silvermike

I'd give up ten catches a season just to have a TE named Bear.

Good freaking gravy. There are more college graduates in this thread then in three years of the Alabama football program?

I think the calculus is this: DE is by far the most expensive of those four positions in free agency. Draft one in the first round. Tight End has the least available talent in free agency - round 2. Then you're looking for a center, and an LB in free agency with lots of good choices. I'd target Dansby and Brown, but it's not critical with the options out there.

Gotcha. No argument here. Playing pro football means pushing your body past what's comfortable. It must be extremely tempting to take plays off, slack a bit, go at 95%. If the coach lets you off the hook for it, then yeah, you're probably going to slide a little bit. You need coaches who make sure when you're playing at 99.95%, you have to explain what happened to the last 0.05%. I think it's possible that there are coaches who do this, but then stick up for their guys to the press all the way. I don't think a good coach should hang his players out to dry to the media, but there's no sense that Jauron is any different behind closed doors. The fact that guys who make repeated mental mistakes - like Duke Preston - love their coach so much makes me think that he lets'em off the hook for it, and they don't do anything differently. I'd be more enthusiastic if the praise for Jauron was coming from players who are notably working hard and showing improvement.

I'd say last year, the worst coach in the league was the hardass Rod Marinelli and the best was the soft-spoken Belichick. Sideline/press conference emotion isn't a good indicator of coaching talent; it's something you pay attention to when you're already doubting the HC.

Sounds like a recipe for fines, suspensions, and 15-yard personal fouls. Rex Ryan so far has shown he's a top-notch defensive coordinator when he has world class talent, and that he's got a gift for working the New York media. I'm not going to crown him coach of the year just yet, but I do understand why Jets fans are excited.

Look, either Kollar is the best man available for the job, in which case we should have kept him, or else he wasn't, and he should have been fired. It's possible that Jauron told Kollar he would be fired, and gave him the chance to start looking for other jobs and they let this thing happen. That's the only possibility.

Did you see the standings page? The Bills are 17-0, with the asterisk saying "This does not reflect the NFL standings"

Yeah - with the exception, I think, that they're in a scheme that they know how to play in. Look at the Steelers - they've been a great defense for 30 years, and I don't think it's *because* they run a 3-4, I think it's because (in part) that they've decided that they're a 3-4 team, and stuck to their guns. They bring in players who are good at the 3-4, they train their players to be good at the 3-4, and they end up with a team of guys who are good at the 3-4. The added the zone blitz to the scheme and kept on going. You can do this with any scheme.

Fewell has actually been fairly clever working within the boundary of the Tampa 2. There have been blitzes: Mitchell particularly has fired in a few times, which is how he ended up leading the team in sacks. Scott, Whitner, Wilson, and Youboty have also ended up in the backfield on occasion, a deviation form the normal Tampa 2 pattern. Meeks is probably the most conservative - the Colts blitzed less than any other team in the league last year. I just checked the numbers: Their defensive line accounted for 100% of their sacks. No sacks from a single linebacker, safety, or cornerback. I wouldn't mind bringing Meeks in as a consultant on the Tampa 2, but I don't think he'd necessarily make a better DC than Fewell.

Yeah, it's almost always the athletes more than the scheme. The scheme is either how you take advantage of the athletes you've got, or maintain consistency in the athletes you pursue. We had 3-4, Tampa 2, and 4-3 defenses win the Super Bowl in consecutive seasons just now. Don't freak out about the system, just make sure the players are good at whatever scheme they're running.

I'd say that Ronnie Brown might be the best RB in the division. But I have no doubt Lynch is better than Thomas Jones.

Don't the Vikings play a Tampa 2?

The '08 and '05 Steelers are great beacuse of the GM and LeBeau, plus solid HC decisions. But the team was good before any of those guys showed up. They were good in the 70s running a primitive Tampa 2. This is a franchise that has won with multiple HCs, schemes, QBs, and GMs, and every other piece of the puzzle. But they keep a personality going all the way through.

There's some hope since previous Ravens DCs have failed (Lewis, Nolan). But on the other hand...he was running one hell of a defense these past few years, and getting great play from Justin freakign Bannan.

Hire Grimm!

I guess after all that time in Canada, Wake couldn't stand even one more game up there.

Roethlisberger did have an amazing rookie year, but I think that he'd likely have still sat on the bench behind Drew Bledsoe his rookie season in Buffalo, in which the Bills probably would have been worse, considering it'd be the same team with Ben doing JP's bench duty and no Lee Evans. We'd go WR in 2005 and probably have grabbed Mark Clayton...I'm not sure where they'd go after that.

The truth is, I think you can make a pretty good case that Pittsburgh is the finest franchise in the NFL. They've had 3 coaches in the past 40 years, and each one of them has made a Super Bowl, and I don't have too many doubts that Tomlin will win one before his time is up there. This is their 7th trip to the big game, and they've had how many AFC championship game apperances? 15? Something like that. The Steelers are the Bills 1988-1996, except they've been like that 1970-2008.

Was he MVP his year? Or did it go to Faulk or something?

http://www.pro-football-reference.com/lead...perc_career.htm There are three retired kickers in the top 25. And they all retired in the past three years.

There's at least a chance that Andre Johnson is an NFL-caliber QB away from being the best WR in NFL history, yet we may never know. Calvin Johnson, as well.

There was definitely something wrong with Leinart. Maybe just didn't have the heart to play in the NFL. If Kurt retires, we'll see if he's gotten his head together. Marv did say they were looking at Cutler as far as QBs went, if they decided to go in that direction. Passing on him seems like a bigger problem right now.

For everyone ragging on this Super Bowl matchup - and I'll say I haven't heard it too much here, but plenty from my friends - if the Arizona Cardinals were any other team with that roster and that coaching staff, I think this would be hailed as one of the great Super Bowl matchups of all time. If the Cowboys had Fitz, Boldin, Whisenhunt, and Warner, this game would be HUGE. Whisenhunt & Grimm vs. the team that jilted them for an outsider. Kurt Warner getting his shot after being cut twice. Great defense vs. great offense. There's a lot of stuff going on here. I'm really excited about this game.

Larry Fitzgerald is almost certainly the best WR in the league right now. In good circumstances, Evans is a solid, Pro Bowl kind of WR, but he's not #1.