National Football League

[ChrisE]

If you want to bash the NFL do it in another thread, please.

As to dark horse teams, I'm going to say Dallas, Tennessee, and Kansas City (granted, they did win the division last year, but everyone forgets them). The Rams should battle AZ for the NFC west as well.

I'm not trying to be a homer, but Houston is looking pretty good IMO. I am not concerned about Foster being hurt. Look at Ward's yards/carry last year, and Tate looks to be the real deal. Indy looks to be coming down. Tenn doesn't have a QB.

Ultimately I do not think Kubiak can take them all the way, and neither can Schaub. He makes too many dumb mistakes, like that IT he threw against SF last week right off the bat. But, I think they will make the playoffs and I have mixed feelings about that; it means Kubiak will be back.

I really like what Det is doing. If Stafford can stay healthy watch out; he can really sling it. I got a chance to watch Suh for the first time in a preseason game last week. That guy is an animal.

 

[palmerq]

I am playing the yahoo nfl fantasy league and I picked this team, the problem is i really dont know anything about the nfl, how bad is my team(I picked 9th in a 10 team league btw)
QB
Vick
Matt cassel

WR
Dwayne Bowe
Devin Hester
Johnny Knox
Terrel Owens and Derrick Mason.....

RB
Peyton Hills
Steven Jackson
Reggie Bush
Daniel Thomas

Te
Mercedes Lewis
Chris Cooley

Dan acker as kicker and the pittsburgh defence

I have heard of Vick and Reggie Bush, and Terrel Owens.... but it didnt tell me owens was a free agent :S

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

Fantasy football is it's own thing. The stats piled up often don't have the same semblance to how the game is actually played to win!

Houston should be decent. I just don't consider them to be a dark horse because people are already saying they will contend for a playoff spot, and if Manning is out, for the division title. With Manning hurt the division will be up for grabs between Houston, Indy and Tennessee. Jacksonville may win some games as well and surprise a few people. Could be four teams fighting to get to 10-6 to win the division.

Foxy - Mark McGuire will never make the HOF. No way. He doesn't have the numbers (outside of total HRs, which he cheated to get). He's basically the Roger Maris of his time. Only Maris was a nice guy and McGuire isn't. But the steroids thing will keep him out for certain. Same with Palmero who has better numbers. I actually don't think Bonds or Clemens will get in for decades. But that's a baseball thread. LOL! Same with the fact Rasmussen (like Heras) was blacklisted from the sport. Another thread for another time.

 

[FoxxyBrown1111]

48 hrs. to go....for the real real football season to start

Pick: Saints 24, Packers 20

Latest news: Shanahan decided to play it safe (trying to save his a$$ under Snyder? , good luck), by choosing Rex over Beck. A mistake. And cowardly after all the praising he did (rightfully) about Beck.

 

[on3m@n@rmy]

NFL week 1 predictions

My predictions for NFL week 1 games:
(let's see if I can do better than Liggett picks stage winners)

Thu, Sep 08
NO @ GB ..............NO

Sun, Sep 11
ATL @ CHI ............ATL
IND @ HOU ...........IND
BUF @ KC ............KC
TEN @ JAC ...........TEN
CIN @ CLE ...........CLE
PHI @ STL ............PHI
PIT @ BAL ............BAL
DET @ TB ............TB
MIN @ SD .............SD
NYG @ WAS .........NYG
CAR @ ARI ............ARI
SEA @ SF ..............SF
DAL @ NYJ ............NYJ

Mon, Sep 12
NE @ MIA ...............NE
OAK @ DEN ..........OAK

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

I'll take GB over NO.

The most interesting games are going to be:

• Pitt at Baltimore - I'll take the Steelers. Aging, but more tools.
• Det at Tampa - I'll take the Bucaneers, though Detroit is motivated.
•*Dallas at NY Jets - I'll take the Jets, though Dallas may surprise
• NE at Miami - It's going to be hot and sticky, but I'll still pick NE.

