SpongeWorthy
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Everything posted by SpongeWorthy
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I'll give Urlacher the benefit of the doubt. I think it was a freak injury. Whoever even heard of a dislocated wrist? Briggs has missed 3 games in 7 years.
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Re: NHL (Blackhawks included) offseason thread
SpongeWorthy replied to Prizefight's topic in Other Sports
Yeah I get that. 26 is an old rookie considering how many sub 23s are leading their teams. Still is it out of the question that he settles in nicely as an above average goalie? I'm not questioning the move, just wondering. -
Peanut and Briggs are older. Urlacher and Pisa basically had a year off and that allowed some young LBers to get on the field. Ogun/Brown to Pep/Anderson is younger on balance. Tommie isn't too old he's just inconsistent and hurt a lot. I'll give you the offensive line...they can't possibly be worse at run blocking though. Cutler may get killed, however. Of course it is the NFL and teams collapse/rise all the time in one season all the time.
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Re: NHL (Blackhawks included) offseason thread
SpongeWorthy replied to Prizefight's topic in Other Sports
Is Niemi already a finished product? Wasn't he basically a rookie last year? -
I just don't understand how we got worse over the offseason. 5-11 is predicting an utterly disastrous season for Cutler isn't it? The defense should be better. Whatever, preseason football predictions mean squat.
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I don't know what Ole Miss' QB situation is like otherwise but I think Masoli is going to be a disaster in the SEC. System QB through and through. I could be wrong but the guy is way overrated in my book. He's definitely a rhythm QB in that when he's rolling he can destroy you but he leaves a lot of plays on the field with bad passes and dumb decisions. Plus the Ole Miss system is nothing like Oregon's.
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More like if you didn't hear about him you just weren't watching any Tennesee games, especially early in the year. 101 carries for a true freshman playing behind a good back like Hardesty with a QB that can't consistently move the chains isn't exactly being buried on the bench.
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Defense better be ready to kick some ass this year. I'm confident C. Harris and Peppers produce. If that happens and Urlacher and Pisa can stay on the field this should be a pretty damn good unit. Mark Anderson needs to step up and if T. Harris wants to dominate again that would be grand.
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D. Manning is a very good kick returner. Doesn't score as often as Hester did but he has a lot of good returns. He's also less fumbly than Hester. Bennett was a pretty good PR as well but yeah, I'd love Hester to start doing some damage there again. I thought he showed some signs of being able to handle the PR and being a full time receiver too. Edit: Forgot Knox too, averaged 29 yards a kick return. That's damn good.
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I don't have a problem with Hester, really. The biggest problem is that he's the guy defenses key on and he has to play a style that requires him to do something other than act on pure instinct. If he can be a solid weapon and avoid the crippling mental errors (like falling down coming out of a cut because he doesn't know what foot to plant) he'll provide value. I do think he's afraid to get hit though. In the Atlanta game last year we were scrambling and he made one too many cuts in the open field when he could've housed it because he was afraid of getting blindsided.
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I didn't follow Martz too much once he left St. Louis because he coached such nondescript teams after that but he strikes me as a guy that likes to follow trends, loves gadget plays, and will adapt his scheme to personnel. I'm worried about the receivers running complex routes as well and I bet Martz will dumb it down. Hester's still learning the position (and isn't a rocket scientist to begin with) and Knox was a raw burner from a tiny school. I bet we'll see some wildcat stuf and a pretty dedicated screen game with Forte and Chester. Probably a few packages with Forte and Chester on the field at the same time too.
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I'm hopeful that Forte decides he doesn't want to be knocked down by stiff breezes this season.
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I use that 10 game stretch because after week 4 the Bears were 3-1 and Cutler had played 3 good games in a row which made the repeated boners against GB in the opener seem like an aberration. And then the season went in the tank after that. By the time he started playing really well again the season was out of reach. Although you saw his talent in those games for sure. I'm not saying there isn't reason to be optimistic or anything. As memories fade and a new season begins people are forgetting that Jay Cutler was pretty much a walking punch line for most of the season. You got [expletive] for being a Bears fan and it was almost exclusively because of Cutler. The worst was when the Broncos got off to such a great start and Orton was playing really well. Luckily that faded.
