NFL vol 4

[Darkostar]

Who's that atop the NFC North all by themselves?

I can't hear you because over the sound of Todd Collins throwing interceptions.

[The Dude]

At the current pace, the Chargers will give up approximately 27 blocked punts today.

Ugh, they are making it tough to enjoy games this year. Home games are blacked out, and the road games have just been really awful showings :(

At least the Chefs lost, but they were making Indy look pretty bad, too.

[Trebla]

The Dallas Cowboys SUCK. I just turned off the game in utter disgust.

[davos]

Green Bay is falling far short of preseason hype. I take some solace in that they had a serious injury problem going into the game which was compounded by some critical losses today. Losing Matthews and Finley, both major differences makes, contributed greatly to the loss. For most of this game they didn't have their top running back (Grant), their 2 best linebackers (Matthews and Barnett), their top 2 tight-ends (Finley and Lee), their 2 and 4 best d-backs (Harris and Bigby) and solid offensive lineman (tauscher, who used to be one of the best in the league but has slipped significantly in recent years). Thats an awful lot of important players hurt. Its painful to watch a team with so much promise at the beginning of the season become progressively more crippled game by game.

Of course there are other problems as well. The issues withe o-line have continued from last season. Much more could have been done in the off season to address this area. Just as troubling, Rodgers' progess has not only seemed to stall but take a backwards movement. Frankly he's playing worse right now than he has at any point since he took over the starting job. The lack of a running game could be based on the absence of Grant. On the other hand management let the team go into the season with a depth problem at this position. Furthermore there was opportunities to make moves after Grant went down in the 1st game to bring in someone to shore up the position. GM Ted Thompson has been famously devoted to the draft over other means of player acquisition. This has given the Packers a nice stable of young players. it has also prevented the packers from trading or bringing in free agents to address immediate needs. Watching the problems at offensive line and running back this policy has reached the point of negligence. While the combo of Ted Thompson and Coach Mike McCarthy have made a lot of good moves for the packers I fear their weaknesses are going to limit the Packers ability to achieve their full potential.

[awesome possum]

I can't hear you because over the sound of Todd Collins throwing interceptions.

He just knew Bears fans missed Cutler, so it was his tribute.

But really, please come back soon Jay. We would have been in serious trouble against a competent team.

Green Bay is falling far short of preseason hype. I take some solace in that they had a serious injury problem going into the game which was compounded by some critical losses today. Losing Matthews and Finley, both major differences makes, contributed greatly to the loss. For most of this game they didn't have their top running back (Grant), their 2 best linebackers (Matthews and Barnett), their top 2 tight-ends (Finley and Lee), their 2 and 4 best d-backs (Harris and Bigby) and solid offensive lineman (tauscher, who used to be one of the best in the league but has slipped significantly in recent years). Thats an awful lot of important players hurt. Its painful to watch a team with so much promise at the beginning of the season become progressively more crippled game by game.

Add a concussion for Aaron Rodgers on the Pack's final offensive play of the game. Things do not look good for Green Bay right now.

This is what is called karma. Packers fans laughed in glee at Cutler getting hammered last week, so this week half their damned team gets injured.

[Arakasi]

The NFL is all sorts of messed up this year. GB is way down, the Saints lost today to the Cardinals, Manning is the only thing keeping the Colts from being 0-5, Dallas is like a yo-yo as is the rest of the NFC East, San Diego and Minnesota. NE has no defense. The best teams right now in the league look to be the Jets, Ravens, Steelers and Falcons. Everyone else at this point to me is a pretender.

Edit: Add the rest of the AFC south to the yo-yo category. The NFC West completely sucks and we have two mediocre 3-1 teams in KC and TB.

[Trebla]

FFS. Great job Jason Witten and Marc Colombo. Because you somehow didn't know that a player giving another player the ball to spike is a 15 yard penalty you guys just cost Dallas the game. I knew once Dallas had to kick from their 15 that Tennessee would have a huge return.

I'm just a fan and I know the celebration rule. How the fuck do you not know that when you are an NFL player? As soon as Witten handed Colombo the ball I screamed "NOOOOOOOOO!".

This team is so utterly undisciplined. they have over 500 yards but also had like almost 150 yards in penalties. and tomorrow their idiot head coach will hem and haw that they called the right plays but didn't use the right technique. The idiot owner will give a vote of confidence but will be looking for the next Yes man. He'll never get another coach like Parcells because he got what he wanted out of Parcells: a winning team so he could build a stadium. Jerry needs to be able to preen to the media, have his own radio show and dominate press conferences.

sigh. I really need to stop getting mad about football and just enjoy watching it. :worried:

[DanteGabriel]

Fucking Chargers. I'm out of my office survivor pool.

[davos]

As to what Davos said, I think injuries do explain a lot of the problem for Green Bay, especially now with Finley basically missing the entire game and Matthews missing the 2nd half. All football teams must deal with injuries, but this is an unusually high amount with these guys now out on top of what they were already dealing with.

