kurtsimonw Posted January 31, 2015 Share Posted January 31, 2015 (edited) Oh, as for Rookie of the Year. Odell Beckham put up all-pro calibre numbers for a wide receiver. Teddy Bridgewater, at best, you could maybe make an argument for possibly being a top 15 QB this year. Seems like Aaron Rodgers might beat out Watt for MVP too. Thank God the Pepsi ROY was "wrong", here's hoping the MVP one is too, because no way Rodgers should win. Edited February 1, 2015 by kurtsimonw Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tegis Posted February 2, 2015 VT Supporter Share Posted February 2, 2015 Back to 6 months of waiting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StefanAVFC Posted February 2, 2015 Share Posted February 2, 2015 Still hurting Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kurtsimonw Posted February 2, 2015 Share Posted February 2, 2015 I never want to feel that way. Giants are 4-0 in "big games" (Super Bowls/Conference Championships) with me, though they've all gone down to the final play of the game. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leviramsey Posted February 3, 2015 VT Supporter Share Posted February 3, 2015 Of the last 60 players enshrined in the Hall of Fame, over the past 9 years, none of them are QBs (Troy Aikman (2006) is the most recent).Of course, Favre will go in next year. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kkr Posted February 3, 2015 Share Posted February 3, 2015 Warren Sapp arrested for solicitation and assault in Arizona! He has been fired from NFL Network, huzzah! Warner and Faulk going also would be great. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tegis Posted February 3, 2015 VT Supporter Share Posted February 3, 2015 Warren Sapp arrested for solicitation and assault in Arizona! He has been fired from NFL Network, huzzah! Warner and Faulk going also would be great. Not that I wish Sapp any harm, I HATE him on TV. Good riddance. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leviramsey Posted February 3, 2015 VT Supporter Share Posted February 3, 2015 I wouldn't be surprised to see Revis playing for Houston next season. Watt and Revis. Do you need a QB? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leviramsey Posted February 3, 2015 VT Supporter Share Posted February 3, 2015 (edited) Interesting article on fivethirtyeight about the ten tiers of NFL QBs.Elite (lots of great games, almost no bad games): Brady, Rodgers, PeytonThe Southerners (fewer great, more average): Brees, RyanSecond Tiers (rare great games): Kaepernick, Schaub, Bridgewater, Luck, RoomOn the Cusps (flat curves): Roethlisberger, Rivers, Wilson, FilesMixed Bags (highly variable): Newton, Garrard, McNabb, Eli, Cutler, Flacco, GriffinRoller Coasters (even more variable): Favre, Vick, YoungBell Curve (mostly average): Dalton, Boyer, Palmer, Locker, Tannehill, Orton, Stafford, GlennonGame Managers (more below average games): Alex Smith, Manuel, Campbell, Freeman, McCown, Hasselbeck, SanchezAlso Rans (rare good games): Geno Smith, Henne, Anderson, Cassel, FitzpatrickUh Oh (no good games yet): Bortles, Carr Edited February 3, 2015 by leviramsey Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brumerican Posted February 3, 2015 Share Posted February 3, 2015 I wouldn't be surprised to see Revis playing for Houston next season. Watt and Revis. Do you need a QB? Yay! The AFC South would be even less winnable for us. At least I will always be spared play-off heartache. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brumerican Posted February 3, 2015 Share Posted February 3, 2015 Uh Oh (no good games yet): Bortles, Carr The comeback against the Giants was pretty good. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abdomlahor Posted February 3, 2015 Share Posted February 3, 2015 I thought Bortles did alright for his rookie year. He was never meant to be the starter this year anyway, right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StefanAVFC Posted February 3, 2015 Share Posted February 3, 2015 Wilson below Kaepernick, Schaub and Bridgewater!?!?!?!?!!? What the hell Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tonyh29 Posted February 3, 2015 Share Posted February 3, 2015 (edited) Wilson below Kaepernick, Schaub and Bridgewater!?!?!?!?!!? What the hell maybe they wrote the list around 3am UK time on Monday Edited February 3, 2015 by tonyh29 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
StefanAVFC Posted February 3, 2015 Share Posted February 3, 2015 The list is just awful on so many levels. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brumerican Posted February 3, 2015 Share Posted February 3, 2015 I thought Bortles did alright for his rookie year. He was never meant to be the starter this year anyway, right? He has tonnes of potential. Just needs a TE and Blackmon back. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abdomlahor Posted February 3, 2015 Share Posted February 3, 2015 He looked good against the Giants, despite us basically throwing it away. Has a good core of young skill players around him too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
