callahan09

I agree with this sentiment, but I'm still holding out hope that the Bills, Broncos, or maybe the Chiefs make it to the Super Bowl (but either way, I want whoever makes it from the NFC to win the big one).

Renner added to the active roster. Does this mean Schaub is probably not good to go tomorrow?

I posted this in another thread as well (albeit as part of a much larger post with other numbers too): We rank 10th in points allowed over the past 4 games, allowing 19.3 points per game, BUT that's against teams ranking 7th, 27th, 31st, and 32nd in points scored over that span, who have have collectively averaged only 16.2 points per game over the same span. So in terms of points we're actually WORSE than the other defenses that our opponents have faced in this past quarter-season. Even if we subtract the 15 points given up off pick 6's (one had a PAT kick, the other a 2PT conversion), we've still allowed 15.5 points per game defensively to teams that have scored 15.3 points per game offensively, thus we're still actually slightly below average.

Miami has been the last ranked offense in the NFL over the past 4 games. Our last 4 games were again teams that rank 16th, 29th, 31st, and 32nd in total offense over the past 4 games. Now, I'm going to give the defense some major credit for taking care of business, allowing the 2nd fewest yards over that span. Those 4 teams have averaged 290 yards per game during this span, while we've allowed 257, so we've performed better than average against those teams than their other 3 opponents have in the same span. But still, we have faced the weakest offensive competition of any team. So while we've taken care of business against them, it's a stretch to assume that means we can keep up with the actual good offenses we're about to face. The next teams we face, over the same last 4 game stretch, rank 1st, 2nd, 13th, and 21st, and are averaging 410 yards per game. I haven't mentioned points yet. The next 4 opponents rank 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 6th in points per game over the past 4 games, averaging 32 points per game. We rank 10th in points allowed over the past 4 games, allowing 19.3 points per game, BUT that's against teams ranking 7th, 27th, 31st, and 32nd, who have have averaged only 16.2 points per game over the past 4 games, so in terms of points we're actually WORSE than the other defenses that our opponents have faced in this past quarter-season. Even if we subtract the 15 points given up off pick 6's (one had a PAT kick, the other a 2PT conversion), we've still allowed 15.5 points per game defensively to teams that have scored 15.3 points per game offensively, thus we're still actually below average. To this point I've just been looking at quarter-season stats to see how these teams are performing LATELY, since so many changes have happened for a lot of these teams over the course of the season that things that happened 5 or more games ago aren't necessarily as relevant as things that happened within the last month. I will look at full season rankings now: Over the course of the entire season, the last 4 teams we played rank 16th, 27th, 30th, and 31st in points scored. And the teams we face coming up rank 4th, 5th, 6th, and 8th in points scored. So to my mind, anyway you slice it, we just performed at about an average level against the worst offensive slate of teams any team has faced, and will now face what is probably the best offensive slate of teams that any team will face. I think that's where there's a good chance for the warts to really show. Long story short, I feel very little confidence that our defense will actually step up, and if the offense continues to turn the ball over like they have been, then the defense will only be exposed even more against the actual good opponents they have coming up. Keep in mind that the defenses we face coming up are also very good, ranking 1st, 3rd, 7th, and 8th in points allowed. We just got done facing the 13th, 24th, 30th, and 31st defenses in points allowed. So we go from facing awful teams in both offense AND defense, to GREAT teams in both categories. Things might get ugly. That's all I'm saying.

So in your mind, the receiver isn't responsible for looking at the ball and making a play on it? If the route says "go fast", then you just go fast, even if the ball is in the air and you're already under where it's going to land, you just keep running, beyond where the ball is going to go, and that's the considered an acceptable decision by the receiver? Even when the defender, who isn't supposed to be as good at playing the ball as the receiver, demonstrates the ability to play the ball and catch it? The receiver has no responsibility whatsoever to respond to the situation?

