BuffOrange

True, but I think it's sort of human nature for a 21yr old to get lazy when that natural talent alone has made them elite on every level up to that point in their life. I'm more surprised a lot of these guys work as hard as they do to be honest.

I suppose he was in the middle of the bench with his head up when we were losing by 18-21 to NE & Oakland. I gotta question Fitz for not duplicating this winning sideline body language in games they lost. Also what if it were a Landry or Knoll or Walsh or Dungy coaching staff? No doubt it was this master killer instinct that blew 2score leads in the 4th Qtr vs the Rams/Panthers in two of their SB wins so that a FG was necessary at the end.

And this would be where we differ. It's beside what point - the point that your most important position, if he's not an elite player, needs to either compile unusually good stats by his own standards in the reg. season, or mount important drives in the 4th Qtr of the postseason to win a championship? Umm yah I would concur that's going to hold true most of the time. That's not saying much more than you need to score more points than the other team.

Bill Barnwell kills it. Players are stupid.

Anyone know how the redzone offense ranked? I don't remember it being that bad. I'm sure there were teams in the playoffs who were worse in that category. Of course part of the battle is getting there, which we did better last year than seasons before. "Lack of killer instinct, couldn't run to finish games" - I don't know what that means or how it falls under coaching. We didn't lose a ton of games with the ball & the lead in the 4th Qtr. There was the Cincy game with the bogus incomplete pass, and we didn't really run effectively that whole game. The aggressive playcalling vs the Giants pretty much epitomizes killer instinct, but of course people b!tched about it because Fitz threw a horrible ball. Obviously the hope is that Mario & Kyle Williams help both the run & pass defense, and Fitz doesn't play like post-Washington. Those 3 things alone are most important & really ought to be enough to get to 10wins. To say they'll close the gap by fixing 6 different things I'd say is an understatement.

Namath is always a good debate. I used to be the first to argue he was a fraud, but he shows up on so many 'overrated' lists now that I've sort of backed off that point some. Not just to be a contrarian, but the more people who say you're overrated, the less overrated you are, ya know? Obviously it's not fair to compare his completion % or yardage to Peyton Manning, but even compared to his contemporaries his TD/INT ratio looks a little out of whack for such a legend. Look at his line from this AFL title game vs the Chiefs the year after SBIII - 14-40, 140yds, 0TDs, 3ints? Ouch. I feel like Vinaterri will get in the HOF for a lot of the same reasons. Ultimately the HoF is as much about telling a story about football as it is selecting the best players. And you can't really tell a story of the league without Namath, so I guess that's fine. Plus almost anyone who saw him play swears he was really good, and I'd prefer to have enough faith in humanity to trust those people weren't all 'brainwashed by charisma' idiots. Then again people still actually argue Ali was the greatest athlete ever, so who knows.

The Patriots were not a pass-heavy team in 2001; I don't know where you get that from. '03 yes, '01 no. I don't know how many 80yd areal TD drives they had in the reg. season (I would bet no more than average), but I believe they had zero in the postseason. They didn't need to thanks to Walt Coleman, Kordell Stewart, and Ty Law. Re Brad Johnson - it's pretty clear that outlier TD/Int ratios in a single season have a lot to do with luck. See Eli's 2010 season. On Eli you're making the same point as everyone else; he was mediocre until he won the SB.

Right, and hating on Dallas fans is never controversial, so... Of course you're allowed to cheer whoever. I'm also allowed to not like it. No argument on our fans; I'd have a lot fewer posts if I thought we were all exceptional.

I get sick of the "well there's a lot of transplants because the economy sucked" explanation when the same is true for Buffalo/Cleveland/Detroit, etc - that doesn't explain all these Steeler fans everywhere. Any team that was good in the 70's (Pittsburgh/Dallas/Miami/Oakland) picked up a lot of fans with no association to the area because they were one of the 'cool teams' to root for. Ya I'm sure they have some good fans but f*&^ 'em.

I like the optimism, but just because 9-7 got it done last year doesn't mean it will this year. It probably won't. Plus "should've beaten Cincinnati" is a classic homer mindset that basically thinks your favorite team is entitled to win every game that's close. I know we had the lead and were hurt by a bad call, but we really got torched in that game statistically and scored on a freakish pick6 (the sort of play if you'll recall, people were ridiculed for calling it 'unsustainable' early in the year). I know what you mean though, the difference between being in and out of the playoffs is pretty narrow; and I also don't care about the preseason.

It's been years since I watched one of these, but if they're anything like they used to be you can you watch the whole thing. I used to watch the marathons just to laugh at the spin of horrible teams like the Cardinals back in the day. "With their week 2 win coupled with a promising draft (skipping over the other 14 games) the future looks bright with Vince Tobin leading the way".

Similar circular argument to the "Eli was clutch in SB's" point. What did he do pre Super Bowl that indicated he could QB 2 SB winning teams - he was good in college and had a nice rookie year? The current backup for the Bills has that going for him too. In any case I agree with those saying the game is so different now that the guys from the 70s/80s aren't too relevant to the quality of QB you need today.

I would agree that 2007 doesn't matter much with respect to 2012. But I think it's probably more relevant (or less irrelevant?) than '08 or '09 when Brady was either not playing, or just coming back from a shredded knee. The last two years are obviously much more relevant than either, a span in which they're 27-5, and haven't lost to Miami, or Baltimore, or Denver, or Houston, or Indy.

I foolishly thought a certain level of exaggeration was implicit in 'seem'. But you're right they haven't gone undefeated vs the other 30 teams or 8-0 vs any division foe in your arbitrarily picked last 4 years (I wonder why you didn't pick the last 2 or 5 or 6 years). Thanks for setting me straight.

Because the Patriots don't play the Giants once, much less 6 times and they never seem to lose to anyone else?

It's more the norm than the exception because winning championships is more the norm than the exception. 1 team out of 32 does it in the NFL. Out of the 31 that don't, some of them were hyped, most of them weren't. Which leads us to another aspect of human nature - selection bias, of which you obviously suffer from greatly.

Yah, they crushed it on the road in the finals throughout their first 3peat and were actually very mediocre at home. The 2nd 3peat post-baseball was just the opposite.

And the point of this thread is whether an average guy can score Kate Upton, irrespective of how much his stock may increase afterwords. So you can see why ranting about how clutch Eli was in Super Bowls is pretty pointless.

Could throw Rypien in there too, although he had a fantastic year. The two guys after Dilfer were pretty marginal too - Brady wasn't yet Brady in '01, and Brad Johnson in '02. Those early 2000's were a brutal mini-era. I think Jim Plunkett would qualify too, though I'm too young to really say.

That's fine I guess, but they still have to win. I remember a lot of the same quotes in the Donahoe era after the Spikes/Milloy signings.

Well history doesn't really agree. Only two teams have swept the middle 3 games at home (one of which was done with an asterisk as the refs pretty much handed Miami Games 3 & 5 in '06).

Meh, there isn't much evidence that this format favors the '3' team. It's sort of high-risk, high-reward from a drama standpoint because Miami being up 3-2 is the only interesting scenario after 5 games. Yup.

Fair enough. I've never been down there for any extended time so I'd have to take your word for it. It just seems to me that for every one of you or Cynical, there's about a dozen 'Christian-phobes' who have spent their whole lives in the the northeast or California (makes sense because this is where most of them live) where the extent of their misfortune is dealing w/ the word 'God' in the pledge of allegiance in school and pretending like that's a crime against humanity.

So one of the few good football writers around can also write basketball. Barnwell on Clutch

Can you give some examples of their beliefs being "jammed down your throat every time you turn around"?