Dibs

There are but few things that are worse for an intelligent and energetic internet forum than a Troll with Self Control. Imo

Welcome. So....Flutie or Johnson?

She's obviously lying to you. She likes your ukulele? That's like saying a girl saying that she prefers a small penis.

I think you missed my point. The new 2pt rule simply adds more short yardage plays. Short yardage situations are already extremely important to convert, particularly on goal line. If using a player like Tebow in these situations gave one a better chance at converting them it would already be happening.

I really don't see the logic in this. The 2 pt conversion is just like a normal game situation at the goal line.....and very similar to 3rd(4th) and short(1-2) midfield. If there was a significant way to improve ones chances where one could score 6 pts(or get a 1st down) by using a "specialist", I would think that teams would already be doing it.

My point here was that if the extremely unlikely event occurs that another player is clearly better than Glenn at LT (and that would be of sure probowl calibre), then Glenn should lose his starting spot. This would be better for the team both on the field and off(due to salary cap implications). If that meant he moves to OG, that would surely be preferable to him than being a backup.

It has Mario as the 9th best DE. It's hard to believe that these guys actually get paid for this junk.

In his 4 games last year, EJ showed large improvement when he was flushed from the pocket. In 2013, when this occurred he rarely(never?) looked up field for a receiving target. He apparently worked on this in that offseason and in 2014 this was corrected and he was much improved in that situation. I am far removed from having talent evaluating skills and even I noticed this in his games last year.

Not they I am advocating it in any way, but if he is moved to OG due to another player showing that they are a better LT than Glenn is (and that's a very big "if"), then losing him in FA would basically save $10+M in cap dollar for each of the next bunch of years.

HOF QB?

Here's an interesting tidbit regarding Orton last year. Orton's first 4 games: 95-141-1128-9-3 67.4% completion, 8.0 ypa, 104.0 QBR Orton's final 8 games: 192-306-1890-9-7 62.7% completion, 6.1 ypa, 80.4 QBR

Only 1 yard if we include the post season. I think that 1500 figure must have been plucked from the air.

McCoy, Felton, Clay, Harvin, Incognito.

Disregarding the Glenn angle, it would be fantastic if it turns out that both Henderson and CK become top NFL talents this season. More likely however, the Bills and Roman "loving what they are seeing" translates to "They are not going to be busts! They should contribute in a positive way this season."

Before I lambaste the linked article(and it is deserved of solid derision), I will try to put a few aspects that the article chose to use to back up their examples for their premise into perspective. Players in general will often have a productive season followed by a non-productive season(for whatever reason). Many of these players will only have a 1-3 year stretch of productivity. To target the instances where this happens to players coming off a heavy workload year is simplistic to say the least. To further take a player's outlier best season, which logic would dictate would be followed by a lesser season, and try to create an argument against heavy workload seasons because of said drop off is similarly simplistic. To highlight this, I thought to grab a random season from around a decade ago. Looking at 2004 we see 18 RBs who achieved 1000+ yards that year. When we look at their career stats we find 31 instances where a productive season was followed by a non-productive season. To only highlight the instances where this occurred in 370+ seasons without comparing it to the base averages provides meaningless information. The problem with the article linked is that it doesn't postulate a hypothesis and then list stats in order to prove/disprove said hypothesis. Instead it starts with the premise that the hypothesis is correct, and then tries to force and manipulate every situation it can in order to have it seem to support said premise. Most comments in the article are minimally misleading and smack with heavy bias, important information is (conveniently?) left out, and in one case there was even stat manipulation(disgusting). As I tend to be very long winded in these sort of posts I will keep my lambasting to a selected highlights version instead of making comment on every single example in the article(nearly every entry shows some sort of bias). I'll list them all later if you want though. Note: article is up to date as no RB has recently rushed for 370+ attempts in the last few season except for Murray last season. Of the 29 seasons listed, by my count, one could only count 6 to be fitting the situation, and even some of them are somewhat questionable. Here are a select few of the articles examples put into better perspective to highlight the immense bias in the article. Dickerson's(1986) 404: Was followed by a multi-team season. He started only 10 games due to this. His performance was actually very similar with 107.3 ypg at 4.6 ypc. Author comment: "Even E.D. couldn't handle 400+" Yes....he did. Ricky Williams(2003) 392: Williams missed all of 2004 with suspension/retirement, 2005 was a backup, 2006 missed season again due to suspension. Author comment: "Downslope started in 2002" If downslope means having a 392 carry year following one's best year and then being booted from league due to pot...sure. Jerome Bettis(1997) 375: If one takes his 1997 outlier season out, his career was very consistent both before and after outlier season. Curtis Martin(2004) 371: Martin indeed had his first sub-par year following his 2004 season. The fact that he was 32 years old having had 10 straight 1000+ seasons including a 367, 368 and 369 carry season obviously had nothing to do with the dropoff. Even the commentary for those that didn't fit the article premise was massively distorted. It seems that where the situation couldn't be manipulated by the author, that RB had some special "immunity" to the condition. Emmitt Smith being out 2 games for the first time in his career? Apart from missing a few games in a season is extremely common, Smith missed those two games due to holdout. Similar comment was made for Dickerson re: missing 2 games where he instead had held out due to contract issues. John Riggins' career ended 2 years later. This is true....but he was 36 and had followed up his 375 carry season with an equal performance at the age of 35! James Wilder apparently had a huge dropoff starting in 1986....which might mean something if he didn't have a huge upswing only 2 years earlier in 1984. He was a classic example of a RB having 1-3 good years in the league. His is only noticed due to his one heavy rush attempt year. Saving the worst till last: Rashard Mendenhall. According to the article he went from 385* carries, 1273 yards, down to 228 carries, 928 yards. Notes being "Workload caught up to him. Tore ACL in week 17." In order to squeeze another example into the mix that backs the author's premise he decided that for Mendenhall(and only for Mendenhall) he would add playoff carries. Mendenhall's real number was 324 carries....and was another example of the 1-3 good year back. This sort of data manipulation really puts this article into perspective. If we were to take the lead here and add playoff rushes to regular season rushes(as I did earlier), one would find a lot more RBs with 370+ seasons....and the vast majority of them would show to not support the theory. Selecting one of the rare situations that actually supports the theory(Mendenhall) when adding playoff carries into the mix is unethical behaviour for a journalist IMO. Lastly, why chose 370 carries as the benchmark rather than 375(or a different number)? Perhaps because at 370 carries we have two legit examples that seem to fit the theory(Okoye and Alexander)....and another that can appear to fit(Martin). Interestingly there are 7 RBs who had either 369 or 368 attempts in a season. 5 out of those 7 seasons actually showed an improvement the following year while 2 showed minimal dropoff. I personally don't think that rushing for 1 or 2 more times in a season is going to make all the difference.

