Football (american football to those across the pond!)

[Parson]

Originally Posted by Ursa major

I think Winters Sorrow may have been thinking of the proverb:

It is easier for Tim Tebow to throw a football through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.

And it even stays in the sense of the proverb! Both are impossible without divine intervention.

[Winters_Sorrow]

Originally Posted by J-Sun

Anyway - in really sad, confusing news, Junior Seau was either murdered or committed suicide or had a horrible accident. Dead at 43 of a gunshot wound to the chest, apparently.

In really happy news in a sense, if you get past the tragedy in the first place, the Bucs made a great free-agent signing today.

Very sad news about Junior Seau. The NFL really washes it's hands of it's past players very easily. The "lucky" ones get positions within the organisations or on news networks and so still feel relevant or part of the sport. For the others it must be a big wrench. I'm not a professional sportsman (shocker, I know) but to go from a communal team environment every day to golf courses and after dinner speeches in different cities must be quite lonely. That's where you hope they have friends & family to help them adjust to it.

Good news on the Bucs story. The kid seems to have a good outlook on life about his condition too. I hope he pulls through. Similar to that Giants LB with cancer who was all over the news in the run up to the SB last year.

Originally Posted by Culhwch

Snap judgements on players who're yet to play a snap of professional football.

Vilma is gone for the year, and that's probably harsher than expected, but I can't argue with it.

Will Smith copped a four game suspension. This is more of a worry as he's our premier pass rusher at DE (not that that's saying much), however we did without him the first four games of last season, so I think they'll be fine.

And that was it for current Saints. Anthony Hargrove is with the Pack and will sit half the season, and Scott Fujita is with the Browns now and will miss three games.

They can weather this, for sure, and I think the Saints still have to be favoured for the NFC South and one of the favourites for the Superbowl...

Almost as bad as snap judgements on players who have 1 good season and get insane deals off the back of it. Matt Cassel springs to mind.

Not at all surprised at Vilma, though 4 out of the 20 odd players investigated seems a bit on the low side. I think there was some wheeler-dealing going on behind the scenes (with the union especially) to avoid dragging this through courts and appeals if this went on much.

As with Spygate, I think the NFL authorities want to make the impression of being tough, but really just get through it asap and on to other matters.

As for innocent teams being hit...well, it seems to have been an open secret in the league about the Saints bounty system to be honest, and you can't let players hop teams and escape punishment so...tough. Rams lost out badly by losing their defensive coordinator, the other penalties can be mitigated by free agency if teams are that put out by it.

The Saints offense has carried the team for years anyway Cul, so the defense knock will hurt slightly, but your team has always been about outscoring the opponents to win so it'll really only hurt you against teams with excellent pass rushers and defensive corners. I don't know your schedule off the top of my head so I don't know whether or not those are in the back end of your run or not.

[Culhwch]

Originally Posted by Winters_Sorrow

Not at all surprised at Vilma, though 4 out of the 20 odd players investigated seems a bit on the low side. I think there was some wheeler-dealing going on behind the scenes (with the union especially) to avoid dragging this through courts and appeals if this went on much.

I've heard reports that the NFL didn't have enough evidence to justify suspending any more players. The NFLPA has certainly not been backward in pointing out that the NFL still hasn't shown them any of the evidence that they claim to have, which supposedly ran into the ten of thousands of pages of documents.

I did read (wish I could remember where now, I've been all over reading about this) that Hargrove rolled over and made a statement of admission to the NFL - perhaps as defensive leaders at the time, Vilma, Smith and Fujita were implicated as the main offenders/organisers in that statement, and that's what the suspensions are based on. I just get the feeling that if the NFL had concrete, undeniable evidence, it would be in their best interest to reveal it.

The Saints offense has carried the team for years anyway Cul, so the defense knock will hurt slightly, but your team has always been about outscoring the opponents to win so it'll really only hurt you against teams with excellent pass rushers and defensive corners. I don't know your schedule off the top of my head so I don't know whether or not those are in the back end of your run or not.

The defense was always going to have to take a step back as they learnt a new scheme under Spags anyway. I actually think the loss of Vilma makes the defense better, as they don't need to find a way to shuffle Lofton and Hawthorne onto the field while feeling obligated to keep playing Vilma.

The loss of Smith will hurt in the short-term, but we have some depth and I'd look for them to add another veteran through free-agency. The first four opponents are Washington, Carolina, KC and Green Bay so not a bad line-up, all things considered. Carolina and Green Bay figure to be shootouts, but Washington and KC should prove to be nice intermediate offenses for the defense to build some confidnece against.

With the improvements the team has made to the front seven I'm really looking forward to this defense becoming much more of a compliment to the offense than ever before, and to find it's feet farily quickly. Spags' scheme is a lot more balanced than Williams' ever was, much more controlled and not so feast-or-famine. Just sayin', but if Spags calls the plays vs San Fran, I think we win the Superbowl last year. That's okay, though, we'll just have to win it this year.

Just need Brees to sign...

[Parson]

Well it turns out I was too pessimistic. The Minnesota Vikings will get their new stadium and my beloved Vikes will play in Minnesota for the next 30 years likely. And on the further good news category, Adrian Peterson is well above the curve in the recuperation from his knee injury.

(Of course AP has been way outside the normal distribution curve athletically all of his life. Just once I would love to know what that kind of feeling was like.)

Counting the days until September.

Parson

[Grimward]

Me too, Parse.

*Takes fiery hat off for a moment in respect to Junior Seau*

RG III for my Skins? Ya almost have to take that pick, but I never like drafting a QB when you don't already have a solid occupant in the starter's spot (and I think Grossman's demonstrated he's not solid, or not solid enough repeatedly).

