NFL 2016

[HaemishM]

Holy shit, the Packers are bad right now. Unfortunately, I can't say that the problem ISN'T Aaron Rodgers because I think a large part of it is. He has tons of time to throw the ball. Yesterday, he was just plain missing his receivers some of them wide open, and other times he just did not read the defense and threw some easy picks. He's holding the ball too long, either because no one is open or he's not seeing them open or he isn't confident that they are open enough. I don't think the playcalling is helping him nor are his receivers because some of them are just dropping catchable balls (Devante Adams). For whatever reason, they looked terrible.

Carolina is also terrible. The only reason that game was close is because New Orleans has the worst defense in the world.

[Rasix]

I blame Olivia Munn.

[Paelos]

I blame Olivia Munn.

Me too, she's awful.

[TheWalrus]

I thought she was a decent wide receiver?

[Surlyboi]

[Shannow]

The entire fucking league is terribad. There's one good team : The Pats (yaya I know, even so their defense has looked shitty at times, kinda circa 2011ish, GET A FUCKING STOP ON 3RD FUCKING DOWN PLEASE) and then there's the Viking (could be good, but if you trust Sam Bradford and that kicker I want to sell you shit) and after that?

There was a good article a month or so ago about how the players in the NFL are getting younger, and therefore, well dumber and it's making the product worse. Throw on Thursday games, London games, the fact the human body can only accept so much punishment and we have the NFL of today. 30 teams of pretty much crap.

And for that, ratings are down significantly. Suck it Roger.

[HaemishM]

There was a good article a month or so ago about how the players in the NFL are getting younger, and therefore, well dumber and it's making the product worse. Throw on Thursday games, London games, the fact the human body can only accept so much punishment and we have the NFL of today. 30 teams of pretty much crap.

It is absolutely that. This has gone beyond "parity" into "all the teams suck really hard and are horribly inconsistent." The product is almost fucking unwatchable.

[Shannow]

I'll be interested to see how many games Vonteze Burfect gets suspended for , not for the low hit on Bennett but for the leg stomp on Blount. If it's less than 5 games you all know how big a joke the NFL has become.

[01101010]

I'll be interested to see how many games Vonteze Burfect gets suspended for , not for the low hit on Bennett but for the leg stomp on Blount. If it's less than 5 games you all know how big a joke the NFL has become.

If that was a stomp, that was the weakest stomp I've ever seen. Who stomps the ground standing straight up with no weight on the stomping leg? Reaching with that. Maybe a foot tap but a stomp?

[Shannow]

Ppl defending Burfect. I have now seen it all.

[01101010]

Ppl defending Burfect. I have now seen it all.

Oh stop... even shitty people should have a fair look and just not assume. But then again this is the NFL and once you have any sort of dirty play, you are labeled which means all your plays are dirty.

[Rasix]

Burfict has had ample time to not be a complete shithead. He was a dirty player from minute one in college and has carried it over into the pros. How stompy the stomp was seems like splitting hairs. He stepped on the dude and looked like he meant to step on the dude. What goes through his head when this sort of shit keeps happening, even when it's a play that can cause them a fucking playoff game.

"NO STOP, HEAD DEVIL, I DON'T WANT TO DO IT THIS TIME!"
"Let chaos reign."
"Good point. Let's fuck shit up."

[WayAbvPar]

Burfict has some deep emotional problems. He has little to no impulse control. If/when he washes out of the league, expect him to be dead or in prison within 5 years.


Re: SEAvATL- much closer than I would have liked. Tired of everyone whining about the last play. Atlanta had 3 downs before that to do something, then ran that play specifically to draw a PI. Hope to get bailed out by the refs and you get what you deserve. Yes, it was probably interference. It was nowhere near as egregious as the pearl-clutching brigade would have everyone believe. Hand-fighting goes on literally every play. If they wanted to call every single thing to the letter of the law, it would have been off-setting fouls, since JJ utterly mauled Sherman's face and head as he came off the line. There were also numerous uncalled PI fouls on both sides all game long. I would prefer not to have the officials become involved other than for the most obvious and play-changing fouls (like facemasks, or a lineman just tackling a rusher before he gets to a QB).

If Seattle had lost this way, I would be annoyed. However, most of my ire would be on the offensive coordinator, not the refs. If you want to run a low percentage jump ball, do it on 1st down, not 4th. If you can keep the drive going you could easily win the game. Caveat- I fucking loathe Seattle's OC and so have a predisposition toward finding fault in his actions 

[TheWalrus]

It was clearly PI. But every team gets fucked so bad with terrible calls, I just call it a wash, and am glad my boys were on the receiving end of a good bad call this time.

[Rasix]

PI gets missed. It was PI, but I can see it not getting called. It wasn't nearly as bad as the PI call on Rogers-Cromartie, which is probably the worst call I've ever seen. There is pretty much no contact at all between Rogers-Cromartie and the WR ,and he nearly picks off the pass as the only person near the ball at all. It is a really baffling call, and I don't see how anyone could miss it. It's Ed Hocculi, admiring his own biceps and forgetting there's a game on, bad.

