The long and bumpy road to Super Bowl XLVI

I might have to make good on this. :lol:

:mad:

Oh well that is just sensational.

Eli Manning and the rest of the New York Football Giants :clap:

I think youā€™ll find I predicted the chargers to win that game Mac. And I also told you that the loss of Cutler for the bears was also the reason that the Raiders and Broncos would beat them and effectivley knock San Diego out.

Until Tebow turned it on last night the chargers still had an outside chance. Time to recoup my losses by backing the Broncos to win the superbowl at 55/1 :lol:

I would laugh at that if it wasnā€™t such a possibility.

I think Eli Manning is an elite QB and commentators should quit always comparing him unfavourably to his brother. Everyoneā€™s going to be a lesser player than Peyton - the greatest QB of all time - but Eli is an outstanding QB in his own right. I have the benefit of having watched him play in the flesh too, of course.

Are you insane?

Montana or Brady. Ainā€™t no doubt about it.

Heā€™s not insane, heā€™s right.

Peyton will lead the Redskins to the Super Bowl next year, a year after his younger brother leads the Giants to the Super Bowl in a wonderful reverse symmetery of Super Bowl XLI and XLII.

Youā€™re as mad as he is.

Peyton is a bottling bastard.

Quit talking trash, bro. They donā€™t put bottlers on cereal boxes. Itā€™s against the law :shakefist:

Flano - the New York loving, Boston supporting trashbag having a go at the New York Giants QB. You couldnā€™t make it up. :guns:

Eli is an alright sort, bit of a banterist by all accounts.

By the way watch that mouth of yours.

Looking at a few stats there and saw Gronkowski has a rushing TD then remembered that lateral from Brady.

Cam Newton has thrown 15 and rushed for 13. Not a fan of this lad at all :angry:

Looks like Rodgers is on course to break the single season QB rating record too.

And finally there are 3 QBs On track to break Dan Marinos 5084 pass yard mark

Brees only needs 238.67 yards per game
Brady needs 270.33
Rodgers needs 319.67

It was bound to happen. It really shows how fucking good Marino was. If he was in the league today heā€™d probably throw for 7000.

Eli is in the mix too. He only has 20 less yards than Rodgers.

Bandage - tough one for you this week. Presume youā€™ll be cheering on the Jets though?

Great deals available in the NFL store right now, Iā€™m contemplating getting the white Colts jersey as a tribute to Peyton, itā€™s likely to be his last ever. $63 for the replica which is outstanding value.

:lol:

Looking for that unique gift idea for the Denver Broncos fan in your life, but have no clue as to what to get them? Your worries are over my friend, now that these Tim Tebow Tebowing Christmas cards are available for purchase on eBay.

Where else can you find a drawing of baby Jesus and his full-grown, NFL quarterbacking equivalent on the same piece of paper?

For a mere $15 you get five of these glorious creations from an unknown Colorado artist, out of the 1000 that were produced.

If you ask me, without sounding sacrilegious, Iā€™m pretty sure God is the artist in question who designed and created these one-of-a-kind X-mas cards. Hey, even the big man in the sky could use a little extra cash for the holiday season

