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Here ya go:
--LINK--
John Madden always said to be nice to a team when they're down and hard on them when they're winning. Andy has plenty he can gripe about to keep the guys focused for this week. Not a great win, but a great result. Once again, too many mistakes.
The good news is that we'll likely get back DeSean this week. MmmBop returns from his "vacation". Jordan and Westy are up in the air. We'll have to wait and see.
We still haven't delivered an A-game recently. I'm hoping we see it against either the Giants or Cowgirls.
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Monday, December 7, 2009
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12 comments:
I thought that pass interference call on Macho was BS, it looked to me like Tony actually slung Macho to the ground more than anything. At least, Tony had his arm around Macho, he then moved his farm forcefully forward and Macho went down. If thats not what Tony did then I'm not sure I understand the laws of physics.
Anymore it seems like if theres any contact at all around a reciever the officials just assume its defensive pass interference. I remember a couple of years ago against the Giants Sheldon Brown got called for a PI on a deep ball to Plax. At first it looked like an obvious PI, but replay showed that Plax actually grabbed Sheldons facemask and pulled Sheldon into him. I wish the officials were paying closer attention to that kind of thing.
Hey, Stephen, remember a Giants game in 2005 where Amani Toomer tackled Michael Lewis just before the ball came down in Lewis' arms and they called Lewis for PI?
OFF TOPIC: How bad is it that TCU and Boise St. have to play eachother in a BCS bowl? They've played their asses off all season to get a chance to prove themselves with the "big boys" of college football, but they're stuck playing a game that won't prove anything really for non-BCS conferences.
Back to the Eagles... Macho is playing lights out. Do you guys see him staying at CB next season or going back to FS? I guess that depends on who we draft or who's available via free agency. I'm assuming we do not re-sign Sean Jones. He's a good back-up, but hasn't shown anything to merit keeping Macho or a high draft pick off the field.
Who knows... maybe Demps will stop the bonehead penalties and compete for the FS spot. I'd love to see his ballhawk-ness from college come out in the NFL.
The trouble with the pass interference call is that it is most of the time an extremely difficult call to make. Much of the time the defensive player hits the receiver before he touches the ball but it does not get called. Other times both players are wrestling and nothing gets called when both players have probably committed fouls. Pushing off gets called about half the time. The officials are afraid to make the call and let a lot of infractions go uncalled, they they go the other way and make silly calls on incidental contact. If the league is going to put the refs in the position of making calls that are almost humanly impossible to make, then they should at least allow video replay review so that there can be some integrity in the calls.
Tommy,
Even though you criticize some of the playcalls from last game, I've been overall very pleased with the offensive playcalling the past 3 weeks. Even when behind, we haven't completely abandoned the run. Still more encouraging is reading some of Andy's very positive comments about Shady, Leo and Eldra; which suggest a higher-than-usual confidence he has in our running game. I really hope we continue to find ways to successfully run inside against the Giants, seeing as that has worked well against them the past 3 meetings (all wins).
Also good to see Donovan rather quietly posting another <100 qb rating.
Where has the boom/bust offense gone? (I'm not missing it).
the above should read '>100 qb rating.'
Oh oh Old Buffoon, while it definitely has been a pleasant surprise, it looks like Andy has completely sucked you in. Very soon he's going to unleash the stomach punch with a 50 passes in a losing effort that is never separated by more than 7 points on the scoreboard. Will it be this week? Next week? I've fallen victim to believing he's seen the light before and when it counts most Andy will revert back.
I don't want to sound negative, but let's just say i've been standing here with my pants down holding my ankles 2 weeks and counting.
I do remember that game vividly EM. There were actually 2 bogus pass interference calls that game, one where Michael Lewis clearly had his head turned and was playing the ball and actually had better position than the Giants reciever, who coincidentally tried to go through Michael to make the catch (this is the one I assume you're talking about), and another where Michael made a tremendous pass breakup in the endzone on a diving deflection and he was flagged on that one too. Both times on replay it showed that Lewis was clearly not interfering and in fact was making tremendous plays, but both times he got flagged for it. I thought that was one of the bummest wraps a player has ever gotten, because he should have been hailed as having a tremendous game in pass defense (a part of his game which is really lacking typically) and instead he ended up being the goat. Both calls were absolutely horseshit but unfortunately most people don't remember the replays, they only remember the penalties.