Explain to me how Givens wouldn't be able to make a play on that ball when the defender, who was literally step for step with him the entire way down the field, WAS able to do just that? The statement that my photo evidence is disputing was 1/28/01's claim that: OK, so if he didn't overrun it or misplay it, then why didn't the DEFENDER overrun it? Why was the DEFENDER able to make a play on the ball and catch it? Despite the fact that the defender was actually slightly IN FRONT of Givens for most of the play down the field, he was lockstep with him the entire way and Givens had positional advantage on the outside where the ball was thrown. Givens keeps running, doesn't adjust to the ball AT ALL, and the defender adjusted to the ball and made a play on it. If you're going to say that Givens didn't misplay it, then you're going to have to show how his reaction on that play was the correct one. It's OBVIOUS that it wasn't correct. If you watch them run down the field together, WR and defender, you can see that they both have the same chance at the ball, but the ball goes to the outside and Givens is on the outside. Explain to me how that ball gets intercepted like that with Givens 3 yards nowhere near the ball, except that Givens didn't play the ball and House did? And if Givens didn't play it, and House did, which is objectively what happened, then how can that not be considered "misplaying the ball"? You're not helping yourself, if that's the level of argument you're going to bring to the table. The entire point of my argument is that the RESULTS were a function of the WR's reaction on the play. So you can't dispute my point by saying "Look at the results!"

OK, someone is negging my posts above with the photos of the two throws, can someone please explain to me how those posts are detrimental to this board? Because that's what a neg means to me. How are those contributions not helpful to the discussion at hand? Can my anonymous disagreer please explain to me how one throw was so much worse than the other? The point I'm making here is that in one case, the receiver played the ball, and in the other, he didn't. They were both underthrows. I don't understand how you can call the Flacco throw worse than the Schaub throw? Explain it to me. What's worse about it? You can't just say, like I've seen here, that it was worse, and leave it at that. "It was severely underthrown, the other was slightly underthrown." That's NOT an answer! Explain in what way one was more egregious than the other, and keep in mind that in one case, the receiver was step for step with the defender, and in the other case the receiver had multiple steps wide open on his defender. I've shown you evidence of where the ball was, where the defenders were, where the receiver was going, etc, and I'm seeing two underthrows that should have both probably just been incomplete passes. One was against a worse defender and Givens played it perfectly and caught it. The other was versus a better defender, and Givens played it completely incorrectly, and thus it was intercepted. The point I'm making is that one makes the QB look, the other makes the QB look bad, even though there is hardly any difference between the throws, and that the Schaub throw was the best possible outcome for an underthrow like that, and Flacco's was the worst possible outcome for that throw, and that if Givens played Flacco's like he played Schaub's, it doesn't get intercepted. I contend that the Flacco throw was of the same nature that Flacco always threw to Torrey Smith, and Torrey didn't let those get intercepted and usually drew a DPI if it wasn't caught.

I have no idea how you can say that. Prove your point. Did you see the videos? Did you see the screen caps I posted above? To me, Flacco's is usually less likely to be intercepted in the NFL, as long as the receiver plays it correctly. He has the positional advantage as they're step for step and the ball is to the outside, the side that Givens is on relative to the defender, and if they both play the ball at the same spot, Givens has the position advantage and at worse the ball should fall incomplete, but this is the pass that Flacco routinely got a DPI call on from Torrey Smith as Torrey goes to play the ball and the defender can't avoid contacting him during his attempt to make the catch, thus DPI, or at worst just an incomplete pass. Schaub's is probably more likely to be intercepted, regardless of the fact that Givens played it smartly, precisely because it was so underthrown and that Givens had a couple steps on him. Givens has to stop and sit on it and gives the defender ample time to make up ground and get to the ball, that's how while Givens is sitting there waiting for the ball to get to him, the defender could have gotten to it and jumped in front of him to intercept it. The defender very nearly did just that, despite Givens being wide open in front of the defender when the ball was thrown and for most of the time while the ball was in the air. On the Flacco throw, Givens never wound up beating House, never had a step on him, and so both of them were step for step the whole way and if they'd both decided to play the ball at the same time, it shouldn't get intercepted. The positional advantage was Givens' but he squandered it and didn't take advantage, overran it, didn't play the ball, and so the defender was left alone with the play on the ball.

Now, for the Givens catch vs the Browns: At the 25, he's got multiple steps on the defender. At the 20, he's already slowed down and turned around to start playing for the ball. At the 22.5 the ball has arrived and the defender has had time to catch up and almost gets his hands on the ball. But Givens watched the ball, slowed down, played it smart, and made the catch. Something he absolutely did not do on the Flacco throw in the Jags game.

