I disagree with this. Statistically the Pats had a top 3 offense of ALL-TIME. They were scoring 35+ pts the majority of the games. I don't care that he put them ahead with a TD. He played subpar the majority of the game, producing a meager 17 points. 17. Let that seap in. One of the best offenses of all time put up 17 pts in the biggest game of the season. Brady only led that TD drive at the end because your defense kept you in the game. Brady doesn't and shouldn't get credit for one drive while playing like crap (and by crap I mean, crap by his standards, not a shitty QBs standards) for 3 other quarters.
My favorite Eli Manning article comes from Gary Myers November 25,2007 Giants are stuck with Eli Manning at QB for long haul, like it or not Eli Manning may not deserve it, but job security is not an issue through the 2009 season and probably beyond. The Giants are stuck. They have already invested $30.1 million in Manning, plus all the draft picks they traded for him. And even if they were willing to write that off as a costly mistake, there is no place to turn to upgrade the position. There have been some bad games by Giants quarterbacks - unavoidable from guys such as Scott Brunner, Dave Brown, Kent Graham and Danny Kanell - but none faced the scrutiny and criticism Manning endured this week after three of his four interceptions against the Vikings were returned for TDs. Even GM Jerry Reese piled on. Reese has been a loose cannon in his first year on the job, evidenced by previous comments about Luke Petitgout and Michael Strahan, but calling his quarterback "skittish" can't be very good for confidence inside Giants Stadium. "I don't know what that means exactly and I'm not too concerned with it," Manning said yesterday. Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/f...g-qb-long-haul-article-1.255570#ixzz1kcBRWQOA
Did you watch the game? Did you see the pressure the Giants front 4 brought after Brady the entire game? Sometimes you just have to tip your cap to the other team when they play great, which the Giants defense did. Brady still had a very impressive drive, putting the Pats ahead late in the game. He did his job. The Pats defense had numerous chances to end that game on the Giants final drive and failed.
All I have heard for two months on this site is that "elite" Qb's can overcome poor oline play and their poor defense. That team was it's offense. It averaged more than 35 points game and in the biggest game of the season, they put up 14. The simple fact at why everyone is blaming Brady is because we hold him to an elite standard he had set in the past and that season. He did not live up to his own standard and actually let Eli out perform him. From what we expected of Brady and he expected of himself, 14 points is not enough so the loss falls on him. (Remember he laughed at the prediction saying we are only going to score 17?)
The Jets made it to the AFC Champ game in Sanchez's rookie year as you well know. And went back his second year. With him playing straight through. This is something you and all the Sanchez Fans proclaim with great frequency, as something that is to his credit. Now you are I assume implicitly blaming his poor third year on that exact sequence of events??? And how exactly was it that this experience, rather than his own limitations, led to his poor third year? And I do not recally you saying at the time that Sanchez should not be playing. Is this not a new excuse for him, presented three seasons after the fact? Now, if you want to say you did think he should start at the time, but (for some reason) you now think that was a mistake, that would be something else. Then we could talk about what newfound information and insight has led you to this conclusion. But as I said in the case of Eli Manning, for all his ups and downs, his team did win the Super Bowl in his fourth year. How would sitting him have bettered that result? We are all familiar with the general fact that young Qb's take some time to get up to speed in the NFL. And as I said there are cases we can all think of of new Qb's who sit. But in almost every case of that sort it is because the team has a better Qb on the roster. And for those rookie Qb's who play their first year, I don't think as a general rule one could say this leads to a higher failure rate in their careers.
I blame Sanchez third season on the lockout, bad management decisions, a fractured locker room when the vets went missing for various reasons, WR's who could not get separation all year long, Plax on the merits and Holmes due to bracket coverage much of the time, crappy protection from the offensive line for most of the season, and finally on Sanchez inability to deal with all of the above. Sanchez has been drilled not to take chances and make turnovers from about game 7 of his rookie season. The Jets did not let him make the mistakes that normal rookie QB's make after the midpoint of that season because Rex had said "Super Bowl here we come" and the Jets could not afford to have a rookie QB losing games for them as part of that process. Through his first 3 full seasons, leaving out the 9 game rookie season, Eli Manning threw multiple interceptions 14 times in 48 starts. The Giants let him throw 55 interceptions over those 3 seasons because that's part of the process of grooming a young QB to be great. Some guys don't go through that kind of pain but most of them do. The Jets treated Sanchez differently than the Giants had treated Eli. Through his first 48 starts Sanchez had 12 multiple interception games, including the two horror shows early on against the Saints and the Bills. After the Bills game, where Sanchez threw 5 interceptions in a 16-13 loss the Jets dramatically cut back the number of throws he made. He got 16 throws against Oakland in the next game. He was held to 21 throws or less in 7 of his last 8 starts that season. The whole point of the Jet's offense became to limit the damage a rookie QB would have on the team as they went down the stretch. The Giants on the other hand installed Eli Manning as the QB at mid-season in 2004 with a 5-4 record. They were still very much in contention for a playoff spot when they did this. Two teams made the playoffs that year at 8-8 in the NFC. The Giants were not one of them, largely because Eli stunk up the joint after taking over as QB, with the Giants going 1-6 in his starts. After 4 starts Eli had thrown 1 TD and 6 interceptions. He was completing 38.6 percent of his passes. He was averaging 4.46 yards a pass attempt. Time to shut him down right? The Giants instead increased his workload over the last 3 games of the season and were rewarded with modest improvements after the initial shock of playing in the NFL had passed overhead. The Jets reaction to Sanchez horror show? Shut him down. Play to win the game. Teach him to manage the game and not make mistakes. I think playing him was an arguable decision. I think playing him with a "must-win" mandate held over his head was unconscionable and had a profound effect on his development.
