowboys won the coin toss and needed
just five plays to win the game. Smith broke through a huge hole on the
left side and outran safety Charles Mincy to the end zone just 2
minutes 26 seconds into overtime. 

The players can tell when their chickenshit coach isn’t even trying to win, and they play accordingly.

Divisional Weekend, Day 2

Carolina is certainly off to a fast start. It’s not looking good for the Seahawks, given that the Carolina defense is better than the Vikings defense that held them to 10 points.

Interesting to see Cam Newton giving thanks right before the first snap of the game too. Who says a sanctuary must be indoors?