[J-Sun]

ESPN's run a "most popular football team" poll. Sorry I can't find the full poll but only two blog posts on it:

NFC West
NFC East

Here's how the teams of some of the heavy posters in this thread fared:

J's Cowboys 1, Steelers 4, Bears 6, Texans ? (I've got to do something about this.)
Cul's Saints 7
Grim's Skins 13
Parson's Vikes 14
jo's Seahawks 18
Ursa's ? Sorry - can't remember your team

Agreed that it's absolutely nuts that perennial losers like the Cowboys are #1 but that's just the power of Landry's legacy - the magic of the star. I can't break free of it. And also agreed - even as a lifelong Cowboy - that it's sad what's happened to the Skins under Snyder. Here's hoping RGIII puts them back... uh, in second place in the division.

[J-Sun]

Full list, finally.

[Grimward]

Ursa's team is to be found, er, well, where yours is, J.

And I missed this earlier, but to describe the Skins as having an intermediate offense with a rookie QB the likely starter (if the early reports are to be believed....there's a lot of time left before even Training Camp)....well, I would say that's generous.

[J-Sun]

Originally Posted by Grimward

Ursa's team is to be found, er, well, where yours is, J.

Ah, thanks. (Sorry Ursa.) Too close - I guess I was trying to think which of the other 31 it could be, so never could have figured it out. Or, with apologies for thread cross-over, maybe it got pushed out by Doorways in the Sand re-entering my memory.

And I missed this earlier, but to describe the Skins as having an intermediate offense with a rookie QB the likely starter (if the early reports are to be believed....there's a lot of time left before even Training Camp)....well, I would say that's generous.

Well, if RGIII is as quick on the uptake as Cam Newton was, there may be a higher percentage of mistakes than you'd want in a vet (but probably no more than Grossman would make ) but the Skins O could be reasonably effective.

[Culhwch]

I'm surprised that the Saints are as high as seven, in the wake of Bountygate. I'd like to know if this was a slide, but a cursory search hasn't turned up last year's numbers, if they exist. I do seem to recall a similar article a while back, with the Saints in a similar position.

I won't lie, I did enjoy that we beat the Niners in this.

[Grimward]

Re the Saints, Cul, Katrina and a Super Bowl will do wonders, the former tragic of course, but I know a lot of people who previously didn't care about the Saints' fortunes one way or another; these folks now kind pull for them since the hurricane and the horrible season they had to go thru afterwards (up until Bountygate, anyway....we'll see if it continues).

It's also quite a statement that the expansion/replacement Browns are higher on the list than the Ravens, especially considering Baltimore's relative success.

[Boaz]

With the advent of the recent class action suit against the league, do you think the NFL is safe, reasonably safe, inherently dangerous, or extrememely dangerous for players?

Think of football safety over the years. The flying wedge. Teddy Roosevelt search to make football safer. Bradbury Robinson and the forward pass. Helmets. Facemasks. Flak jackets. Quarterback friendly rules. Modern sports medicine.

Is football really any safer than one hundred and ten years ago or have equipment and medicine allowed players to survive horrible injuries?

[Parson]

My opinion is that it is only slightly safer. The protective gear does indeed protect but the inverse of that is that the protection gives a lot of players the opportunity to take bigger risks and make bigger hits. I think one thing that can't be overlooked is how much bigger and faster the average player is today. I've been watching NFL football for 50 plus years. In the 60's a 300 lb lineman was a very rare commodity. Three hundred pounds almost always meant too fat and too slow to play. Now we see a lot of lean 280's and fairly quick linemen in the 320's. A linebacker running a 4.6 forty and weighing 245 lbs, as some do today can do a lot of damage both to someone else and to himself when hitting someone full bore.

[Boaz]

Originally Posted by Parson

My opinion is that it is only slightly safer. The protective gear does indeed protect but the inverse of that is that the protection gives a lot of players the opportunity to take bigger risks and make bigger hits.

Absolutely.

Parson, I usually ask and answer in my posts and I was trying to avoid that here. I wanted to get the opinions of others... but I agree with you whole heatedly. I don't regularly watch Rugby and I've seen some big hits in Rugby, but their lack of equipment makes their big hits more natural. I mean guys don't spear with their heads and they rarely make shoulder only hits. But in football, the helmet and shoulder pads are major weapons. Players throw their bodies around in ways that God did not intend.

Also, the more rules they make to protect quarterbacks just emboldens the QB to stay in the pocket longer. This further specializes the QB position and differentiates it from the regular players. They think, "I've got to make this play... one more second... one more second..." They don't want to be seen as weak, so they hang in there. I see so many hits on exposed quarterbacks now... maybe it's just the overexposure by out telecom media, but it seems like so much more than when I was a kid. Someone is going to get killed someday.

[Parson]

I'm nor sure I'd agree with you about the quarterback and the rules. I think that the quarterback does take more and harder hits because the game really, really rewards passing. You will note that the quarterback does not get nearly as many hits when he rolls out, but that limits his effective passing area and allows the defense to concentrate on one side of the field, making that kind of passing far less effective on the average. The quarterback stands "tall" in the pocket because that position puts the most pressure on the defensive backs.

I would also say that quarterbacks get more hits because they are taught not to scramble. I grew up watching Fran Tarkington play. He played with some of the worst offensive lines in his early years, but he was able to avoid a lot of hits because he scrambled and was quick on his feet. He probably wouldn't get the chance to play today because he would be "too short" to play the position.

(I'm making the assumption that while top end speed often is found in the taller players; quickness (first step) is more often found in shorter ones.)