No team in the NFL will purposely tank a season to draft Luck or any other player.
Brett Favre takes what might be considered a subtle jab at Aaron Rodgers, saying he’s not surprised that Aaron won a Super Bowl, but he is surprised that it took him so long.
Greg Jennings responds, first saying that the Packers felt they could have won it sooner, but every team feels that way. Then he says, “We didn’t go all the way with Brett, but we did with Aaron. I think that kind of speaks for itself.”
I love Greg Jennings.
Brett Favre is the Sarah Palin of football.
Erik_J
2944
That is what I’m talking about. “Well, allow me to retort…”
Mike Nolan. Ooh I get to share my favorite Dan Snyder story (originally told in John Feinstein’s book, Next Man Up). From when Turner coached the team (probably around 2001 or so).
Early that season, after a Redskins loss, Snyder told Nolan that his defensive calls were “too vanilla.” Like the other coaches, Nolan had figured out by then that trying to explain football to Snyder was pointless, since he already had the game figured out. A few days later a gallon of 31 Flavors ice cream showed up on Nolan’s desk with a note that said, “This is what I like. Not vanilla.”
Nolan laughed and sent Snyder a note: “Thanks for the ice cream. My kids enjoyed it.”
“The first time it was actually kind of funny,” Nolan said. “I didn’t mind it at all.”
The next time wasn’t as funny.
The Redskins lost on the road to Dallas, and Nolan went into his office late Sunday night to start looking at game tape. When he arrived, there were three giant canisters of melting 31 Flavors ice cream on his desk with another note: “I wasn’t joking. I do not like vanilla.”
Quoted from here
olaf
2946
Rodgers is so much better than Favre. I think Rodgers might end up being the best ever. I still think thats Montana, but man watching Green Bay last year and this season, he is damn near perfect.
Nawid_A
2947
What, the Colts this season hasn’t confirmed that Manning has been the best ever for most of the past decade?
I’ve been watching football for nearly 40 years and Manning is the best QB I’ve seen in that time.
Shadarr
2949
Peyton Manning has an unfair advantage, though, because he has Peyton Manning calling plays for him.
Sarkus
2950
Manning is very good but I still think Montana was better. A bit more mobility and still a good enough arm in his prime to make the deep throws when needed. Chiefs Montana was limited, of course.
We’ll see what cam Newton has to say about that.
While I did lol at this, I’ve got to wonder why the Colts brought in Collins so late and didn’t even try to “dumb down” the offense.
That is the only time Alex Smith is going to be compared favorably to Tom Brady.
Wrong!
“Smith has completed an astounding 72 of his 107 passes, which gives him a completion percentage of 67.3%. This makes him the fourth most accurate passer in the league, behind only Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees and Phillip Rivers.”
He’s also only thrown 1 INT so far. Yeah it’s only week 4. Still, he’s usually at the bottom of the league in QB stats by this time already.
I haven’t seen SF play this year – are they playing in the shotgun more? I want to say that Smith has excelled when he’s in shotgun, and less so under center.
Not that I’ve seen to an appreciable amount. The article explains the success there is coming from Harbaugh making it easier for Smith to beat the blitz because receivers don’t change their routes so Alex knows where they are going to be. Receivers used to change their routes? And nobody thought to NOT do this to help Alex until Harbaugh came along? Football is weird, man.
Thongsy
2958
No, I would say it’s lesser than in years past. Alex Smith is an enigma, he sucks for 80% of the field but get him in the Red Zone and he’s an elite QB. He’s finding success now out of the pro set instead of the shotgun and playing better while being blitz? I just don’t know what to think of him anymore, whether I should hate him or embrace him as the future Niners QB.
It’s no secret that some pro offenses are all pretty damn intricate. I have no idea if the more complicated ones, relative to other pro offenses, produce better results or not but some OCs/HCs obviously believe they do or they wouldn’t be installing these monstrosities. I would absolutely love to see a thoroughly researched article on this by good football journalist someday. The engineer in me strongly suspects that high degrees of complexity are self defeating and that the most elegant offenses will be those boiled down to the simplest possible system that gives the players more attention free to focus on execution, but I have no way to prove this. Some stats on success and productivity for simple pro offenses vs complex ones would be really interesting to see.
Based on what Bill’s said, I don’t think you’re wrong in so much as you have to work with the people you have, and in this year at least, in a very limited time period (especially for teams with new offensive coordinators). Harbaugh and whoever is the OC at Carolina are showing to be flexable with how they approach their teams; I.E. not making it complex and giving their quaterbacks help due to either rookie (Carolina) or average (San Fran) quarterbacks and a lack of off season camps.
If you look at, for example, St Louis or KC to contrast that, you see a supposed OC genius in McDanial in his first year and I guess a new OC (and an idiot head coach) in KC not do that. Both teams haven’t been helped with injuries or a really hard schedule, and the Chiefs just don’t look nearly as good as last year when Weiss was calling the plays. We know Bradford’s a pretty good quarterback, and Cassell isn’t exactly chopped liver himself, but with limited time to even have the damn (new) playbook, much less to practice it enough to get everyone’s timing down, it’s gonna be a rough year for both those teams unless they make some changes to how they call plays.
Peyton Manning is a complete edge case in this experiment btw; he literally called the plays for the team, which is to my knowledge unheard of in the modern game. It wasn’t a sandlot offense in any respect either: Reggie Wayne said it took him a couple of years to get everything down, and that’s for a receiver. The Colts dropoff is almost completely explained to Fetushead’s absense.