abdomlahor Posted February 3, 2015 Share Posted February 3, 2015 Love Gronk Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leviramsey Posted February 4, 2015 VT Supporter Share Posted February 4, 2015 An obituary for the Patriots dynastyThe New England Patriots dynasty will soon come to an end. Specifically, it will end on April 16, 2018. Probably around noon Eastern time.I have written so many obituaries for the Patriots dynasty over the last decade that it made sense to postdate this one. It's one of those Mayan-calendar, mysterious-comet, not-too-distant-doomsday style predictions. The end is nigh. Just not all that nigh.On April 16, 2018, a 40-year-old Tom Brady—having played to the end of his final contract, with a standing offer from the Patriots on the table but nothing else to prove, coming off another season of 12 wins, a deep playoff run and perhaps a Super Bowl—will decide to retire so his team can forge ahead with its draft strategy without him. The Patriots will need a quarterback, after all, because Jimmy Garoppolo will have followed Josh McDaniels to Cincinnati after the 2016 season.There will be tears, tributes, keys to the city, a Grand Marshal appearance at the Boston Marathon and all the fixins. Some local sports columnists may light a funerary pyre in Boston Common and leap into it so they may better serve their emperor in the afterlife. The mourning across the nation won't be quite as extreme and may be speckled with refrains of "Ding! Dong! The Witch is Dead," but it will be solemn and respectful for the most part.The April 16 date has symbolic significance. The 40-year-old Michael Jordan played his final game on April 16, 2003. Jordan was a shadow of his former self, an executive/backup for the Wizards, but he was still Jordan, with his own narrative gravitational force. Jordan's dynasty, like Brady's, featured several false endings, inspired a few premature obituaries and bred plenty of national resentment.Brady will remember Jordan sheepishly stepping off the bench for standing ovations after terrible games in the era in which Brady himself first climbed to championship superstardom. He will remember Brett Favre becoming a comic figure after numerous fake retirements, then a tragic figure when he spent his ill-advised final season as a tackling dummy. He will talk to Peyton Manning at Augusta or Bay Hill and discover that life goes on after retirement. He will talk to Gisele, Bill Belichick and Robert Kraft. And then he will decide that five or six Super Bowl rings are enough.In the days after their fourth championship of the young century, the Brady Patriots inspire memories of the Jordan Bulls of the late 1990s. They have the look of a team at the start of a second three-peat. (Their first was not quite consecutive, but time blurs the details.) When Jordan returned from his first retirement and vanity baseball project in 1995, it was easy to assume that picking up where he left off would be impossible. We had giggled at the minor-league outfielder with a turnpike tunnel in his swing; no way that guy would climb straight back to the top. The NBA had crowned new champions. The sports world was ready to move on. But Jordan wasn't ready to let us.The Brady Patriots era appeared to be over after the playoff losses of 2005 and 2006 and the Spygate scandal. It seemed finished when he tore his ACL at the start of the 2008 season. Losses to the Ravens and Broncos in the 2012 and 2013 playoffs read like final chapters of a saga. The magic failed in a pair of Super Bowls. Every September stumble looked like a crack in the foundation, though we should have seen them for what they were: 30-point losses to the Knicks or Sixers in November, long before the spotlight heated up.We have now reached the era when Darrelle Revis and LeGarrette Blount arrive to play Dennis Rodman roles, mercenaries thronging to Brady's side in search of vindication or validation. Julian Edelman and Danny Amendola are Brady's Toni Kukoc and Steve Kerr, functionaries perfectly suited to serve their leader. Jordan could win with one-dimensional three-point bombers and rebounders, Brady with underneath receivers and committee rushers. Rob Gronkowski is a latter-day Scottie Pippen; the defense has its share of diligent Ron Harpers. The head coach and franchise have become experts at tailoring the roster and giving players the system and space they need to thrive.Brady's game has changed. There are no more crosscourt alley-oops to Randy Moss. Brady's attack has become more precise and calculated, if no less deadly. His perfect little passes to Gronk and Edelman are Jordan's mid-range jumpers of the late 1990s: just as unstoppable as the anti-gravity dunks, but far less vulnerable to the ravages of age. Brady the