I cannot believe that the Chargers pulled it off to sneak into this elimination game next week. What a crazy season. I was looking back at their losses this year, and a couple things struck me: how close all their losses were, and how tough their opposition was. Look at the strength of teams they lost to:
Division Leaders: Carolina, Denver, Miami, Pittsburgh
Wild Cards: Indy, Atlanta
Decent: Buffalo, New Orleans
At the start of the year, some of those seemed like easy wins (Car, Mia, Atl), but turned out to be good teams.
Can the league penalize an entire team for simply refusing to play? The Cardinals were simply a travesty yesterday - they just wanted to run out the clock, get out of the snow, and get back to Phoenix. They didn’t bother to put out the minimum effort on the field at all. It’s amazing that a well-proven football man like Whisenhunt would tolerate even the thought of his team e-mailing it in, but since they all did, the fault is his. For a franchise which rarely can even dream of the postseason, this was especially disturbing - there’s just no way they can get their game faces on in only two weeks from now. Bet big-time against the Cards, no matter who they play.
I do want my Pats to win, sure, but this wasn’t any pleasure to watch, not this time. A simple forfeit would have been more honest and less of a waste of time.
Perhaps I’m being unreasonably pessimistic, but must my Broncos destroy my soul every single year? I know, it’s hard to win games when you have a crap load of injuries, and it’s especially hard for the Broncos to win games when they don’t have a running game to speak of. But all I’m asking is for a basic level of competence that I know they’re capable of! Cutler can’t carry the whole team on his back. He shouldn’t be asked to.
I swear, next year I’m not going to get so emotionally invested. Really. I’m not.
I’m tempted to root for the cardinals as I’m generally tempted to root for historically shitty teams when they get a chance at some success, but a pansy dome team that folds because the weather gets a little rough is beyond my ability to tolerate.
I’m with you. I’ll probably root for the Colts again this year. Classy organization, classy coach, great players…and flying under some folks’ radars right now, apparently.
I was excited to see that all the NFC teams whom the Bears needed to lose last week obliged by doing so. The Vikings folded leaving the NFC North crown up for grabs and the Cowboys, Eagles and Bucs all shat away their opportunities. The Bears odds are still long, but I’m glad there’s still a outside chance.
That said, none of it matters unless they put away the Packers tonight on Monday Night and get a little payback for what happened in the last meeting. There were reports that the Packers were doing all their practicing indoors and the Bears were outside in the elements to prepare for what is going to be an insanely cold, blustery night game in Soldier Field. Perhaps the Packers, with nothing to play for, are not exactly selling out in their preparation. I have no doubt that they’ll be at 100% on the field, but maybe this means a few balls with slip out of their hands.
Brace yourselves for Kornheiser’s bitching and moaning about the cold in Chicago tonight.
Ya know, s’funny but I thought I had heard that at some point and I even checked just before I posted but nfl.com still had the game at 1:00 so that is what I went with. You would think the league would update its own web site in a timely manner.
**Telemark **I hear you, it is going to be bizzaro-world rooting for Mangini and Favre to pull this one out.
The Bears found a way to get it done, but damn, they didn’t deserve it. Thankfully the Packers implode even better than we do. One miserable side-effect of the Bears possible playoff hopes is that it probably buys Lovie another 2 years at the helm. Jesus this is a poorly coached team that struggles with the barest of fundamentals.
Interesting play on that muffed punt. The coverage guys had to decide if it hit the guy on the fly and choose whether to down it inside the 1 or go for a TD. Never seen that scenario before. Unfortunately the Bears players made the wrong choice. I thought it hit the return man on the top of the foot, but I understand that it wasn’t clear enough to overturn the ruling on the field.
Why the hell were the Bears getting so thoroughly dominated at the point of attack, especially on the offensive line, for the first 50 minutes and then suddenly are driving them off the ball for Forte to dominate the final scoring drive. Troublesome to say the least.
Orton really played awfully. Jaws was right about him staring down his targets. I could probably pick off a pass given that much forewarning. I know he’s facing nickel packages on every down and has WRs who can’t get any separation but those balls were all over the place tonight. Rodgers looked like a much, much better QB in the cold. I wonder what Hester could do as a slot instead of a wide, that would give him better matchups and force the Ds to put the nickelback on him instead of Olsen. Probably need a competent #1 on the outside to make that work.
Tommie Harris’s knee must not be healed because he was a major liability out there and our ends simply can’t get any pressure on their own. Glad we got to see Mike Brown go down with an injury finally, I was beginning to wonder if hell had frozen over, him playing 16 games is one of the signs of the apocalypse. A Payne and Steltz tandem at safety would be great if we were playing in the Big 12.
Thank God for Brad Maynard and Robbie Gould, let me tell you…
They already have been for a couple weeks now, but today was unreal. 8 solid hours on WFAN of sports talk radio literally screaming for him to be fired for gross incompetence.
He will never live down going for it instead of punting in that spot. Ever.
