Yeah, Ryan Nassib looked pretty darn good. Better than Eli, sad to say.
Riiiight. Or, you know, it could be that for five years, up until last season, Eli was by any measure a solidly above average QB. And that, in those five years, the Giants played the Patriots four times, and every game was close, and they won three of them, so probably the *least *that could be said about those Giants teams was that they were a bad matchup for the Patriots.
Or, whatever, you can keep fighting old fights and making excuses.
Agreed. I’m not as much of a defensive purist as some, but I also don’t see the virtue of a league where holding an average team to 21 points is a significant accomplishment, and every year I’m becoming more fanatical about stoppages of play. It seems like it’s rare to string more than 2 or 3 plays to together without a penalty (usually an automatic 1st down), or a replay, or a mandatory and unnecessary replay. Let’s fucking go, already. A few years ago the league embarked on a quest to shorten games through rules & officiating tweaks, and worked: average game time went down by something like 10 minutes. I can’t believe they’re so eager to give all of that back so soon.
And, yeah, they seem to have added about half a dozen new varieties of ticky-tack fouls. I thought those “roll-up block” calls would be rare when I read about them, but they seem to be happening all the time (“Here you go, have 15 yards”). I’m not sure any DBs in the NFL (or college or HS, for that matter) even know how to cover receivers without using their hands at all, so this is gonna be a shit-show at least for the first season. And I saw something the other day I’d never seen before: a “blindside block” on a return. We have “block in the back,” which is fine, but a blindside block is essentially a block in the front, except the blocked player isn’t looking. Well that’s his fucking fault! Gah!
He didn’t say that Eli wasn’t an above average QB. He said Eli is horribly overrated. I took that as a response to the people who claim that Eli is an elite QB, thanks to his two Super Bowl rings, and not to those who say “yeah, he’s an above average NFL QB”. Eli is both an above average (we could argue the “solidly” v. “slightly” above averageness) and highly overrated. To me he (and Joe Flacco) are in the category of being very good at the right time, to win championships, but way to inconsistent overall to be considered great.
It’s still too early to get too excited, positively or negatively. But…
It looks like this is going to be a long, painful season for my Giants. Eli Manning looks awful in their new offense.
I was skeptical initially about Jadaveon Clowney- I thought he should have been DOMINANT in college, and questioned his work ethic. But so far, he’s looked VERY good. With him and JJ Watt, the Texans should be able to get heat on the quarterback with JUST the defensive line, allowing them to do a lot of creative things with their linebackers.
The Texans had a terrible season in 2013, but they weren’t a bad team. With a revved up defense and a quarterback who won’t GIVE games away (as Matt Schaub did several times last season), they could jump back to the top of the division this year.
Did you see the hit Jadaveon leveled on Atlanta’s RB in the second series Saturday night? I haven’t yelled that loud or slapped granny so hard in years, it was awesome! Nice to have something to cheer about again.
If nothing else PS week 2 was a remarkable turnaround from week 1’s ass kicking by AZ. I don’t expect the Texans to be much better than about 8/8 this year but I’m really liking Bill O’Brien and think we’re going to have sound, repeatable success for many seasons to come with him. Bob McNair deserves as much.
I don’t want to get into a big thing here, but was there ever really a large contingent out there arguing that Eli is, like, a Top 5 QB? Maybe a little bit after his 2011 season, but at that point it wasn’t a ridiculous position to take. The whole “Elite?!?!” clusterfuck always seemed to be more about confusion over what it means to be elite, not whether Eli was actually as good as Drew Brees.
And, look, a guy who never gets hurt, seldom gets sacked, throws for a ton of yards with pretty good rate stats, and (it has to count for something) was able to win two Super Bowls – even if he throws too many interceptions – is a very good quarterback, and I don’t see any way around that. If it turns out that last year was not an aberration and he was basically cooked at age 32, that would suck, but that shouldn’t really color our perspective on the preceding five year run, which is what **etv78 **was trying to do.
