Sports: NFL

[Hahma]

Originally Posted by Spidey'tilIDie

I've never hated a team more.

At the end of the first half, I told my wife, and also commented on a friend's FB post, that the Jags didn't deserve to win because they gave up playing just before the 2 minute warning. I said it to my wife during their weaksauce play calling choices that lead to them punting to NE, and on FB after NE scored.

I said that anyone with half a brain knows that giving the ball back to NE with 2 minutes left in the half is going to end up as a TD. That's what they do and then that momentum builds into the 2nd half and the bastards end up winning, and they did.

I also commented to my wife, "why doesn't Jacksonville throw the ball deep and go for the DPI calls?"

As much as I dislike NE, the Jags pretty much gave the game away. They had a good lead and could have built on it by playing to win and not turtling and being afraid of their QB. Heck, when they recovered that weird fumble, they did nothing with it.

[AMIS]

LOL.
It's amazing just how many people hate the Patriots...And I'm not sure why...I guess success breads contempt.
For transparency sake - I'm a Pats fan...Have been since I came to North America and they were consistently last in their division. Probably why I dislike the Bills so much. Although I don't hate them.

All that happened yesterday was experience beating inexperience. By all rights Jacksonville should have won but then, as Hahma pointed out, they started turtling and beat themselves.
This was how and why the Patriots won the Superbowl last year.

This years Superbowl is shaping up to be the make or break for the Belichick and Brady show. They will need to come out strong because the Eagles don't appear to either turtle or give up and a last minute Brady drive against them is less likely to occur.
What will really be interesting around the AMIS household is that; my youngest is an Eagles fan.

[japes]

Originally Posted by dok

Something I missed in live play that's, in retrospect, pretty remarkable:

http://ftw.usatoday.com/2018/01/myle...afc-super-bowl

It did not go unnoticed in my house. Even if Jack doesn't score on the return he'd have been in FG position with a kicker that hasn't missed all season. All season long they have been saying how they let the play go and then bring it back if it's determined differently...except here.

Also for those wondering why Jax didn't just throw it deep and see if they'd get a PI call...can you honestly say you watched the whole game and NE didn't interfere at all...At one point in the game I joked with my son that I thought NE could get a piggy back ride down the field on a Jax receiver back and they probably wouldn't call it.

Experience vs inexperience? Is that like when Michael Jordan used to get falls calls when he missed a basket...I wouldn't call it intentional but any benefit of the doubt went to Brady over Bortles. If Brady's pass was incomplete and it was close the threw a flag. One of the TD drives an OL had a DL from behind by the Horse Collar keeping him off Brady as Brady threw the ball over him...no call. I'm all for fewer holding calls by OL in the ticky tack variety but if the DL completely beats the OL and he reaches back and grabs him as he goes by...that's a pretty easy call to make.

ONE penalty...come on now.

[Dad_Scaper]

Originally Posted by AMIS

LOL.
It's amazing just how many people hate the Patriots...And I'm not sure why...I guess success breads contempt.
For transparency sake - I'm a Pats fan...Have been since I came to North America and they were consistently last in their division. Probably why I dislike the Bills so much. Although I don't hate them.

There are a couple reasons why I hate them. One of which is this attitude that their fans have: you hate us cuz we're better. No, I hate the Patriots because their coach is a disgusting pig of a man. I hate the Patriots because of their institutional disdain for the rules. Has there ever been a week when Tom Brady wasn't on the injury report? Videotaping other teams' practices? Playing with under-inflated balls? It's just disdain for the rules.

Nothing ever happens to them, but it's annoying as hell to watch. And, like all good cheaters, the response is something like "every team does it," or "we didn't get punished so it didn't happen," even though both of those things are lies.

And often, as in this case, there's an officiating call making a difference in a tight game. In a close game you say "experience beating inexperience," but of course you could just as easily say "one enormous blown call," by the premature termination of a play, and either way you are describing something that happened on the field. In fact, the blown call is a better explanation, in that it's something concrete you can point to instead of the nebulous "experience" thing.

