then that should have been your point rather than talking up Kenny. I disagree, I think he was really good in 2010 and took a step back last year. You don't win 4 road playoff games w/ poor QB play. MAYBE one run you can get away w/ it but 2? in a row? not happening in this era of AFC teams. we lost in 2010 b/c of D not O, how would we have beat Pitt w/ Chad?
You know better. The Jets lost by 5 in a game in which they gave up a defensive touchdown. You just can't do that in the playoffs, it'll kill you every time. The defense intercepted 2 passes and forced a safety. Chad Pennington probably accumulates more than 16 total yards of offense on the team's first 4 possessions. Maybe he doesn't give up a fumble for 6, either. 4 possessions. 7 and a half minutes. 16 yards. Negative 7 points. 3/8 passing. I don't care how well Mark passed when trying to dig out the hole, because he dug it.
The Steeler O pushed the Jets around all day and let's look closer at that game: where did you get 16 yds in first 4 possessions? esepcially considering we had 29 on the first drive alone. as far as the intercepted passes: One was a 4th and 1 where Pitt for some reason decided to throw and threw it away rather than take a sack. we didn't get extra yds from the INT. The 2nd was a ball thrown up for grabs deep which set us up at our 14. Let's not act like the D was putting us in great spots. Forced a sfatey, the O left Pitt's O at the 1 which helped, right? I'm still not sure the Sanchez play was a fumble- it was that close but that play clearly wasn't his fault and we were down 17 pts at the time, before the D ever set foot on the field again the game was down to 14 after the FG and TD on next 2 drives. and the last time we played a postseason game in Pitt you realize Chad led us to 3 pts on O, right? The D dug the hole allowing Pitt to dictate that game on offense. If the D would have been pushed around all 1st half we would have had a great chance to win.
This is true but Chad was also in desperate need of shoulder surgery when he played that game. Santana Moss gave us a TD on a punt return so we weren't trailing and trying to come back like the Sanchez game. Definitely Sanchez played better of the two in the similar games, but he was at least healthy and in my opinion had a better team. But the D did put us in bad shape, and I also don't think that was a fumble, his arm was going forward on the Steelers' last score before the half.
Something you have to keep in mind in a conversation like this is that Namath, Obrien, and Testaverde (for the first seven years of his career), played when there was no salary cap. Teams could load up on elite players and spend as much as they wanted prior to that. Sometimes it worked for you, sometimes it worked against you. The 49'ers and Cowboys dynasties could never happen today, parity won't allow it. But this is for sure, it is far easier for a wildcard team to make a superbowl run in 2012 than it was in 1985, because the teams you were likely to see in the playoffs were teams that spent far more than you on talent. Mark Sanchez and Eli Manning aren't going to run into Joe Montana in the Superbowl, an they aren't going to run into a dynasty in the playoffs. The closest thing to that would be the Patriots, but even they only have the same number of dollars to spend than you do. Making the Superbowl or getting far in the playoffs was much harder for Ken Obrien and Vinny Testaverde than it was for Chad Pennington or Mark Sanchez. This is a fact.
You could keep all your core players together prior to the salary cap. You could pay them whatever it took to keep them on the team. You just can't do that today. If Revis contract is up and he wants more than the Jets can offer him he's going to be playing elsewhere next season. This didn't happen in 1985... it just didn't. Hardcore teams STAYED HARDCORE. Mark Sanchez and Chad Pennington never played under that reality... Namath, Obrien and Vinny did.
Unfortunately w/ Chad he was always hurt. If I knew he'd be healthy I think he would have eventually been #1 in franchise history and we'd have a SB by now. Think about the Giants title game last year and ours 2 years ago. On a play that could go either way they gave Pitt the fumb;e and a TD, a play that could go either way they blew the whistle dead saving the Giants a fumble in the final mins of regulation which would have set up SF w/ a chip shot FG. That's how close things could have changed. Vinny played the majority of his career in the salary cap era and O'Brien played when the AFC was not very good. In '85 a WC team did reach the SB which was near impossible in those days- that's how weak the AFC was so I think it was much easier in O'briens era than Chad or Sanchez as both have had to deal w/ a dynasty team in their division, you have to win your division to get a home game now and the competition in the AFC has been so much better over the last decade than it ever was in the 80s through mid 90s.