[HaemishM]

As for the Seattle/Atlanta game, let's face it. Dan Quinn, Atlanta's HC, is the one who taught Richard Sherman about how to avoid PI. He should probably shut his hole about it.

[Velorath]

There was a good article a month or so ago about how the players in the NFL are getting younger, and therefore, well dumber and it's making the product worse. Throw on Thursday games, London games, the fact the human body can only accept so much punishment and we have the NFL of today. 30 teams of pretty much crap.

It is absolutely that. This has gone beyond "parity" into "all the teams suck really hard and are horribly inconsistent." The product is almost fucking unwatchable.

I've been working Sundays lately so I've only seen about a half a game of football and some highlights. After a few weeks I realized how little I missed watching it. Sure it doesn't help that my team is the 49ers, but damn, there is just nobody in the league right now that's exciting to watch.

[Rasix]

It gives me an excuse to do nothing on the coach for at least an hour every Sunday and maybe even get in a nap. "Can you take him to swimming? I want to watch this."

College is a lot more fun, even if my team this year is complete garbage (on our 5th QB and we're fresh out of actual RBs).

[Paelos]

I'm watching less NFL for a lot of reasons:

1 - Mainly the product is terrible right now. I'll get to why in my other reasons but the main thing is there are only 6 teams I give a shit about watching: Patriots, Cowboys, Seattle, Vikings, Steelers, and Falcons. The rest are so flawed I don't care what their record is, I don't trust them at all to make the playoffs.

2 - The QB play is shit. I have been talking about how this was going to happen for years, but it's shit now, and it's going to get worse as Brady and Big Ben and Rivers and Ryan and Romo get older and retire. Matt Ryan, Eli Manning, and Andy fucking Dalton are leading the league in passing yards right now. In rating it's Ryan, Bradford, Rivers, and Stafford. The shock is Dak Prescott who might be a revelation maybe, or Carson Wentz. Goff doesn't even play and he's a first rounder. Famous Jameis is now 28th in rating. Aaron Rodgers is having a shit year. You have a league where Ryan Fitzpatrick is a starter because the other options are so fucking bad. 18 teams right now would probably trade out their QB immediately if you gave them the overall #1 pick.

3 - The rookie payscale has wrecked the league. Teams are willing to dump tons of money on QBs still who suck, but aren't willing to pay veterans with experience real money because they can save on the cap with rookie draftees. It's the worst thing the ownership could have done to save money, and it's all their fault because the rookie scale isn't bad necessarily, but the usage of it has created terrible teams of unskilled trainees starting on football teams.

4 - The CBA hitting rules have fucked up things further. You can say you're about player safety but if you're not hitting in practice you look like shit on the field. You can't be meatheads about it, but doing shorts walkthroughs is doing us no good in the player development department either. There's a happy medium and they totally missed it.

[Cyrrex]

To be fair about QB play, as the league leans more and more towards promoting an offense-heavy product - and we know they are actively doing this with all the rule changes - then it has put the QB play more into the spotlight than it ever has been.  The emphasis on scoring more points gives them both more advantage and more responsibility.  The top tier QBs who can handle all that look great.  The lower tier QBs don't pass muster and look terrible.  So I don't think it is historically bad QB play we are seeing, more so that some of them just look awful compared to current standards.

It has this weird carry-over to defensive play as well.  The few teams over the past decade or so who have been able to crack the code (Baltimore, Denver and Seattle are the ones that spring to mind) and figure out how to adapt to the pro-offense NFL have turned into all time great defenses in a time where such a thing shouldn't even be possible.  They may even be underrated.

[Shannow]

Classy Giants organization will not let admitted wife abuser Josh Brown travel with team. Oh my, so strong! The NFL suspended him for all of 1 game.

Burfect got a 75k fine too.

lol, fucking clownshoes. Least Brady got what he deserved amiright?

[Bunk]

Sitting in a bar in Arizona watching bears / Packers with a guy from Wisconsin.

[Goumindong]

I think its a bit early to be complaining about passing and QB efficiency. Too much variance in the defenses that teams might be facing.

In general though the "QB" deficit is probably down to a couple of things

1) There are actually a lot of legitimately good QB's right now. This is due both to the skill of the players as well as QB focused rules. But even then probably half of the "Best QB's ever" are playing right now. A lot of the people we shit on for being bad are legitimately historically good QB's. They're just playing in an era that contain an amazing amount of good QBs*. If we compare them solely to the greats of the past yea they're shit. But the QB's of the past were really shit, we have just forgotten about all of them.

2) There is a strong co-variance between QB play and offensive play. Since the Hawks of a few years ago there has been a big shift towards defensive lines and away from offensive lines. The offensive lines of the worst QB offenders(and the Hawks) are sieves right now.

