Andrew Luck is GID today.
Let’s hope it’s just beginner’s Luck.
St Louis Rams have opted out of their commitment to play a National Football League game in London in 2013 and 2014.
Giants beating the jets scum 16 to 0
Sent from my HTC Desire S using TFK App
Patriots signed Jeff Demps there last week. He won a silver medal at the Olympics for USA in the 4x100 relay. He seems quick alright!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6PQ09oTu-4
Will probably end up more as a returner I would imagine if he makes the final 53.
Sure the entire defence is so scared of Tebow in their faces they can’t focus on Demps :lol:
any links for last night hard knocks?
More redtube banter .
Oi oi!
He’s fast but he’s no young Grizzly
Cheers gman.
Let’s hope the pats get a new o line for your sake.
Interesting piece from The New Yorker on the (slow) trend against punting.
The Case Against Punting
Posted by Reeves Wiedeman
It is not news that we often act against our own interest. Human nature yanks us in so many ways as to make rational decision-making almost impossible. Parents give their teen-agers cars and cell phones. Much of the middle class votes Republican. And N.F.L. head coaches continue to punt the ball on fourth down.
Punting has been a part of football since the game’s earliest days, but it was long considered so unimportant that teams simply trained safeties or running backs to do the task. The professionalization of punting arrived in the seventies, when the Oakland Raiders selected Ray Guy, a punter, in the first round of the N.F.L. draft. (It’s fitting that Al Davis made this choice, the only such selection in draft history; he later took Sebastian Janikowski, a kicker, with the seventeenth overall pick.) Today, their presence is expected and well remunerated. Punters and kickers now make, on average, more than tight ends. Shane Lechler—again, of the Raiders—earns $3.8 million a year. Lechler punted seventy-eight times last year, meaning the Raiders shelled out nearly fifty thousand dollars for each time he stepped on the field.
Yet there is growing statistical evidence to suggest that paying punters at all is, at best, a misallocation of salary-capped funds and, at worst, counterproductive. The [i]Times[/i][/url] recently cited a paper by David Romer ([url=“http://emlab.berkeley.edu/users/dromer/papers/PAPER_NFL_JULY05_FORWEB_CORRECTED.pdf”]PDF), a professor of political economy at the University of California at Berkeley, that has become “the gospel for the antipunting faction.” Romer’s determination, after studying punt data from 1998 to 2004, was that teams should never punt when facing fourth down with less than four yards to go for the first, regardless of where they are on the field. Other analysis has suggested that teams should never punt from inside their opponent’s forty-yard line. As a corollary, they should always go for a touchdown, rather than a field goal, from inside the five-yard line.
And yet football teams continue to do the opposite. Those attempting to put the data into action are stuck, for now, in the lower ranks of the game. The archetype for non-punting football has become a high-school team in Little Rock, Arkansas. The Pulaski Academy Bruins do not return punts (fumbles and penalties outweigh big returns, they say), they perform onside kicks after almost every score, and they never, ever punt. Last season, they went undefeated and won the state title. But coaches at higher levels have been slow to buy in to their system. San Diego State coach Rocky Long has said he might consider going for it on fourth down once his offense crosses midfield this season, but he’s an exception, and there are few others. Anyone that tries it puts himself at risk. In 2009, Bill Belichick opted not to punt on fourth down from his own twenty-eight-yard line, late in the game, with his team leading by six points. The statisticians came to Belichick’s defense when the play failed and the Patriots lost, but he was still roundly mocked, stats be damned. This is common.
Once, when the Pulaski Bruins actually did punt, their own fans gave them a standing ovation.
Last week, Chris Kluwe, punter for the Minnesota Vikings and a regularly entertaining contributor to Deadspin, wrote a response to the announcement that San Diego State might no longer punt. (It begins “I am about to GO NUTS,” and in terms of decorum, goes downhill from there.) His argument cited statistics on the increasing likelihood that an opposing team will score when they receive the ball closer to the end zone, and the difference in level of play from high school to the N.F.L. But mostly he made the point that N.F.L. coaches, who are paid many millions of dollars, are scared gutless about losing their jobs. (“Do you know who likes keeping their jobs? NFL HEAD COACHES.”) Failing in the traditional punt-filled manner is more easily explained to fans, the thinking goes, than explaining that various statistical reports bear out a decision to go for it on fourth down.
But even this may be changing. Fans and other outsiders are almost always ahead of coaches and team executives when it comes to statistical revolutions in sports—the inventors of Moneyball were inspired by Bill James’s books—and it is now an article of faith among fans who populate the growing number of Web sites analyzing football in the same statistical way that punting on fourth down is often a bad idea. Crowds now regularly boo punts that occur in the opposing team’s territory as cowardly. Soon, they might boo punts from their own team’s end. When that happens, the coaches will be out of excuses.
Read more http://www.newyorker…l#ixzz24MT0sDaS
Never mind all that bollix. The real drama is being played out in Seattle.
Who will be the starting QB on opening day? Will it be matt Flynn the man who outplayed Aaron Rodgers and Brett favre in green bay and came over on a _$19 million contract in free agency? Or will it be the undersized 3rd round rookie out of Wisconsin Russell Wilson who has lit up training camp and has drawn comparisons to drew Brees?
This weekends game against Kansas city will be critical, if Wilson plays well it looks like he will get the nod.
its all good. Mankins, a continuing pro bowler hasnt yet played, and Brian Waters, a pro bowler last year, has yet to turn up, but is expected to and Sebass Vollmer has only returned from injury. It looks shit in preseason, as Solder hasnt come back with the same form of last year, and Marcus Cannon hasnt fulfilled potential, but I cant think of a season where the Patriots had a decent off season. Even the year they went 16-0, they lost 2 preseason games to Titans and Bucs (I think). I’d only get worried about it if it is shit in the regular season.
a tad exaggerated there? two regular game starts v. superbowl and season MVPs?
[quote=“Sandymount Red, post: 658060”]Never mind all that bollix. The real drama is being played out in Seattle.
Who will be the starting QB on opening day? Will it be matt Flynn the man who outplayed Aaron Rodgers and Brett favre in green bay and came over on a _$19 million contract in free agency? Or will it be the undersized 3rd round rookie out of Wisconsin Russell Wilson who has lit up training camp and has drawn comparisons to drew Brees?
This weekends game against Kansas city will be critical, if Wilson plays well it looks like he will get the nod.[/quote]
Similar to Brees in what respects? Height?
And as for Flynn outplaying Rodgers and Favre… :ph34r:
Wilson is an inch shorter than brees and has a very similar Throwing style with a very high release. His ability to scramble and keep plays alive is also similar as are his pass compltion percentage and extremely high passer rating all done in a pro system in college.
Whilst the favre and rodgers comparisons were obviously tounge in cheek, Flynn has thrown for 6 touchdowns and 480 yards both single game records in packers history.
I wouldnt be convinced by either, and its not like Seattle have a great WR corps, or a proven team ethic in them at least. could blow up in their face. it’ll make an interesting story when the season starts alright though. Its a risk paying out so much on a player who had one, albeit excellent, game last season.
That game was the last game of the season, dead rubber
Ah class. I had a brief flirtation with the Wisconsin Badgers last Fall when I was home in the States and it was all due to Russell Wilson’s dynamic QB play. I didn’t even know which franchise he’d gone to in the draft. Best of luck to Russell and all Badgers’ alumni.