While I agree that any team would struggle, if not out-right fail to over come the kind of injuries GB has suffered this year I think there is something deeper going on. One, I wonder how much of the injury issues are indirectly the result of poor coaching and team culture. Proper conditioning and strong fundamentals can go a long ways to limiting the chances for serious injury. Yes, injuries are a part of football. Individual incidents are simply the result of chance. Even several important injuries can simply be bad luck. When I see this many injuries occurring in such a short span on a team I have to wonder if the team if the coaching staff is the players are properly conditioned and fundamentally sound.

Second, the offensive line problems that crippled the team much of last year have not been resolved. Anyone observer with the smallest amount of sense could have known that the o-line was a looming issue for several years. After the disaster it was last season efforts clearly needed to be made to address it. Yes, they did draft a tackle in the first round that is showing promise but it was far to little to late. A major effort was needed to bring in veterans to shore up the unit in the off-season. Yes, on paper, if Taucher and Clifton were able to both avoid injury and return to form, it was a decent unit. Predictably neither have been playing close to the level they were at a few years ago. The problem could have been address. It was not and the results are predictable. I have lost what confidence I had in Ted Thompson as a GM and am close to giving up on McCarthy as a head coach as well. I had hope going into this season because of Rodgers and the over-all talent level of the team. i'm now getting to the point where I believe that a house cleaning of the front-office and coaching staff will be needed before this team will stop under-achieving. There are some serious problems on Lombardi Ave.

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

It seems the league as a whole is more mediocre than last year. No teams seems truly dominant, but neither do any seem truly terrible. I just remember last year being the year of terrible teams, where any player playing against the Rams, Lions, Bills, Bucs, Chiefs, Browns, Raiders, Seahawks, or Redskins was automatically worth a fantasy start. It seems like this year, every teams had it's moments of greatness, or at least goodness. I don't know how this will shake out in the end, but I think there might be a lot of teams between 7-9 and 9-7.

[Maithanet]

Fucking bullshit PI call against Green Bay.

ETA: Not the one on Woodson which looked legit, the one before that.

Ehh. There were several PI calls throughout the game that didn't go the Skins way, so I don't feel like we got lucky cuz of the refs.

BUT WE DID GET LUCKY. Completely outplayed in that first half, and we could have easily been down 17-0 at the break. And all game we had no running attack of any kind.

The injury to Matthews was huge. He was a wrecking crew in the Skins backfield, and once he went out our questionable pass-only attack started looking downright effective. I'm confident it won't last.

I admit, this is the kind of game that the Skins almost never win. We are great at making good teams look not-so-good, make it seem like maybe we could pull the upset, and then blowing it. But we actually pulled it off. Maybe it's McNabb, certainly played well late.

I think this will be a pretty good season for the Skins until McNabb gets injured. Given the number of times he's getting hit, I expect that to be any game now.

[Space Bandito]

Fucking Chargers. I'm out of my office survivor pool.

:laugh: I lost the first week thanks to them.

It was a hard game to watch I wanted both teams to lose.

[Bronn Stone]

:laugh: I lost the first week thanks to them.

It was a hard game to watch I wanted both teams to lose.

Even harder to watch in the Bay Area. Blacked out.

[awesome possum]

One, I wonder how much of the injury issues are indirectly the result of poor coaching and team culture.

Gotta wonder how much of it is ego as well. Some teams have the ability to ignore all the hype and the talking heads predicting them to win the Super Bowl. Others falter or crumble.

I think the Pack can definitely pick it up and still probably win the NFC North, but they definitely need to get their shit together.

Fixed that for you.

Last I checked, you were the only one in this thread who hurrah'ed a blatantly (and idiotic) insulting statement directed towards Cutler.

[Lightning Lord]

I don't think the guy's great, but I don't want him concussed either. There are many players I think are big enough asshats to deserve a good ol' concussin.

[Zadok]

Congrats to the Bears for proving that last weeks game against the Giants was not in fact the worst football game possible, they really outdid themselves this week. Makes you appreciate the ridiculous lengths the "protect the QB" rules have gone to in recent years, when you realize what would happen to the general level of play around the league if a few of the high profile QBs were injured at the same time. Cutler has health problems and isn't good to begin with and the Bears still don't have another QB on the roster anywhere close to being able to play at the NFL level.

The NFL may need to start eliminating some of these teams, there really aren't enough QBs to go around.

[Zadok]

By the way, is anyone else with the Redzone channel unable to watch these who gives a shit primetime games with the nonsense and endless commercials? It's completely spoiled me, I just spent 7 hours watching football with no commercials and the occasional break in between when nothing was going on in any of the games and now I'm supposed to sit here and watch the Eagles and the 49ers just play each other? Ugh.

[Lord O' Bones]

Ya know, I kinda prefer the 49er team that just sucks over this version that looks pretty good minus the constant string of soul crushing turnovers.

ETA: lolol this is just fucking embarrassing; ask and ye shall receive, I guess.

Edit2: Don't celebrate like your not down 14 points, Vernon. Or like Frank Gore won't fumble again. Until he doesn't.

Edit3: OK, now celebrate. Kinda proud of Smith right now.

Also, guts of a sailor? :smoking:

Edit4: I'm the only boarder stupid enough to be watching this, aren't I?

Oh well, the baseball Giants won today.

Also, what a terrible waste of a Ted Ginn Jr. performance tonight.

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

Alex Smith, huh?

[Lord O' Bones]

Alex Smith, huh?

Yep. Soul crushing turnover.