Dawgg Posted January 21, 2005 Share Posted January 21, 2005 That is precisely the argument people are making. Interpreting it as anything else is a stretch... the only concern that people have with respect to the aforementioned player is his effectiveness "now" and in the "future." While his accomplishments may or may not be worthy of a Hall of Fame spot, that is not the debate. The issue here is whether he is an effective quarterback now. Kurt Warner was a two-time MVP (something Drew has never done) and led his team to two Super Bowl appearances, capping one of the best 2-year stints a QB has ever had. But as soon as he stopped being effective, the Rams rightfully moved onto someone who was, a young kid named Marc Bulger. I will never say that Bulger is as good as Warner once was, but it was the right move for the future of their franchise. Likewise, a similar situation exists here. Bledsoe was a very effective quarterback at one time. That is no longer the case. You might argue that a QB among the top 7 passers of all time WAS good but his skills have deteriorated213899[/snapback] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AKC Posted January 21, 2005 Author Share Posted January 21, 2005 That is precisely the argument people are making. Interpreting it as anything else is a stretch... the only concern that people have with respect to the aforementioned player is his effectiveness "now" and in the "future." While his accomplishments may or may not be worthy of a Hall of Fame spot, that is not the debate. The issue here is whether he is an effective quarterback now. Kurt Warner was a two-time MVP (something Drew has never done) and led his team to two Super Bowl appearances, capping one of the best 2-year stints a QB has ever had. But as soon as he stopped being effective, the Rams rightfully moved onto someone who was, a young kid named Marc Bulger. I will never say that Bulger is as good as Warner once was, but it was the right move for the future of their franchise. Likewise, a similar situation exists here. Bledsoe was a very effective quarterback at one time. That is no longer the case. 214001[/snapback] You can't rewrite history that simply. The argument we've been force fed for two season with regards to Bledsoe includes: He's inept at reading defenses (while the record shows he was the first QB in history to hit 5 differerent receivers for over 50 grabs each in a season). He's unable to win big games (He's been on two Super Bowl Teams, one as the starter) He's not a leader (Never on any team he' s played with has he lost the guys who play with him- one of the primary measures of leadership) He's immobile (while he's hardly a mobile QB, when he's offered SOME amount of pocket, which he had for part of this season, he makes the footwork adjustments necessary to make plays. The fact is in 2003 he had no pocket, had no time, and was playing with a unit that would have made any QB in the league- with the exception of a Vick type- inneffective) He can't play without a Pro-Bowl TE (He finished '04 with what I'd call the worst TE options in the NFL). The list continues on over adn over and over droning on and on withthe same tired whining. The broad stroke of the Bledose Haters includes a complete ignorance of the strengths of his game (he's still one of the 5 or 6 best long ball tossers in the league), a complete disregard of his historical accomplishments and a complete lack of understanding the benefits of a QBs track record and experience. Is he washed up? That's an argument you can only make if you first acknowledge he was a superior talent of historical proportion in this league. And that's something your boys in the Bledsoe Haters Club refuse to recognize. Without recognizing that, it's impossible to participate in intelligent discussion about his value to the team. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rico Posted January 21, 2005 Share Posted January 21, 2005 And that's something your boys in the Bledsoe Haters Club refuse to recognize. 214057[/snapback] It's the Dead Horse Beater's Club, get it right! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
1billsfan Posted January 21, 2005 Share Posted January 21, 2005 It's the Dead Horse Beater's Club, get it right! 214062[/snapback] How did this turn into a bleblah thread anyways? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rico Posted January 21, 2005 Share Posted January 21, 2005 How did this turn into a bleblah thread anyways? 214076[/snapback] Cause it all boils down to this Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AKC Posted January 21, 2005 Author Share Posted January 21, 2005 It's the Dead Horse Beater's Club, get it right! 214062[/snapback] The cue for you to ignore this string was "INTELLIGENT thread about the QB position"- I'll give you a heads up when there's a "OBSESSIVE thread about the QB position". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dawgg Posted January 21, 2005 Share Posted January 21, 2005 Right on, Bledsoe has always been one of the top 5 long ball passers in the NFL -- problem is, we run a ball controlled offense that rarely takes shots down the field. The long balls I have seen Bledsoe throw (even this year) were things of beauty and I wish we utilized that strength of his more. That said, it's a lot tougher these days to utilize that strength when the quarterback is as immobile as Bledsoe. It really is a shame that Drew isn't just a hair faster because if he were, he could buy that extra 2-3 seconds in the pocket and really tear defenses apart. But alas, he cannot buy that extra time and that is a big liability for this offense. You can't rewrite history that simply. The argument we've been force fed for two season with regards to Bledsoe includes: He's inept at reading defenses (while the record shows he was the first QB in history to hit 5 differerent receivers for over 50 grabs each in a season). He's unable to win big games (He's been on two Super Bowl Teams, one as the starter) He's not a leader (Never on any team he' s played with has he lost the guys who play with him- one of the primary measures of leadership) He's immobile (while he's hardly a mobile QB, when he's offered SOME amount of pocket, which he had for part of this season, he makes the footwork adjustments necessary to make plays. The fact is in 2003 he had no pocket, had no time, and was playing with a unit that would have made any QB in the league- with the exception of a Vick type- inneffective) He can't play without a Pro-Bowl TE (He finished '04 with what I'd call the worst TE options in the NFL). The list continues on over adn over and over droning on and on withthe same tired whining. The broad stroke of the Bledose Haters includes a complete ignorance of the strengths of his game (he's still one of the 5 or 6 best long ball tossers in the league), a complete disregard of his historical accomplishments and a complete lack of understanding the benefits of a QBs track record and experience. Is he washed up? That's an argument you can only make if you first acknowledge he was a superior talent of historical proportion in this league. And that's something your boys in the Bledsoe Haters Club refuse to recognize. Without recognizing that, it's impossible to participate in intelligent discussion about his value to the team. 214057[/snapback] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BB2004 Posted January 21, 2005 Share Posted January 21, 2005 I'm no Cowher fan but there's some serious precedent for a Steeler's win this weekend based upon Cowher's teams of the past. While Bill Belichick is the analytical coach who trains his fighters to play smart and play together- buying their mental emotion in the vast majority of circumstances, Cowher is a guy who has many times bought his fighter's adrenaline with toughness instead of smarts. As sporting as it is to watch the smart fighter beat the tough guy in many circumstances, this time we have a coach who lives on predicting the other team's tendencies and confusing the opposition. It's proven effective in the immediate past. On Sunday the outcome will come down to this: If Bill Cowher found himself in a physical confrontation with the analytical Bill Belichick the fighting would end with Belichick on the floor with his hands covering his face screaming STOP! STOP! SOMEONE STOP HIM! Cowher would knock the stuffing out of Belichick mainly because his fight would be from a deeper emotion, a more basic instinct than logic, one fed by adrenalin and coaxed on by a hunger that logic is unable to compete with. Cowher's trick Sunday will be exploiting the same thing- to bring out the animal element of his players to consume the logical coach, logical QB and logical defensive strategy the Pats will no doubt unveil as the game unfolds. Twice this season the logical QB of the Pats faced pressure, and twice this season that same logical QB folded like a Galloping Gourmet episode filmed at a girl's school. Over the course of the Cowher career he's displayed plenty of reasons to assume he'll fall to a far more intellectual strategy. There's plenty of reason to believe the same will happen Sunday, hence the Vegas line on the game. But the one element the Vegas line can miss, a line established by cold logic and analysis, is the same element of emotion that Cowher has successfully called out at times in the past. It won't take long to determine whether there'll be a game Sunday in Pitt- Belichick will no doubt have his troops arrive with the emotion of logic ready to win a road game- the key is the Steelers. Do they show up with the look of a guy whose wife just told him about an affair and he's got an address he wants to visit or do they come out flat like they did against the Jets? I'd be less inclined to buy the logical Vegas line since the Jet's game appeared to be a "looked past" Sunday. The Steeler tone will be obvious early- they come out to play or they simply don't have it. It's tough to bet that their coach can't find another week of emotion out of a talented group who must realize just how emotionless they played last week. 213087[/snapback] I think you'll be mistaken. As I said last week, don't ever underestimate the heart of a champion. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AKC Posted January 21, 2005 Author Share Posted January 21, 2005 Right on, Bledsoe has always been one of the top 5 long ball passers in the NFL -- problem is, we run a ball controlled offense that rarely takes shots down the field. The long balls I have seen Bledsoe throw (even this year) were things of beauty and I wish we utilized that strength of his more. That said, it's a lot tougher these days to utilize that strength when the quarterback is as immobile as Bledsoe. It really is a shame that Drew isn't just a hair faster because if he were, he could buy that extra 2-3 seconds in the pocket and really tear defenses apart. But alas, he cannot buy that extra time and that is a big liability for this offense. 