Er... Vinny played with an expansion team called "The Bucs", a joke of an organization and still put up some pretty good numbers with them. Then he played for Cleveland for three years and did pretty well there. As far as the competition goes, you had Elway with the Broncos, you had Jim Kelly with the Bills (how many superbowls did Levy take them to?), you had Marino with the Dolphins... These were not easy teams to beat. These are the teams Obrien and Vinny faced. It wasn't easy, or at least it was far harder to beat these teams than it is today. Plus take into account the joke they've made of the passing rules in the NFL since then. You could really rough a reciever up back then. No DB in those days would make a dime today, they would get called for PI every 45 seconds. lol
They came into the league in 1976, Vinny was drafted in 1987. Hard to use the expansion excuse. Great QBs not great teams, the great teams were in the NFC which is why they dominated the AFC champ every year.
Namath came into the league with one bad knee. If the rules were the way they are today his stats would be unreal.
Guys still get hit and they get hit by MUCH bigger, MUCH sytronger, MUCH faster players than in Joe's days. They may not get hit as much but they still get hit. The bottom line is Joe wasn't durable and played in the era he played in, we can't spread some magic pixie dust to have him play today.
"The expansion Buccaneers lost all 14 games during the 1976 regular season, and the first 12 games of the 1977 season, for a record 26 straight losses. Even after the season expanded to 16 games in 1978, they remained the only NFL team in the modern era to experience a winless season until the Detroit Lions went 0–16 in 2008. A twenty-game road losing streak against AFC teams finally ended with a 17–10 victory over the Denver Broncos on December 26, 1993.[citation needed] In 1980, against the Bengals at Riverfront Stadium, the Buccaneers began a 27-game losing streak of games played outdoors on AstroTurf.[citation needed] The streak was broken in 1995, with a victory over the Eagles at Veterans Stadium. From their inception, they lost 20 consecutive games in which the temperature at kickoff was below 40 °F (4 °C). The streak ended in the final week of the 2002 regular season, when they beat the Bears." Thats the team who drafted Vinny Testaverde... lol! As far as the NFC dominating the AFC goes, it's mostly true but let's remember Bill Parcells won Superbowl XXV over Marv Levy by only 3 points at the gun in that one. Then the Bills lost Superbowl XXVI to the Redskins by seven points. So the Bills had a very tough club back then, and that's because they were able to keep all their guys together because they had no salary cap to deal with.
That is very very true. If Joe Namath played under these cake rules? Hahahaha! He'd be throwing for 6000 yards and 50 TD's easy. LOL!
Bucs weren't really expansion when they drafted Vinny but they were real bad, that's how they had the #1 overall pick to get him. Steve Young couldn't succeed there either and he did ok after he left.
All true points. Lol, we do need some magic dust at this juncture. I sure do wish Princess Brady played in that era.
That's my point, the Bucs were an extremely bad team playing against some really good teams in a no-salary-cap era and Vinny still did pretty good under those conditions. Would Sanchez or Chad have done the same? I'm thinking decidedly NOT.
whgat does 1976 have to do w/ TB in 1987? Did you know in 1979 TB was HOSTING the NFC Championship Game? that has nothing to do w/ 1987 either but the franchise wasn't always a joke and would turn into a good one again not long after letting Vinny go. There were 2 close SBs, XXIII Cincy losing to SF and XXV Buf to NYG. The other SBs from XIX through XXXI the NFC won by an average of 24 points. The Bills lost SB XXVI to wash by 13 pts not 7 pts and the final score was much closer than the actual game as they trailed 24-0 in the 3rd and 37-14 in the 4th. he'd dominate in any era
Troy Aikman was drafted onto an awful team, 4 yars later he won a SB. Montana was drafted onto an awful team, 2 years later he won a SB, most top QBs are drafted onto bad teams. They tend to get better b/c of how well that QB develops as they put pieces around him.
he's only been hit by players much bigger, stronger, faster, more athletic but he'd crumble in the old days.:lol:
