NFL 2010 Week 1 discussion.

The Game Room
141

Charger fan here; also a longtime supporter of whoever’s playing the Cowboys. While watching this game, I wondered how long it’d take Skins fans to turn into Philadelphians and start blaming McNabb for the fact that their receiving corps couldn’t catch herpes from a two-dollar hooker. He can’t do much besides deliver it straight into the hands of his target; if his receiver gets confused and decides he’s playing Hot Potato, there isn’t much McNabb can do about it.

Mark my words, once he learns the hard way to avoid at all costs throwing it anywhere near any player not named Santana Moss, you’ll be liking him a lot better.

ETA: That’s not to say he was perfect — the whole game was about as messy as it gets, McNabb included — but you can hardly pin it all on him.

142

I jumped on the bandwagon. :frowning: I was dazzled by the hype surrounding Crabtree, VD, and Gore, yet forgot about the crapfest which was the rest of the team. Luckily, the only player I have on my team from SF is their defense, which scored a stunning 5 points for me today.

edit: re: the CJ catch/non-catch: Imho, it only matters because it decided the game. I’ve seen the same decision countless of times the past year, and it was accepted.

143

Dude, this simply isn’t what happened. Watch the replay or something, this quite clearly and obviously is not the sequence of events. He caught the ball in the air and was tied up with the CB who was falling backwards and reaching back to dislodge the ball. He failed, but the act knocked Megatron to the ground. As Johnson was falling to the ground he extended the ball away from the defender is an effort to either prevent him from batting it away or to hot dog it. Johnson twisted his body and extended his hands to the ground to brace the fall. One hand obviously had the ball in it. As his lower body hit his hands held up his upper body, his right hand propped up by the ball. As his upper half landed on the ball it squirted out.

He was not setting the ball down. He was not laying on the ground and using the ball to get up. He was using his hands to brace the fall. In the process he lost the ball. Perhaps he was trying to brace the fall in order to get to his feet faster to begin his celebration faster, perhaps he was just trying to keep the ball away from the defender. Whatever, the fall was happening as part of the act of catching thee ball and the ball hitting the ground was part of the landing. Any implication that he was sitting on his ass or standing on his feet with possession of the ball isn’t reality.

Perhaps the rule is written too strictly and perhaps the refs need to be allowed latitude in how they enforce it, using judgment to determine if the ball coming out was somehow incidental versus integral to the catch but that’s not the reality.

This rule was given a very close examination and public stage in the 2009 Super Bowl. Holmes final catch was reviewed forever to determine if the ball was jarred lose when he hit the ground after getting his feet in. If I remember correctly he had a pass called incomplete for that rule earlier in the drive.

Here’s a Youtube video of the exact same circumstance from the Chargers-Raiders game from last year.

144

Are the Panthers as bad as they looked or should I actually be feeling pretty good about the Giants D?
Eli hung too many passers out to dry yesterday but he did miss much of the pre-season. I’m hoping it was just rust. The O-line and thus the RBs looked better and better as the game went on.
The coaching staff seemed to make excellent 2nd half adjustments to the game plan.
The special teams looked bad and the rookie punter looked very bad. I hope for him it was nerves.

145

Both. My beloved Panthers, as I stated in another thread, are on their way to a long stay in Suck Town.

146

The 'Skins need to give game balls to Tashard Choice and Alex Barron for that win.

147

… and Jason Garrett for calling that Choice play and Jerry Jones for trading Bobby Carpenter for Barron, the most penalized lineman in the NFL.

148

Garrett should get one anyway for running the ball just enough to show he could, then abandoning the run entirely.

“Let’s see… Barber and Jones both have about 40 yards on 8 carries. Yeah, our running game works. Time to find out what doesn’t!”

149

Some thoughts on the Cards/Rams game even though only dalej42 and I care. :smiley:

They may have not bought a ticket yet, but it looks like my poor, beleagured Rams at least are looking at the bus schedule to get out of SuckTown some day. The offense is, at least, improving and the defense is much stronger. A few more drafts like they had this year and they could be in contention again.

I think Larry Fitzgerald spent last night making little Derek Anderson voodoo dolls. There is no timing and no chemistry between those two right now. If only that could have held true for one more play.

150

Even worse, the play called was a Hail Mary that Wade Philips forgot to uncall that broke down and they had to improvise. Think Choice will get tired of hearing “JUST GO DOWN!” for the next week?

151

Didn’t Fitz miss nearly all of camp? Can’t really blame Anderson. I bet he prefers receiving passes from DA than Leinart anyway.

152

I doubt Wade can uncall anything Jason does, per marching orders from Jones.

153

Having watched TFV, (Here, until the NFL takes it down yet again), I have to wonder: how is Lance Moore’s 2-pt catch in the Super Bowl A-OK, but Johnson’s catch is an incomplete. Moore’s jiggling the ball when the ball hits the ground; conversely Megatron’s got the ball palmed like Michael Jordan in his prime, and it looks rock solid until he decides to spike it/flip it away. I am not a Detroit fan, or a Chicago fan, and the catch had no fantasy implications for me. I just like watching professional football and I don’t like games turning counter-intuitively on a rule interpretation stretched to absurdity, e.g. the Brady Tuck Rule play. When the majority of your sport’s fans are calling the interpretation ridiculous, you might want to change the rule, or reevaluate how your officials are interpreting the rule.