I don't know what can be taken from this without some context. Bradham: TT has been great. He's been accurate and he's elusive. Taylor: ...probably the most athletic QB in the league. Who knows? Maybe they were actually raving about him....but maybe they were simply answering questions and these specific parts were taken to create an interesting narative for an article.

Thanks guys, I was initially compiling some of those stats but stopped due to them showing no correlation to virtually anything. The numbers are all over the place, particularly in regards to number of carries. Injuries, specifically at what time in a players career they occurred, greatly affected the numbers of carry statistics. The only conclusions one could draw from the number of carries stat were that players who played longer tended to have more carries, and that players who's careers were cut short due to injury tended to have less carries.....which was obviously expected prior to seeing any stats. I have however gone through and done the complete stats compiling playoff numbers into the season numbers(as Dave suggested)(see below). I have chosen not to add the receiving stats into the numbers as I am not only uncertain as to whether RB hits are fully comparable to WR hits, but also because upon seeing the final numbers feel that adding the WR stats into the mix will not alter things. If you feel strongly otherwise, I am fully willing to listen to good logical reasons to do it in the future. Though, as I said, the stats for this come across largely irrelevant, there was one aspect which I think was extremely interesting. I compiled numbers as NoSaint suggested into heavy run season categories(300-324, 325-349, etc). I should note at this point that prior to adding in the playoff stats there were remarkably few heavy run seasons. There was only 1 season from the 25 RBs that was over 400(Eddie George), and only 7 seasons in the 375-399 category. After adding in the playoff numbers, these fields were greatly expanded(17 over 400). Back to the point, the extremely interesting part is that the concept that a RB's heavy run seasons will effect their long term durability or lead to serious injury seems to be spurious logic. Using the "29 years old" from the OP as the 50/50 benchmark(roughly 50% chance that a RB will play well after 29 years of age)....the numbers break down as follows. 2x450+ seasons(2 players): 1 by 29 years or less(1 players) 1 by 30 years or older(1 players) 7x425+ seasons(4 players): 3 by 29 years or less(2 players) 4 by 30 years or older(2 players) 17x400+ seasons(11 players): 9 by 29 years or less(6 players) 8 by 30 years or older(5 players) 21x375+ seasons(12 players): 10 by 29 years or less(6 players) 11 by 30 years or older(6 players) 17 of the 25 players had 350+ seasons. As you can see, the heavy rush seasons are evenly split along the age delineation, and when you look at the numbers below you will see that similar to the basic rush number stats, the heavy rush season stats roughly followed the base rule of, "the more you play, the more you'll have"....meaning that compiling multiple heavy rush seasons didn't seem to have any affect on a player's longevity. I think the spurious logic involved with this is fairly obvious. One sees a top RB get injured....one notices that they had a lot of carries the previous few years....one sees it happen to multiple RBs.....one draws a causal relationship between the two things. We tend not to notice the many instances where RBs go through heavy rush seasons(and following) when they don't get injured, just as we don't look for reasons when a non-heavy rush seasoned RB gets injured(FJ is a good example in 2011). Obviously rushing 400 times in a season will increase ones chances of injury due to the extra touches, but I cannot see any correlation that it is a precursor to ending careers. Here is the list of RBs. If anybody can do better than myself and spot a pattern or trend I would love to know. Same criteria as in OP. Age of player's last 1,000 season("i" is injury finished, "*" is no wall or still playing)....Name....rushes(regular+post) to that point....(300-324 rush seasons, 325-349, etc) Sorted by rush attempts: 28i Deuce McAllister: 1325 (0,1,1,0,0) 28i Terry Allen: 1346 (0,2,0,0,0) 30i Priest Holmes: 1461 (1,2,0,0,0) 26i Terrell Davis: 1547 (0,0,1,0,0,1,1) 28 Chris Johnson: 1753 (1,0,1,0,0) 28i Shaun Alexander: (1,1,1,0,0,1) 29 Ahman Green: 1987 (0,1,0,0,1) 27i Clinton Portis: 2122 (1,2,2,0,0) 32 Ricky Williams: 2174 (1,0,0,2,0) 30i Corey Dillon: 2275 (2,1,0,0,1) 27i Marshall Faulk: 2281 (3,0,0,0,0) 31* Tiki Barber: 2337 (1,1,2,0,0) 29 Steven Jackson: 2412 (1,2,0,0,0) 31 Fred Taylor: 2412 (1,1,0,0,0) 29 Jamal Lewis: 2529 (1,1,0,0,2) 31* Frank Gore: 2572 (4,0,0,0,0) 31i Ricky Watters: 2725 (1,1,2,0,0) 29 LaDainian Tomlinson: 2741 (1,3,3,0,0) 29i Jerome Bettis: 2781 (2,0,2,0,1) 30 Thurman Thomas: 2893 (2,2,1,0,1) 30 Eddie George: 2939 (1,2,2,0,0,2) 29 Edgerrin James: 3006 (1,1,3,1,1) 30* Barry Sanders: 3153 (3,3,1,0,0) 31 Curtis Martin: 3480 (2,1,2,0,2) 32 Emmitt Smith: 4147 (0,3,1,1,1,1,1) McCoy for comparison: 26* LeSean McCoy: 1499 (1,1,0,0,0)