Rob Gronkowski of the Patriots might be the perfect tight end.
His long, lanky frame creates a large ā€œcatching radius,ā€ to use the trendy buzz phrase. He moves with remarkable speed and agility for such a large man (6-foot-6, 265 pounds). Heā€™s muscular enough and tough enough to stomp on overmatched defensive backs like a Godzilla of the gridiron, casually crushing an entire NFL secondary or a small Japanese fishing village beneath his feet.
Just look at the way he manhandled Washington safeties DeJon Gomes and Reed Doughty in New Englandā€™s 34-27 victory over the Redskins on Sunday. ā€œThe Gronkā€ caught a short pass to the right of Tom Brady then, after recovering from losing his own feet, left both defenders on the ground, flailing away helplessly at his legs in a futile effort to haul him in.
(Maybe itā€™s just the time of year, but the scene reminded me of the way Officer Bert tried fruitlessly to handcuff Clarence in the holiday classic Itā€™s a Wonderful Life, before the guardian angel slipped through his fingers.)
Redskins cornerback DeAngelo Hall merely looked on at the gruesome carnage, apparently too shocked or too fearful to fight back. The result was a 49-yard gain that set up New Englandā€™s first offensive touchdown.
The onfield manifestation of the tight endā€™s physical skills has been a season for the ages: Gronkowski has already hauled in 15 TD passes, smashing the record for tight ends (13) that was shared by Vernon Davis and Antonio Gates, with three games still to play.
You might say that the Gronk has broken the mold for tight ends.
But he hasnā€™t. That mold for breakout tight ends was cast long ago, and it puts Gronkowski in what might be the most impressive company the position has known.
The same superhuman adjectives used to describe Gronkowski today were once applied to another mythic young tight end who exploded onto the scene and dazzled the football world with his rare combination of size, strength, speed and record-setting production.
His name was Mike Ditka ā€“ ā€œIronā€ Mike Ditka. Fifty years ago, long before he was the lovable grandfatherly old sage of ESPN pre-game analysis, 20 years before he oversaw the re-birth of the Monsters of the Midway as head coach in Chicago, Iron Mike was the Gronkowski of his day: the most explosive tight end to hit the game, well, ever.
Ditkaā€™s rookie campaign with the Chicago Bears in 1961 was a breakout moment in NFL history. In terms of the tight end position, Ditka, in 1961, was Babe Ruth in 1927 or Dan Marino in 1984. His accomplishments rewrote the standards of the position and changed the context of the conversation.
Ditka, at 6-3, 230, was smaller than Gronkowski. But by the standards of the era, he may have been an even more awesome physical specimen. Each tackle who lines up next to Gronkowski on the New England offensive line, for example, tops 300 pounds. The starting offensive tackles on the 1961 Bears, Herman Lee and Art Anderson, were barely bigger than Ditka, each about 245 pounds.
The factor that set Ditka apart from any tight end before him was not the size, but the production from the position. In fact, the position really didnā€™t exist in the way we know it today, as an actual offensive weapon, before Ditka in 1961.
The comparisons between the two tight ends are many. Both were just 22 in their breakout season, Ditka as a rookie, Gronkowski here as a second-year player. Both have those hard-edged Eastern European surnames that just plain sound tough, like a guy you donā€™t want to mess with in a dark alley or an open seam down the middle of the field.
Dit-Ka! The Gronk.
Ditka grew up in a family of Ukrainian immigrant roots in the heart of the Gridiron Breadbasket of Western PA. Gronkowski made his way from Western New York to the famous football breeding grounds of Western PA for his senior year in high school.
Not only did Ditka statistically reinvent the position, he did it with numbers that stand the test of time, even a half-century later. Hereā€™s a look at how Ditka and Gronkowski stack up in their breakout seasons.
Rob Gronkowski vs. Mike Ditka
Player (Year) Catches Yards YPC Touchdowns Mike Ditka (1961) 56 1,076 19.2 12 Rob Gronkowski (2011) 71 1,088 15.3 15
The numbers are gaudy for tight ends in any era. In fact, Ditka and Gronkowski are two of just three tight ends in history who hauled in 12 or more TDs with more than 1,000 receiving yards in the same season. The third was Todd Christensen, who was a seasoned poetry-spinning old salt of 27 when he turned out his career season in 1983 (92 catches, 1,247 yards, 12 TD).
Gronkowskiā€™s performance here in 2011 is frighteningly good by the standards of the position. If his current place holds true heā€™ll end the year with 18 or 19 touchdown receptions. If he does, Gronkowski will be on the very short list of all players in history with 18 or more touchdown receptions: Sterling Sharpe (18 in 1994), Mark Clayton (18 in 1984), Jerry Rice (22 in 1987) and Randy Moss (23 in 2007). In other words, we have to start turning to wide receivers to find comparisons to the Gronkā€™s production this year.
But within the standards of his era, Ditka had a greater impact and more prolific season.
Consider this: The 1961 Bears passed the ball just 349 times that season, completing 186. The 2011 Patriots have passed the ball 496 times through Week 14, completing 328. The Patriots will probably complete more passes in 14 games than the Bears attempted in 1961.
ā€¢ Gronkowski is responsible for 22 percent of New Englandā€™s receptions and 14 percent of its pass attempts end with him hauling in a pass.
ā€¢ Ditka was responsible for 30 percent of the teamā€™s receptions and 16 percent of its pass attempts ended with him hauling in a pass.
ā€¢ Gronkowski has accounted for 19.8 percent of New Englandā€™s offense (1,090 of 5,517 yards)
ā€¢ Ditka accounted for nearly one-quarter of Chicagoā€™s offense, 23.6 percent (1,076 of 4,562 yards)
Ditka also averaged an incredible 19.2 yards per catch, an almost unbelievable example of his game-breaking ability. Fifty years later, Ditka remains the only tight end in history with more than 11 TD receptions, more than 1,000 yards and more than 19 yards per catch (cap tip to the profootballreference.com player index for that info).
The biggest difference between the two might be that Gronkowski benefits from playing with Tom Brady, a future Hall of Fame quarterback who helped make Randy Moss and Wes Welker record-setting receivers and who won Super Bowls throwing touchdowns to Deion Branch and David Givens.
Ditka was paired with Billy Wade, a nice quarterback in his day, but several notches below Brady on the totem pole of pigskin.
The Gronk is one of the great young players in the game today. Heā€™s carving his own legend as we speak. But he hasnā€™t broken the mold for young breakout tight ends.
Heā€™s merely shaping up as the best young tight end of the last 50 years, one carved in the physical and statistical image of Hall of Famer Iron Mike Ditka himself.
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Read more: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/kerry_byrne/12/14/rob.gronkowski/index.html#ixzz1ghgbLJZ9

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the Patriots defence will make Tebow look like a fool on Sunday. A fool! :shakefist:

:ph34r: