If that’s the case he should have written “Has he ever heard of Steve Young?” I didn’t write the book. heh. It doesn’t make a ton of sense addressed to me, y’know?
Wow, just shows how different sports fans can view things.
Even if the St. Louis Cardinals (wrong sport, I know) hadn’t won the World Series in 2006 (by far their worst team of the run), I’d still much much rather have been a fan of those teams (2000-2006) than, say the Marlins.
Sustained excellence is worth watching to me. Mediocrity punctuated by fluke runs to titles is not.
Exactly. I have a vague attachment to the Marlins (they were the only Florida team when I moved here) but I’m very, very happy to be a Rays fan. Their ability to win when they’re trying to is matched only by their gall in expecting people to buy tickets (and fund a stadium!) when they aren’t.
So we’re writing off the Buc’s Superbowl as a fluke? They didn’t earn it, they just got some lucky bounces? (That is also a loser’s mentality, btw.)
Well, yes. Superbowls typically are.
The 2002 Buccaneers had a historically good defense (first in overall defense by nearly 40 yards per game, and first in scoring defense by 2.9 PPG) and a middling (#18) offense. The combination was repeated several times over the next six seasons, but never resulted in anything better than a one-and-done playoff appearance.
Playoff success requires two things: (1) get there, and (2) get lucky. Teams which get there a lot tend to get lucky more, because they have more opportunities to do so, but in general a team’s regular season performance tells you much more about how good they are than their playoff performance.
People say quarterback but they don’t mean the guy who takes the snap from center. They mean a certain mythology that varies from person to person. An effective quarterback, as far as I’m concerned, is one that helps get the ball from one part of the field to the other and scores some points. Same as an effective right tackle, or an effective receiver.
How they do it, who gives a shit. (Answer: a certain kind of fan who believes in magic when it comes to sports.)
So, again, the reason people say that Vick or Vince Young can be an effective quarterback is because, by and large, when they’re the quarterback, the offense is effective. I’m not even touching the rest of it.
I actually wouldn’t quibble with this statement as it applies to players, or even coaches. Certainly I don’t want my starting middle linebacker thinking “Well, if we can just be Top 8 team for the next 6 years, we’ll have a 55.2% chance of winning at least one Super Bowl!” However, I do want my General Manager thinking like that, and I especially don’t see the sense in a fan holding that it’s the best or it’s nothing. There’s value in a 10-6 season, both for it’s own sake, and because if you string enough of them together, sooner or later you may get hot at the right time and win a championship (e.g., New York Giants, 2005-07).
Far be it from me to tell someone else how to be a fan, but, gracious, that sounds like a recipe for sadness (especially if you’re unlikely enough to have been born in, say, Cleveland). As a whole, I actually enjoyed the '08 Giants season more than the '07 season. The week-in, week-out dominance, being the consensus best team – it was huge fun, and I was emotionally invested right from the start. The '07 playoff run was amazing, off course, but before that the season had been pretty frustrating, such that I’d almost written them off, and the playoffs were just a nice treat.
True, but it definitely works both ways. Compare 2006 Tom Brady, throwing to Reche Calwell and Troy Brown, with 2007 Tom Brady, throwing to Randy Moss and Wes Welker. He didn’t magically become a different guy in the offseason. They exchanged bad receivers for good ones, and the passing game went from mediocre to historically great.
ETA: Er, in the post previous to this one, that should be “… unlucky enough to have been born in Cleveland.”
Why is it accurate to say the quarterback’s job is to “make receivers good,” in any event? The quarterback’s job in the passing game is to get the ball to smart spots. The receivers’ job is to create those spots and capitalize on them. Both aspects are required, or the passing game suffers. And when a statement is exactly as true as its opposite would be (see, for example, “Defense wins”), you have to ask whether it’s a meaningless statement.
And it’s ludicrous to say that Miles Austin was manufactured by Tony fucking Romo, or anything of the sort. What happened to Roy Williams, then? Wide receiver, as it turns out, isn’t a position where talent works the way it works in every other position in every other sport. There are no good wide receivers, just good quarterbacks conferring their blessings.
Can we compare the 2007 Brady to the 2009 Brady? Same WR crew, but Brady had almost as many attempts, but 500 less yards, 22 less touchdowns, and more interceptions. Sure you could blame it all on his knee, I guess, but comparing his most phenomenal season to one of his most pedestrian skews the stats a bit. And Wes Welker wasn’t Wes Welker until he had Brady throwing to him, and Moss was coming off a not great years with the Raiders.
I don’t think QB’s make the WR or the WR make the QB, it’s somewhere in between. It’s a helluva lot easier to get stats while throwing to a phenomenal WR than a mediocre one for sure, though. And the really great QB’s generally do have a really great WR or two to throw to. Manning had Harrison and Wayne. Montana had Rice. Unitas had Berry. Marino had Clayton. To me, it’s a bit of both.
