What’s more is the rest of those guys were inactive players, not coaches. The NFL just hasn’t cared about it at all, despite the real potential for injury by phalanxing on the sidelines. Enough is enough, push them all back.
Don’t draw too many conclusions from that game. Yes, the Patriots are a great team, and would be my odds-on pick for the bowl winners, but not on that basis alone.
Sunday’s game just proved what everyone who’s paid attention (especially Bears fans) has been saying about the Bears: they’re a mediocre team playing with a good team’s record. If it weren’t for a thoroughly rotten NFC Central and a few games they had really lucky breaks on they’d be the 6-7 team that fans expected them to be (if they were lucky!) this year.
All Brady did is study exactly what you need to do to shred the Bears: pound in precision dink-and-dunk routes all night long and demolish the Tampa Two. That he managed to do it in a raging snowstorm speaks to his ability as a rifle-armed passer, but doesn’t in any way excuse a fundamental flaw in the Bears.
(There’s a second flaw there: with the defense ineffective the team can not win. Cutler is a playmaker when he has time, but once the offense has a hill to climb the grab-bag O-line starts to weaken, he begins making dumb Grossman-like decisions… and you end up with a disgusting blowout like that one was.
I think with another year of seasoning on Martz’s offense (and some more O-line cohesion) the team cold be really good – ESPECIALLY if the defense learns to adapt a bit more when the two-man shell gets taken apart as well as it was last night. This year, though, they’re not.
Many Bears fans here in Chicago started the year expecting to be something on the order of 3 and 13. Ever since this last win streak started we’ve been walking around like beat dogs, more nervous every week, waiting for the brutal pummeling we knew was sure to come. It finally came.
The best we can hope for this team is it somehow managing to fake its way to a first-round playoff bye, scraping by a tired wild-card straggler in round two, and then getting demolished by any other top NFC team in the conference championship. They’re not getting to Dallas. Le sigh.
To clarify, my conclusion comes after watching the Pats destroy the Jets a week earlier too, that’s two pretty good defenses right there getting torn apart.
As for my dear dear Bears, ever since the Giants utterly demolished them I have no real expectations other than lucky breaks and hoping Cutler and the offense will finally click. If it happens, I do hope the team will become very dangerous and solid.
chase_j
3944
I had a thought, charge each person $5 and donate to some charity in poor Detroit.
Yeah, a 7-9 team winning the division is reasonable, and my guess is the best any team will do is 8-8.
And there’s a good chance there will be a 10-6 team in the NFC that doesn’t get a wildcard. Man, will fans of that team howl if the winner of the NFC West is 7-9.
What I’m waiting for is a 7-9 or 8-8 team from the NFC west to sneak into the playoffs and then win a home game against a 11 or 12 win wildcard team. That ought to cause the entire system of giving division winners homefield advantage during the wildcard round into question.
Sarkus
3947
Why get excited about it now? It’s already happened. Two years ago the 8-8 Chargers hosted a playoff game against the 12-4 wildcard Colts and won. The same year the 9-7 Cardinals beat the 11-5 Falcons in Arizona. The same year the 11-5 Patriots didn’t make the playoffs at all.
7-9 seems to push buttons that 8-8 doesn’t. I guess I can understand it, but to me the difference between 7-9 and 8-8 isn’t that significant. And if this year a 7-9 team out of the NFC West does make the playoffs, it will be the first time that’s ever happened. Hardly reason to make significant changes to the playoff system.
It’s like BCS chaos for the NFL!
Yeah, last year the Jets were 9-7 and almost made it to the Superbowl. In 2008 the Cardinals were 9-7 and almost won the Superbowl. I don’t see a lot of difference between 9-7 and 8-8.
Sarkus
3950
With all the talk about Favre’s streak ending, it is interesting to hear a debate about whether what he did is actually more impressive then Jim Marshall’s shorter (only 281 games) streak. Marshall was a defensive end, meaning he was hit on nearly every play unlike QBs, played in an era where defensive substitution wasn’t as common as it is now, and had a lot less sports medicine advantages then Favre had. Definately worth considering, IMHO.
