NFL playoff thread

Joe Gibbs belongs very high on that list. Who wins three title with three different QBs? That's an amazing feat.

 

Tom Landry gets no love?

Xan, you might just want to redo the whole list.

 

Barnwell's analysis can sometimes be insightful, but he cherry picks stats in a maddening way to make the case for or against players he likes or dislikes. He is a good writer as far as number crunchers go, but a misleading metrics guy. Earlier this year, he essentially invented a theorem with the sole purpose of "proving" Flacco was shitty, and it was quite honestly one of the most ridiculous, made-up, flawed stats I've ever seen.

Again, I'm all for advanced metrics in baseball, where each individual match-up can be categorized and labeled with little outside factors influencing it. But it's absurd the way some of these guys try to make the same claims in football, without ever thinking to factor in the ridiculous number of variables like: weather, play-calling, blocking, field position strategy, coaching philosophy, surface conditions, etc.

Matt Ryan is a good quarterback with a soft arm who has admitted he has doubted himself in big moments because of past failures. That's not narrative, that's something the dude was human enough to admit. His "team" was fucking terrible a year ago in the playoffs mainly because their "quarterback" could not drive the ball through the swirling wind against a good defense. That's was not narrative, that was a player who was overmatched by the team he was playing. Ryan is a very capable dome quarterback who would absolutely not be as great playing in the AFC North or AFC East. That's ok, especially this year when he will not have to play a single game outdoors, but at least acknowledge some of that instead of just pretending it's all unfair the way he's been treated and his fate was in someone else's hands.

Manning is now 0-4 in playoff games where the temp was 40 or below, btw. (And that's not some arbitrary cutoff point where he's won a bunch of games where the temp was 43 degrees.) And while I'm sure Rick and his abacus will be along shortly to tell me his team is 0-4 and not Manning, and that's just randomness anyway, too small of a sample size to make any such judgement, I laugh at the idea that football is just as easy to play outdoors as it is indoors. Laugh at it.

I'm glad Matt Ryan slayed the narrative, because some of it was, in fact, stupid. He made two very good throws against some shit prevent defense, but they were good throws. That doesn't change the fact that he threw a terrible pick, and then the drive before Seattle took the lead, he missed a wide open third down throw when he team desperately needed a first down. Those things happened, and they played a big role in letting Seattle have a chance to win a game where they trailed heavily.

 

In fact, I think Joe Gibbs is the greatest coach whose career began after the merger.

 

Why does the fact that the Falcons had no choice matter? It was an empirical example that it is possible to move the ball well enough in that matter of time. The risk/reward ratio there was on the side of being aggressive---whoever made the decision to take a knee with 31 seconds left (Fox, McCoy, Manning, Elway, etc.) was wrong.

 

Yep, they needed to go 40 yards, and with two timeouts they had five plays available and the middle of the field open. Totally doable.

 

Doesn't the second paragraph of this post (there are too many externalities in football for metrics to be applied) completely defeat the anti-Peyton Manning posts you have been making? Because I agree that the variables in football make it difficult to do certain things like, you know, make a claim that Peyton Manning is a bad playoff QB.

 

In that situation, any scheme the Broncos could have conceived that got Cary Williams in single coverage would have resulted in a defensive pass interference penalty or a completion. I'd put the odds of a knockdown or an interception (by him) at less than 1 percent. Why Fox was afraid to put three WRs on one side of the field and someone like Decker on the other, draw Ed Reed away from the route, and launch a throw that way, I can't understand.

 

Math, eyesight and general brain activity make it easier.

 

Gibbs 124-60 with 3 titles in 12-year stretch.

Noll 88-27 with 4 titles in his best 8-year stretch.

Madden 103-32-7 with a title in only 10-year stretch.

Shula 67-16 with 2 titles in best 6-year stretch with Miami, 55-12 with NFL title in 5-year stretch in Balto

Landry 171-49 with 2 titles in 16-year stretch

Halas 128-36-5 with 4 NFL titles in 15-year stretch

Lombardi 89-29-4 with 2 Super Bowls, 3 NFL titles in 9-year stretch

Walsh 92-59-1 with 3 titles in 10-year career

Belichick 146-42 with 3 titles in 12-year stretch

Levy 70-26 with 4 SB appearances in a row in 6-year stretch

Parcells 65-30 with 2 titles in 6-year stretch

 

Now is where we enter the hyperbole stage of the argument, like I said Peyton Manning is a "bad" playoff quarterback. What I have mainly contended, in this thread and countless others, is that Peyton Manning is not the quarterback that Tom Brady is, and that years and years of under-performing his usual statistics in the playoffs has given us a larger enough sample size where it's not all just "random" as certain people want to make it. Peyton Manning is a great leader. I'd love to have Peyton Manning on my team. Where people lose me is when they say "He's just as good as Brady, and maybe better. Look at the neato stats he put up playing in a dome!"

And I'm not some Brady/Boston fanboi. Far from it.

 

He's not dog shit, DD!