Correct. Even a week before the draft, at least a few draft honks were saying there was a chance Rodgers would go #1. And every draft board (not mock drafts, necessarily) I saw had him in the top 5.
Coming as it did in the twilight of the Mike Sherman era, that draft day was a real highlight of my Packer fandom. I drunk-dialed a lot of friends that afternoon.
As a fantasy owner of him, I agree. Just think of what he could do with an actual offensive line around him…he might even have enough time to throw to Jennings once and awhile!
I’d like to do a little follow up on my Jerome Harrison pimpage. He got his first 2 starts, and against Baltimore he put up 16/52 rushing and 5/33 receiving. Which is not exactly spectacular, but the team was trailing by 60 points the entire game so it wasn’t exactly run friendly, especially against that defense. Pretty decent turnout.
In his second start against the Bengals, he put up 29/121 and 5/31 against a pretty decent defense. I was actually somewhat dissapointed - he didn’t look as good as he usually does, but those totals are solid. It didn’t help that he had Hank Fraley working at right guard - Fraley can’t even handle the run blocking requirements of a center because he’s too weak, so I’m guessing he’s a black hole at guard (still gotta review the game). According to last week’s football outsiders adjusted line yards, Cleveland is 5.2 left, 3.something center, and 0.0 right. The left side is great, the right side is utterly terrible. How often do we run left, though? About 17% of the time. Fantastic.
If the O-line gets their shit together, he can be better. But I hope he’s earned his spot as the starter. There’s no point in going back to Lewis at this point. See what the kid in the last year of his contract has. What are you going to do, ride an old man to a 4 win season? What’s the point?
Browns fans are calling for Lewis to be used Jamal Bettis style on short yardage and the goal line, but Lewis has never been a good short yardage runner. He’s too hesistant to hit the hole and has bad short-area quickness. People just look at a running back’s weight and say “oooh, he’s 245, he must be a good short yardage back” regardless of actual running style. Lewis has always been a freakish size/speed combo that’s so good because, while he’s slow to accelerate, once he gets up to speed he’s ridiculously hard to bring down. That style of game doesn’t translate well to short yardage, and he’s clearly lost some speed in his old age.
Crabtree signs for 6 years, and is expected to practice today.
I’m going to be an early predictor that he is a big old bust.
I’m not. Too much physical ability. He can do all the stuff you can’t coach, and if anyone is going to get him to fly right, it’s Singletary. Plus, it can’t hurt to have Ike Bruce as your “resident old guy at the position”.
Eli Manning provided compelling evidence for this in his rookie season on par with the Browns of 07. Back in 04, Kurt Warner was benched in favor of the rookie despite the team having a 5-4 record. This change was only about sacks.
Week 7: Giants lost to the Lions 28-13, with Warner giving up 6 sacks. The Lions finished the season ranked #14 for sacks.
Week 8: Giants crushed the Vikings 34-13, but Warner gave up another 5 sacks. Minnesota finished #12 in sacks.
Week 9: Giants lost to the Bears 28-21, with Warner surrendering 7 sacks. Chicago finished #23 in sacks that year.
Week 10: Giants lose a squeaker to the Cardinals 17-14, with Warner allowing 6 sacks. Arizona finished the year #15 in sacks.
Week 11: Eli gets his first career start, losing to the Falcons 17-14. Eli gave up just 1 sack to Atlanta, who finished the year #1 in sacks. Think about this for a minute. Atlanta – the best sacking team in the league – is getting ready to play against the Giants, who have just given up 24 sacks in the last four games. Not only that, but the Giants are starting a rookie for the first time in his career. Sack heaven! And yet, they only sacked Eli once.
All told, Eli the inexperienced rookie gave up 13 sacks in 2004 compared to Kurt Warner, the grizzled veteran, who gave up 39. Giants fans were in almost unanimous agreement that Kurt Warner held the ball too long, prefering a sack to an incompletion because sacks don’t count against your passer rating.
