Not to disparage the accomplishment because it is a good showing but the rules are written and enforced now to encourage passing. Had the greats from the the 80s and 90s played under these rules, they would have put up even better numbers probably.
Heard to announcers say that Marino did it while throwing far less often than Brees.
Marino had 564 attempts in 1984. Brees has 622 so far this season, so figure he’ll finish with 650 or 660. It does say something about the way the passing game is used today.
The announcers said that Marino’s average passing distance was above the average for his time (duh) but that Brees’ average is even higher than today’s average than Marino’s was in his time.
I chuckled last night during Sean Payton’s speech to the team in the locker room before handing the floor over to Brees. First, he congratulated the team, blah blah blah. Then he talked about some NFL history, the 1984 season, etc. Then he pointed out how Marino was an amazing player, one of the top 5 ever, and mentioned something like, “but he didn’t win the Super Bowl.” I think Marino threw a football through his tv at that point.
I have to question how that stat was complied. In '84, Marino bested his nearest competitor by 470 yards, and there were only 3 passers with over 4000 yds. There will likely be 10 QBs with over 4000 yds this season. Brees, Brady, Rodgers, Manning, Stafford, Rivers, and Ryan have all broken 4000 already, and Romo, Newton, and Big Ben will likely break it in week 17. Brees could theoretically be passed by Brady during week 17, so there is little chance he will have a nearly 500 yd passing lead come season’s end. There will also likely be three 5000 yd. passers this year, and two that will break Marino’s old mark.
That said, the only way that the difference between Brees’s numbers and the average QB could surpass Marino’s would be if they are using raw numbers rather than yds/game or something like that. There have been a number of injuries that would make the raw numbers less impressive in today’s game. That coupled with a number of inexperienced QBs starting, and you might be able to massage the stats to make Brees’s accomplishment seem better by comparison. Although Brees has had a great year, I think that his inferior passing average (8.2 to Marino’s 9, and 5th in the league in 2011), the fact that he will finish with roughly 100 more attempts, and that he is not even having the best season for a QB this year makes me think that his accomplishment is not as great as Marino’s.
Let’s be fair. Brees was kneeling in prayer, prominently displayed by ESPN, right before his speech. Actions speaker louder than words, right?
I thought he was tying his cleats.
Where’s the “like” button, I need to use it for this post!
Congratulations to Brees to beating this record.
I wouldn’t say “better than”. I’d say “equal to”.
You think the annoyance at athletes thinking their favorite deities at every opportunity annoys people because of their super anti-Christian bent and not just because it’s annoying.
Since people only hate Christians, of course it’d be okay if some player said “Praise Allah” 50 times a week.
You poor, poor, persecuted, hugely dominant majority, you…
I like how you were so sure of this that you answered your own rhetorical question. YOU CAUGHT US CHRISTIAN-HATING HYPOCRITES. Now I’m going to go rape and pillage, CAUSE WHAT’S STOPPING ME!!!
So, I’m imagining things? Great! I’m so relieved- just point me to a few newspaper columns or video clips of sports commentators telling Ali “Shut the hell up about Islam, Muhammad. Nobody wants to hear that crap.” As soon as I see a few of those, I’ll know I was just overreacting and succumbing to irrational self-pity.
And when Leon Spinks finally beat Ali, there were LOADS of comedians laughing “Guess Allah let you down, huh champ?” I must just have been in the shower when that happened.
I mean… if I’m merely a self-pitying paranoid, surely there must be LOADS of such columns and clips, right?
Just give me one or two.
You seriously don’t think that, in 1964, there was no mainstream criticism of Muhammad Ali’s decision to join the Nation of Islam?
Yes. I know how tough it is to be a Christian in modern America though, where you are only allied with the vast majority of all Americans, including having all the political power in this country. Never has a massive, powerful, culturally ubiquitous minority been so oppressed. hug
Now I know I’ve been lax, failing to read and remember things that happened 20 years before I was born, so my bad on this one. I do employ a full time personal archivist who keeps a record of all newspaper articles of the last 50 years in my personal library, but I’m afraid I just gave him two weeks off for Christmas (as well as gave him a gift of a nifty new monocle!) so that he could go on Safari in Africa. Can I have some time to get back to you on this?
I would imagine so - as we know, comedians talk about the exact same subjects now as they did 50 years ago with the exact same level of freedom, right?
I will send a telegram to Alfred to hurry his Safari, but I’m afraid he still has a long boat ride ahead of him.
Translation: you don’t have a leg to stand on, you can’t provide a single instance of sportswriters or comedians mocking Islam as they regularly do Christianity, but you think if you double down on the sarcasm, nobody will notice that you’ve totally evaded the challenge.
No, you’re being ridiculous.
First, I’m not a sportswriter or comedian (even if I am the funniest man alive), I’m some dude on a message board. So it’s weird to require that people in those positions share my sentiments.
And you’re demanding a burden of proof that would actually make me go to a library all day and look shit up on microfiche to prove a point - a point which isn’t even valid if true, because it doesn’t necesarily say that Christians are being oppressed - it could mean that sportswriters of the 1960s had a different tact than current sportswriters do, or it could mean that sportswriters have a different tact than random message board users.
I can assure you, that if there were some famous American muslim football player that started every statement with “Praise be to Allah and his prophet”, I wouldn’t be patting the guy on the back. Want proof of this? I can direct you to all sorts of threads in which my criticisms of religion are universal.
Oppressed Christians are just about my least favorite huge majority though, so you’re way higher than Tebow on my personal obnoxiousness scale.
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Let’s be fair. Brees was kneeling in prayer, prominently displayed by ESPN, right before his speech. Actions speaker louder than words, right?
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Before the game, I saw one as the practical application of the other.