Also, Tom Brady is an asshole. Maybe not as big an asshole as Belichik, but they are both right up there as leading assholes in the NFL. *You* might not care about whether your team is populated with, or led by, assholes, but I do.

You want to root for the Patriots, then go ahead. But keep your sneering to yourself. You can have your wins, and your team led by a pair of sneering, disgusting men, and I'll root for my team that doesn't win so often but also doesn't get embroiled in biannual cheating scandals.

[superfrog]

D_S spittin' that fire against the Pats.

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[Spidey'tilIDie]

Originally Posted by Dad_Scaper

There are a couple reasons why I hate them. One of which is this attitude that their fans have: you hate us cuz we're better. No, I hate the Patriots because their coach is a disgusting pig of a man. I hate the Patriots because of their institutional disdain for the rules. Has there ever been a week when Tom Brady wasn't on the injury report? Videotaping other teams' practices? Playing with under-inflated balls? It's just disdain for the rules.

Nothing ever happens to them, but it's annoying as hell to watch. And, like all good cheaters, the response is something like "every team does it," or "we didn't get punished so it didn't happen," even though both of those things are lies.

And often, as in this case, there's an officiating call making a difference in a tight game. In a close game you say "experience beating inexperience," but of course you could just as easily say "one enormous blown call," by the premature termination of a play, and either way you are describing something that happened on the field. In fact, the blown call is a better explanation, in that it's something concrete you can point to instead of the nebulous "experience" thing.

Also, Tom Brady is an asshole. Maybe not as big an asshole as Belichik, but they are both right up there as leading assholes in the NFL. *You* might not care about whether your team is populated with, or led by, assholes, but I do.

You want to root for the Patriots, then go ahead. But keep your sneering to yourself. You can have your wins, and your team led by a pair of sneering, disgusting men, and I'll root for my team that doesn't win so often but also doesn't get embroiled in biannual cheating scandals.

I never thought I'd agree so whole-heartedly with a Ravens fan, but this perfectly sums it up for me. It galls me to no end that true greatness (Joe Montana and Terry Bradshaw) has been surpassed by two guys whose motto in life is, "if you ain't cheating, you ain't trying." The NFL, which obviously favors the Hate-riots, has still managed to catch them cheating twice (only a fool believe that they were the only two times they cheated), despite that the league spouts rhetoric claiming they are the greatest of all time. No, I say. Tom Shady and Bill Belicheat are not the best ever. While cheating multiple time, they have barely surpassed better coaches and QBs who did things on the up and up. There should be an asterisk next to every record and trophy that team achieves, to mark their rule breaking for posterity.

[japes]

I hate the patriots solely because of their fans...(Not all of you are bad). It actually started with the Red Sox...for the longest time I kind of liked the Red Sox...Mainly due to my dislike for Yankee fans. Before I moved to Texas I lived in the city where the Red Sox had Spring Training. I've been to many spring games and I was even friends at one time with the Red Sox Clubhouse manager. Everything was fine and then they won the world series...then overnight the fans turned into Yankee fans and then got worse. The self entitled attitude where if they don't win every year something is wrong, someone should get fired, we were robbed...etc.

I have a ton of respect for the organization and what they have been able to accomplish. And as a closet Michigan fan I've got huge respect for Brady. Heck I remember this past Super Bowl looking at my wife early in the fourth quarter after a camera caught this look on Brady's face and saying "Oh my gosh...New England is going to win this game" I don't know why I said that but he had a look that said..."we aren't going to lose this game"...and I believed him as did his teammates obviously...

Tom Brady is the greatest QB in the history of modern Football...But like Jordan...he benefits from a few questionable calls quite often. If any patriots fans out there would be honest with themselves they'd admit...they got lucky in that one...and had some help.

Also do you think the NFL was really looking forward to a Superbowl with Blake Bortles and Nick Foles as the headliners...

