Arena The Official NFL Discussion Thread (Now Featuring Time's Person of the Year, Taylor Swift!)

HOFers like Warren Moon should not count as 'failed QBs' since they went on to have HOF careers.

 

How did you not remember when Moon played for the Chiefs?! Shame on you

Again, as others have pointed out, Defensive Holding is only applicable before the ball is in the air. It's holding to impede someone's route in that fashion. When you keep holding onto them once the ball is thrown their way, that's PI.

And to those who still somehow think that was uncatchable.... yeah, it wasn'. Because he was being wrapped up entirely! If you don't believe that Gronk could have at least come back to the ball and gotten a hand on it had he not been bear-hugged and held to the back off the endzone, I don't think you've ever seen a Patriot's game. But really, how good the receiver is should be irrelevant to the call. The rules don't say it's only PI if you know for sure the guy would have caught it. They say you can't impede someone attempting to catch the ball in this fashion. This is not a gray area.

I think the most egregious part of this is that the ref threw the flag then picked it up. Basically it seems like he was afraid of the home crowd getting pissed and got intimidated into making a bad call. And you just can't do that.

 

The second one is hypnotic.

 

HOF 2014 semi - finalists announced.

 

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/10017323/bill-barnwell-tom-brady-peyton-manning

For solojones and s65horsey

 

It seemed to be a fairly intense week for football.

 

This Sunday night is a trap game for Denver if I ever saw one. My Pats are a pissed off team right now that is going to be playing at home, with a full compliment of healthy weapons at Tom's disposal, and basically the whole country outside of here in New England calling us underdogs. Take away two BS calls by the refs this year that decided games, and we're 9-1, right there tied for the best record in the league. Peyton himself has admitted that he doesn't sleep well the night before he has to play the Pats because more often then not, we've had his number. The Denver defense has shown, especially in the Dallas game, that if you scheme properly, they can be passed on almost at will. I believe this is going to be a high scoring shootout, in which turnovers are going to be key. Whoever commits the least amount, is going to come out on top. Let the haters hate, but I'm willing to bet Tom gets the better of his fellow future hall-of-famer again.

 

Don't see how it's a trap game. The teams seem evenly matched in most ways. Do the Pats have a home edge? Yes. Trap game? No.

 

I've never heard this term before can someone explain "trap game" to me?

 

Basically it's a game where theoretically, on paper, one team is supposed to be dominant -- especially coming off a quality win over an actually tough team -- and is looking ahead down the schedule (either to the week immediately following or overall) and walks into their current opponent and get played hard and lose.

 

Ah...yeah then I don't think this is that. Manning at least isn't going to be one to look over Brady's team. Idk about the rest of the Broncos.

 

Not so much a trap game as much as "Brady's probably going to be still really ticked off over how that game vs Carolina ended and take it out on on the Bronco's defense."

 

how can any game against the pats ever be a trap game? they're one of those harder opponents that teams would be looking ahead to... and get womped on by like the jags or something, not the other way around.

and i dunno, the pats haven't exactly had peyton's number the last however many times they've played. ever since that playoff win, it's kinda gone the other way, regardless of location.

 

Because the Pats are 2.5 point underdogs at home that's why.

 

it's still the pats, one of the premier teams of the league since 2001, and nothing has done anything to change that. who cares if they're 2.5 underdogs at home? i dare you to name any team that would actually not devote their full week to the pats. probably more, because that's what brady and belicheck have earned. and that's not something that just randomly disappears. if they were losing most of their games, and it seemed like there was something wrong with brady, then maybe, maybe i'd buy it. but neither is the case.

 

What is your definition of a crappy team? Tomlinson played in an AFC championship game and was in the playoffs 5 times. AP has played in an AFC championship game and the playoffs 3 times.

 

the majority of tomlinson's career they really weren't that great of a team though. he was the main reason they made it where they did most of the time. rivers has never impressed me as a qb, and their wideouts were never really very good. they had a good line, and they had a HoFer in tomlinson, with a decent defense that happened to play the 3-4 before teams really started figuring out how to play against it. when were they ever really impressive beyond gates and tomlinson?

and the vikings? seriously? how can you say they've had a legitimately good team other than that one year with favre, when they made it to the aforementioned AFC championship game? i mean really... the vikings are terrible, have been terrible, and are probably going to be terrible for a while. it's a real waste of AP, sadly. he's in a very barry sandersish situation, great, great RB who is good enough to get them to the playoffs, but not good enough to get beyond that. the lions with sanders made it to the playoffs more than a few times, but would anyone really call them good teams?

 

you might have just answered your own question. the vast majority of good teams have good qb's, whereas teams who lean really heavily on the running game tend to do so because their qb is not so great. a lot of great running backs have played on great teams. in most cases though they don't put up gaudy numbers because their teams aren't as one-dimensional as peterson's vikings or sanders' lions.

 

Beat me by a minute, tom. I was coming in here to say that it made logical sense to me that the good teams had good qbs and there were less chances for the rb to gain a lot of yards.

 

i get that. i just wish we could see something like what happened when faulk ended up on the rams, or smith on the cowboys, etc. it's absolutely amazing to watch a HoF back and a great QB play the game together, and we just don't get to see that often enough. when was the last time that happened? was it the faulk/warner rams? i guess it was more of a rhetorical question than anything else.

 

i think you could make an argument that it's happening right now with lynch and wilson. league's second leading rusher and 5th highest rated passer on a 10-1 team.

 

could definitely make an argument for that. wasn't aware they were doing that well.

but that'd be what... more than a decade between them?

 

i dunno, there are definitely other examples of single seasons like that at least. how about the 2004 patriots? won the super bowl, and everyone just thinks of brady, but corey dillon ran for over 1600 yards that year.