I think the right person COULD help him to realize his potential. Rodgers was so lucky to have that long understudy period rather than being thrown into the fire as the franchise savior too early.
Note that 2 of the 3 QB’s who were going to change the game are now on the bench: RG3 and CK.
Have to say that watching Cam Newton get hit, I think how one blow to the knee or ankle will ruin him. Wilson uses the no-touch rules much more.
Yes, the Bengals started out slow, and had me scared for a minute, but they kicked it into gear, 8-0, WHO DEY!!!
And the Lions finally made the long overdue decision to fire Lewand and Mayhew. Caldwell keeps his job (at least for now) but once a new full-time GM is hired there’s a good chance they’ll want to bring in “their own guy” to coach…so Caldwell shouldn’t rest easy just yet.
I’m “sure” this will finally get the Lions on the road to breaking that pesky little 6 decade slump they’ve been in. Pffft. L-)
@lergnom:
It is kind of sad. My S and I agreed that Kapernick was overrated, that they were using a trick system that eventually the NFL defenses were going to figure out. RGIII had the potential to be a great NFL QB, but the Shanahans IMO did a number on him, they were desperate to win, and didn’t protect him the way they should of.
That said, in some ways it makes me happy, because I am getting tired of this incessant pushing of the idea that the NFL should adopt college play calling. I despise the read option/tripe option crap and I am glad every time they try it NFL defenses stamp it out (think the “Tebow revolution” that never happened). Cam Newton I think will survive, if only because what he is doing seems to be his own thing, he can actually throw the ball, but he also is the Gronkowski of QB’s, guy has such immense size, strength and athleticism it works.
As far as the Lions go, it is about time. I am now just waiting for the moron in Indianapolis to get the boot, the GM there makes Idzik look good, he totally fouled up and what is left is pathetic. The Lions need a lot of things, they need an O coordinator that actually knows how to take advantage of Megatron and Stafford, they need an O line, they need running backs and they need a coordinated defense. Caldwell wasn’t entirely blameless, the Lions look like an uncoordinated mess, to be honest, more like the lions team that went 0 and 16.
It’s funny how for years the NFL was the “parity league” as teams trended toward 8-8. And now it’s more like the USA: huge income/wealth differential with a few haves and a bunch of have-nots. And the same dynamic: no one wants to be Detroit!
@lergnom:
I was wondering about that, about why so many teams are currently undefeated, and how bad some teams are (or in the case of the eastern division of the NFC, just how bad all the teams are). I have come to the conclusion that there is no one way to really figure out why. It isn’t money, given the hard salary cap no team has an advantage there, so what is it?
Some of it is injuries, Dallas losing Romo for example totally took them out of the picture (though the NFC east is so bad, they might still have a chance) and other high profile injuries have seriously hurt contender teams. Some of it is franchises that have extended past their shelf life (New Orleans, Ravens) or completely imploded (SF, between loss of Harbaugh and horrible personnel turnover and issues and retirements). Carolina is interesting, part of it is having a great defense and part of it is Cam Newton going into overdrive, it is amazing given how relatively ordinary their offense is what they are doing.
The one thing I am starting to appreciate is how much both depth and continuity make towards success. If you look at the teams that are currently undefeated, most of them have relative stability in that their coaches have been there a while, and personnel are relatively stable (as much as they can be), and more importantly the teams have some depth to them. New England is just amazing, they lose key people, and they just keep on chugging along, before this year people were wondering if NE’s reign was over, and yet despite losing people on the defense and offense, they are having an incredible year. All of the undefeated teams also have quarterbacks that are key parts of the equation, while manning may not be having a stellar year, and Denver is winning to a large percent because of the D, none of the QB’s on these teams are making many mistakes (even Andy Dalton, amazingly enough).
I think much of the difference is an effect of rule changes that make passing so much easier. Blame the Colts! Bill Polian when he had Peyton throwing to Marvin Harrison and Reggie Wayne pushed for the big rule change/point of enforcement about “illegal contact”. It took a few years - and I mean only a few - before teams began to focus on passing efficiency beyond completion rates, which are themselves of course 10+% higher than in the old NFL. People say “West Coast Offense” but it was really the NE offense that substituted short passing for runs and which led to Belichick’s comment earlier this season that balance doesn’t matter, only winning does. That goes right back to 2007; the NE champions of 2001-2005 were more traditional NFL teams that beat the heck out of teams with power running backs and defense, a version of old NYG “smashmouth”.