[dok]

Pats fans writ large have definitely become very much like Yankee fans; i.e. entitled and insufferable. Of course, just as with any fan base, there are plenty of agreeable people who I count as friends and who I'd gladly sit down and watch a game with. But the overall attitude of "Pats nation" does not make it easy to stomach their wins.

I'm of two minds with Belichick. There's no question he looks to exploit loopholes in the rules (from the injury report shenanigans to the receiver ineligible shenanigans in that playoff game a few years back), and the videotaping was of course just straight-up cheating and really shouldn't be minimized when we consider his legacy. And as D_S points out, it's likely there's other cheating that he simply got away with. He's also a morose, humorless guy; it's tough to enjoy someone's success when they barely seem to enjoy it themselves.

But Belichick is also clearly the greatest football coach of his generation by far; his ability to continually adjust the playstyle of his teams to maximize the the talent on his roster is just unparalleled. He's the best in-game as well; it's not an accident that his teams over-perform in the second half so often (it's not all officiating). He's a very good GM as well; the Garopolo trade looks terrible now but by and large he's done an amazing job of continually reloading the roster despite not having high picks to work with. The team has has a good to great O-line for something like 15 of the last 17 years; that speaks to both coaching and talent evaluation, and it traces back to Belichick.

Even going outside football, the only American sports coach who I put above him is Popovich. That dude is incredible (and, as a bonus, is a truly wonderful person).

Brady, on the other hand, I just hate. I freely acknowledge that he's one of the 5 best QBs of all-time. However, his GOAT status rests more or less entirely on the fact that he's played on the best-run team. Does anyone really think that if Peyton Manning had been the Pats QB for those same teams from 2001-2016 he would have won fewer than 4 Super Bowls? Or that if Aaron Rodgers had been the Pats QB from 2006 to the present he'd have fewer than 3? I certainly don't. It's just weird to anoint him by team success.

Setting that aside though, the dude is just such an arrogant prick. I am a bit hesitant to claim I know what someone is really like from their public persona, but with Brady we have so much evidence of his nature, from leaked private correspondence (including deflategate) to the fact that he's now aggressively selling snake oil health products. The latter is really bad on so many levels; not just because pseudoscience always pisses me off, but because the way he markets it really underscores a self-aggrandizing, entitled attitude (i.e. I succeed not because I've been enormously fortunate in my situation, but because I have all the secrets and I work harder and better than everyone else).

tl;dr I am not a fan

[Dad_Scaper]

I don't take issue with Belichik's effectiveness as a coach. As a man, he is loathsome.

You can get a fair window into the genius and loathsomeness of that organization by looking back to a memorable play from the divisional round of the postseason in January 2015. Many of you who watched the game might remember the trick play that helped the Patriots beat the Ravens and move on to the AFCC. The Patriots came out on offense with, essentially, too many otherwise-eligible receivers, so one of them had to report as ineligible. Which one of them did (Danny Amendola? I don't remember.).

The refs immediately spotted the ball and the play began, and the Patriots found an uncovered receiver (Edelman? Again, I don't remember.) for a key first down on a touchdown drive. John Harbaugh, the Baltimore head coach and a scholar when it comes to the rules, was livid on the sideline. Why? He explained afterward: "Eventually, Harbaugh ran onto the field — drawing an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty — to argue that the referees should give him a chance to send in subs once the ineligible receiver was announced." LINK

Here's the thing: What Harbaugh was demanding was *within the rules*. The rules permitted the officials to delay spotting the ball until the defense has time to set. Which is pretty much the same way the rules work when it comes to substitutions by the offense. From the same article: ""The officials told me after that they'd give us the opportunity to do that, which they probably should have done during that series," he said. "That's why guys were open, because we didn't ID where the eligible receivers were at.""

