Steelers to win; Seahawks to win and cover.
Nothing else to add; just wanted to get my picks in before kickoff.
Realized I hadn’t made a pick on the NFC game, so I’ll take Carolina - albeit in the interest of having a halfway decent Super Bowl more than any actual feeling about this particular game.
I believe we can put the Roethlisberger-Plummer debate to bed.
Agh. I suppose so. I’m as happy for the Bus as the next guy, and I should’ve known that Plummer hadn’t really changed that much. But 1-6? Watch me lose this next one, after Carolina beating my picks twice in a row.
It’s okay, Omniscient. As you watch more football over the years and come to understand it a bit better, you’ll be able to provide more insightful analyses.
Mike Anderson: 9 carries, 36 yards. Tatum Bell: 5 carries, 31 yards.
Jake Plummer: 18/30, 223 yards, 1 TD, 2 picks.
Steelers D: 3 sacks, 2 QB fumbles recovered.
One quarter in and it’s looking like it’s the end of the road.
So he picked against your team, there’s no need to be so abrasive. The pre-game show I watched had all three professional analysts picking Denver to win also… would you like their email addresses?
I look forward to Omni’s threads each week, and I’m not the only one. He’s not always right, but he’s out there every week putting in the time and effort to create the thread and break things down as he sees them. Some of us appreciate the effort and would appreciate it if you learned the distinction between trash talking and jerkdom.
He was obviously joking, dude.
Sure, they were pretty much wrong too. Although, not having watched, I don’t know if they broke it down into being wrong in almost every specific category also.
If that was too abrasive for you, I would hate to see what you would do with real trash talking! Yikes.
He also accused people who disagreed with his assessment of the Bears game last week of not watching the game. Trash talking inevitably dips into jerk-dom on all sides (for example, I implied without meaning to that Hentor was a whining pussy), and jokes don’t always come across that way on a message board - everybody needs to have a thick skin in a thread like this.
I’m from Jersey, I’ve got as thick a skin as they come; I’m not offended in the least.
But there’s a difference between condescension and trash talking. “Jake Plummer is aptly named because he stunk it up like a septic tank” is trash talking; “As you watch more football over the years and come to understand it a bit better, you’ll be able to provide more insightful analyses” is just a patronizing attack on someone whose opinion you disagree with.
I know the games not over. But I like my crow warm with gravy.
Congrats to Seattle.
Oh, man, who did the Seahawks play tonight… its on the tip of my tongue. 
Well, that made my two weeks.
WE’RE GOING TO THE SUPERBOWL!
I missed this in preview. Thank you from this Hawks fan at least… That says alot coming from you. I feel bad you had to live up to your name.
Agnostic Pagan
So does it taste like chicken?
First off, I never said that one was better than the other, just that total yards cannot be dismissed out of hand.
While true that passing TDs are important, but they don’t wholly illustrate a QBs effect on scoring. A QB who generates more yards per game creates more opportuites for FGs and rushing TDs. Neither of which is reflected in any of the standard QB ratings and passing stats. It’s one of big reasons why QBs, more so than any other position, need to be evaluated beyond the stats. So as I see it, the argument that he had fewer passing TDs is mitaged by the fact that his team had a higher scoring average.
As for whether 27 yards is a significant difference or not…lets throw some career per game numbers out there for a pair of QBs:
Montana: 211 yards per game
Kosar: 185 yards per game
I’d say it’s a notable disparity. As always it’s just one stat, but 27 yards is not a negligable amount.
You keep doing comparisons based on additional pass attmepts but I’m not convinced that additional pass attempts to achieve the same goal is a bad thing. I know you hate the west coast offense, but it’s founded on the premise that many short passes are as good a fewer long ones. That premise has worked on many occasions (to varying degrees of success) and it blurs the line between runs and passes. Those shorter pass attempts are a key reason why a QB would have fewer INTs. As the Championship games showed this week, INTs might be an even bigger factor than TD passes. Being more cautious with the ball and as a result decreasing your yards per attempt averages by design is not necessarily a less effective strategy. A QB throwing more passes to get the same yards isn’t a strike against him so long as completion percentage and INT rate don’t get worse.
So it’s frustrating as hell to see what happened to the Carolina offense when you actually game-plan to stop Steve Smith. Was that really that much of a leap? Apparently Ray Rhodes is a savant since no one on the Bears were smart enough to figure this crap out. The way the Seahawks played we’ve have probably gotten handled too, but damn it would have been nice to play that game.
:smack:
Pittsburgh capitalized on every Denver mistake and Denver missed all it’s opportunities. It’s that simple. I wonder how different the game would have been if Champ Bailey gets that INT or if Parker’s fumble isn’t overturned. It’s going to be an interesting Super Bowl, that’s for sure.
The only game plan I saw to stop Steve Smith came from Coach Fox. And it was a good one. Never give Smith the ball, and Smith is stopped. That punt return for touchdown was apparently an oversight by the staff. I’m sure they meant to bench Smith.
Largent is the better receiver. He put up those numbers being slower, shorter, with small hands, and very little supporting quality in the rest of the Seattle offense. He frequently over the years was the sole offensive threat under perpetual double and triple teaming, and still could produce. He made his QBs look good, instead of being made to look good by QBs like Rice.
Rice had the support of the greatest QB in history, and supporting WBs and RBs that made sure that the 49ers were never a single-threat offense. He deserves props for his phenomenal longevity and effectiveness, but I think his was a “standing on the shoulders of giants” type of success.
…and Jim Zorn is the greatest QB ever
(raving Seahawk fan)
Quote from this ESPN article:
Liberal, I gotta disagree. The Seahwaks just covered him really well. You saw what happned when they tried to run the WR screen pass. Totally blown up, while the Bears got gouged on it time and time again. There’s numerous highlights of Smith’s catches and in every one he had 3 or more Seahawks all around him. They left Carter and the rest of Panthers in single coverage and those guys simply weren’t good enough to beat them. Carter had a couple nice long plays but that was it. The lack of a running game certainly made it easier for the Seahawks to overwhelmingly key on Smith, but that gameplan was in place all game.