We’ve seen a lot of changes in the last few years that have changed defenses. Remember when it was Tampa 2 and other Cover 2 variations? Now it’s more versions of Cover 3 and/or a single high safety - which can be Cover 3 if you have short zones on the wings (like Seattle) - where you can move a safety up to the line for both run protection and TE coverage. The base defense is now nickel and the extra DB is usually a safety or a safety/CB hybrid. I think only a few teams played more snaps with 4 DB’s last season.
I don’t know exactly how to categorize the way pass interference is called now except it seems to be a function of the rule change mentioned plus instant replay’s effect; we look closely at milliseconds of possession time to determine whether it was a catch and I think refs tend to call things more because they’ve become sensitized to how things look in super slo-mo.
The changes mean there’s an extreme premium on accurate passers who make decisions quickly. That places more emphasis on pre-snap reads and my take is that many QB’s are more chuckers than readers. I mean that given the variety of blitzes - thank you Dick LaBeau - and the way defensive linemen and LB’s shift roles, the old West Coast notion of a read progression (tied in the old days to each step of a dropback) works less in important situations, like in the red zone, in a close game, etc. or simply versus a good team. You need to act fast or you need to force the defense into a pure skills matchup that has them chasing, meaning stuff like read-option which pits the fast QB versus slower defenders or what I think of as the old Randy Moss/current Julio Jones style of putting the ball up and letting your guy outperform the defender. (There’s always a place for chucking the ball.)
Parity when teams run balanced attacks makes sense: you have the o-line/d-line fight for a limited number of yards and then you can mouth the platitudes like “turnovers decide” because they become the difference, along with poor punts, bad kick coverage and the huge penalty.
I’ve noted that Brady and the other top QB’s are all about seeing the match-ups, which means pre-snap with a quick (ideally) adjustment if the defense does something at the snap. Quick decision based on reading the field versus going through progressions to find the open guy. In the latter, if you can rush the passer, you can break down the passing offense. But with the former, if the offensive skill players are good enough and the QB is accurate in the reads and throws, you have to hope for a big mistake or you’re going to get yards rung up on you. And given the improvement in FG kicking, that means points.
I wonder what Don Shula thinks of these new or recent NFL regulations. I think he was chairman of the competition committee for years.
Why, why, why, why, why does Dom Capers still have his fricking job?? ~X( If I hear the phrase “defensive genius” one more time I may just vomit.
But luckily I don’t feel strongly about it and don’t get overly emotionally invested in sports. Thank God there are multiple chicken wing franchises nearby that allow me to fill the emotional void with something unhealthy. With the way my Packers are tracking lately…I’m predicting I’ll be a biscuit shy of 3 bills by Christmas. :(( ~:>
Capers may suffer from 'Buddy Ryan Syndrome." I never understood why Ryan was considered a defense “genius.” Sure, he had great a defense with the 1985 Chicago Bears, and I believe he was the Jets Defense Coordinator with the 1969 Superbowl Jets, but I just never saw any of that genius when he was a head coach with the Eagles. Even his boss Mike Ditka said Ryan was overrated.
Good defensive teams are able to adjust aspects of their scheme to counter a particular opponents offensive strengths. Capers is a one-trick pony…blitz, blitz, and more blitz. It can be effective against some teams but when they played San Diego and Denver and faced QBs that can get rid of the ball quickly they got torched time and time again on underneath crossing routes. No time for the blitzers to reach the QB, and a 4 yd crossing route turns into a 20 yd gain.
The Packers’ DBs just aren’t good enough to cover receivers man to man. Without some sort of supporting underneath coverage they’re going to get burned more often than not. I’m convinced that every time a receiver for the Chargers, Broncos, or Panthers went to the grocery store in the last 3 weeks there was probably a Packers DB trailing 4 yards behind them. :-q :-w
The Patriots had to play one of their tight ends as an offensive lineman, as yet another o-line player went down.
I think injuries are far more likely to derail the Patriots, rather than any other team. “Next man up” is a great philosophy, but at some point you run out of quality players.
If Deon Lewis is lost for the year, that is a huge blow as well. 
I didn’t get to see the GB/CAR game; in NE we only had one early game, NE/WA. Lots of long passes: Cotchery for 59 yards?
Washington is better than they showed. Three of first 4 passes were bad drops, including the first tipped up for an INT. That was a weird sequence of events: NE recovers onside kick, nearing the end zone and Edelman fumbles (despite the way WAS pulls the ball out as a specific Belichick point of emphasis), then the INT on the next play. So NE is up 14 and WAS drops 2 big gainers with guys wide open.
