CARTOON PICKS WEEK 7- Yay The Patriots Are Genuinely Shit Now
WEEK 7! The season is almost half over. Jesus Christ.
I wouldn’t say too much happened this week to turn the tables or upset the balances. We’ve mostly kept going down the same road. Good teams will continue to be good teams. Bad teams will continue to be bad teams. Mediocre teams will continue to be boring. The NFCE will continue to to be the most entertaining division in football. Yeah. I said it. I’m tired of pretending that it’s somehow an affront that the NFCE is a disaster. This is something we watch for entertainment. Hilarious failure is entertainment. Competitive failure is entertainment. I’m just as excited to see how one of these teams manages to lose as I am to see how good teams manage to win. But I digress and will likely have a comic about this later this week.
The Jets held a lead for an entire half of football! They held the Bills to nothing but field goals! That’s….progress! Maybe the Trevor Lawrence sweepstakes isn’t over yet. The Jags snatched defeat from the jaws of victory, as did the Giants and Falcons.
But the most important piece of information learned this week is that the Patriots are kinda ass! Not fake ass, real ass! They got stomped at home by the still somewhat injured 49ers. I was willing to overlook the loss to Seattle, the Hawks are good. I was willing to overlook the loss to Kansas City, the Chiefs rule and they had to start Brian Hoyer. I got suspicious when they got Cam back and still lost to Denver. But hey, they didn’t have much practice time and had been shuffled all over the place thanks to the Covid scare. But…they go out against the 49ers, at home, and get absolutely curbstomped. Now they are 2-4 and sit at 3rd in the AFC East, below the rebuilding Dolphins and the Bills, only sitting ahead of the literal worst team in the league.
There is still plenty of season to go and we’ve all eaten our words on the Patriots before, but we are in a new era now. Brady isn’t there. There is finally reason to hope it’ll stick this time. They play the Bills next. If the Bills beat them, that’s probably it for a divisional win. If they lose to the Dolphins, they might not make the playoffs. They don’t have a hard schedule for the rest of the year, but outside the Jets none of the teams are pushovers. I have…cautious optimism. Brady is killing it in Tampa Bay (much to my dismay) so hopefully we can get this win out of the breakup.
I did pretty good this week, even though the Bengals, Falcons, and Titans made it pretty close. The Raiders once again fucked me over. I hate the Raiders.
LETS TAKE A LOOK AT WEEK 8
FALCONS @ PANTHERS
The Panthers are mediocre but they try. The Falcons also try, they just fail really badly every time they do. The Falcons have incentive to just shit the bed too, get that draft pick on a lost season.
If the Falcons win, I will draw Calvin Ridley hadokening Teddy Bridgewater
VIKINGS @ PACKERS
Holy guacamole do the Vikings suck.
If the Vikings win, I will draw Kirk Cousins as dorky Thor
TITANS @ BENGALS
The Titans ran into a real challenge in Pittsburgh but they still put up a damn good fight. This team is legit. The Bengals just aren’t on the same level.
If the Bengals win, I will draw Joey the Tiger pouring Skyline Chili over a plate of Nashville hot chicken
JETS @ CHIEFS
Jesus Christ
If the Jets win, I will draw Patrick Mahomes being led down the Shame Walk from Game of Thrones, with Adam Gase as the nun saying SHAME
COLTS @ LIONS
The Lions have valiantly fought back from the brink of despair to become thoroughly mediocre, only delaying the inevitable. Don’t believe in the Lions. The Colts have reasons to hope.
If the Lions win, I will draw Matt Patricia riding a decrepit horse
STEELERS @ RAVENS
The Steelers are really good but they have to get punched in the dick at some point. The Ravens, at home, could be just the dick punch we’ve been looking for.
If the Steelers win, I will draw Ben Roethlisberger eating crabs
RAMS @ DOLPHINS
Why the fuck are the Dolphins sending Tua out to play his first game as a starter after a year of injury rehabilitation against Aaron Donald? Come on Dolphins, don’t do that to the guy.
If the Dolphins win, I will draw a Dolphin in Sea World, only as the trainer, and the ram drowning in the pool
PATRIOTS @ BILLS
This is the Bills chance to really stamp their position at the top of the division. They win this, they aren’t just in the drivers seat, they are the team to beat. They lose this, they might just be the same old Bills. I think they need this win and they know it.