NFL.com says 5 of their 7 experts predict NE to get back to the big game. My pick is Green Bay over the Jets.

Shanahan decided to play it safe by choosing Rex over Beck. A mistake. And cowardly after all the praising he did (rightfully) about Beck.

Agree. They must be joining Seattle in the "Suck for Luck" campaign.

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

Talked with this guy today. Met him a couple years ago at my job, he definitely knows the NFL, College too. His picks for this year's SuperBowl are... the Saints and the Chargers. He got a good ribbing on the Chargers, then more of a ribbing when we realized he played for these two teams. But he was close to accurate last year (picked Packers and Jets) and the year before was right with the Saints.

 

[FoxxyBrown1111]

I'll take GB over NO.

The most interesting games are going to be:

• Pitt at Baltimore - I'll take the Steelers. Aging, but more tools.
• Det at Tampa - I'll take the Bucaneers, though Detroit is motivated.
•*Dallas at NY Jets - I'll take the Jets, though Dallas may surprise
• NE at Miami - It's going to be hot and sticky, but I'll still pick NE.

NFL.com says 5 of their 7 experts predict NE to get back to the big game. My pick is Green Bay over the Jets.


Agree. They must be joining Seattle in the "Suck for Luck" campaign.

I doubt. NE seems to be in the doghouse, since the cheating scandal, of the NFL (we just remember the obscure play calling vs. the Jets in the playoffs). As the Raiders are since Davis declared war vs. the rest of the owners with his moves to Oakland back and forth. Or how can we explain the Raiders are near the top every year in penalties? It makes absolute no sense they allegedly obtain the dirtiest players/and-or tactics year in year out for two decades, with a ton of different coaches. Even in their same division was a dirtier team (Broncos OL-"Tactics").

My SB-Pick (which is absolutely luck dependend by calling it this early, so don´t take it too serious): Saints (beating the Packers in the NFC-Title-Game) over Colts* (beating the Pats in the AFC-Title-Game)

* if Kerry Collins doesn´t start at QB after September, otherwise i go with the Houston Texans

P.S.: The Chargers? .... Ah, no, Smuf Norv is still around!!

 

[FoxxyBrown1111]

Talked with this guy today. Met him a couple years ago at my job, he definitely knows the NFL, College too. His picks for this year's SuperBowl are... the Saints and the Chargers. He got a good ribbing on the Chargers, then more of a ribbing when we realized he played for these two teams. But he was close to accurate last year (picked Packers and Jets) and the year before was right with the Saints.

Is this Stan Brock?

We make our all year around running gag, that every OL in the NFL has at least one "German". It seems like they have a OL-Factory up there in german speaking Milwaukee Area.

To name a few big timers:
Kuechenberg is the absolute NO. 1. Even in "real" Germany this name is seldom now. But it sounds great.
Other greats; Jim Otto, Mel Hein, Diehl & Diem, Olin Kreutz, Casey Wiegmann, Dan Dierdorf etc.

Even born german OL´ers get drafted nowadays (Sebastian Vollmer)

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

You are one die hard fan there Foxy. I'm impressed.

He said he hates predicting things that far in advance, and his Saints-Chargers pick was halfway joking because of it, as he played for both teams. The only thing you can really do is predict which teams should be good, if they have no injuries or problems, or go flat, etc. After that, it's guesswork. His pick for this weekend's game was Pittsburgh over Baltimore by a FG. Somewhat of a safe pick, but I agree with him.

Biggest man I've ever met in my life. He's like 6'6" and 330. His hands are just huge, absolutely huge. You'd think he could grab a basketball and squish it in his palm. Yes, I said basketball. Gentle giant though. Has a lot of great NFL stories from the years, many with Jim Mora. People joke about Mora and his quotes but he says he was a great coach. Tough, but had a good rapport with his players.

 

[FoxxyBrown1111]

You are one die hard fan there Foxy. I'm impressed.

