3741

T.O. gets a shot if some playoff-bound team loses its starting WR in December.

Tiki is done. If he can’t get signed by the Bucs, who are down to their #3 RB and have Ronde Barber on the team, he can’t get signed anywhere.

3742

They’d just promoted a hotshot coordinator in McDaniels who didn’t work out. I can see the logic in going with a veteran head coach. The Rams may have that same kind of question at the end of the year if they fire their coach – go with someone with a track record or promote a hot coordinator again. So many of them don’t work out as HCs.

3743

Which is kind of sad. I’m not a huge fan of Tiki after how he left the NFL (burning bridges, disdain, etc). But, I’m always for giving a guy another chance. If I were the Bucs, I would at least let him try. Put on the depth chart, give him a few runs, see if he has anything. Because, honestly, he may be older, but he might still have a fair amount left in the tank if he wasn’t the feature back…

3744

Third string running backs who don’t play special teams aren’t going to last long in the NFL. Does anyone see Tiki playing on the punt coverage team? He’s done.

3745

…or if he can’t even get a tryout with the Lions, given Best’s concussions and Jerome Harrison’s brain tumor.

3746

The Panthers have Cam Newton because of the ineptitude of Jerry Richardson’s sons. When Jerry went out due to illness (needed a heart transplant), Mark and Jon ran the Panthers into the ground. They were cheap, made bad decisions, caused internal conflicts between the front office and coaching staff and generally fucked up big-time. Foxy didn’t stand a chance in that environment, especially with crippling injuries to the team. By the time those two douches resigned on September 1, 2009, the piss-poor season was a foregone conclusion.

I’m not saying he’s a great or even a good coach, but the majority of the blame in Carolina lies with those two privileged ass-wipes.

As for Foxy being hired, remember that prior to that 2-14 debacle, he had a 71-57 coaching record and made the playoffs 3 times. That’s pretty good. Frankly, he’s not doing a bad job at 2-4 with a really poor Denver team gutted by bad trades, McDaniel’s ego and horrible drafts.

3747

I will certainly grant you all of that but I am still not seeing much in the way of good coaching on the Broncos this season.

3748

It’s possible that Fox has lost “it”, so to speak, but like Blackadar I’m inclined to give him a couple of years given the state of the team he inherited. In particular, until the Broncos figure out their QB situation its going to be dicey. Tebow is playing mostly because of public pressure as far as I can tell, not because Fox, his staff, or Elway think much of the guy. And the longer they play him, the more time they are wasting since what they will have to do to give Tebow a “fair” shot is not going to necessarily be good for them in the long-term.

3749

Just saying…Tebow is my starting QB this weekend in fantasy football… god help me…

3750

Tebow is a half decent fantasy QB, thanks to his rushing ability and his spray-and-pray passes, at least a few of which are going to be caught. When people see 150 passing yards, 70 rushing yards, and two total TDs they’ll be even less inclined to look at his 10-29 passing line or whatever it ends up being.

3751

The good fantasy news with Tebow is that it’s difficult to intercept his passes that are 15 yards overthrown out of bounds.

3752

I think this is sort of like the Colts situation. Fox got the blame, but the reality is that he and most other coaches in the league are as good as their QB. Fox was able to win games basically just with Delhomme throwing to Smith. Once he didn’t have a QB, he couldn’t win games anymore. So they hire him in Denver where they also don’t have a QB and lo and behold he can’t win games there either. Is he a good coach or a bad coach? I think he’s the wrong coach, what they need is a guy like Mike McCarthy who can identify and develop QBs. Ironically, McDaniels might be that kind of guy but he’s such an atrocious head coach in all other respects that they couldn’t keep him.

3753

I think what you’ll see now that teams have tape on him is that a LB will be left in to spy on the QB run, and the secondary will play off and try to catch as many of those errant passes as possible. Sure, a guy in tight man coverage can’t intercept an overthrow, but if you have the safeties sitting back and watching for it, that’s the easiest INT to get.