*As an easy to find example, as of 2014, 7 of the top 10 QB's in all time passer rating were active and playing. Matt "Schaub'd it" Schaub was 13th highest of all time. Joe Namath is at #157 with an all time passer rating of 65.46

[HaemishM]

Part of the raised passer ratings is because there are so many more passes in a game than there were in Namath's time. Also, Namath's historical numbers probably aren't great because he only had a few non-injury seasons where he was playing at his highest level. He was hurt a lot later in his career.

So Green Bay discovered their offense last night. It wasn't just that Chicago is a really shitty team - at some points, their cornerbacks were blanketing the Packers receivers. However, they did switch up the offensive scheme - there were a lot more quick hit passes, which Rodgers seems to relish. He didn't have to run around behind his O line for 5-7 seconds nearly as much because the routes weren't nearly so long. They need to keep doing this, especially since they are essentially running a wide receiver as their main running back.

Also, Brian Hoyer is made of tissue paper.

[Paelos]

Yes, teams throw more. But they also throw a ton more in screens, behind the line of scrimmage passes, shovels, and inside 5 yard slants and buttons. It's a ton of high percentage stuff because you can and because defenses are so big and fast now.

Passer rating is a horrible HORRIBLE metric to use if you have a high efficiency passing team. Say for example I have a QB throw 20 times in a game, he completes 15 of them in mostly low yardage situations. He has 150 yards, 0 TDs, 0 picks. That's a 95.8 rating in the NFL.

Now I have another passer. He goes 21/35 for 300 yards, 2 TDs, 1 INT. That's a 94.9 rating in the NFL. Did the first guy have a better day? No, he did next to nothing. QB2 got me twice as many yards and 2 TDs, I would value that guy much higher.

Or here's a better example.

QB1 is 88/125 for 990 yards, 6 TDs, 0 INTs. His rating is 109.8
QB2 is 148/237 for 1496, 13 TDs, 4 INTs. His rating is 91.7

QB1 is Sam Bradford. QB2 is Aaron Rodgers. I'd still rating have Rodgers any day of the week.

[Cyrrex]

You'd pick Aaron Rodgers because he is Aaron Rodgers.  If you had factored in that QB1 had only played 4 games compared to 6 for QB2 and didn't know who they were, you would probably take QB1.  But that is somewhat besides the point, because you are at least correct that rating alone is not a good indicator.  I think a metric combining rating, Y/A and interception ratio would be a good measure of a QB.  Any one of them alone is bubkis.

[Goumindong]

Part of the raised passer ratings is because there are so many more passes in a game than there were in Namath's time. Also, Namath's historical numbers probably aren't great because he only had a few non-injury seasons where he was playing at his highest level. He was hurt a lot later in his career.

That is fair. Its also fair that QB rating isn't a great metric. It was just something easy to pull up. I am confident that other stats would confirm that many of the best QB's are playing today.

Also, Bradford has the better line there. His "QB rating"[as an abstract statement of the quality of his play] should be higher. He throws for 7.92 yards per attempt for and zero turnovers. Rodgers throws for 6.31 yards per attempt and turned the ball over 4 times. Fewer TD's in the air doesn't matter.  Bradford has better yards per completion (11.25) than Rodgers too (10.1), so its not that Rodgers is taking lower probability throws (with higher expected returns)



So its not much of a surprise that the Vikings have a better record than the Packers and beat them straight up too.

*TD's is a junk stat since you don't get credit for a running TD by the offense, even if you put them close enough to do it. Its like an RBI in baseball.

[Rasix]

That Cardinals' game. What a shit show. At least Russel Wilson's liquid Jesus magic wasn't able to pull it off. Cardinals should have won, but didn't. Microcosm of the franchise as a whole.

[Paelos]

That Cardinals' game. What a shit show. At least Russel Wilson's liquid Jesus magic wasn't able to pull it off. Cardinals should have won, but didn't. Microcosm of the franchise as a whole.

Worst football game that I can remember. Anybody else have a contender?

[Rasix]

Jacksonville Jaguars 2011 - 2015. 

Eagles v Vikings  was pretty terrible this weekend as well. Minnesota is going to get mauled by the first real defense they encounter in the playoffs.

[Mithas]

Dolphins vs Steelers 2007. Steelers won 3-0. On a punt, the ball just stuck in the mud and never bounced.

[HaemishM]

That Cardinals' game. What a shit show. At least Russel Wilson's liquid Jesus magic wasn't able to pull it off. Cardinals should have won, but didn't. Microcosm of the franchise as a whole.

Worst football game that I can remember. Anybody else have a contender?

It's definitely up there as one of the worst things I've seen on a football field since Anthony Munoz's injury in the Super Bowl. God, what an utter waste of fucking time this game was. I'm saying this about an alarming number of games these days.

[Paelos]

Dolphins vs Steelers 2007. Steelers won 3-0. On a punt, the ball just stuck in the mud and never bounced.

That's bad but it was decided. This one wasn't.

[HaemishM]

I'm pretty sure you could have played another 4 quarters without anybody scoring.

[Paelos]

And the Falcons lost to that shit ass offense. Good lord.