No. A "wild speculation" is a type of question...which is what you did in the OP. A reasonable question would have been somewhat similar to what you suggested mid-thread "Might Garoppolo unseat Brady during his 4 games as a starter?" Of course not. But if you can't see that the two we were comparing are vastly different then that is a reflection on yourself, not on me. That concept is totally irrelevant as you were speculating on things that are happening now in camp. I already acknowledged that I accept the concept of potential future changes to Brady/Garoppolo. I don't think I would have reacted as such....but I guess you'd know me better. Simply speculating on something does not necessarily mean one has thought things through. Are we having fun yet?

Yes. I understand the difference....and fully admit guilt in this case. Wild speculation is the former. Condemning wild speculation as ludicrous is the later. Though it may be the same coaches and owner....as I previously stated...it is not the same situation. Replacing a QB who has been injured due to seeing how good the replacement has played in many games through a season is totally different to knowing your QB is going to be out for 4 games and deciding to hold an open QB competition in camp.

The concept that you thought I was in some way trying to undermine Bledsoe's contribution helps explain why this conversation feels like herding cats. Post #55 was in reference to post #48....which was referencing post #41....which was your response to the concept that the OP was wild speculation. Your comment in post #41 in a stand alone context is quite reasonable. There is a chance that Garoppolo getting to start 4 games could unseat Brady. It isn't likely as Brady just won a SB and was MVP candidate....and in comparison to Brady unseating Bledsoe will be a much bigger task....but possible non the less. The problem you have here is that the above proposition was not the same as in the OP. By you speculating in the OP, "Is he saying the QB position is open and will be decided via competition?", you are saying that the coaches might not simply recognize a better QB on the field(in games) and stick with them over the aging incumbent(which you came to saying later in the thread...#41)....but are saying they could be actively, with predetermination, be opening up an open QB competition, which is honestly quite ludicrous.

What's your point? Brady taking Bledsoe's job during season after he got injured(and becoming a SB winning pro-bowler) has no correlation to the thread premise.

This is pretty much a non-story. Things might have been different had Manziel hit the kid with the water bottle.......but there was never much chance that was happening.

That's not exactly correct. Bledsoe didn't return during the season, he returned during the conference final when Brady got injured. He was the backup to a pro-bowl Brady at that point. His stats on the day were 10-21-102-1-0 Brady: 12-18-115-0-0

Those 4 reasons are somewhat stupid IMO. 1. Rex LOVES Rice from his 1 year cross-over at Ravens. I find this hard to believe. Why would the Defensive Coordinator of a team build such strong affection for a 2nd round offensive draft pick that is a backup the year that he is there? He might have LOVED his potential at that point, but that's about all I would think. 2. Run heavy, North-South runner system. Apart from the fact that we are loaded with RBs of all types and styles at the moment, if we are so fixated on needing a North-South style RB it really brings into question as to why we would trade for Shady. Rather than being in need of a N/S style RB, I would think that what we need are RBs that can hit the hole.....which we have in Shady & FJ etc. 3. He's cheap. This reason would apply to every team. 4. Pegula's not afraid of controversy. Name a team that is afraid of controversy. They all are, and aren't, depending on the situation. This would not even be on anybody's radar if not for the tenuous Rex-Rice connection.