infeXio said:
How is it even possible to be this bitter? Jesus christ, it reeks. That you won't even acknowledge how insane it is to have 9 Super Bowl appearances in 18 years (during the salary cap era, mind) is so utterly ignorant. No other team has more than 8.
Not saying the Patriots haven’t had a remarkable run, but let’s remember, as Hitch pointed out upthread, they play in the softest division in the NFL. No team from that division other than NE has been to the SB since Buffalo in the early 90s. Every other division in the NFL has sent at least two teams to the SB in the past twenty years. That means that a) the Patriots only need to be a little better than average to win their division, year after year; and b) if they are a very good team, on a par with but no better than multiple SB winners of the past, they get a lot of virtually guaranteed wins, paving their way to a first round bye. At that point, they’re just one home win away from playing for the AFC championship.
And those home games are critical. In the B-B era, NE is 20-3 in playoff games at home. They’re 4-4 on the road. Call me cynical, but I really wouldn’t be surprised if Beli has installed signal-stealing technology at Gillette.
Even outside their division, the competition in the AFC hasn’t been that strong. There has been only one other team consistently good throughout the past twenty years, the Steelers. They’ve been to three SB and won two, but have never had a dominant season, followed by a dominant SB win. The Ravens, Broncos and Colts have been to two SB each in that period, but except for the Ravens first SB, none of those teams won a SB in dominant fashion.
Contrast this with the 70s, when the Steelers had to contend with Miami and Oakland; those teams won 8 SB in nine years. It was a low-scoring era, but except for Pittsburgh's two SB against Dallas, the games really weren't close. Or the 80s and early 90s, when the 49ers had the Giants and Washington, and then Dallas. The NFC won 13 consecutive SB during this period, and only two of them were even close. In contrast, neither conference has dominated in this century, and every one of NE’s SB has been decided by a single score. There hasn’t been a single SB when the Patriots dominated the other team.
So sure, NE is a dynasty, in an era when it’s hard to stay on top for very long. Belichick is probably the best football coach in history, assuming he hasn’t cheated his way to the top. But let’s not get carried away. The playoff system, which usually makes it harder for a team to win a series of championships, has worked to NE’s advantage. They win their division virtually automatically every year, and sometimes have to beat one other very good team, usually at home, to get to the SB. When they get there, they typically play a close game, winning sometimes, losing other times. They win year after year not by being clearly the best team, but by being good enough to win a share of championships and SBs that their schedule helps them get into.
on3m@n@rmy said:
While the No-Call was a officiating mistake, I believe it would not hurt to make more plays like that reviewable in some way (either by challenge or review booth call) as long as it would not slow the game down.
PI is non-reviewable because it’s a subjective call. A player either steps out of bounds, or doesn’t; there is a fact of the matter. He either catches a pass or not (granted, the definition of a catch is another matter entirely). But PI is not as simple as hitting a receiver before the ball arrives. It may be judged incidental contact, the defender going for the ball, or the pass non-catchable. If subjective decisions like this are made reviewable, then there will be pressure to review other penalties that are also subjective—like roughing the passer, e.g., or even holding.
over recent years when rules favor offenses guess what percentage of teams that won the OT-opening coin toss won the game? 52%. That's it. The stats show that winning the coin toss to start OT does not significantly favor that team winning the game.
Seems to me that’s a pretty good argument for letting both teams have the ball in OT. There’s a lot of unfairness in sports, as in life, but the rules are supposed to be set up to ensure fairness as much as possible. To give one team but not the other a chance to win is blatantly unfair. Suppose the rules in baseball were changed so that in a tie game, if a team scored in the top half of the tenth inning, that team wins. That’s actually quite analogous to the current NFL OT rule, and no one in his right mind would advocate that.
Or how about the first team to score in OT wins in the NBA? You good with that?