Ftr I don't dispute the obvious, and that is that whatever the mix of factors that have applied in Sanchez's career so far, it has not worked as hoped. Your orginal point I see did contain a strong implication it was not merely the starting but the win or else approach that was a significant factor in that mix. Fair enough. I do not necessarily agree with you, and will say one more time I think you make this point in hindsight. But it's not about scoring rhetorical points here, at least not primarily. Heh. Your argument is plausible, even if questionable. For example I don't see how trying to avoid interceptions necessarily leads to such things as lack of touch on passes to running backs, let alone to cases where he still throws into triple coverage. But you may be right as to a major reason how we arrived at this point. Now that we are here, how does it get fixed? Is it possible this approach has permanently altered the potential upside of his career to be materially less than it would have otherwise been?
O stop. This is pathetic. All I've heard from you is that great QBs can overcome good pass rushers. If this was the case, shame on Tom for not checking out of plays and going to 3 step drop backs. Any way you slice it he had a poor game by his standards and was the main reason they lost when you consider the defense held the Giants to 17 pts, 7 of which were contributed by the luckiest catch of all time.
Thank you. Put it better than I did. I can't believe a Pats fan can logically defend Brady for how he played in that SB. He wasn't the only reason they lost, but TX absolved him of blame in a previous post which is nothing short of asinine.
Your last sentence sums it all up. If Tyree doesn't make that catch, Brady leads the Pats to a last-minute Super Bowl victory. And I'm not disagreeing with you, Brady did not play as good in the Super Bowl as he did all year. But the bottom line, the defense had ample opportunities on that last drive to win the game.
One of the best posts I read in a while certainly the best one in this thread. Just mad I. Nic wasn't th one who wrote it...LOL! Nice work.
So Eli was allowed to throw 55 picks in 3 seasons, but Mark was not allowed, but still threw 51. I wonder how many picks he would have thrown if he had been allowed.
Probably about the same number Eli threw. If you look at the numbers Sanchez has only thrown a few less passes through his first 3 full seasons than Eli threw in his first 3 full. Eli threw 1608 in his first 3 full seasons. Sanchez has thrown 1414. Give him 9 games at really throwing the ball in 2009 when he instead was being shut down and he probably has another 140 throws and another 4 or 5 ints. Maybe a few more Int's, maybe the same. What would have changed was the location of the Int's. The Jets have thrown a huge number of short passes with Sanchez over the last three seasons, in the belief that cutting down the range on his passes would also cut down turnovers. What they've actually done is to turn the Jets offense into a short passing offense against flooded zones full of defenders. Not surprisingly Sanchez continues to throw Int's even in the shorter passing game because he's dealing with more people in the zones he is throwing into. One of the reason that Jet's receivers keep running into each other and winding up in the same lanes with only a few yards separation is that the Jet's offense has incompetently set them up to do so by not releasing receivers into the deep secondary on a regular basis. This is also the reason that Sanchez keeps throwing 15 yard int's. There are too many defenders, by design, in the zones he is throwing into on a regular basis.
Here we go, another guy that quotes stats, like stats mean anything. Sanchez sucked this year a lot of the time, but he showed a lot of flashes of greatness as well. In his first two years, he showed a lot more flashes than he did this year, but the point of the matter is Harrington always sucked, never won shit in the playoffs and I don't recall him ever bringing his team back in big games. He certainly never had a winning record because the Lions didn't have one for 10 years before this year. I'm not making excuses for Sanchez, but to point strictly to stats as a reason he sucks is just as stupid as pointing to Elis stats and comparing them and saying Sanchez will be great. One has nothing to do with the other. The bottom line is that the guy has shown some ability, he's still young and he's not even within 3 years of his prime, nor has he reached the point where most QBs solidify themselves into good QBs. I don't think anyone at all has said Sanchez will ever be Brees, Rodgers, Manning or Brady. Shit, hardly anyone is. The comparisons to Eli Manning and Drew Brees are done simply as a matter of statement: don't give up on a guy because MOST guys take awhile. Sanchez will never be elite, we can say that with some certainty - but there's no reason that he can't ever be very good. And the Jets can certainly win with him. Worse QBs have won Super Bowls.
Matt Leinart??!? Really? In what way is he comparable to Sanchez? I'd love to see you try and come up with a valid answer to this.
Why does his yardage matter? They won 4 out of 6 games. Isn't that the important thing? Yeah, I know, running game, defense, blah blah blah. If he was a completely shitty QB the running game couldn't have been as successful as it was. And the defense cost us both games we lost. Give it rest. You hate the guy for whatever reason, but it's not a valid one.