If the Patriots win, I will draw a Buffalo getting leveled by a smug Bill Belichick
RAIDERS @ BROWNS
Absolutely ugh at this fucking matchup. I believe in the Raiders…they fail. I distrust the Raiders…they win. I deliberately try to game the system and pick against my heart, and they screw me over. Now they play a team that isn’t better or worse then they are, especially with Beckham out. Fuck the Raiders. Go Browns.
If the Raiders win, I will draw the Raiders Stadium as a giant roomba slupring up Cleveland
CHARGERS @ BRONCOS
I was shocked this weekend to see the Chargers had only won a single game up until yesterday. They feel like a better team than that. Justin Herbert continues to rule. The Broncos just seem like an ugly, unfun slog of a team. Go Chargers.
If the Broncos win, I will draw a large horse kicking Justin Herbert in the gut
SAINTS @ BEARS
The Saints. A team that should be better than they feel, despite the solid record. The Bears, a team that feels significantly worse than their record, but they keep winning. This is a hard choice, but I refuse to trust the Bears. EDIT: After the Rams game, I definitely don’t trust the Bears.
If the Bears win, I will draw the Bears winning Fat Bear Week
49ERS @ SEAHAWKS
This aught to be a great game! The 49ers are rolling and the Seahawks defense isn’t that great. The Hawks, of course, keep winning, but that has to end at some point. EDIT it, in fact, ended last night, in the game of the year vs the Cardinals. The Hawks are mortal!
If the 49ers win, I will draw Yosemite Sam yahooing over the body of Russell Wilson
COWBOYS @ EAGLES
TRASH FIGHT! The Cowboys might not even have Andy Dalton for this game. The Eagles have already adjusted to playing dudes they picked up from their local homeless camp. This is how the Eagles win, by dragging a shit team into their own web of despair.
If the Cowboys win, I will draw Mike McCarthy flipping off the haters
BUCS @ GIANTS
We can make all the “Giants are Brady Kryptonite” jokes we want but this shouldn’t be close.
If the Giants win, I will draw the Giants as Brady Kryptonite
I am irrationally angry that we didn’t get tiny Russel Wilson getting thrown into the canyon. That is all.
Murray also being short may have something to do with that.
We did get tiny Russell Wilson. He’s just next to tiny Kyler Murray with nothing else for scale
They’re both 1 inch in difference
Here’s a frame of reference, if anyone wants/needs one:
http://www.thedrawplay.com/comic/russell-wilson-and-kyler-murray-get-lost-in-the-jungle/
Big rip
Also: On your predictions, I maintain that your comic that has made me consistently laugh the most over the years was the Eli Train’s derpy face with Tom Brady throwing every penny he can on the rail. Giants as Brady Kryptonite is memeworthy.
That’s the comic that got me hooked.
I never wanted the Jets to win more in my life.
Fortunately the Patriots fan can take comfort in the fact that the Jets and Giants are also, as usual, genuinely shit too.
Man I hope we get Nuclear Baker Mayfield the rest of the year. Also that the Browns find a safety somewhere sometime soon.
The only proven, consistent home field advantage in the NFL is an Eastern time zone team hosting a Pacific time zone team in an early game, so I really hope the Browns-Raiders game doesn’t get flexed.
A 1pm Eastern game is a 10am Pacific game. Think about that.
Why it happens isn’t really a question. I was just pointing out that, no matter who the two teams are, the only measurable home field advantage in the NFL that doesn’t care about talent, coaching, or weather is that Pacific time zone teams always play worse when they have to play early games under severe jet lag.
Maybe Matty P should be riding old, decrepit Rivers centaur….
🙁
no
You’re right, Rivers would probably somehow have another kid
So two things. The Dolphins are starting Tua against Aaron Donald because of Covid. If you’re starting a young guy the best time for their debut, when they’ll have the most time to prepare, is week 1 and after the bye week. Coach Flo clearly didn’t feel like he was ready for week 1 and now he is, so the time to do it is after the bye, which originally would’ve put him against the Jets and Gregg Williams, he who ended Favre and Warner’s careers and threatened Peyton’s. Now it’s against Aaron Donald and frankly I rather prefer him than Williams.
Also good job jinxing it, the Pats will now bounce back this week and go on a run.
Oh, and you forgot to underline your picks for the last three games
I didn’t know Fat Bear Week was a thing, but now I love it.
🙁
Would there be a way for us to vote on one of the pick comics that don’t get made at the end of the season? Because god do I want to see the Jets win, but the only way that’ll happen is if the stadium collapses on half of the Chiefs roster.
never gonna happen
To which part? The vote or the Jets winning? Because I can hope for one of them.
….you’re going to make me root for the Titans. Nashville hot chicken is damn amazing and shouldn’t be tarnished with that abomination Cincinnatians call chili.
http://www.thedrawplay.com/comic/cartoon-picks-week-4-probably-a-super-spreader-event/colts-9/
The Patriots, and more importantly Bill Belichick, might be experiencing the absolute worst case scenario that could have played out for them this season; namely, they suck complete ass offensively while Tom Brady is still doing Tom Brady things down in Tampa. I watched the Bucs game and the Patriots game at the same time yesterday, and the entire time I thought to myself, “They really let that man walk to do this?”
It’s bad enough that the Patriots’ offense is straight dogshit not even worth the time of day to be watching, but the fact that Tom Brady is not only still playing well, but making a case to be league MVP this season just rips my heart out.
The inner Bradytard in me is happy to see him destroy a tired, downright fallacious narrative that should have never existed, but the Patriots fan in me feels sick that we actually let him walk instead of investing him long-term. We wouldn’t have been as great this season even with Brady, but we could have avoided this shit. The fact that the Patriots still win 12-4 despite having an offense this bad surrounding him should be a testament to how good of a quarterback Tom Brady is. That offense looked bad by Tom Brady standards, but it was infinitely better than what we’re seeing now.
I just feel for Cam Newton. He’s going out sad playing for a team that won’t invest in helping him. If I were him, I’d fuck off somewhere else this offseason. You got to experience first hand what Tom Brady dealt with in 2019 and the fact of the matter is that this shit won’t change any time soon. Cut your losses and go to a team that’s willing to help you. Don’t deal with this.
pats best case scenario was… last year. even brady can’t succeed with the type of roster the pats have this year. consider this year a freebie, and wait for the cap space to clear.
For the Patriots, yeah, the best case scenario is that they bring Brady back, struggle similar to last season, finish around 11-5 or 12-4 again off of the arm of Tom Brady, then lose in the Wild Card or Divisional Round again.
Most of my comment was really directed at Bill Belichick, because Tom Brady’s success down in Tampa deeply affects his legacy. For the longest time in many internet circles, the narrative was that Bill Belichick was the one pulling all the strings and Tom Brady was just another cog in the machine. A really good cog, sure, but not the primary reason that the Patriots were winning games. This season is proving the exact opposite. Tom Brady went to a bottom feeder franchise in Tampa that was definitely budding with its fair share of talent, but had no real direction or discipline. He’s turned them into a title contender and is putting up MVP numbers. Meanwhile New England looks nothing like the team of old. They look like… a bottom feeder franchise. Just not good in general.
Obviously it’s way too early drop the hammer in Bill Belichick, but if this trend continues, that narrative, however misguided it is, will be destroyed. It looks more like Bill Belichick was a solid, but not great coach that benefitted heavily from having the greatest QB of all time on his roster, rather than Tom Brady being a solid, but not great QB benefitting from being coached by the greatest to ever do it.
Let’s just say that 2021 will be a very important year for Belichick’s legacy.
When this first played out, my thought was Brady would find early success in Tampa, but Belichick would have better success overall.
That was my early thought as well. There is simply too much talent on the Buccaneers’ roster for Tom Brady not to find huge success, but the way things have played out so far, it’s really concerning for Bill Belichick, honestly. This Patriots offense doesn’t just look bad, it looks downright putrid. It looks like a unit that cannot physically function. Cam Newton looks like a total bum and his receivers look like they could barely make a JUCO roster, let alone an NFL one. Belichick had literal years to fix all of these problems and he just… didn’t. He left it as is for reasons that I will honestly never fully understand.
2021 is going to go a long way in determining Belichick’s legacy. The Patriots have plenty of draft picks (10 iirc) and a whole lot of cap space going into next season. It’s a real opportunity for him to properly fix all of the issues that this team is having. They need to bring in a bona fide weapon on the outside at WR and they need to sure up the front 7 by drafting quality LBs. If the Patriots continue to look like this next season, I’d say that it’s pretty fair to give a lot of credit to Tom Brady at that point.