Catch, no juggling, two feet down, a jump and twist: I have to agree with blog commenters who wonder if Megatron had to carry the ball with him to the bench in order to get credit for the TD. It may be the rule, and I bow to Ellis Dee’s well cited explanation of the rule’s text, but if so, it’s a damn silly rule leading to a nonsensical result. It’s not the worst rule anywhere, but it needs to be changed or guidance needs to be given to the refs where they realize that’s a touchdown. I agree with the observation that anywhere other than the end zone, that’s a completion coupled with a fumble. And I also agree with, I believe, Hamlet’s observations that Megatron won’t hot-dog like that again and if the ruling on the field was a catch and touchdown, no Bears fan would think they’d been robbed. And to complete the trifecta, I also agree with him that:

By this point in the discussion, I don’t think anyone is going to convince anyone else that they’re wrong.

You’d think no other games happened yesterday. BoltEater, I was big on the Raiders before the season (“big” meaning 8-8 or 9-7 and fighting the Chargers for the Division title) , and thought the Texans would have lost to the Colts and 'Skins. A Raiders loss would just about finish the season. I completely did not expect the Texans to just run over the Colts on both sides of the ball. For two drives in the 2nd half, the Texans did nothing but run, the Colts knew it, and could do nothing to stop them. Now, it’s not like the Colts have the Ravens or Steelers front lines, but it’s still very impressive to this fan how the Texans won. After that game, I can see the Texans beating the Skins, the Raiders—already had them thumping the Cowboys—and a 4-0 start without Brian Cushing might give this team the confidence needed to really do some damage in the AFC this year. Though Dales will no doubt totally disagree, 6-0 to the bye week might not be out of line.

(If Williams/Stewart couldn’t run well on Big Blue, I can’t see Foster doing it. Though unlike Matt Moore, Schaub can actually throw the ball like an NFL QB. Whoo-wee, was I wrong about Moore this year…)

Aside, that sickening, crushing thud you heard yesterday were the Bay Area bandwagons being driven into the brick wall of reality. I thought Seattle was going to be absolutely terrible this year, Tatupu coming back or not. How did the Niners let a QB with a bad back, coached by a relative newbie, smack them around like they did? How good would the Niners be with even game-manager level QB play? For the Raiders, I’m surprised they let VY throw as efficiently as he did. (13/17, 154, 2TD, 0 INT, 2 Sacks, Rating: 142.8) I mean the last few years, you could always run on the Raiders, but I thought they were stingier than that through the air? And usually, “VY just wins games”, it’s not like you could count on him for good QB play. Week 12 at Houston should be a lot of fun; maybe it’ll be flexed to the night game?

Can’t believe I just typed the Texans might sniff 6-0. We’ll see. Crazy how actually playing the games changes a lot of what you thought. (The Matthew Berry article was pretty good, thanks.)

154

Crap, got my Giants’ fans confused. Meant Ellis Dee, for Dales.

Oh, and one more question for the group: Does this Philly game mean that Mike Vick is back, or does it mean instead that GB just foolishly didn’t game plan for him?

155

Why is it foolish, there is only limited time to gameplan, why would you spend your time on the back-up quareterback?

156

When you know that last season, the back-up QB has come in for plays while the regular QB was playing. It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility that Vick would play a little that game—he did play a bit before Kolb’s concussion—but the stats make it look like GB’d never seen him before. (16/24 175 passing, 1 TD, 0 INT, 3 sacks; 11 rushes for 103.) Is it that hard to play a nickel and spy Vick with an extra DB? Were the Eagles a threat to win the game on the ground with Weaver out (when did he go down, BTW?) and down 20-3 with 8:36 to go in the 3rd? I like the GB defense and thought they did a heck of a job in the first half; I’m just perplexed at how they let Philly back into that game.

157

Bear in mind that the Packers weren’t exactly playing with their ideal 11 on the field:

  • Half of their starting defensive backfield (Al Harris and Atari Bigby) are on the PUP list
  • The guy who should’ve been their nickel back (Will Blackmon) suffered a season-ending injury in preseason, and wound up being waived with an injury settlement. They wound up with a rookie (Sam Shields) playing nickel.
  • An undrafted rookie (Frank Zombo) played much of the second half at OLB.
  • One of their DEs (Justin Harrell) was injured during the game, which limited what they could do with rotating the defensive line.

Injuries happen (and the Eagles came out even worse in that department than the Packers), but it helps explain why they couldn’t contain Vick.

158

It should also be borne in mind that even when he was an every-game starter hardly anyone could contain Vick. In fact, the Buccaneers were pretty much the only team who really had his number as a runner (unfortunately, as a passer, he used to carve us up regularly).

I’ve never much cared for him, but I’m not going to lie; I had a huge smile on my face watching him in the game. I don’t give a shit if he can’t throw a touch pass (and it was clear yesterday that he still can’t); he’s still the most dangerous player in the league.

159

This all ties into my theory that all QBs are either underrated or overrated. It’s just tradition to blame the quarterback. I agree with your assessment in general. There is the factor of McNabbs decisions, and his ability to lead the team to consider though. I lived in Philly area too, became a Philles fan after the Senators left town. There are no worse fans anywhere than in the city of brotherly love.

160

Kolb was getting booed about thirty seconds into the second quarter. Some honeymoon.