3754

Any of you dudes read this? Interesting stats analysis on efficiency in the NFL.

3755

Didn’t McDaniels draft Tebow? If so that would go against the ‘identify’ good QBs thing.

3756

I have some arguments with that.

FO ranks San Francisco 3rd overall in their stats, 4th in defense, but just 17th in offense. Yet he praises the San Francisco offense, remarking on how they’re more efficient on offense than the New England Patriots (1st overall in offense, 34% higher in DVOA than San Francisco).

Why is that? Well, he slips that in at the end – special teams. No one has better special teams than San Francisco right now, 2.5% higher than the second-place team, the Jets. But the article would have you believe that the offense is why, and that New England is “wasting” yards. New England has league-average special teams and an atrocious defense. Their offense is winning them games, just like San Francisco’s defense and special teams are winning them games.

And then there’s this:

(Note: Scoreability counts ALL points, not just those generated by the offense. The scoreboard does not care how those points get there, only that they do. Well-coached teams score points as many ways as possible. Scoreabilty rewards teams for proficiency in all phases of the game; Bendability applies the same rules to defense.)

What the hell does this have to do with their offense? San Francisco has two return and one defensive touchdown – not ridiculous totals, not the most in the league (Baltimore and the Jets are tied with four return/defensive TDs_. San Francisco’s offense has jack-all to do with Ted Ginn returning kickoffs for TDs.

The intro of the column says “We call them Scoreability (offensive efficiency) and Bendability (defensive efficiency), which quantifies the bend-but-don’t-break phenomenon.” Then that is completely at odds with his little disclaimer at the bottom.

One last gripe, because my day is almost over:

The 2010 Chargers, for example, were No. 1 in both total offense and total defense. Yet they went 9-7 and failed to make the playoffs. The problem? The consistently dumb, inefficient Chargers ranked No. 28 in Bendability, meaning they surrendered a lot of cheap points that made it hard to win games.

San Diego’s special teams was historically inept, single-handedly losing games the offense and defense won. I believe they graded out close to the worst special teams play of the modern era. Those plays had nothing to do with the play of their defense, which is what CHFF would have you believe, and everything to do with blocked punts, awful coverage, terrible blocking on returns, and repeated injuries to long snappers (if I’m remembering that correctly).

HULK SMASH STUPID WRITER

I am not saying San Francisco is not awesome. They are! They’re third overall by FO’s metrics, they’re great this year. But the cause here is wrong.

3757

Yeah that article is fucking stupid. SF is a great story and an impressive turnaround from their previous seasons, but that writer doesn’t seem to have a clue why.

3758

Not only did he draft Tebow, but he drafted Tebow in the first round, a major Raider-class draft error. And that in the end was the problem. Denver was stuck with Tebow and now that they are stuck with him and losing with Orton, then they may as well go with Tebow. Elway is supposed to be working with Tebow, right? We’ll see if that can save him.

3759

Matt you can’t argue with the “harsh, inalterable reality of raw numbers.” Clearly the Chargers were, and are, awful, especially on defense.

Seriously though, their “scoreability” and “bendability” seem to be fairly biased towards special teams. That’s fine, since special teams are important, but you really can’t use those numbers to say much about a team’s offense or defense.

Speaking of San Diego: I just noticed that Darren Sproles is averaging 7.4 yards per carry and 7.31 yards per reception, with a total of 84 touches and 614 all purpose yards. That works out to 7.31 yards per touch. I know a lot of Charger fans that have said things to the effect of “Sproles didn’t fit into our system” but damn, you’d think with a guy that talented you’d find some way to make it work.

3760

True, so it could be that he’s not all that or it could’ve been a little egotism on McDaniels’ part: Tebow’s raw but I can fix his mechanics. Certainly his ego was responsible for a lot of his other blunders. I was impressed with how Orton played during his tenure, though. Kind of like Smith in SF this year.