I’ve always leaned more towards giving Tom Brady most of the credit for New England’s success. Sure, winning games as a QB is a fair bit easier when you have a great coach, but people forget that winning games as a head coach is significantly easier when you have an ultra-elite QB on your roster. There’s a reason guys like Tony Dungy and Mike McCarthy have rings as Head Coaches. They played with uber-elite QB talents like Peyton Manning and Aaron Rodgers who carried the load for them. Tom Brady has done the same with Bill Belichick, but he managed to do it over an extended period of time, rather than one single season. The reason we look at Belichick as some sort of unquestioned mastermind is because he had that uber-elite QB to cover up all of the bad moves.
I’ll always point to 2017 as a prime example of this. New England’s defense was hot garbage to start that season due to a lot of player movement and weird decisions by Belichick and didn’t start getting their shit together until the last few weeks, really. What did Brady do in that situation? Only lead the league in passing yards at age 40 and win his 3rd MVP honors for his career. When things went wrong, they could always lean heavily on Brady to make it right. They can’t do that anymore and this is the result. I am hoping and praying that this isn’t the case and they return to form in 2021, but I just can’t see it happening at this point. If they could have avoided being in this situation but didn’t, then there is no way that they are going to ever climb out of it.
I think you’re making the assessments WAY TOO SOON. I don’t like the idea of using covid as an excuse for anything, but the Patriots boat was *heavily* disrupted by that. Not only did they lead the league in the sheer number of players who opted out for the year, Gilmore had it one week, Cam had it another week, their facility was affected multiple times. For a coach whose success has always been on attention to the tiiiiiniest of details, disruptions like that are BRUTAL. This is a very bad year for making a sound judgment on “Who was better – Bill or Tom?”
It was only a week or two ago that Tommy was leading the league in Pick Sixes (he may still be, I’m too lazy to check). I know his stats were pretty, but that game against Green Bay was nothing special from his end. The D made Rodgers absolutely poop his pants, and Brady had a very easy walk of it.
You’re also deeply misrepresenting the talent in Tampa last year and how much Jameis held them back. I think we can all agree dude is a mediocre qb – yet he threw for 5k yards and 30 TDs. It was the 30 INTs that lost them a lotta games. We already know you can put an average QB on a mega-talented roster and win with it. (*shakes fist angrily* Dillllferrrr!!!) Anyone who looks at what Brady is doing in Tampa to this point as some sort of evidence that it was all him… well, they’re probably named Skip Bayless. X’D
Trust me, I’m not making these assessments without proper justification. I understand that COVID has deeply impacted the Patriots this season, but quite frankly, if Belichick is the outstanding coach we think that he is, he should have been able to navigate those problems without much issue and put out a far better product than what we’ve seen out of the Patriots’ offense these last two games. The reality is that these poor performances aren’t the result of COVID-19, but rather poor roster management and awful moves on Bill Belichick’s part. Tom Brady covered it up for years, but without him, the cracks are finally starting to show, and they’re bad. Bill has had plenty of time retool the roster to be able survive in life post-Tom Brady, but he hasn’t done it. He’s continued to make the same questionable moves and bad decisions that Tom Brady constantly covered up, and now the team looks and plays like absolute dogshit.
COVID is a bad excuse, especially when you consider the fact that the Titans had it far worse than the Patriots, and still managed to look like a legitimate contender after the fact. They’re 5-1 right now and gave Pittsburgh a run for their money. Are you telling me that Mike Vrabel (who’s a really good coach, zero disrespect to him) is better than Bill Belichick? Looks like it.
I really wanted to see Cam Newton succeed on this team, but it’s just not going to happen. Tom Brady actually fooled me and many others into believing this this WR corps is actually passable. It’s horrible, and not even a former MVP QB can save it. The blame falls on Bill Belichick in that regard. He’s either avoided the issue outright or straight up missed on his few attempts to fix it. I could understand if it was Jarrett Stidham sucking ass out there or Andy Dalton, but when Cam Newton looks like one of the worst QBs in the league in your offense, there’s a severe problem.