He said he hates predicting things that far in advance, and his Saints-Chargers pick was halfway joking because of it, as he played for both teams. The only thing you can really do is predict which teams should be good, if they have no injuries or problems, or go flat, etc. After that, it's guesswork. His pick for this weekend's game was Pittsburgh over Baltimore by a FG. Somewhat of a safe pick, but I agree with him.

Biggest man I've ever met in my life. He's like 6'6" and 330. His hands are just huge, absolutely huge. You'd think he could grab a basketball and squish it in his palm. Yes, I said basketball. Gentle giant though. Has a lot of great NFL stories from the years, many with Jim Mora. People joke about Mora and his quotes but he says he was a great coach. Tough, but had a good rapport with his players.

Thanks...

About predicting in advance: I say the same as you know. And it´s funny to see every year how the pundits fail with their pre season picks.

To have any kind of (small) sucsess with predicting far in advance, i go with passing efficiency (Y/PP). That stat by far correlates best with future outcomes. The 2nd thing to look at is regression to the mean. That´s how i came up with Houston (if they´d have any kind of D, they´d be a no brainer) and that ATL goes 8-8 or worse (overachieving last season, just average passing efficiency on both sides of the ball).

Enjoy the game tonight. I know i´ll have some beers since i meet with a die hard Saints-Fan. We have a cute little Football-Bar over here in Berlin. Like the "Cheers"...

 

[on3m@n@rmy]

You are one die hard fan there Foxy. I'm impressed.

Biggest man I've ever met in my life. He's like 6'6" and 330. His hands are just huge, absolutely huge. You'd think he could grab a basketball and squish it in his palm.

I'm impressed too. I was thinking, 'how come I have not heard that name in a while?' He finished his NFL carreer in 1995 after 2 years with SD, which followed 13 years with NO.

Looking at that image, compare his hands to the hand of the Buc in the same photo. OK, his hands are gloved and tapped and the hand of the Buc is bare. But the width of his hands dwarf the other player's hand, and his fingers sticking out of the glove are like sausages. Nice big fat German sausages.

I see he grew up around Alpe's neck of the woods... Portland.

 

[Anonymous]

2011-12 season preview..guardian.co.uk
http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2011/sep/08/nfl-2011-2012-preview-predictions-football

 

[rides like a girl]

As halftime comes on the first game of the year, wow seems the defenses are still locked out!

Are the cheese heads that good on offense, seemingly scoring at will or are the Saints that bad on defense? Saints scoring easier than I expected too. Maybe adjustments at halftime...

Hate all the touchbacks. Why kick it off at all except to keep players employed! Guess left with just punts returns for that anticipation of the what if...

This is the hard time of the year for me, hard to schedule rides and football. Do i ride on Sunday and miss a game? Nope!!! Ride on Saturday and miss college ball, or ride on trainer pretending the ride is rained out and watch the key college games...

 

[on3m@n@rmy]

As halftime comes on the first game of the year, wow seems the defenses are still locked out!

Are the cheese heads that good on offense, seemingly scoring at will or are the Saints that bad on defense? Saints scoring easier than I expected too. Maybe adjustments at halftime...

Hate all the touchbacks. Why kick it off at all except to keep players employed! Guess left with just punts returns for that anticipation of the what if...

This game showed the Packs 'D' > Saints 'D', and Packs 'O' > Saints 'D'. The Saints secondary could not match up man for man against the Packs receivers and Rogers. Saints tried man to man coverage and Rogers picked them to pieces. By the time NO realized this they were already down 2 scores or so.

Hindsight is so much clearer than forsight (hehe, I predicted NO would win). I picked NO because I thought the combination newly acquired Sproles and rookie Mark Ingram would give NO an added dimension with the run game making it tough for the Pack to defend. Down early, NO did not exploit that as much as I thought they would because they were playing catch up. This is a passing league, but if NO could have run the ball more and be effective at it, then it would have done a couple things: (1) run off more clock with the run game, (2) keep the GB offense on the sideline, and (3) give the NO defense more rest. But as NO were playing catch up they ended up passing more.