214213[/snapback] Your conclusion is one that’s reasonably arrived at considering the faults Bledsoe has always had in the short game added to the seeming likelihood that his skills are declining or the speed of the game has passed up the pocket passer. There are a number of very knowledgeable long time posters here who have reached the same conclusion based upon the same logic. I’m not one who buys the “inevitable decline of the pocket passer” since the media has been burying them for 50 years yet they continue to hold far and away the most championships over the course of time. The modern pocket passer is a live and well behind very good offensive lines, lines that appear today to be more susceptible to clever scheming to break them down, viv a vis the Indy line trouble in their game last week. The susceptibilities of clever scheming seem on paper to be there- and the NFL has had at least 20 coaching “geniuses” over the course of my fanhood, each of whom was granted the throne of being a timeless victor only to find answers to their strategies and having the same “geniuses” become little more than frustrate has-beens within a few years of the declaration. Even the one’s with sustained success over many years found the game catching up to them- Bill Walsh comes to mind. The thing is history seems to bring everything back in cycles, and that cycle ALWAYS returns to he big passer who makes his living in the pocket. As far as Bledsoe is concerned, he looked to me to have taken some of the off-season coaching lessons and tried to apply them, but unfortunately asking him to throw the type of screen passes we should be killing people with considering the balance of our personnel he clearly doesn’t have the feel or the accuracy to manage these throws. At the same time when we do go up top in play action he is still one of the most dangerous in football because he plays with so much more field than the average NFL QB that he can fully take advantage of the threat of play action. In NE he relied on TEs to complement his long ball and poor accuracy on the short game, and TE has hardly been a position of strength on the Bills offenses he’s run. I’m more inclined to think he’s not suffering from “rapidly declining” skills as much as he’s just the same QB he’s always been and he’s just not gotten better. He’s still a deadly big ball guy but without the intermediate game he becomes absolutely one-dimensional and a one-dimensional pocket passer is a sitting duck in the NFL. We’ve seen a little of JP Losman and IMO we’d have finished about 5-11 under him this season while he learned to play in the NFL. Yeah he’d have a year under his belt but the NFL is about winning and we won as many as we could. If this team moves into the ’05 campaign with the same garbage at TE we have after Campbell then I see no chance of improvement under Bledsoe. At the same time if we were to bring in a Bubba Franks and perhaps a vet LG I’d rather hold the line on the QB spot instead of conceding a season to the learning curve. I don’t see anything unreasonable about either of our positions, it’s possible to reach either of these or a hundred others. What’s unreasonable is to look at every game this year and find that Drew Bledsoe, more than any other element of our team, “threw the season away” because of his awful skills, terrible leadership and inability to move his feet. The evidence contradicts these things, and in turn it contradicts those with no ability to grasp the dynamic nature of the game of football. You don’t strike me as having any problem understanding that and applying it to your process of analysis. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ATBNG Posted January 21, 2005 Share Posted January 21, 2005 Cowher's played in four home championship games as a head coach, and the Steelers have yet to cover the point spread while going one and three. His MO as a coach has always been based primarily on bluster and emotion, but it has not served him well in his biggest battles. In this case, team preparation is going to serve him better than some bloodthirsty pregame speech. Since opening day 2003, there has only been one game out of 35 that the Pats were soundly beaten in, and that was at Pittsburgh this past year. Pittsburgh has assembled a great team with a lot of depth and a lot of versatility on both sides of the ball. There's been a noticeable drop in bulletin board material this week when compared to 2002. This is going to be a huge challenge for the Patriots. Dillon and Branch aren't going to mean anything if the other 43 guys play like they did on Halloween. I think Cowher was the coach of the year, and I think that his experience as the longest active head coach has been drawn upon this year very impressively. If he reverts to the fire breathing, jaw jutting leader of years' past and that leads him to make decisions on emotion rather than logic, he is much bigger trouble than he would be if he were to coach in the more even keeled style that he has employed all year. It's going to be an outstanding game - I really can't wait. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grant Posted January 23, 2005 Share Posted January 23, 2005 This will be a little over your head, but I'll provide the facts anyway- Only 6 QBs in the century of NFL football history have more pass completions than the Buffalo Bill you love to denigrate: Official NFL Most Productive Passers in NFL History Your agenda forces you to ignore the objective and obvious: You might argue that a QB among the top 7 passers of all time WAS good but his skills have deteriorated, but making a claim of "not good" makes you nothing more than a fool. The fact that you can't bring yourself to recognize that it takes a "good QB" to reach these historic milestones exposes your utter inability to offer objective discourse on the subject of our starting QB. 213899[/snapback] Ah, I see. Your proof that Bledsoe is a "good" QB and a "productive" QB is based on completions he's compiled over his career. So, you define "good" and "productive" as someone that a) stays in the League for over a decade and b) has an offense centered around the passing game. As I thought. Carry on now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rico Posted January 24, 2005 Share Posted January 24, 