Your point on Tom Brady is downright silly, to put it bluntly. Sure, he has 2 pick sixes on the season, but one of them came in a week one matchup and the other came in a game where he also threw for 370 yards and 5 TD passes, all while leading a 17 point comeback win and earning NFC Player of the Week honors after the fact. The fact that he has a couple of catastrophic throws on the season deeply pales in comparison to all of the good that he’s been doing so far, and that’s in spite of the fact that there was no preseason for him to get those needed reps with a new roster, and constant injuries that have affected Chris Godwin (who’s only played in 2 full games to this point and just got hurt again), Mike Evans (who’s been battling injuries all season and missed time), OJ Howard (who’s out for the year with an achilles injury if I’m not mistaken) and Leonard Fournette (who’s missed most of the year with an injury). Plus the Bucs are still boasting a rather lackluster offensive line (improved from last year, but nothing particularly great).
I know the name of the game is to deny, deny, deny when it comes to Tom Brady, but just give the man a wee bit of credit here. He’s 43, playing on a new team dropping dimes like this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X0IKosJesvA) to *checks notes* … Scotty Miller. That has nothing to do with the talent surrounding Tom Brady and everything to do with him just being that dude. His impact on the Bucs is unquestioned. They look more confident, play more with more fire and just look like a damn good team down there. He’s turned them into a winning football team. Anyone that denies at this point is just… well, they’re probably just deluded honestly XD.
This year, Brady can boast the following studmuffin stats (courtesy of Shannon Sharpe):
– 22nd in completion percentage
– 21st in yards per attempt
– 16th in QBR
– 6th in pass attempts
Oh, and the Bucs have another Top 10 defense, which goes well with the many Top 10 Ds Brady benefitted from in NE. I’m not saying Shady is a horrible qb, but he’s *clearly* benefitting from talent around him, and in many areas, his stats range from ho-hum to pretty good. Good on him for signing there, but pretending he magically made it all happen from scratch is preposterous. You don’t get 5k yards and 30 TDs with Jameis Winston as your qb without having some serious talent. Arians fired shots at Brady after week 1, and he forget that it was 4th down less than a month ago. Let’s cool it on the MVP talk for now.
As for the Pats, they had EIGHT players opt out for this year, after the draft. The Titans had ONE opt out, and benefitted from far more continuity than the Pats, who signed Cam VERY late in the game. He barely even learned the playbook before losing additional time to covid. And did covid impact his ability to play? We really don’t know.
And Belichick crafts the roster from top to bottom, so whether they were studs or third stringers, losing 8 guys is gonna alter his gameplans, and the time he would normally use to figure things out was heavily disrupted. It’s not to say they ARE bad because of covid, but it’s absolutely impossible to say that they AREN’T. Fair or not, you absolutely cannot make an educated assessment of Belichick’s Post-Brady coaching prowess at this point. There are offsetting penalties on the season to this point; you’ve gotta replay the down.
Coaching is not nearly black and white enough to say Vrabel is better because he has more wins despite covid. Coaches have different styles and different team building approaches. Belichick excels at taking raw and less talented players and coaching them up to achieve beyond the sum of their parts. All I know about the Titans is they have the repossessed spirit of Brandon Jacobs at RB. If the Titans were assembled purely based on existing talent, then covid would absolutely have a lesser impact on them. Again, it’s not to make excuses, it’s just acknowledging the reality of the situation we’re in.
Also, I’m going to say it. The NY Giants, one of the worst teams in football, gave the Steelers a run for their money. That’s not an impressive feat. XD
If I’m going to be honest with you, it’s very embarrassing to see the lengths that you just went to attempt to deny the patently obvious. You pulled up 4 stats to make your case and 2 of them hardly correlate to much of anything regarding the quality of a QB’s performance, 1 actually hurts your case, and only 1 actually makes a strong argument against Brady being considered for MVP; namely, QBR. That is a pretty woeful case against a 43 year old man. Maybe if those were his best numbers, I’d see where you were coming from, but you just went straight for the worst possible stats of his that you could find and tried to use that against him.