First you were disrespectful to me by responding to a tiny piece of a large post that I made, and making no argument whatsoever, just dismiss it by saying "this is hilarious." How about you make an actual point rather than making a disrespectful one-liner with no reasoning at all to back it up? Now you say this, but post nothing to prove your point, or even explain how you're right and I'm wrong. How exactly did did Givens *NOT* overrun and missplay that ball? http://www.nfl.com/gamecenter/2015111506/2015/REG10/jaguars@ravens?icampaign=GC_schedule_rr#menu=gameinfo%7CcontentId%3A0ap3000000579991&tab=videos He never even beats House. They are step for step the whole way, until House notices where the ball is going and makes a play on it while Givens doesn't and just keeps going. OK, so at the 20 yard line, they're step for step. At the 15 yard line they're step for step. At the 10 yard line, the ball is being caught, while Givens is 3 yards upfield. Watch it in game-speed on the video link I posted. Givens just outright keeps running and never makes a play on the ball. Why is it that the defender can look up, find the ball, and figure out how to make a play on it, but Givens can't? The ball actually does get thrown significantly to the outside, where Givens should have had by far a better play on it than the defender, who was to the inside of Givens relative to the ball, but Givens, once again I say, doesn't play the ball, overruns it, and gives the defender a free shot to make a leap to the outside to go come down with it.

My point is that they're essentially the same throw... one is an interception, one is a catch, and the biggest difference between the two is how the receiver played it, not the throw.

I don't think Schaub is playing well at any level this year. He hasn't been making any tough throws, and he's missed a lot of easy ones. These receivers have been doing so much more for him than they did for Joe, they've gotten more open and they've (particularly Buck Allen) done WAY more for him after the catch than Joe got from anyone this year. Schaub hasn't made any particularly impressive throws with the lone exception of the TD to Brown yesterday that got wiped away by a ridiculous OPI that should never have been called. That was a good throw! But he's been throwing to a lot of wide open receivers, hitting them sometimes, missing them too often as well. A lot of his completions were not particularly good throws that were hauled in anyway. The deep pass to Givens in the Browns game was a pretty severe under-throw, but Givens played the ball smartly, attacked it, AND was so wide open because the Browns defense is in an absolute shambles right now, that the defender wasn't able to catch up to the under-thrown ball as Givens had to basically stop in his tracks to get it. For reference, Flacco threw a ball that wasn't even that under-thrown against the Jags, and Givens totally misplayed it and over-ran it, and the defender had a free shot at the interception since Givens wasn't playing the ball. So here we see a worse throw than one Flacco made in the same type of situation to the same player, and Flacco's was intercepted by Schaub's was completed. That doesn't impress me, because my eyeballs tell me which player is throwing the ball better, but which one is getting helped by his receivers rather than screwed by them. Buck Allen has turned two 2-yard dumpoffs into long TDs with evasive speed after the catch, something Flacco never got from Forsett this year. If not for Buck Allen, then Schaub only has 1 TD pass to his 4 INTs. He's just got no zip on his ball, and no accuracy, missing way too many open receivers, but being afforded easy throws by our receivers getting wide open, and then the receivers bailing him out and making plays for him. Can you imagine how many points we might have put up with Flacco at QB this year if the playmakers were making plays like that have for Schaub? It's ridiculous. When Schaub plays against an actually competent defense (Browns and Dolphins right now are playing like bottom 5 defenses in the NFL, if not bottom 2), then those lame duck underthrows and throws behind the receivers that Schaub has been tossing are going to be getting picked off really, really often. He's already got 4 INTs in 2 games, but it could easily be 6 or 7 with a couple of horrible passes that miraculously weren't intercepted.

Wow, Brian Billick WRECKED that guy on Twitter haha.

Trestman has had a lot of issues this year on 3rd down and in the red zone, I will definitely agree to that. But overall he's been pretty good. There are excuses that could be made for him. First of all, we never had "all of our top tier players healthy". We never had Pitta or Perriman see the field this year, which meant that we were working with rookies & Gillmore (a 2nd year player who was never supposed to be more than a blocking tight end in the NFL) at tight end, and a bunch of undrafted guys + a 36 year old SSR at the WR position. That's not exactly a murderer's row of playmakers. He was working with a banged up O Line where our left tackle was replaced for most of the season by the worst offensive linemen in the NFL this year in Hurst. That's not "all of our top tier players healthy". SSR was dealing with injuries ever since week 4 or when he had the back injury, so the one real WR we had on this team was not only an old man on the brink of retirement, but he wasn't even fully healthy for more than 3 games this year. Gillmore, the other of our best playmakers from the beginning part of the seaosn, has also missed a lot of time due to injuries. He hasn't missed many full games, but he's been absent for "the remainder of the game" starting usually at the end of the first half or early in the second half due to in-game injuries during something like 5 different games this year, in addition to 2 entire games he's missed, one of which was during that time when we supposedly had "all our top tier players healthy" on offense. Just because SSR and Flacco didn't go to IR until more than half the season was over didn't mean we were healthy at all the important positions! The front office neglected the WR position in this off-season anyway. Even if every player signed to this team was 100% healthy this season, we'd still have a weak WR corps anyway, depending on whether Perriman quickly became a dominant receiver or not. We've had injuries at WR, TE, RB, and perhaps most importantly LT for the entire season.