Definately touchbacks = boring. But how many kick off or punt returns went for TDs in tonights game?... off the top of my head I think it was 3. That's almost unheard of in a single game. With all the touchbacks I think guys might be out of practice, which may have contributed to returns going for TDs.

 

[rides like a girl]

Crazy game. I agree had the Saints not fallen behind, establishing a run game would have helped give the D rest.

Not being able to get a yard twice has to be troubling for the Saints.

Just when I was frustrated with the touchbacks it was like the guys read my mind and ran one back... Crazy. You might be right about coverage teams not being ready or perhaps disciplined to stay in lanes.

I too had the Saints to win, mainly due to 49er love. I also thought Sproles was going to explode on Green Bay and be the difference. Plus no one rocks a visor like Sean Peyton. I lost a bet with co-worker. Can't bet money at work, so I have to fetch coffee in the morning, do his filing of end of month reports and do his expense report.

Can't wait for Seattle V 49ers. May not be two top teams, but I want to see if any left over PAC 10 issues between the coaches.

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

I have a feeling both teams defenses and special teams weren't quite ready for the season and will improve in a few weeks. One has to wonder how much this has to do with the lockout and shortened training camp. Watching today's game makes me wonder about this Sunday's Steelers-Ravens game. A game that normally would be 13-10 could be...different.

Your 49ers should have no problem with the Seahawks. While I think SF is bound to finish about 7-9, Seattle needs so much work they may make Alex Smith look like Joe Montana this Sunday.

Peyton Manning had surgery and it appears he may be out for the season with the Colts.

 

[ImmaculateKadence]

Nothing like watching a division rival start the season with a loss. FIRE THEM CANNONS!

 

[on3m@n@rmy]

Your 49ers should have no problem with the Seahawks. While I think SF is bound to finish about 7-9, Seattle needs so much work they may make Alex Smith look like Joe Montana this Sunday.

I STILL have hope for Seattle... hope for a high draft pick next Spring that they really should gotten last Spring.

Nothing like watching a division rival start the season with a loss. FIRE THEM CANNONS!

Bucs fan, eh? Too bad all 3 of those teams (TB, NO, ATL) have to be in the same league because I like them all. But it would be nice to see TB or ATL have a go at the SB this year.

 

[FoxxyBrown1111]

That was a beautiful Air-Show by both teams, not even i did expect. Unluckily i hardly can remember the 2nd Half. Needed the whole day to recover from all those beers.

What we learned respectively already knew is that you can´t defend Passing-Offenses in sync. As said, the running game didn´t matter until GB tried to run down the clock. All great teams, since the Unitas-Era starting in the late 50s, practise the tactic of come out throwing, and if a good lead is built kill the clock by running more in the 2nd Half.

on3m@n@rmy; I put our avatar bet into a money game last night. Found a german student to bet 25 Euros that ATL will win max. 8 games. We also ended up at 9 games as cut off line. Now i certainly will root against the Falcons all year long.

 

[FoxxyBrown1111]

I have a feeling both teams defenses and special teams weren't quite ready for the season and will improve in a few weeks. One has to wonder how much this has to do with the lockout and shortened training camp. Watching today's game makes me wonder about this Sunday's Steelers-Ravens game. A game that normally would be 13-10 could be...different.

Your 49ers should have no problem with the Seahawks. While I think SF is bound to finish about 7-9, Seattle needs so much work they may make Alex Smith look like Joe Montana this Sunday.

Peyton Manning had surgery and it appears he may be out for the season with the Colts.

Hate to disagree with you, but it´s the other way around. Short times to prepare for a season always helps the Defense. Can´t remember his name, but that´s what a NFL-Europe coach once said. It makes sense since the O needs to execute the playbook to perfection, while the D is/only can react. We always had low scoring games in the first few weeks, because there was only short training camps without pre season games. Later in the seasons, scoring improved... So we can expect both teams to set the league on fire if not too much injuries materialize.

The die hard Saints Fan i talked with, said Manning may even has to end his career....