You ignored the fact that he is 6th in passing yards, 2nd in passing TDs, and 10th in passer rating (not great for his standards but still impressive considering his age). You also left out the fact that, according to PFF, he’s 1st in passing attempts that travel 20+ air yards and 1st in completions that travel 20+ air yards. He’s also leading the league in big time throws as well. And furthermore, according to Football Outsiders, Brady is currently 2nd in DYAR and 5th in QB DVOA, two stats that correlate heavily with QBs winning MVP (there were only 2 instances this past decade where a QB that finished outside of the top 5 in both stats won league MVP. No, Tom Brady was not either). If you want to pull up the numbers, that’s perfectly fine, but if you’re going to cherry pick stats to make someone look bad, I will gladly do the exact opposite.
I’d also like to point out that your argument regarding Brady’s defenses is extremely disingenuous as well. While Tampa’s defense is a very good unit this season (and a better overall unit than their offense, no doubt), that doesn’t at all take away from the impact Brady has had on them this season. This unit finished 29th last season, in part due to Jameis Winston being a turnover machine and putting them in bad situations. A good QB was definitely going to help them, but for them to jump from bottom 5 to top 5 over the course of an offseason speaks volumes to the impact that Tom Brady has had on that entire roster. Now, to be fair, they were actually 5th in Defensive DVOA last season, but the way people talked about them, you’d have thought that they were hot garbage. Now, they’re widely considered one of the top units in the league.
>”which goes well with the many Top 10 Ds Brady benefitted from in NE.”
This statement is honestly really, really sad and devoid of context. Sure, going by stats like total defense shows that Brady had more than a few top 10 defenses in his career, but since we’re on the subject of numbers, I’d like to counter this by referring to Football Outsiders’ Defensive DVOA, a fairly consistent stat that rates defenses based on overall efficiency. When you take a look at where Brady’s defenses have ranked in that database, well, it’s not exactly good. While Brady had some outstanding defenses that finished 1st in the stat back in 2003 and 2004, he actually went from 2005 through 2018 without having a single defense of his finish in the top 10. Actually, since that stat was created, Tom Brady is the only QB in its history to take a defense rated 27th or lower to the Super Bowl… And he’s done it twice. You can dispute the numbers all you like, but I would argue that this stat is pretty damn accurate. Brady’s defenses were severely overrated for the better part of decade, and units that lived and died off of “bend, don’t break” and leaned heavily on their offenses being elite, which, under Tom Brady, New England’s offenses were routinely in the top 5 every season in DVOA and even more basic stats.
The main point I’m making here is that New England tended to lean heavily on Tom Brady being stupidly elite. When the defense lost of all its star talent from the early dynasty, Tom Brady was the guy that had to step up and carry the load so the team didn’t fall apart. When the defenses were downright awful, Tom Brady was the one who would put up MVP numbers and got them to the Super Bowl regardless. You seem to be conflating Tom Brady seemingly not having to carry very often for him never carrying at all and even being carried, even when that clearly wasn’t the case.
You also basically just glossed over the point that I made earlier about the fact that while Tampa might be stupidly talented on paper, that talent has not consistently been on the field for Tom Brady this season. Like I said, Fournette, Godwin and Evans have missed time, Howard is out for the season, and even Scotty Miller has missed a game this season due to injury. He hasn’t had a real chance to get fully meshed with this new receiving corps of his and despite that and not having a preseason, he’s still putting up very good numbers and leading the Bucs to wins.
You seem like a pretty smart guy, so it’s kind of saddening that you’re desperately trying to die on this hill. There’s really no case to be made anymore against Tom Brady. If you hate the guy, just say so. There’s no point in debating someone that’s going to simply argue everything from the standpoint of a massive hate boner.
Moving on to the Patriots, while yes, it is true that they had 8 opt outs due to COVID, only 3 were real impact players, and even then, Cannon was arguably their worst offensive lineman and Chung is well past his prime and New England’s secondary is still one of the best units in football without him. The only really horrific loss for them this season is Hightower, seeing as their LB corps is basically depleted as is. The Patriots could have pretty easily navigated these losses, and they have. Their OL is playing extremely good football and their defense has been pretty consistent all year.