I doubt that was the motivation. Getting hit full speed by some 280 pound monster is not fun, and certainly not worth a little stat padding. It’s just a matter of how long it takes to make decisions, how the play is structured, how willing a player is to check down early, etc.
Yeah, Warner has always been a hold-it-'til-they’re-open kind of guy. Worth considering if deciding on which QB to start, but nobody really thinks Warner has his own stats on his mind while in the pocket.
Still, I agree with my father-in-law, sacks and incompletions should be assigned to the player at fault, like errors in baseball. If an O-lineman just gets beat, the resulting sack is on him. If the QB holds the ball too long, it’s on him. If it really was a coverage sack, then blame the receivers.
Throwaways should be to passing stats like walks are to batting average in baseball. If a receiver lets his own leg get credited with a “pass defended,” then the pass should be a wash to the QB’s stat line. Tipped balls that become INTs are at the scorer’s discretion.
It’s too subjective - there are too many times where it’s ambiguous. Let’s say an O-lineman has his guy locked up, but then the QB scrambles, giving the D-lineman a new angle, and he gets away from his guy and sacks the QB. Blame the QB or OL for that one?
DL breaks through the line right after a play starts, but the QB sidesteps him and he’s pushed out of the play. But during the 2 seconds the QB lost due to having to move, another D-lineman comes free and sacks him 4 seconds into the play. Is it the QB’s fault for holding the ball too long, the O-lineman who let the initial rusher in who disrupted the play, or the O-lineman who was blocking the guy who got the eventual sack 4 seconds into the play?
Same deal with interceptions. Did the receiver run a bad route, did the QB tip the defenders with his eyes, etc. Too hard to assign blame, especially if you don’t know the playcall, route tree, sight adjustments, etc.
These things are too ambiguous often enough that I wouldn’t want the stats to try to attempt to reflect this. And ultimately it’s not that important - football isn’t a stats-dominated game the way baseball is.
Thankfully so.
You guys missed one of the more ridiculous ones: Spiking the ball counts as an incompletion. Talk about (some) stats totally missing the point…
Yeah, but a quarterback’s stats are generally a pretty good indicator of how good he is when you take them in large numbers. Single-game stats are obviously pretty meaningless, since a wideout tipping a pass to a defender might drop the QB’s passer rating by 25 points, but stats for a full season are generally instructive.
Funny story re: week 4. A co-worker just told me he spent five minutes trying to adjust the settings on his TV. Ha, the rest of us have spent three times that laughing at him.
I don’t think you’re early. 
So Crabtree got six years and $32 million, with $17 million guaranteed after turning down five years and $20 million with $16 million guaranteed. The final deal has less guaranteed money than the contracts of Heyward-Bey and Monroe. If he plays well, the deal could be shortened to five years and he’d be able to get more money.
The actual contract numbers are a bit lower because the total contract value is based on him playing (or at least being on the roster) for all 16 games this season. That’s not going to happen for obvious reasons.
Some of the Browns players and coaches thought that the field goal at the end of the game was a miss. I certainly got that impression at first. It’s hard to tell.
Complete and total sour grapes on the part of Ryan. The back of the endzone view makes it look like it was a miss, if you can watch it from the “behind the kicker” view, it’s clearly in. Clearly.
He has great medieval-looking hair, though.
I’ll have to look again tomorrow.
Again, where’s the video from the opposite angle? I saw it. It was good.
And what, Ryan, waiting until Friday to complain? Boo fucking hoo on you, you well-coiffed bastard son of a bastard.
Don’t know, I just saw what they showed on NFL network. I don’t care that much really… I mean, come on, Shaun Rogers - you can’t block 3 kicks in a game? WTF?
But I saw the story around multiple sources sos I thought I’d share it here.
He is sort of awesome. He looks like he should be swinging around a broadsword.
I assume he didn’t say anything because he didn’t have a press conference until Friday. I mean - it’s not like saying it earlier would’ve caused them to review it or something.
