Philip Rivers was (GM) A.J. Smith’s guy, while Brees was Marty Schottenheimer’s guy. They had given Rivers a huge contract (as the #4 pick),
Brees performed quite well during his first season as a starter (his second in the league), especially considering how horrible the Chargers were otherwise. The offense was basically LaDanian Tomlinson and a bunch of NFL Europe types- Tim Dwight, for example.
Unfortunately, he had a down year in 2003 and was actually benched for Doug Flutie for 5 games. That’s when they selected Rivers, but because Rivers held out Brees was the starter in 2004, and had a huge year (which coincided which the emergence of Antonio Gates). So, they franchised Brees for 2005 and figured they’d sort out who to keep at the end of the year.
When Brees tore his rotator cuff at the end of the season it made their decision a lot easier; it wasn’t clear whether he’d ever recover, and everyone saw Chad Pennington’s career (apparently) derailed by a torn rotator cuff that same season.
Remember, the Dolphins passed on Brees, who was a free agent, in favor of Daunte Culpepper, who’d torn all three knee ligaments and cost them a second-round pick. That’s how serious Brees’ injury was.
I asked a question in the previous page but it kind of got lost in the talk about ratings.
Anyone have ideas about the Giants passing while so far down with so little time left in the game? I have never ever seen a timeout while the other team is trying to kneel and end out the game. But, I guess it’s just something that is common and I had never seen.
On another topic that Really Not All That Bright made me think of. What makes Marty Schottenheimer such a bad playoff coach? Is it bad luck or does he do something that works really well in the regular season but not at all in the playoffs. It seemed like when he was with the Browns he would lose close close games to the Broncos. But after so many years I guess he has to be given the blame. Do you think any team will ever give him a chance again?
I’ll also go with bad luck. If you take a couple dozen coaches with a lot of playoff appearances, you’re going to have one or two with really lousy records after 15 or 20 years, even if they’re all equally skilled at coaching playoff games. I suppose it’s possible that, after a long enough time, it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. That is, in the run-up to playoff games, the players and coaching staff get too much into their own heads about the HC’s poor track record, and therefore underperform. But I have no particular reason to think that’s the case.
It’s not bad luck, he brings it on himself by being ultraconservative. Most coaches are way too conservative, in terms of risk involved in game planning, decisions on when to go for it on 4th down, risk/gain expectations from playcalling, etc. Marty is the most conservative successful coach of the modern era. When the game is critical like a playoff game and the other team is willing to beat him through pure risk taking aggressiveness.
I do think he realized the errors of his ways in his last year (2005?) and decided to go all out for it, and still lost to New England. The last one was luck.
If you ever come across the Herm Edwards Jets vs the Schottenheimer Chargers playoff game of I think 2004 you can see two coaches desperately trying to out-coward the other guy and lose. The most pathetic playoff game I’ve ever watched I think.
No, there comes a point where excessive caution is a losing proposition. You lose value relative to the default action. So at their level of conservatism you are leaving a large amount of value on the field so even normal aggression levels that are closer to optimal will walk all over them.
Say you’re defending 3rd and 3 from your own 20 yard line. If you’re playing Schottenhimer, you know he’s going to run off tackle behind the fullback, so you stack eight in the box and you cheat your free safety forward as well - you’ve got a pretty good chance of preventing the first down.
If you’re playing the Patriots, you can’t just assume Belichick’s going call a run - you have to make sure you’ve got a CB (possibly with safety help) on Moss if he heads for the end zone, keep someone on Faulk even if he stays in to block, and still have enough guys near the line of scrimmage to bring down Maroney if he get’s the handoff. If you bring everybody forward to stop the run, you’ll get burned in a heartbeat.
An off tackle run behind a lead blocker might have a 60%* chance of gaining three yards, compared to a much smaller chance of completing a 20 yard TD pass. But Schottenheimer will go for that run every damn time, and the defense knows it - maybe that takes the chance of a 3 yard gain down to 25%*. For the Pats, the 3 yard off tackle still has a 60% chance of success, because the defense can’t load up the line of scrimmage.