 

[Alpe d'Huez]

Hate to disagree with you, but it´s the other way around. Short times to prepare for a season always helps the Defense. Can´t remember his name, but that´s what a NFL-Europe coach once said...

NFL Europe??!

All I'm really saying is that I'll be surprised if these two teams defenses and special teams give up this many points often in the future. Whether that's because of pre-season prep, or otherwise.

Talk on ESPN radio today about Manning's neck is that he's all but certain to miss the entire season. They'll probably re-evaluate late and if he's not 100% he won't even consider it. What are the odds of that? Even if he misses the season and things go well, he could have 2-3 good years left, and not have to make many changes to his style. But if the neck doesn't heal properly...

 

[FoxxyBrown1111]

Yeah NFL-Europe
Serious, you can´t see any differnce of speed and technique between NFL and NFL-Europe. The Skill-Level is sooo high, that often luck is the difference between millions of dollars and working in a supermarket like Warner did. Many players who were missed by NFL-Scouts made it to the NFL trou europe. And the winning formula was the same: Passing won the games, running the ball was irrelevant.

About neck injuries. If Manning is smart, he stops playing (for me it would be a no brainer, but you never know how greedy rich people like Manning can get. I heard he even took dollars for signing autographs. When BigMac was in Berlin, he did it for free, even tough we disturped him totally drunk in his 5-Star-Hotel. Well, those were the good times.). Otherwise he risks paralyzation. One more wrong hit and his spine cord may will narrow to serious damage.

At least GB´s D will "improve". Just wait when they play the Bears in bad weather conditions.
The Saints D might be a problem. But as long they can play league average, i see no reason why they wouldn´t have a chance to play the Packers in the NFC-Final...

 

[on3m@n@rmy]

That was a beautiful Air-Show by both teams, not even i did expect. Unluckily i hardly can remember the 2nd Half. Needed the whole day to recover from all those beers.

What we learned respectively already knew is that you can´t defend Passing-Offenses in sync. As said, the running game didn´t matter until GB tried to run down the clock. All great teams, since the Unitas-Era starting in the late 50s, practise the tactic of come out throwing, and if a good lead is built kill the clock by running more in the 2nd Half.

on3m@n@rmy; I put our avatar bet into a money game last night. Found a german student to bet 25 Euros that ATL will win max. 8 games. We also ended up at 9 games as cut off line. Now i certainly will root against the Falcons all year long.

Well, good luck on the avatar bet... I don't need to bet cash to root my team ATL on. Remember, if I lose I have to sport a 2006 Floyd pic in yellow with champagne... for the whole cycling season. GO ATLANTA!!!

On last nights game, when I think about how passing has become so important I really miss the smash mouth running games of old. Some teams still have that though. Pass blocking is not nearly as fun to watch as a good run blocking team. On the other hand, watching Detroit's Suh and Fairley wreak havoc on passing offenses will be fun. Also fun will be watching how other teams deal with it and how Detroit counters. For instance, opponents won't be able to double team both guys. If they do, expect the Lions to counter with middle blitzes and so on.

 

[FoxxyBrown1111]

I can see you are a "Defense-Guy", while i am a "Offense-Guy". May i got "spoiled" since the first games i saw we had some truly spectacular Offense with a strong armed guy named Clifford Madison. The high point was a 106-0. That seems boring, but it wasn´t. 70-80 yard throws (no kidding here) were completed for TD´s...
In the 89-Final our Berlin Eagles had minus 4 (!!) rushing yards and still won a 30-23 Thriller. One play was a bomb from Midfield. Nulified because of Offense-Holding. Next play, guess what.... same play, TD.

That carried on when the NFL-Europe came to Berlin. We got the strongest arm by far. Davey was throwing killer darts and hellacious bombs. The LB´s backed off so far, that it seemed the opponents played with like 7 DB´s. Still they couldn´t stop Berlin Thunder as World Bowl winners.

It would be a sweet loosing season for ATL. You with the Landis-TdF-Avatar and 25 Euros doubled up for me.