The funny part is that Mangini isn’t even in the top 10 of stupid, incompetent head coaches. I think he might even be better than half the coaches out there.
Isn’t it amazing? With all the people that play football in America, we can’t find more than a handful of NFL-level quarterbacks or NFL-level head coaches.
Bill Simmons always makes a joking comment about every NFL team employing a Madden Football geek who would patrol the sidelines and whisper into the coaches ear at the end of games so that the know when to kick a field goal, when to go for two, when to use their time outs and generally handle the simple, game management stuff that every Xbox owner out there can excel at from their couch.
For years it was a joke. Now it’s starting to look like a real possibility. It almost seems as if Madden works as a football simulator and that the fans legitimately know how to manage a game better than old, out of touch head coaches. Is it really that hard to know when to go on 4th down and when not to? When to kick that field goal when you’re down two scores and when not to? When to use that timeout as the 2 minute warning approaches and what part of the field to use? These guys are awful. Lovie Smith has taken the Bears to a Super Bowl, another playoff berth and might manage a third this season and he’s a complete moron. It’s simply evidence that the other coaches are even worse, and when you face a guy who knows what he’s doing it’s jarring and decisive.
It’s been my little joke that we’ll have a Mark Cuban in football some time soon, and when that happens, we’ll have the first Madden-to-NFL head coach, and he’ll have all that game management stuff down pat. Then other teams are going to hire “Football Simulation Theorists” as well.
It’s surprisingly difficult to present a compelling case for taking timeouts before the 2:00 warning. (Which you absolutely should.) Time is such a mundane thing, but analyzing the passage of time somehow becomes esoteric very quickly.
My favorite thing about Tom Coughlin is his attention to detail. He very rarely mismanages the clock. (Though I thought he did at the end of the Panthers game, but that was highly unusual.) He only challenges when he thinks the call was wrong, as evidenced by his NFL-record challenge percentage. He’s not shy about going for it on 4th but by the same token he is a big fan of using Jeff Feagles as the weapon he is. I don’t actually remember a time when I disagreed with his choice of whether or not to punt on 4th down, and that’s saying something. He never messes up the 2-point conversion decision.
I have to say, watching both the Jets and Giants is like night and day. Coughlin is a pro.
To followup on my comment that WFAN was wall to wall screaming for Mangini’s head on Monday – and I literally do mean screaming, as in they were actually screaming – yesterday it was somehow worse. It was very calm, dispassionate criticism, and it followed the same basic premise:
“It’s a given that going for it on 4th in that spot means he should never coach any level of football again. We don’t need to even address that. Let’s pretend that never happened; instead, let’s go over in excrutiating detail the countless other things he did in that game and others that warrant his firing.”
Where does it get tricky? If you are facing a team who is attempting to run out the clock and runs a play that finishes at 2:03, taking a timeout is the ideal solution. The subsequent play will stop the clock again, meaning you can limit the team to using 10 seconds or less on 2 plays leaving the maximum time left. Taking the timeout after the two minute stoppage means that you are simply wasting whatever seconds transpire between the first play and the 2 minute warning.
For example, if a team has 1st and 10 with 2:10 left, they can run a dive that gets tackled down at 2:05. You call timeout making it 2nd and 8 with 2:05 to go. Then they run another dive that gets downed at 1:59, leading to a stoppage and a 3rd and 6 play with 1:59 left.
The alternative is them running the 1st down play, and you letting the clock run down to 2:00. After second down the play would end at 1:54, leaving you with a 3rd and 6 with 1:54 to go. You just wasted 5 seconds waiting for the 2 minute warning to pass.
Subsequently, if you have the ball on offense or are getting the ball via punt as the 2 minute warning approaches taking a time out right before can allow you to have two consecutive plays where you can work the middle of the field or call a running play without risk. This difference is more subtle, and depends on if you have 3 timeouts or just 1, but it’s still clearly better to use the time out before the 2 minute warning so you can get two plays in the fewest number of seconds.
One issue is that the offense in this situation has more options if you call the timeout at 2:03. Since the warning will stop the clock, they don’t have to worry about incomplete passes, or going out of bounds.
Another thing is that it has happened that an offense trying to run out the clock has thrown an incomplete pass / gone out of bounds, or turned the ball over, saving the defense from using a timeout. If you don’t call the timeout at 2:03, it might be possible to get the ball back without using it at all.
Your explanation has a lot more words than one would expect if the explanation were simple. And even though I already understand fully, I had trouble following it. Somebody who didn’t understand to begin with likely wouldn’t be convinced.
Bearflag offered a nice explanation many moons ago. Again, it’s quite wordy for something that should be simple to convey. (Post 16. Link goes to the question.)
EDIT: And yes, that was as hard to find as you think.
I’m not sure I agree with the idea that a wordy description means that the concept is complicated or difficult to grasp. I think that if you tried to explain the benefits of running a short pass towards the sidelines versus a run or pass to the middle in the 2 minute drill, it’d be a heck of a lot wordier. Yet all the coaches and fans seem to grasp that without too much difficulty.