2005 I'm no Cowher fan but there's some serious precedent for a Steeler's win this weekend based upon Cowher's teams of the past. While Bill Belichick is the analytical coach who trains his fighters to play smart and play together- buying their mental emotion in the vast majority of circumstances, Cowher is a guy who has many times bought his fighter's adrenaline with toughness instead of smarts. As sporting as it is to watch the smart fighter beat the tough guy in many circumstances, this time we have a coach who lives on predicting the other team's tendencies and confusing the opposition. It's proven effective in the immediate past. On Sunday the outcome will come down to this: If Bill Cowher found himself in a physical confrontation with the analytical Bill Belichick the fighting would end with Belichick on the floor with his hands covering his face screaming STOP! STOP! SOMEONE STOP HIM! Cowher would knock the stuffing out of Belichick mainly because his fight would be from a deeper emotion, a more basic instinct than logic, one fed by adrenalin and coaxed on by a hunger that logic is unable to compete with. Cowher's trick Sunday will be exploiting the same thing- to bring out the animal element of his players to consume the logical coach, logical QB and logical defensive strategy the Pats will no doubt unveil as the game unfolds. Twice this season the logical QB of the Pats faced pressure, and twice this season that same logical QB folded like a Galloping Gourmet episode filmed at a girl's school. Over the course of the Cowher career he's displayed plenty of reasons to assume he'll fall to a far more intellectual strategy. There's plenty of reason to believe the same will happen Sunday, hence the Vegas line on the game. But the one element the Vegas line can miss, a line established by cold logic and analysis, is the same element of emotion that Cowher has successfully called out at times in the past. It won't take long to determine whether there'll be a game Sunday in Pitt- Belichick will no doubt have his troops arrive with the emotion of logic ready to win a road game- the key is the Steelers. Do they show up with the look of a guy whose wife just told him about an affair and he's got an address he wants to visit or do they come out flat like they did against the Jets? I'd be less inclined to buy the logical Vegas line since the Jet's game appeared to be a "looked past" Sunday. The Steeler tone will be obvious early- they come out to play or they simply don't have it. It's tough to bet that their coach can't find another week of emotion out of a talented group who must realize just how emotionless they played last week. 213087[/snapback] Well, there's always the 2nd half. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
T-Bone Posted January 24, 2005 Share Posted January 24, 2005 Gee AKC, I wonder if Cowher would win that hypothetical fight against Belicheck... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ray Posted January 24, 2005 Share Posted January 24, 2005 How's that working out for him at home down 21 points at half! Nice little "exhibition" for the Pats before the SB. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grant Posted January 24, 2005 Share Posted January 24, 2005 Can AKC ever be right? Seriously, I don't think he's ever been. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NorCal Aaron Posted January 24, 2005 Share Posted January 24, 2005 If Pittsburgh only had a better gunner. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
NDBoston Posted January 24, 2005 Share Posted January 24, 2005 You got it nailed. Pats will lose. They have NO advantages in this game, except for the nebulous "well they've found a way to win in the past." There's no homefield, no weather, no "we're being disrespected," no talent, and most importantly no mind trick advantages. Simply put, Cowher is too dumb and too much of a brute to KNOW he shouldn't be able to beat Belichick. The last matchup on Halloween was a classic example of brawns over brains, and nothing will change, except Seymour won't be in the lineup. And again WRT the Pats' offense and how Dillon and Branch will be playing this time, the Pats scored a whole 6 points against the lousy Colts' defense in the 1st half last weekend, until exploding in the 2nd because, well, the Colts have a lousy defense. 213187[/snapback] You were saying? Was this game fixed too Mad? Are you finally going to admit the Patriots are a great team? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AKC Posted January 24, 2005 Author Share Posted January 24, 2005 Gee AKC, I wonder if Cowher would win that hypothetical fight against Belicheck... 215722[/snapback] One thing for sure Bone- Cowher would kick the snot out of a booger-eater like Belichick in a one on one fistfight, but if you let that same booger-eater recruit his own guys to do the fighting the tables can turn in a big way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dawgg Posted January 24, 2005 Share Posted January 24, 2005 Petty arguments aside, I think it's time to realize that Tom Brady just makes plays for his team when they are needed and is the best QB in the NFL. Can AKC ever be right? Seriously, I don't think he's ever been. 215789[/snapback] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AKC Posted January 24, 2005 Author Share Posted January 24, 2005 Petty arguments aside, I think it's time to realize that Tom Brady just makes plays for his team when they are needed and is the best QB in the NFL. 216234[/snapback] You might say that if you included that with Tom Brady QBing the Steelers today the end result would likely have been very similar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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