The issue has been the offensive skill positions, and this is entirely the fault of Bill Belichick. He’s avoided the issue for years now, so much so that it ticked Tom Brady off enough to actually leave a team that he’s played 20 seasons for. The few moves that he did make completely failed. He’s done nothing to help Cam Newton at all, and the only reason the offense looked semi-successful to start the year is because New England completely changed their scheme to suit Cam’s skillset. They ran him like Lamar Jackson, reverted to a power run scheme and straight up abandoned the passing game, and now that teams have figured that out, you see the results. Cam looks dreadful. He’s missing wide open guys, playing hero ball way too often, and playing overall poor football, and the Patriots are getting absolutely pummeled as a result. Their offense looks completely incompetent, and the fact that Tom Brady was able to even make it look mediocre is an incredible feat in and of itself. Say what you will about COVID, but they finally had a normal week of practice before the San Francisco game and they got beat worse than they did against Denver. San Francisco is a better team than what we might be giving them credit for, but they aren’t THAT good. New England didn’t even put up a fight in that game.
Like I said, it’s definitely too early to definitively drop the hammer on Bill Belichick. The Patriots have a great opportunity to retool the roster next season and put themselves back in a position to compete again (10 draft picks and lots of cap space). I’m praying that this season will just be a bump in the road and they’ll go back to being the powerhouse that they were, but I’m not very confident seeing as they’ve completely failed to do much of anything other than lean on Tom Brady and basically force him to carry them out of the doghouse. Belichick can’t keep missing on draft picks and making weak moves every season. Tom Brady isn’t there to cover up that stench anymore.
The only positive that I can take away from this year is that it has made me appreciate Tom Brady’s body of work even more. At the very least I can watch him kill it down in Tampa, but even then, it just rips my heart out to know that he’s gone and never playing for us again. It’s whatever though, I know no one is going to sob over the plight of a Patriots fan lmao.
Also, to your point about Brady’s QBR, just say you don’t understand how statistics work:
https://twitter.com/KeyTBoi/status/1321293213148340228
If I’m going to be honest with you, your use of pejoratives with a giant wall of copy has effectively killed my interest in even bothering to read through what you wrote in detail. I don’t enjoy debating with strangers on the internet to begin with, but if I feel the need to be called a f-ing moron, I can just call my mother-in-law. So I apologize, but I’m not going to spend several hours looking up stats and trying to counterpoint you. I just don’t care that much, and living in New England has taught me to never argue with Pats fans when they get riled up.
But I’ll leave you with this:
– You’re one level off on the Cherry Picking Inception tree. The Brady Cult cherry pick stats to call him MVP, I’m in turn cherry picking stats because I’m not trying to prove he’s a horrible qb. The burden of proof on me is ONLY to show that – to this point – he has some big question marks in his play, which he does. I’ve only seen him play 3 games this year, and he was nothing special in them. For a 43 year old, yea, he looks good. But it seems clear to me that the team is buoying him as much as he’s buoying them.
– I don’t understand a lot of things, but I DO understand that it’s MOST VALUABLE player. Not “More Valuable Than 33% of the Players in the League” Player. (I went to rewatch the twitter video for wording this morning and it’s locked now, so I apologize if I didn’t get his phrasing accurate).
Cheers.
That’s your loss, then. Next time, don’t try to pull up numbers to counter point someone if you’re immediately going to lose interest and stop reading the second they rightfully call you out for blatantly cherry picking. I don’t say the things that I say without proper justification.
>”You’re one level off on the Cherry Picking Inception tree.”
I’m not. I simply responded with the same energy that you gave me. You tried to counter my point by pulling up 4 stats (comp %, yards per attempt, QBR, and pass attempts) per Shannon Sharpe, and only one of them actually correlates to winning games and MVP awards. Actually, Brady being 6th in pass attempts only further proves the point that Bucs are more than willing to lean on his arm at age 43, considering that other players near his age have mostly had the load taken off of their shoulders. He’s still slinging it.
If you’re going to pull up cherry picked numbers, I’ll gladly do the same, but I think this just boiled down to you going “Oh shit, this guy actually pulled up numbers to back up his case and I can’t just lazily make up bad arguments to counter it. Let me just try to highroad my way out this one and get the last word in, that will do it.”
Don’t. Just… don’t. No one’s riled up here besides yourself. You invited this debate by replying to my original comment, and I have zero issues about talking ball with anyone. It’s an interesting topic, but if you don’t want to continue, that’s perfectly fine.
Cheers.
Sigh. Because this is a community I post in regularly, I’m going to try to make one more attempt at clarification.