ball distributor, play-faker, mismatch-exploiter and dissector can keep playing at this level indefinitely.While Brady and the Patriots evolved, a whole generation of rivals turned over. Patrick Ewing and Charles Barkley? Yesteryear's news. It's time to duel with Reggie Miller and Karl Malone. Peyton, Philip Rivers and even Ben Roethlisberger are giving way to Andrew Luck and Russell Wilson; Kurt Warner, Donovan McNabb and Mike Shanahan's pesky Broncos seem like relics from a distant age.Like those Miller Pacers of the late 1990s, the whole AFC now reflexively builds for second place, an entire conference consumed by unconscious fatalism. Manning's Broncos tore themselves apart in a moment of January weakness. The Jets and Bills are starting over for the hundredth time each, the Dolphins spinning their wheels. The Bengals and Colts line themselves up like steppingstones. The Ravens and Steelers are the Houston Rockets: They had their chance when the champ was down. Do you see a clear rival for the Patriots in 2015? The foreseeable future?Sure, Wilson and the Seahawks could nip them next time, or some other NFC power like the Packers could rise up. Maybe the Colts get Andrew Luck a running back and Luck gets them to a new level. Heck, maybe the Broncos or Ravens can get in one more lick in some future playoff game. The NFL is not the NBA; the rules don't cater to a handful of superteams, and random things happen in 60 minutes that cannot persist through a best-of-seven series.Predicting a Patriots three-peat is a little click-trollish. But two or three more years of AFC East titles, 12-win seasons, deep playoff runs, AFC Championship bouts and even-odds-or-better chances at additional rings? After Super Bowl XLIX, it's ridiculous to predict anything else.Brady remains under contract through 2017. His cap numbers are manageable: $16 million in that final year. Brady has accommodated restructurings as recently as last month; if the Patriots ask him to convert salary into bonus in the name of signing a new set of mercenaries to chase an additional title, Brady will oblige. He's talking about playing well past this contract, though he may find his employer more fiscally cautious than romantic about a 40-something quarterback. Either way, he isn't going anywhere until after the 2017 season, and he shows no signs of fading away.Gronk is under contract through 2019. The cap numbers don't get flaky until 2018. Gronk turns 26 in May; he will remain in his prime for years, and the injury concerns have subsided.Edelman is under contract through 2017, and his whole deal is cap conscious. Many of the core defenders—Jamie Collins, Chandler Jones, Dont'a Hightower—are still playing under their rookie contracts. The team's future cap allotments are reasonable once Revis gets cleared off the books. And if you are worried about clearing Revis off the books, remember that a young man named Malcolm Butler just stepped up in the secondary. Whatever holes the Patriots cannot fill with veterans seeking jewelry, they can fill via the development pipeline.Yes, there will be changes and losses. Wes Welker was replaceable. So were Logan Mankins, Lawyer Milloy, Asante Samuel, Moss and others over the last 14 seasons. Jordan didn't really need Horace Grant or John Paxson, either. He was the only truly irreplaceable part.The Patriots nucleus will remain intact. The wins will keep coming. AFC football will remain all about "defeating Brady" instead of simply winning, and that reality will tie contenders like the Bengals, Broncos and Colts in knots. The national haters, bored and resentful of too much success, will hate all the harder, rooting for Brady/Patriots comeuppance the way we increasingly rooted for someone to take Jordan down a peg. The endless hosannas will grow even more tiresome to everyone outside the congregation, but who will rise to silence the shouting?No one will. Some Wilson, Luck or Joe Flacco may beat Brady now and then, but no one will really defeat his Patriots: make them look bad for more than an isolated game, drop them to 7-9, open the book to a new chapter of 21st-century football. None of those things will happen until we have done all of this again: another January (or two or three) of Brady adulation, another Super Bowl week of the same old faces, endless musings about legacy, probably some more penny-ante scandals.Finally, Brady himself will decide to write his own ending. Maybe Bill Belichick joins him. Maybe the Patriots, like the post-Jordan Bulls, push a plunger and start over from scratch. But it is not going to happen until April 16, 2018.Do not dare write or read a "dynasty is dead" article until that day comes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AVFCforever1991 Posted February 4, 2015 Share Posted February 4, 2015 The list is just awful on so many levels. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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