I can’t see NE going undefeated unless they get a lot healthier fast. AS noted in the post above, they played a TE at tackle - for only one play - but he at least was a tackle before and weighs nearly 300 lbs. Their line through much of the game consisted of the 4th tackle - promoted to the active roster a few weeks ago - at left tackle and at right tackle was last year’s center, who was activated for this game after being hurt. I don’t know if he’s ever played tackle in a game before but he was at both guard and tackle yesterday (and 1 snap at center). The center is an undrafted rookie. And one of the guards is a rookie and the other was also undrafted. How did they run for 150 yards? And Brady was hit a few times but not sacked. If Vollmer’s head injury isn’t too bad and if Cannon comes back, they’ll be fine, but … The oddity of the game is that Brady through a bad INT. Didn’t see the LB next to Edelman? Didn’t lead him? Beats me.
I was surprised by Denver’s defensive approach versus Indy: after holding Rodgers in the pocket and doing the sensible things with the GB receivers, why did they blitz so much? It was stupid.
“It’s always good to run the ball, always good to throw the ball, always good to score points.” - Bill Belichick
It’s so simple!
Forgot to mention:
- Play of the day to me: Antonio Brown taking a short pass and almost going the length of the field so PIT wins. It was an illegal pick play in which the other WR basically drove into his defender so Brown could duck inside while the other CB was picked by the guys in his way, but what really stuck out was: how can you not double Antonio Brown? He had like a million yards in the game and runs perhaps the best routes in football but you put one guy on him and I didn't even see a safety on his side of the field? At that stage of the game, you should have had plenty of DB's on the field.
- I have to say this about Matt Ryan: he always puts up pretty numbers. I'd say that describes him as a QB: pretty numbers but not meaningful ones. 30 of 45, 303 yards, 1TD, 0 INT, only 16 points. I do not fault the coach for kicking an FG: they should have been able to stop SF with Blaine Gabbard at QB and no recognizable names at skill positions. Hold, drive the ball, kick the winning FG. Given that Atlanta is always the softest winning team, I'm not surprised SF found it in themselves to play defense.
If only the Jets had taken a couple of field goals instead of going for it twice on fourth down, they would probably have won this game. Especially considering the defense was on a roll and Buffalo couldn’t get out of their own way on offense.
Stupid Jets.
“Stupid Jets” is redundant.
That entire mess was ridiculous. Decker drops an easy reception on 3rd and 2 and they go for it rather than kick an FG but they line up as a run and instead throw 4 yards behind the line of scrimmage to Marshall even though the DB’s are playing tight because it’s 4th down. You can’t throw that ball unless Marshall has open space and it wasn’t there. Then what can you say about a punter simply missing a long snap? Your job consists of catching the long snap and kicking the ball. Then the Jets again throw behind the line of scrimmage on the crucial 3rd and 3 at the 6 and lose a yard, leading to the botched 4th down. Why throw behind the line? Why?
I actually thought the decision to go for the TD on 4th rather than going for the field goal, given how anemic their offense was/is, made sense. What didn’t make sense was the play calling, you have a 1st on the 13 yard line, get 8 on first down, then can’t score? Chan Gailey is the opposite of Brian Schottenheimer, Schottenheimer had these complex offenses that no one could execute, Gailey has these boring plays that the D can see coming from a mile away.
It was an ugly game, and it showed a lot of the problems with the Jets. Defensive schemes that have LB’s covering (the Jets LB core are not good at coverage), which isn’t entirely the safety (or lack thereof) issues. The run defense was brilliant at times, yet at others let McCoy go open, and you can’t do that. Special teams are a joke, they have a crappy punter, and their play on special teams leaves a lot to be desired. The offensive line actually looked halfway decent, was a surprise with Winters in there, but the rest was pretty pathetic, dropped passes, Fitz throwing into coverage , and his long passes OMG…you have a guy wide open, and the ball goes 10 yards to the right? Ivory finally got some decent running in, but again when it was key the blocking wasn’t there.
What makes it worse is that Buffalo wasn’t exactly great, 10 of their points were on Jets mistakes, and Tyrod Taylor didn’t exactly burn up the field with his play. It was a sloppy, ugly play in the “Tidy Bowl”, and Rex may have been happy he won, but it was nothing to cheer about on either side. Bowles is going to face a lot if the Jets keep playing like this, they have a relatively easy schedule, but games like the Philadelphia game, the Oakland game, almost losing to Jacksonville, now this mess, show how weak the team is, and Bowles might end up with the reputation Rex had (not unjustified), that he is another defensive guy, great at that, who doesn’t care about offense or anything but the defense. The special teams are piss poor, Westoff on the post game show was practically speechlesss. I originally thought the Jets might go 10-6, but right now I suspect at best they will go 8-8. I am going to the NE game on 12/27, I suspect even with NE banged up that the Jets are going to be in a lot of trouble.