Well, I understand your point, bt I think it may be a little ham-handed. Unfortunately, there are levels of cheating. I think you’d agree to that as well. Is holding on every play cheating? Is it cheating in the same way as reading lips on the opposing sideline? Is it cheating in the same manner of stealing a playbook? What about taking steroids? All those examples are at different places along the “cheating” spectrum, ranging from “we didn’t see it” to “well, you didn’t get caught”, to “you must be punished”, to “Congressional hearing”.
Although it does beg the question: at what point does Congress feel like it should get involved?
And I don’t lock my door because I think the bolt closing sounds cool. Doesn’t mean it’s acceptable to break into my house because you infer I expect it because I lock my doors.
There are different types, and different degrees of cheating. Cheating that directly affects the outcome of games will trump contract negotiation cheating for most people.
Another factor is that while there’s uncalled holding, it’s a subjective judgement, and it’s all out in the open. Anyone can see what the lineman did or didn’t do - there was no secret attempt to take an advantage that no one else can see. If you think you see holding, is it definitely cheating? What if the ref saw it too and used his judgement to decide it wasn’t? Cheating still?
There’s a difference between pushing the boundaries for commiting a foul in an open to all to see judgement call, and secretly gathering data in violation of the rules.
I don’t actually expect you to acknowledge this - you’ll argue that if anyone ever got away with a foul in NFL history, then any and all cheating is perfectly fine.
Well, let’s get one thing straight: I don’t think anyone thinks Congress really needs to be looking into Spygate.
I kinda like Arlen Specter. He seems like the sort of guy you’d want to have a beer with; but he certainly doesn’t seem to have his priorities straight, no matter how big an Iggles fan he is.
Also, not a particularly effective investigator, if he’s successfully getting stonewalled by the NFL.
Eh? He’s not some schmuck (well, not just a schmuck), he’s a five-term Senator. I suspect he’s got more than enough influence to have the FBI send out at least a few agents on a personal goose chase, and that would be the least of his resources.
That’s exactly what I’d be questioning. I know of Senator Specter and know that he’s a respected Congresscritter. I just don’t know/doubt the use of federal agents to investigate “Spygate”. Hell, if he did do that, almost on a personal whim, I’d file that under “abuse of power”.
The thing that pisses me off about spygate is that people like Specter act as if the NFL supported and encouraged the Patriots, or are conspiring to let them keep doing it. The truth is the complete opposite: the NFL punished them.
Many people seem to feel that since the punishment wasn’t as harsh as they wanted, the NFL didn’t punish them at all. And in the same breath point at the severity of the punishment as evidence that the crime was so severe. You can’t have it both ways.
Omni, I can’t let it go because there’s a friggin’ douchebag in the Senate who felt the need to shit all over Superbowl weekend with his petty, whiny bullshit.
All that free publicity couldn’t possibly have anything to do with his book tour, right? I mean, not even an Eagles fan could be that much of a shithead, could he? Yeah, right.
And note that much – if not most – of the original outrage was in the form of “but they were caught CHEATING!” Liberal tirelessly pointed out again and again in a multi-page trainwreck that there are different forms of cheating, and that not all rule violations were cheating. (Uniform violations, for example.)
But he was soundly yelled down, and the righteous indignation over the dastardly CHEATING carried the day. In addition to taking potshots at Specter, I’m pointing out the blatant hypocrisy of the boards in light of this new CHEATING!!!1!!1
I think the vast majority of sports fans and critics all agree that the Senator’s involvement is unnecessary and unwarranted. A goodly percentage of those think it’s bordering on abuse of power. So in that you won’t find much quarrel I think.
However, I think that Goodell destroying the tapes and the evidence was incredibly stupid and shortsighted. I have no idea what reason he had for it and that’s what’s opened up all the new drama. I’m much more angry with the NFL than the Patriots at this point and that seems to be the thrust of Specter’s issue.