Eli himself seems to think he’s elite; he put himself in the class with Tom Brady.
That’s like saying a QB who is sub-average in passer rating among active QB’s, that has led the league twice, and been in the top 10 in 7 of his 9 seasons in interceptions, whose completion percentage puts him in the category with Kyle Orton and Jay Fiedler, and who won those rings thanks to his defense is a sub-average QB and you don’t see any way around it.
You can find stats that show he’s very good, that he’s very bad, and that he’s average. He’s all of those things. That comes from his inconsistency and his troubles with accuracy.
Never said he was elite. Very few people ever have in a meaningful way. Even Eli didn’t really say so: if you look at the whole quote, he’s going with a definition of elite that means “Top5, Top 10 kind of quarterback,” which is hardly a big exaggeration, and when asked he basically says ‘I’m in the same class as Tom Brady because Tom’s worked hard and gotten better and I’m trying to get better, too.’ Link. It’s an aspirational answer to a question that’s very hard to give a No to. (“Eli Manning lacks confidence!”)
Yeah, but I think you have to take a much more narrow view of things to get to “sub-average” than you do for “very good” (for 2008-12, at least). One position is, in reality, a lot more defensible than the other, even if both arguments can theoretically be made.
Some crazy penalty stats from the start of the preseason, from this Mike Tanier article. Through the first two weeks of preseason from last year and then this year, the number of Pass Interference, Defensive Holding, and Illegal Contant penalties that were called:
I think Eli is more capable of being a very good quarterback than one who completely sucks, but the fact of the matter is he’s completely capable of being both. Once again, that’s why he can be so overrated, because he’s woefully inconsistent and inaccurate.
Yeah, can’t argue with inconsistency being a fault of his.
OTOH, while he’s not as accurate as one would like, I don’t think calling him flatly “inaccurate” is quite fair. He typically finishes right in the middle of the pack in Comp%, but he’s also always thrown more deep balls than almost all the guys who finish above him, which depresses that number some. His accuracy is about average, and it’s one of his weakest points. The only area in which he’s actually bad is Interceptions (which, granted, is a pretty big fucking hole to have).
Just occured to me - the original illegal contact enforcement changes happened after the Pats beat up the Colts receivers in the AFC Championship game back in… 04?
The new batch of changes along the same lines but stricter happened following the Seahawks handling the Broncos receivers in the superbowl.
So whenever Peyton Manning gets stopped, the rules dramatically change to fix that.
The Panthers won last night so the locals are all agog. Jonathan Stewart looked good, but we know we can’t count on him staying healthy. Kelvin Benjamin is showing promise, and the entire new cast of receivers can’t really be much worse than last year’s group. The front 7 on D will be among the best in the league. The secondary is suspect though. They won’t give up a ton of points, but how many will they score? So much depends on Newton. He still makes way too many fundamental mistakes, but he’s extremely talented. If they game plan with the tight ends and RBs right, they will probably be in the 9-10 win range. In contention for a WC.
Absolutely yes, the NFL loves offense and loves Peyton Manning, not necessarily in that order. Bill Polian was on the competition committee back in 2004. Not sure who is the Peyton Manning sleeper agent amongst the current members of the committee…
[QUOTE=Wikipedia]
Chairman: Rich McKay (Atlanta Falcons)
Jeff Fisher (St. Louis Rams)
Stephen Jones (Dallas Cowboys)
Marvin Lewis (Cincinnati Bengals)
John Mara (New York Giants)
Mark Murphy (Green Bay Packers)
Ozzie Newsome (Baltimore Ravens)
Rick Smith (Houston Texans)
Mike Tomlin (Pittsburgh Steelers)
Well Gordon is going to get suspended for the year now that the NFL realizes they’re not going to get anything exciting out of the Browns offense with or without him. If Manziel got a big play to him I think it would’ve seriously affected the nfl’s internal position. But it’s a moot bag of shit now.