What are you talking about? Branch was acquired from the Seahawks during the 2010 season, in a trade, in exchange for a 4th round draft pick in the 2011 draft. He was then quoted as saying he was happy to be back on the Patriots. What do you expect a person to say when they're on a team? That they're NOT happy to be there? Your whole argument is full of holes and misinformation on this. Why would you even bring up Derrick Mason? He's 41 years old and out of the NFL for 4 years, and was CLEARLY *done* during his last season in 2011. He played 1 season in the NFL after the Ravens dispatched of him, and he wasn't good. It was a significant drop-off from his previous 3 years playing with Flacco as his QB. Then, he retired. I just don't understand what he has to do with anything in this discussion.

Out of curiosity, does that count Perriman and/or Pitta?

In what way did Flacco have a down season last year? An I misunderstanding? Are you talking about Joe Flacco?

That isn't proof. How many receivers who have left this team are even still in the NFL? Most are not. The two good ones who are would be Boldin and Torrey. There hasn't been a chance for them to go elsewhere since going to the Niners, and both have actually expressed dissatisfaction being on that team when neither ever expressed dissatisfaction as a Raven. I seem to recall Boldin really wanting to remain a Raven, the fact that he isn't a Raven is because our front office didn't want him, not the other way around. Besides, how often in the NFL do players leave a team and then go back? Not often. Your proof is a meaningless fact and has nothing to do with the premise of the discussion.

Most (all?) misses from beyond 50 yards, though.

The D has been excellent these last two games. Take away two pick 6s (and a PAT and a 2pt conversion) and the D has given up just 27 points total in the last two games. 13.5 pt/game. Very good. Too bad the offense is awful and keeps spotting the opponent 7 a game.

Plus one to this sentiment.

This is just not true. Joe had 1 three turnover game this year (and only 1 last year). He has only had two games since winning the Super Bowl where he had multiple interceptions and a lost fumble.

Not really, actually.

I don't recall many people making these excuses for Joe against the Texans in 2012 when JJ Watt kept getting in unblocked and tipping his passes... People say, why not throw the ball away? Why not take a sack? Why not throw it higher over the defender? Why not throw it in another direction? Why not change the protection to pick up the unblocked pass rusher? Why not audible to a different play?

Why do you hold the fumbles against him but not count his 3 rushing TDs? Anyway, Joe has 112 INTs in 137 games (including post-season). That's 0.82 per game. Cousins has 25 INTs in his 20 starts, that's 1.25 per game. Plus he has an additional 4 INTs in just 79 attempts across 5 games he played in but didn't start. He averages 36 attempts per start, so that's basically 2 games worth of passing in additional to his 20 starts. We could call that 29 INTs in 22 games, then, which is 1.32 INTs per game. That's a rate of about 60% more INTs per game than Joe. Joe has also had 65 starts with 0 INTs. Cousins has only had a 0 INT start 6 times out of 20, that's 70% of his starts that he has thrown at least 1 INT, vs just under 53% for Joe. Joe pretty darn near has an interception-free game in about half his games throughout his career. So to characterize him as an interception per game guy is just wrong. You seem to be relying entirely too much on 2015 numbers and ignoring the rest of the career (for both players, in fact, but especially in regards to Joe). Joe's 80% of games with at least 1 INT this year is out of the norm for his 8-year-long career, and remember that the Oakland and Arizona games both had just 1 INT on the last play of the game as he tried to lead a desperation comeback, those aren't that significant to me. All told, too many of Joe's INTs this year were the result of his players not attacking the ball, the ball bouncing off their fingers and to an interception, or on the last throw of the game trying to lead a comeback (often the 2nd would-be comeback of the game because the defense gave the lead back up after the first comeback drive, which happened in 5 games this year!). 2015 is not indicative of Joe's ability, he was working with a truly messed up receiving corps this year, and Schaub did quite a bit worse than Joe has done this year, and he did it against a really REALLY bad defense that Joe had 3 TDs and 0 turnovers against earlier this year (when they had a healthier defense at that).