Still, the “everyone’s doing it”, “the tapes don’t help” and the “it’s not cheating” rationalizations really need to stop.
Ugh, just saw it reported that the schedulers have picked the worst possible matchup as the Thursday season opener. Obviously it will be a Giants home game, so maybe you figure a matchup with anyone from the AFC North, or maybe hosting the Seahawks or something.
But instead, they picked yet another NFC East divisional matchup for a primetime game, and worse they picked the least interesting one possible. Redskins @ Giants.
You know that every team tampers with other peoples’ players, right? Herm Edwards was calling out the Bucs a week ago for tampering since they signed Jeff Faine before he had a chance to visit any other teams. And he’s probably right.
Every season a couple dozen guys get signed within the first few hours of free agency, and you know there’s no way an NFL contract gets negotiated in less than 24 hours- even the veteran’s-minimum ones.
I think the Browns/Giants game will be an interesting matchup and would’ve been a better first game. I’m anxious to test our elite pass protection against your elite pass rush.
Anderson was the least sacked quarterback in weeks 2 through 17. The team sack stats are inflated because Charlie Frye created 5 of his own sacks in 20 minutes in one game in week 1.
And we don’t run a quick-drop offense - we run a lot of passing plays that take time to develop - and Anderson is pretty much immobile. Anderson’s quick release plays a big role in the low number of sacks, but the pass protection was excellent.
Pretty amazing that the line was so good when arguably the best lineman was on IR.
It’s not looking too good for Bentley. You may not have read that after the surgery for his torn petallar tendon, he got a staph infection so severe that he was hospitalized for weeks and was at serious risk for having his leg amputated and he lots a lot of weight.
To his credit, he’s been working superhumanly hard to come back.
There’s some bad blood between him and the team, though. We’re not sure what the story is, but we think it has something to do with him going to do his own rehab away from the team doctors. They quietly reworked his contract so that he becomes a free agent at the end of the year.
It looks like the team may not expect him to play again.
That’s why I found it such an apt comparison. I’d wait for the avalanche of counter-arguments we saw against this particular logic when it came to stealing signals, but I expect all I’d hear is crickets.
A couple things are up for discussion in the owner’s meetings that I find troubling.
First is the issue of reseeding. I hate the very idea of this. If you win your division, you should get a home playoff game. Period. I suspect the owners will take less time coming to this conclusion than it took me to type it, so I’m not worried, but it still bugs me that it’s even a question. Worse would be if they wanted to add more playoff teams.
Second is the clearly racially-motivated hair length issue. Yeah, yeah, like two white guys might be affected. Give me a break on that; they may as well call it the dreadlock rule. I find it interesting that most of the pundits railing against this have shied away from the racial component and instead claimed that hair, being part of your body, is not part of the uniform and therefore not subject to such rulings. Uh, what? No jobs enforce rules about hair? Really? So if your salesman showed up one day with a giant green mohawk, hey, that’s part of his body, right? Puh-lease. I also can’t seem to remember any of these pundits railing against the Yankees when guys like Johnny Damon had to get clean cut and shaven before putting on the pinstripes.
The conservative owners might actually pass this one, and while I defend their right to do so, it would offend me if they did. I love it when the longhairs get dragged down by their hair; that’s all the incentive players need. If Marion Barber got tackled by his hair a couple-few times in a game, he’d be bald that Tuesday.
Hey, Brett Favre’s retired, but he still counts for 2007.
One thing you didn’t mention that I heard was talk of abolishing the force out. I wonder what kind of an uproar that will have. The defenders will really be able to use that sideline, but I don’t think people will be happy when a receiver gets blasted out of the air above the end zone and they don’t get the score.
Ironically, it’s the touchdowns that don’t get called correctly (according to the rule) anyway. The officials are all over proper enforcement of the force-out between the endzones, but the two times I’ve seen a force-out in the endzone, neither was correctly called. And when I say “correctly,” I mean using the same standard that the non-TD force-outs were called.