When you go for “pure risk taking aggressiveness” on a play call, it’s not just that one play - it’s something that affects the entire game.
While I agree that he’s generally hurt himself by being excessively conservative, the position that his caution is more damaging in the playoffs than it is in the regular season seems unduly speculative – how would you even go about gathering evidence in support of that argument? And, theoretically, why should we expect it to be true?
You could argue that his caution will cost his team more in very competitive games, which his teams are, of course, more likely to face in the playoffs. But then he should also have an unusually poor record in regular season games in which both his team and its opponent are playoff-caliber. We can dig up those numbers if we wish, but I think we’d both be surprised if they showed Marty as struggling there, as well.
I don’t really care enough about the issue to do research into it. But I don’t think the disparity between his regular season and playoff record can reasonably be explained by luck - he’s been in something like 20 playoff games, which is a very large sample size in terms of being an NFL coach. And he’s lost games on what were clearly conservative coaching decisions - not even subtle ones, but having the QB kneel to center a 50 yard field goal attempt instead of using the down to try to advance the ball and ridiculous stuff like that.
Totally agree with Beef about Marty in the playoffs, especially that terriible NYJ-SD game.
I think you also asked about the Eagles taking a timeout before punting. That’s pretty common when you want to eat as much time off the clock as possible; wait until it gets to 1 and call a timeout instead of snapping it with around 3 seconds left. As for calling timeouts when the other team is kneeling, you’ll sometimes see that if a hardass coach isn’t happy with the way his team is playing. Coughlin is definitely a hardass, and the Giants have been playing like little bitches lately, so you get dick timeouts. It’s the equivalent of having them run windsprints in practice or whatever.
Others have mentioned the defense, but the offense is very much improved this year. The most notable improvement is that both Colston and Shockey were injured last season. The running storyline on them in 08 was imagine how potent they’d be if Brees had healthy receivers.
New York is absolutely a baseball town, specifically the Yankees. Going against the Yankees in the World Series, basically every other channel on the dial has to figure no viewers from New York since they’ll all be watching the Yankees.
Favre Bowl is an unusual thing that doesn’t really reflect ratings reality. (hee!) I think the Yankees actually draw across the country, though, and wouldn’t want to guarantee any non-specialty NFL game (eg: Favre bowl) would easily beat them. If a NY football team were involved, the Yankees would be a mortal lock.
Was anyone else as disgusted by Rex Ryan’s postgame rationalization as the NY media? He had the gall to claim that the Jets outplayed Miami because they beat them in yards from scrimmage. WTF? The NY media has (rightfully, IMO) crucified him for this.
Anyone agree with him? And yeah, there’s a gotcha coming.
It’s not just the receivers - their running game is head and shoulders above what they had last year as well. Last season, they ran the ball less than 40% of the time for an average of 4 ypc - this year they’re running it more than throwing it for 4.5 ypc.
I don’t know if disgusted is the right word, but I wasn’t exactly thinking, “hey, classy guy.”
It’s ridiculous to assert that you outplayed the other team when you lose cleanly. Ryan knows damn well that special teams yardage and points count for just as much as offensive and defensive ones.
"I would have said something to [del]Buddy[/del] Rex, but he wouldn’t stand on the [del]field[/del] press conference long enough. He got his fat rear end into the dressing room.’’
Eh, it’s not completely absurd. For example, when I do my Picks next week I’ll be taking note of the fact that the Jets defense did perform pretty well against a solid offense. Offensively they also played well enough to win. Giving away 21 points on returns is inexcusable but in some ways it’s a bit of a crap shoot. I don’t think it’s likely that it will happen again and I’m willing to give Rex a little credit for adjusting after the ass whipping in the first game and if they’d have tackled Ted Ginn there’s a pretty good chance they’d have won the game.
I’m not ready to kill a guy for not reading from the stupid coaches script in a presser and sharing an actual opinion or emotion.