I agree izzy, I don't really blame the officials for botching pass interference calls, its superhuman to expect them to see every little aspect of a pass reception attempt and analyze whats going on in real time, especially since they can only see the play from one angle. Its not like we don't get away with it either, remember the Cowboys game last year where Greg Lewis was tightly covered by a Cowboys defender and he grabbed the Cowboys players jersey and tugged him into himself to make it seem like he was interfered with? The refs completely missed that call and the foul occured in the endzone and we got the ball at the 1 yard line.
I think its unfortunate that such a penalty that carries such yardage implications has to be so completely subjective and random in its enforcement (and so obviously flawed in its application at times) but hey, until the NFL is ready to do something about the way it officiates games thats the way its going to be.
The thing that frustrates me the most is that the NFL is sitting on top of a virtual endless fountain of cash and yet they fail to do the most basic things to improve the officiating, such as establishing full time officials (all NFL officials are currently part time, they all have second jobs, ed hocculi for example is a lawyer). Its not like paying them to be full time employees would be some kind of crippling financial move, the NFL has the money and resources to more or less do what it wants. If they really wanted to do they have the resources to have a camera trained on every player for every play of every game to help with enforcement, but they instead choose to go with the old 6 guys who couldn't beat me in a footrace and have 20/200 vision formula. That drives me nuts sometimes.
That and the tuck rule is still in the books, dumbest rule in the history of the NFL, I still disagree with the call in the oakland game, Tom Brady had both hadns on the ball it should have been a fumble even considering the tuck rule, I'm not over it, biggest botched call I've ever seen in my life outside of the vinny testeverde quarterback draw touchdown call.
@ Pitmanite,
I'm not saying AR has gone through a change of heart and is ready to accept all the merits of establishing the run. I am saying that AR (and Marty) needs to have confidence in our run game before he'll go to it a reasonable amount. His comments suggest his confidence is higher than usual, and this is also reflected in his playcalling as of late. 2006 is a good example of a year when AR got confident in our run game as the OL continued to gel late in the year.
He's never gonna love the run more than the pass, but he has shown the ability to recognize when our running game is being consistently effective. Of course there's the danger that the first team that decides to prioritize taking away our run game in the 1st half will cause AR/MM to go back to pass-happy crazyland. But AR will keep running just as long as he believes it's working, which he clearly does right now. Let's enjoy it, man!
Between part-time officials and overly-complex rules, it's no wonder that officiating is so bad. And the NFL spends more time defending their officials than it does protecting the integrity of the game. There are so many nuances to the rules that I'm sure the refs are confused as to what they're looking at half of the time. And although everyone gets on the league for the age of its officials, I'm not sure that younger refs would be significantly better. The game is so fast and there is so much to follow that any human being would have trouble in that environment.
The best solution, to me, is to give the head referee a headset to communicate with additional officials in the booth. After a flag is thrown and while the officials on the field are concurring with each other, the booth officials can give their two cents over the headset as they're instantly watching replays from multiple angles. This will never happen, of course, because the league would rather have people believe in the competency of their refs on the field than make sure the game is called correctly.
You would also have to figure out just how much power the booth officials have. What if they see an obvious infraction on replay when a flag wasn't even thrown? Can they signal down to the head ref to call a penalty? There'd definitely be some details to iron out. But with the technology available, it's ridiculous to me to rely on 6 old men on the field to officiate the actions of 22 young, strong, fast players.
@ Cliff
I don't follow college closely, mostly in part because of what you're saying about the TCU - Boise State game. It's absolutle b.s. to not let those teams compete against the BCS conference teams.
TCU and Boise State aren't afraid to play the "big boys". The "big boys" aren't afraid to play them. It's the boosters and the alumni and the folks behind desks at the big schools that are afraid to give the little guys a shot. The politics and money involved in college football is sickening.
The game isn't even for the kids out on the field. The game is for the crusty old bastards who graduated 30 years ago who can't let go of a sad allegience to a place they used to party and drink at when they were 20 years old. Ugh.
What on earth is going on with our Practise squad? We've promoted 2 players from our practise squad for a game, they've been cut and then not resigned to the practise squad and had their spot filled by someone else. That doesn't seem to make much sense..
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