So, that happened. The officials decided, for whatever reason, to spot the ball immediately after the previous play ended, thus allowing an obvious deception exploiting the rules. They *could* have left the playing field level, but they *didn't*. Fine. The rules at the time provided it was optional for the officials to tolerate these shenanigans, and the officials did so. But Harbaugh's objections were reasonable and within both the letter and the spirit of the rules. Whatever. Game over, Patriots complete the comeback and win.

How does Tom Brady respond? With class, acknowledging a tough game against a good team? If he has to talk about John Harbaugh's post-game comments discussing the trick play, does he acknowledge frustration and say something graceful and nice? No. He is a total asshole about it: "Maybe those guys (have) got to study the rule book and figure it out."

Harbaugh's argument with the refs at the time had been within the rules, which he knew and has always had at his fingertips. Even if it wasn't, there's no reason to talk that way about a player or coach for another team unless you are a pile of human excrement.

[japes]

Originally Posted by dok

Does anyone really think that if Peyton Manning had been the Pats QB for those same teams from 2001-2016 he would have won fewer than 4 Super Bowls?

Yes...yes I do. Peyton Manning was really good but not matter how good a team is ran there is a point when it is all on the QB and Brady has shown he has the "whateveryouwannacallit" factor that comes from being a little arrogant.

Also Peyton Manning has done a great job of making himself likeable to the public but he's had his run-ins with coaches and offensive coordinators...his whole needing to run the show wouldn't have worked in NE and they probably don't win 4 Super Bowls...

A few of you on here know me and know that I was, a lifetime ago, a professional athlete (not on this level by far) and what comes off as Arrogant on the field and surrounding it isn't always what it seems. The self confident - arrogant line is very fine at higher levels...often times people show that side either to get those around them to believe or to psych themselves up to believe it. I'd imagine that if you could really see inside someone mind, at their true thoughts, you'd have a hard time finding someone that truly believed they were the greatest...but they have to at least be able to convince themselves that they may be Great to achieve great success.

I do get your point and mostly agree with you except I don't think Peyton replacing Brady = same amount of NE super bowls.

[dok]

Originally Posted by Dad_Scaper

You can get a fair window into the genius and loathsomeness of that organization by looking back to a memorable play from the divisional round of the postseason in January 2015.

Yes, that was the "receiver ineligible shenanigans" I was referencing. We (and others) discussed it at the time here. It was clearly an attempt to exploit a loophole in the rules - one that was plugged that offseason.

[Dad_Scaper]

Thanks, dok. I think this post was my deepest dive into source material:

Originally Posted by Dad_Scaper

XDVincent, you cannot expect to persuade people by putting words in the mouth of every single person you appear to disagree with. It wasn't "cheating," it wasn't a "tackle eligible" play. To use dok's word, it was an "exploit." Here is a brief discussion off an ESPN blog, which I think is a fair summary, and nothing John Harbaugh said contradicts it:

Here is why Harbaugh was upset during the game, and this is also why (as I observed earlier here, or maybe it was somewhere else) that officials will stand over the ball to stop the snap so defenses can adjust to pre-snap shenanigans:

LINK

Nobody said cheating. Abusing the rules, deceiving, yes. Not cheating. Nobody here is whining; neither was Harbaugh. It's just worth noting that the rules in this area can be exploited, and it has to be addressed. I expect it will be.

I got nothing against fans of the Patriots, one of them is my brother and I love him. But if you're going to be one, don't kid yourself: they push the rules envelope. They find weaknesses in the rules and exploit them. I'm not judging, it's what they do, and it's institutional in Foxborough. They are the divining rod for weaknesses in the rules, because they'll find them and exploit them.

Finally, on the subject of Brady's response, he wasn't "defending himself," because nobody was attacking him. The opposing coach pointed out that something the Patriots had done was unheard of and was a deceptive surprise. All true! That's the whole point of running the play! So mocking him by saying he should read the rulebook is unnecessarily mean.

Go ahead and root for your favorite team, but don't blind yourself to what's happening out there.