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65.62 and a 2-8 record is downright putrid in my book. Now you could point out guys like Stafford and Sanchez had lower QB ratings than that and you wouldn't call their play downright putrid so I do believe expectations and the level of responsibility the QB has needs to be considered.
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The average QB rating of 2009 playoff QBs was 97.9. Cutler was 1.3 standard deviations below that for the year and more than 2 full standard deviations below that for that stretch of games. He was closer in QB rating to Jamarcus Russell than he was to Brees, Favre, Rivers, and Rodgers.
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You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. What am I wrong about? Just because Cutler has a lot of talent doesn't mean he didn't play badly last year. He most certainly did for big portions of the season. I don't even see how this is debateable. I believe 77.2 is "average". Only the 2 games that were already pointed out are far enough from average to be considered "downright putrid". In 2009 the average rating of qualified QBs was 83.4. Cutler's was 76.8 for the season and 65.62 for that stretch of games. That's really pretty awful and more than a full standard deviation below league average. You also don't give up a king's ransom for average to bad play. Going into the 2nd Minnesota game the Bears were 5-9 and Cutler had 19 TDs and 25 picks. Then he went 8-1 TD/INTs in the final two games when the only thing to play for was Lovie's job.
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You have absolutely no idea what you are talking about. What am I wrong about? Just because Cutler has a lot of talent doesn't mean he didn't play badly last year. He most certainly did for big portions of the season. I don't even see how this is debateable.
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QBs are more important now than they were in the days of Fran Tarkenton.
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79.6, 64.1, 66.7, 98.6, 33.6, 63.2, 71.6, 96.0, 74.9, 7.9 QB ratings and a 2-8 record isn't average football. It's downright putrid. For 3 meaningful games Jay Cutler was a good quarterback. The last two against Minny and Detroit were hopefully a sign of things to come. At least 2 of the games (opener against GB and against SF) were pretty much entirely his fault. He got a lot of blame for the Atlanta game and the 2nd GB game because of moronic red zone INTs. In that stretch there were several blowouts that it wouldn't have mattered how Cutler played. Now obviously every QB screws up and you can't just focus on their bad games but Cutler is lapping the rest of the field when it comes to bad, bad red zone interceptions over the last few years. Now it says something about his talent that with no running game to speak of and a mediocre/hurt defense we managed a 7-9 record.
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Look at the San Francisco and Baltimore games last year and tell me he didn't come close to Grossman-bad.
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Calling him a disappointment and inconsistent is a huge understatement. He had 3 good games in the first 4 (after singlehandedly losing the opener against GB) and then 2 good games at the end when anything meaningful was out of reach. He was pretty consistently awful from weeks 5-15 including big stretches of play that were pretty much as bad as anything Grossman ever did.
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I'm going through the list of pro bowl QBs over the years and the guys that you would consider elite who haven't had a big, winning year by this point in Cutler's career is pretty small. The big majority of them starting winning big in year 2 or 3. That includes guys who were drafted very high onto crappy teams like Manning and McNabb. Anyway, I wouldn't point to 24-29 as to why I would be concerned with Jay. I would point to the fact that he sucked pretty hard last year and that we're going into this year with no big improvements on the line or at receiver.
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Ok, how about it's very unlikely that an elite quarterback would have a bad career W/L record? You're right that no one considers you elite until you start winning lots of games but I don't see how that's necessarily a bad thing. There's one overwhelming reason the Colts have won 12+ games every year.
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Aikman didn't have a good record until he was 27ish, Drew Brees played a while before his record became impressive. The fact is it is very easy for a very good QB to not have a good record. Aikman went 1-15 his rookie season. He had to play on a lot of good teams to make up for that. Brees wasn't elite until he went to New Orleans. Good but inconsistent and they still opted for Rivers when he was in the fold.
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Well it's a bit of a chicken or the egg argument then. Kelly is probably a good example of a guy being held back by mediocre talent because the system he played in was very dependent on great QB play especially compared to the guys he lost to in the Super Bowl.