East Coast Bias Bowl -- Running Super Bowl XLVI Thread

Eric Wilbur is very sorry you misunderstood his admittedly terrible column, guys.

http://www.boston.com/sports/columnists/wilbur/2012/02/uncle.html

 

Gee, LTL, if you can figure out what the hell happened to Rivers this season, you should replace A. J. Smith. Went from top performer to middle of the pack at best.

 

Comedy is hard.

 

Yeah, I have to believe injuries, but man oh man what a drop-off.

Still probably the second-best QB in the division behind that kid in Denver, though.

 

I read his Twitter follow-ups yesterday. It's so hard to say "boy did I whiff on that one." I also noticed that his Twitter profile features a Drew Bledsoe picture -- man is that guy living up to the stereotype.

I hope he read your critique the other night. It would have benefited him greatly.

 

That wasn't much better.

 

Bring back Steve Grogan!

 

Nothing to discuss.

 

"My husband can not ***** ing play the game and write the story at the same time."

 

This type of writing is why athletes think "you never played the game." I guarantee you no one in the Pats locker room blamed Brady for the loss. They know that there were plays to be made throughout the game that could have changed the outcome and some of them were not made. To blame Brady (for what exactly?) is like blaming Buckner for the '86 loss (I never have) while ignoring the Bob Stanley wild pitch and the fact that the Bosox had a 3-0 lead in Gm. 7.

 

Yeah, the follow-up is ridiculous -- if he was hurt, he should have concluded in that two-tenths of a second that he shouldn't have thrown the ball to Gronkowski, or that he should have put it in a better place for Welker. WTF, the guy has to be absolutely perfect on every throw?

Also I think Brady or someone else explained that although the Welker ball looked (and was) difficult, if he had put it anywhere else he was risking an interception or getting Welker's head taken off.

 

RE: Rivers vs. Manning.

I was one of those people arguing for Rivers a month ago, and I'm man enough to admit I think I got it wrong. It's one of the reasons I'm so fascinated by football, and especially what it takes to play quarterback in the NFL. I think when we evaluate QBs, it's really hard to put everything in context, and statistical comparisons (while certainly not irrelevant) are way more complicated than we make it out to be. Manning and Rivers have been asked to do very different things through the first seven years of their career. Within the context of their teams, they've each done them well, although Manning has certainly shown this season he could probably do everything Rivers does and more with a similar offensive philosophy and similar personnel.

Football statistics are far, far more complicated than baseball statistics, but so many people don't think about that, and they simply make apples to apples comparisons. The "It's All About Winning and Intangibles!" crowd goes way overboard with this in regards to Tebow, but how can you watch a game like that Super Bowl, see the way Manning so calmly carved up the Pats at the end, and believe Philip Rivers could have just as easily done the same thing? That honestly goes against everything I believe about both football and sports. Some men really can, as Kipling wrote, "keep your head when all about you are losing theirs" and that quality -- while it's not a finite thing -- is part of what makes sports so fascinating.