2013 NFL Season

Huh? I don't have anything against the Patriots. I respect and admire what that organization has accomplished in the past 20 years. That was a reply to Parker's (insinuation? trolling?) about fandom.

 

Pretty sure every single team does the exact same thing. Let's ban all of the coaches.

 

I wouldn't go that far. I havent done the hard number crunching, but empirically he was having his best season as a Bear. He had a really bad first half against the Lions, but otherwise he was consistent, made alot of plays, engineered 2 4th quarter game winning drives to start out the year. He actually played a really good game against the Saints even though they lost. For the first time since I was a little kid, the issue hasn't been the offense, its problems on defense.

They will likely franchise him, give themselves another year to potentially find a young QB, and then assess. But I would put money on him sitting out the rest of the year.

Absolutely brutal year for injuries.

 

If we're going to bitch about rules, how about the fact that we treat the chain placement as sacrosanct, yet it depends on some guys eyeballing the placement from ~25 yards away? Every time I see them measure and decide that the ball is an inch short, I die a little inside.

 

What an awful game. Incompetence by both teams in all facets of the game.

 

I hear Brett Favre says he's ready to go.

 

So three different guys who weren't very good but were starters for NFL teams last year have failed in Minnesota this year. Maybe it's time to acknowledge that there are deeper issues with that team?

 

Also, Cassel didn't really fail per se. He wasn't great, but he wasn't especially bad either. They just inexplicably wanted Freeman.

 

But it wasn't even a lack of knowledge with the offense, he made 8-10 TERRIBLE throws, including a red zone pick with nobody around, and took a terrible sack that took them out of field goal range when they were still within striking distance.

Nobody expected him to be Fran Tarkenton, but most of his misses weren't due to lack of knowledge of the plays or comfort with recievers, they were just misfires.

My favorite part was Tirico getting frustrated in the second half and, with an exasperated voice, saying "This is just a terrible quarter of football. These teams are just BAD"

 

That game was too shitty to discuss as much.

Question, is Greg Jennings good? That's what we should be talking about. Was he just a product of Aaron Rodgers? Or are the MN Vikings that bad? Because there were games I was glancing at where I thought he was injured, but nope, he was on the field, but he was practically invisible and never targeted.

 

He puts the team on his back doe



He had a good season with Favre and a great season before Rodgers really became a star. Rodgers certainly helped, but I think he's just getting old.

 

It's relevant that your description also describes what Josh Freeman looked like in Tampa. Sure, he had a dickhead coach there who actively undermined him, but he nominally knew the playbook and was on good terms with the receivers. The guy just can't make good throws.

 

I can't believe the pressure that Freeman had in his face all game, particularly in the fourth quarter. Every throw that was horribly overthrown was followed by his linemen trying to scrape him off the turf.

They should've let Freeman ride the bench for three weeks and learn the system while Cassel led the team. It's too much to expect a player to learn a brand new system AND prep against a tough NYG defense in what, 11 days? And if you choose to start Freeman, you need to lean on AP more. He carried that team last year with Ponder as deadweight, he can do it again. But the coaching staff saw the '8 carries for 9 yards' stat in the first half and abandoned the run, leaning on Freeman and that unprepared passing game even more.

I don't know what I did to deserve to sit through both the Dallas-Philly game and the Giants-Vikings game in the same weekend, but I'm sorry.

 

Pretty sure running your franchise player into 9 man fronts isn't a good idea either. They should have stopped running plays and tried to play some backyard football.

 

I don't know if it would have made a difference or not but pulling Freeman for one of the other guys would have been worth trying as well. At least the other guys know the offense. They may not be any good but at least they've practiced with the team more than a few days.

 

This is true, but I can understand the underlying logic. This is a QB-driven league, so you can make the argument that a team is best off doing everything they can to find a franchise-worthy QB, even at the expense of everything else. After two seasons Ponder doesn't seem like he's got it, and Cassel, at 31, isn't going to suddenly transform into The Man, so why not try out Freeman to see if he can prosper with a change of scenery? This wasn't a playoff-bound team to begin with, so riding semi-competent QB play by Cassel to a 7-9 or 8-8 record doesn't really accomplish anything in the long run.

Perhaps I'm not the best judge because the Vikes' receivers were so bad last year, but he seems solid from what I've seen so far. The Vikes' QB play is just so bad that it's really hard to judge. This team is also very poorly coached in terms of preparation and playcalling - for example on the Monday game the play where Freeman took that bad sack and took them from comfortable FG range to questionable FG range was a 3rd and 2. Given how badly he had played up to that point, why the hell aren't they giving it to Peterson? Then the very next play they punted from the 36 yard line! I know it's 4th and 12, but at that distance either try the long FG or just go for it.

 

Came across this again and it made for a laugh:
<a class="postlink" href="http://deadspin.com/why-your-team-sucks-2013-new-england-patriots-1238962098" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://deadspin.com/why-your-team-sucks ... 1238962098</a>

So true.