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NFL 2012 Week 1 |OT| A New Hope

P

Plinko

Wildcard berths that can't beat teams without a winning record should have homefield advantage
Hey, did you guys know that Bones and Sons of Anarchy are on this week?

Because I honestly don't know who couldn't know that right now.
 
D

Doorman

Member
Plinko said:
This Lions team is melting down. Two blatant drops.
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Gut-check time? I think some of the fans weren't the only ones around that underestimated the Rams.

And Bentley's hurt now too, great. What the fuck is wrong with us and defensive backs?
 
W

WesternHeretic

Member
DeathbyVolcano said:
Hasselback doin work
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JguUt.gif


He isn't called Glasslebeck for nothing.
 
A

Agent Icebeezy

Welcome beautful toddler, Madison Elizabeth, to the horde!
squicken said:
why isn't fatford just doing the throw it up for megatron?
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Stolen from another board

Five years ago, while the league was enthralled with the Brady/Moss Touchdown Tour, something else was happening in the rust belt that probably should've received more attention than it got.
The Cleveland Browns finished the 2007 season with a 10-6 record [their best win total since 1994] and fielded the league's 8th ranked offense, led by a quartet of pro bowlers: WR Braylon Edwards, TE Kellen Winslow II, OT Joe Thomas and QB Derek Anderson.
While Edwards, Thomas and Winslow were both top-10 draft picks, who came into the league with massive expectations, not much was expected out of Anderson, who was signed as a street free agent the previous year after having been drafted in the 6th round out of Oregon State by the rival Ravens. The Browns' QB of the future was expected to be rookie first round pick Brady Quinn. But Anderson won the preseason competition and proceeded to throw 29 touchdown passes [the most by a Browns QB since Brian Sipe's MVP season in 1980].

After 2007, however, Anderson's play fell off the proverbial cliff, and with him went the entire Browns offense. In 10 games [9 starts] in 2008 Anderson would throw just 9 TDs to 8 interceptions, but more embarrassingly would complete only 50.2% of his passes at 5.7 yards per attempt for a passer rating of 66.5.
Anderson would be released by the Browns after an even worse 7-start campaign in 2009, and would fare no better in 9 starts for the Arizona Cardinals.

So what can we take away from the one flash-in-the-pan season that Anderson posted? Why did he fail afterwards? And was that failure inevitable?
Well, we can start by running the numbers. Anderson, despite his success generating points in '07 was sub-par in most categories besides touchdown passes. His completion percentage was a below-average 56.2% and his YPA was a middling 7.2. He did post a league-high yards-per-completion number of 12.7. But given how well-protected he was [only 14 sacks taken in 15 starts], those numbers should all have been better. As should the 19 interceptions he threw [Eli Manning, Jon Kitna and Carson Palmer topped the league with 20 apiece].
More importantly, opposing defenses caught on to Anderson and were able to adjust and exploit the glaring weaknesses in his game. As indicated by his high YPC, Anderson loved to throw deep: Braylon Edwards averaged 16.1 yards per reception, and Kellen Winslow 13.5 - both quite high numbers for their respective positions. Third receiver Joe Jurevicius was the security blanket in the short game with 12.3 yards per catch [compare to other receivers in the league who filled similar roles on their teams].
Once defenses got enough film on Anderson to see that he relied on high-risk/high-reward throws primarily, they would routinely drop their DBs into a 2-deep or 3-deep shell to force him to use more underneath routes. Anderson struggled with his reads on short and intermediate throws, as indicated by the fact that his TD:INT ratio on throws of 20 yards and under was a rather poor 21:17 and his accuracy also suffered [he completed under 50% of throws from 11 to 20 yards downfield, where top QBs typically complete between 57 and 63% of their throws [and usually >70% on throws shorter than that, where Anderson completed 62.5% of throws 10 yards and shorter].
From week 9 onwards in '07, Anderson would throw just 12 touchdowns and 10 interceptions, and see his YPA drop to 6.22 over that 8-game stretch where it had been 8.20 over the first 8.
Anderson simply could not adapt to teams taking away his deep ball.

Last year saw an unprecedented explosion in passing offense with ten quarterbacks surpassing 4000 passing yards and nine surpassing 25 passing TDs. Among those with 25+ TDs and 4000+ yards, Detroit's Matthew Stafford seems to be the one showing the most warning signs for severe regression of the kind Derek Anderson underwent after his breakout season. Stafford had a similar discrepancy between his YPA and YPC numbers [albeit not as steep], struggled a bit with his intermediate accuracy [only 52.8% on throws 11-20 yards downfield] and threw significantly more interceptions over the second half of the season than the first [12 in games 9-16 compared to just 4 in games 1-8].
However, Stafford did not see his YPA numbers diminish over the second half of the season [in fact, they rose from 7.29 to 7.8], and his completion percentage improved over the course of the season, from 61.2% in the first half to 65.4% in the second.

With no fewer than 11 teams fielding a different opening-day starting QB than last year, it'll be interesting to see how many of them progress through the season the way Anderson did in 2007. If any do, fans will know the warning signs and know not to get excited over unsustainable success.
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M

Mrbob

Member
LOL, it looked like the entire Bears oline missed their assignments. Jay says fuck this I'm not getting killed going down to the ground.
 
E

eznark

Banned
Doorman said:
Gut-check time? I think some of the fans weren't the only ones around that underestimated the Rams.

And Bentley's hurt now too, great. What the fuck is wrong with us and defensive backs?
Click to expand...

No one underestimated the Rams, the Lions just suck.
 
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