Your continued evasion proves the counter-argument. If you’re not willing to address it, why should we continue to discuss it?
There are three reasons why Brady’s 2009 was not as good as his 2007: the knee, normal regression to the mean, and an historically difficult slate of pass defenses; FO has it as the most difficult schedule for a QB since at least 1993. Using advanced stats largely corrects for that last one, and last year Brady was 1st in DYAR and 2nd in DVOA (so, another fantastic season). And I hardly think it’s a coincidence that Brady’s most pedestrian season coincided with his most execrable WR corps.
Hey, no argument here. I’m just saying that you disregard the importance of WRs at your peril. There was a time when I wouldn’t be the guy pointing this out. Used to be that the smartest franchises were New England and Philly, and they were treating WRs as largely fungible, so it was de riguer in the geek-fan crowd to write them off as over-hyped. Recently there’s been something of a reappraisal.
Philadelphia has named Michael Vick the starting Quarterback.
As a Giants fan, let me just say that this is fantastic news. Vick will hold them to mediocrity, and their relationship with Kolb is likely too strained to survive, so, in a year or two, when they realize the mistake they’ve made, they’ll have to start from scratch at the QB position. This is the best news the Giants have all year.
Oh, I don’t know about that. You disregard the possibility that Kolb is in fact terrible (in which case, in terms of Giants’ win probability both short and medium term, this is a bad thing). It seems to me that you’ve always been the NFC East discussion participant with the rosiest-colored non-homer glasses when it comes to the Eagles, though, so I suppose you trust the Reid machine more than I do.
True, we’re working with a very small sample size on Kolb, so it could be that he isn’t worth a damn, but in that case the Eagles are boned regardless, since Vick surely isn’t the answer. It’s also true that I’ve tended to be quite sanguine about Philly’s choices and chances, but this is the first real howler I can remember in a while. Christ, does Andy Reid not grasp the concept of strength of schedule? Vick has looked good (not great) against a team that hadn’t gameplanned for him, and then the Detroit Lions. This is not a good test of one’s abilities.
I’m wondering if Reid sees the problems with the offensive line as a potential problem for Kolb getting sacked. And, he is using Vick as sack cannon fodder (Plus he has the legs to avoid trouble far easier) for a few weeks to allow Kolb more time to heal from the concussion. Maybe he heeded the lessons learned from Westbrook’s constant head injuries?
That’s probably giving him too much credit. But, it’s only sense I can make out of a decision that directly contradicts a summer of constantly saying Kolb was the guy and the fact that he traded the best quarterback the team has had in decades to give Kolb a chance to start.
If it were any other coach in any other situation, this move would reek of job saving desperation. Trying to scrounge out some extra wins in order to save some face with the front office. However, since Reid is himself more or less the front office, I can’t figure thats the case. Maybe he sees a weak division that could be won with a 9 or 10 wins this year and figures that Vick gives him that chance. I dunno.
I like the Vick as cannon fodder theory, except I don’t think Reid would have stressed that he made this decision based on Vick’s play and Vick’s play alone.
Just a mind-boggling decision, if for no other reason than Vick is a free agent next year and they’re gonna have to either try to resign him soon or let him walk. Then all you’ve done is wasted a year.
Re Vick starting, any transaction that gives rise to the following message board quote from football outsiders can’t be all bad:
FWIW, I’m on board with Varlos regarding the utility of Vick as a starting QB, and am dreading what this will do to the continued fantasy output of McCoy and Jackson. OTOH, if what happened to Leonard Weaver also happens to Vick, that won’t be so bad either.
I expect it will actually be good for McCoy. One thing running QBs do is open up opportunities for the running game in general; apparently this is a quantifiable effect. Atlanta’s RBs were always quite efficient playing in Vick’s backfield, and Warrick Dunn had some solid fantasy seasons from 2002-06. Maybe the only real concern is that Vick is going to snipe a lot of goal line carries.
Jackson’s value just took a hit, though. Maybe Vick’s arm strength will compensate for his inaccuracy somewhat on deep balls (though probably not much), but you can forget about Jackson being hit in stride on short throws and racking up the YAC.
One of the rumors circulating in the Philadelphia area is that Reid was being pressured by the team owner to make Vick the starting quarterback, and he caved in to that pressure. That actually sounds like a possibility to me, because 1) Reid never gives up on his starting quarterback, and his starting quarterback was Kolb, and 2) Reid had once again declared to the media that Kolb was his starting quarterback just 24 hours before he announced that Vick had that position.
I’m not saying that making Vick the starting quarterback was a good move or a bad move; just that it’s a stunningly un-Reid-like move.