You insulted me throughout your last two posts and linked me to a video calling me “a f-ing moron”. I didn’t invite a random stranger to send me a 19 paragraph report with a bunch of insults thrown in. If you presented the stats concisely and without the pejoratives? I’d give you a high five. So if I’m “highroading” my way out of this, it’s only because you immediately went low without provocation. Nowhere in my posts have I insulted you or your intelligence.
Things to consider for the future if you’re genuinely trying to have a productive conversation / debate with someone.
I don’t mean to start a endless war of finger pointing, and Dave is free to end this whenever he sees fit, but, when I see any mention of Skip Bayless in reference to the points that someone brings up, I immediately assume that is their way telling someone that they’re a complete and utter moron. When I noticed that particular remark, I assumed that we were just spitballing, and responded with the same energy. If that wasn’t your intention, then I apologize.
With that being said, if I see a bad argument, I’m going to directly tell you that it is a bad argument and explain why. It might lead to longer replies, but I find it silly to say “This point is stupid” and not elaborate beyond that point. You had more than a few questionable arguments and I felt compelled to explain why those points were wrong. If you don’t care for it, then I don’t know what else to tell you there.
I will admit that the end of that twitter video was a tad bit much. That guy in particular tends to lean more towards the aggressive troll side of debating people. Makes some outstanding points but ends it with a “You’ve been owned. Weep.” sort of thing, which can be funny, but yeah, obviously rubs people the wrong way when you’re trying to contradict the points that he’s making. I thought it got a point across, albeit very bluntly.
Ultimately, I’m one that believes that you earn your slander. If you make an overtly stupid point (and trust me, I have made plenty of those, and I’m making a pretty strong argument here against Bill Belichick that has plenty of good counter points if you put the effort in to find them), you deserve whatever response you get short of an actual threat on your life. If someone tells me that I’m wrong and a fucking moron, but elaborates fully on why that is the case, the only person that I can be mad at is myself for not being prepared enough to come up with a counter argument. Tom Brady earned his slander when he threw a pick 6 to an old ass, anti-semetic Malcolm Jenkins and when he forgot what a 4th down was on a possible game winning drive. You earned your slander when you tried to argue against Tom Brady’s MVP case. Shit happens sometimes, not everyday is going to be your day. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I accept your apology, my dude, and will offer one of my own. It wasn’t my intent to infer that *YOU* were Skip Bayless, but in hindsight, I can understand how you took it that way.
I’m very long winded myself, so the length itself isn’t the issue, I just don’t have much interest in debating with people when the insults come out. Maybe if we were both watching a game at a bar and could read tone more, it would be funny banter, but if I see insults in an internet discussion, especially if I’m going to spend time reading, thinking, and then putting my own points together… I’ll happily tap out, regardless of optics.
Good luck to Mr. Brady against the Giants’… 17th ranked defense! He should have an easy go of it when our offense is 3 and out all game. X(
.
I will say I appreciate how Belichick’s hoodie says “Subway” on it. Even if those commercials are extremely odd.
As a Cards fan I just want to that Kyler has been amazing to watch this year. It’s killing me that we are once again in the log jam that is NFCW. Whether best teams or worst teams, they’re always mirroring each other.
At the end of the season, you should pick out some of the best ideas that didn’t get drawn, or have a vote on it, and draw some of those clever ideas that didn’t come to pass.
Gotta chime in here: I don’t think the loss of Odell Beckham makes the Browns worse. Baker has historically played much better (yeah, it’s weird using “historically” when describing less than three full seasons, but I couldn’t think of a better way to put it) without Beckham than he has with Beckham. He actually scans the field. He gets rid of the ball on time and doesn’t try to break the space/time continuum with every pass.
On your bad feeling about the flying Tampa there is an easy fix. Start liking Tom. Let’s say make him your 3rd guy or them the 3rd team to root for. Embrace. Enjoy. Endorphin. He/they can be this way a band aid on a bleeding giants fan heart.
Fuck that.
I realized something this season. The Patriots are much less hateable when you replace Brady with Cam Newton. Cam’s a likeable fun dude, while Brady’s the guy who’s lobbying for a sexual offender to come to his already stacked receiving corp.
“The Broncos just seem like an ugly, unfun slog of a team.”
*ruefully laughs, laughs turn into ugly hitching sobs*
Click my username to get rick-rolled
I am SICK.
Sweet, that’s the Raiders winning this week. Thanks Dave!