Like the City of Detroit?
chase_j
3952
I’m sure it would’ve been gladly accepted…wonder how large a crowd they got.
While I agree completely that coaches should be way the hell away (and players too for that matter), but I equally think they should crack down on “gunners” who deliberately run out of bounds to avoid defenders and try to make better speed. As far as I’m concerned, even if a player is pushed out of bounds, he should be ruled out of the play. Everyone knows where the sideline is, if you are running so close to it that you can’t avoid the blocker without going out, then you are out. There’s a reason it is called “out of bounds.”
As things stand, runners are using the sideline to protect themselves and build up speed. I think that should be against the rules.
Rimbo
3954
But the beauty of that is that you can’t argue with the team that wins on the field. If the 11-5 team was so much better than the 8-8 team, well, they should’ve won the game then, shouldn’t they?
In college, teams will get ranked ahead of teams without them ever playing on the field –*or even after being beaten on the field. Where’s the justice in that?
He’s right, but it wasn’t the Bears fault.
[LEFT]From the middle of the third quarter against the Lions, into the early part of the third quarter against the Bears, the Patriots outscored three opponents by a margin of 109-3. The last 2 games against the 9-2 Jets and the 9-3 Bears, the Patriots won, 81-10. Over the last 10 quarters the Patriots have scored 116 points.
Right now Tom has 268 throws without an INT, 19 TD’s in that time.
His QB rating for the season ATM is 109.9
Pats have not turned over the ball in 5 games.
The Bears ran into the best QB in the game, who actually has a higher career QB rating in the snow than not, who at the moment is playing the best football of his life. I’ve watched every snap this guy has thrown, and I thought I would never see him look better than 07. I was wrong. There is no ceiling with this guy. It is like watching Jordan. When you think you have seen him at his best, he does better. Uncanny.
The weird part, because the defense at the beginning of the season was so sucky, in almost every category the Pats are worse than their opponents…1st downs, 3rd down conversions, yards given exc. Except two, Points/touchdowns and turnovers (+18). Classic Bill Belichick bend don’t break mentality.
[/LEFT]
What killed us in that situation was not having a physical back who could take advantage of the tired Ravens D. Oh, wait…
Since being a Texans fan is all about moral victories and silver linings, this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0o_Ycabu55Y is sweet. I love how he pulls his hand up at the last second to make sure that the second foot gets down first.
dwolfe
3957
Throwing the ball away or getting sacked in the end zone = safety (if the refs call chucking the ball away an intentional safety, anyway).
So…yeah, dude didn’t have much choice. When two of your offensive linemen are on just one guy, game on the line, and let him through, you’re already screwed.
As an unrepentant Brady fan since the moment he replaced Bledsoe, I’m going to have to respectfully disagree with you. I think a lot of it is hype and two mediocre teams with good records getting exposed and frustrated. The Patriots are showing that they can score points on any defense, and that is reason enough to kneel before the Beib, but the Bears should have made at least one interception on him. Brady threw into Urlacher’s hands multiple times, not making an adjustment, and was skipping 6 yard passes into Welker’s knees. Brady’s doing exactly the right things in this stretch but he wasn’t having the same success without Mankins in the line. A team with excellent pass rush can still disrupt him, like Miami did earlier in the season. In the first half of 2007, he was untouchable. The GB game should be an interesting game. It’s a shame Rodgers likely won’t play.
Not stupid enough. The BCS would pit the two teams with the best records against each other and the remaining teams with winning/break-even records would play randomly selected games at neutral sites. If there are three+ teams with the same record at the top of the league, the oldest two franchises would be selected to play in the BCS Super Bowl and the remaining team(s) get(s) to play in the Meaningless Random Match-Up Games.
