Letters to the Editor
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Football goes soft
John Madden was speculating about the up and down career of Randy Moss, but he failed to notice the most obvious reason, the game has been sanitized. Forty year old quarterbacks can stand in the pocket all day, knowing that no one is going to put a 10,000 dollar hit on their aging frames.
Example A, a so called illegal hit in the Chargers game, when the Jags DB put a shoulder into the receiver at the moment he caught the ball. Legal hit, flagged for a penalty. The NFL made an ingame statement, that the rule allows for a discretionary call if the hit is felt to be excessive. Lucky the home team was in the lead at the time. No Randy Moss is back in the game because he can run into coverage without paying any of the consequences, at least not the kind of hits he would have gotten when he came into the game. Moss never liked running into coverage.
You have to be ready, because women will playing the game before long. Then probably old women, with bionic arms in wheel chairs. The games going soft, get used to it, with good players suiting up twenty times a year, how you can you help but get hurt. Baseball isn't much different, there is hardly a starting pitcher out there who can put an entire season together. Now we see Ricky Williams stepping in the secod half of the season. Fresh legs. That's the problem, not excessive violence, but long schedules.
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Jerry Rice is still No 1
Sorry Wes, not only is Jerry Rice still the best receiver ever by far, he is probably the best player to ever play the game. The only way I would put Moss over Rice is if you needed one guy to run a deep fly pattern and, if needed, make an arcobatic catch for me. That's it. Overall, Rice was a much better receiver.
While Moss is having an amazing year with the Pats after dogging it for two years in Oakland, speaking of which, how pissed are you if you are a Raider fan after watching Moss half ass his way through two years with your team. Granted you didn't have anywhere near a Brady level QB, but you thought you were finally getting a deep threat to compliment Jerry Porter and you get the Moss who jogged patterns, crocodile armed passes, never went over the middle and was so lackidasical that the defense could tell what play (run or pass) was coming simply by looking at him lineup on offense and that was the good part when he was in the lineup instead of malingering on the sidelines with a mysterious hamstring injury and a poor attitude! Now you're watching the Minnesota Moss in New England where a QB can throw up rainbows down the field and he will go and get it over the smaller DBs and Corners. That's gotta suck.
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After This Year
Moss will be the big dog on the top two total points scored teams in NFL history.
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Professional
The "Professional" is supposed to make it ok? People complain about running the score up in college football all the time and no-one argues that it is indeed running up the score. You can make all the excuses you want, but it has been convention in the NFL that you don't do this. Probably in part because people know that eventually you'll be the underdog again. Bellecheck doesn't care. He's been screwed a number of times in his career and now that he's been caught cheating he's going to show them all! They'll rue the day and other vengeful cliches. Do you really think the other teams that were mentioned that had large margins of victory couldn't have had bigger ones?
If you're up 42 to 10 and at 4th and one at the Buffalo 10 in the third quarter, you kick the fg. But how did they get to 4th and 1 on the 10? Did they run the ball and run out the clock or did they try to score as hard as they could and stall. Something tells me it is the latter. Once you have the game in hand if you move to a time management game and run out the clock you aren't giving up, you're playing smart. The way the Pats are playing, they're trying to make a statement. What's the statement? "You were mean to me so now you'll pay!"
Yeah, that's professional.
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Running up the score or turning it over on downs?
The whining about running up the score seems more than a little curious. Kicking a field goal in close is usually automatic versus going for it on short yardage situations. Even the best teams have about a 40% 4th down conversion percentage. If it were higher than more teams would take the risk, right?
Late in the game I recall the Patriots punted from about the Bills 35 rather than take a shot at a 45 yard field goal.
As to the question about why folks don't jam the receivers at the line like the Patriots did against the Colts receivers a few years ago? Indy whined so badly about that after the season that the NFL made a rule change specifically to address it.
I think the more folks complain about cheating the more the Patriots will seek to maintain a huge margin of victory to show that no matter the alleged "edge," it would not have made a bit of difference.
They're good. Period. Anyone who knows a whit about football can see that. Personally I love watching Welker moreso than Moss. Moss is a freak of nature, whereas Welker is a gritty, somewhat undersized player who can go over the middle (where Moss can develop a pair of alligator arms), block, tackle, return punts, and go on a deep route every once in a while.
Moss makes the highlight film and makes everyone better by drawing double teams. You don't give him a compliment to keep defenses honest and he'll be pummeled and wind up in a funk as he did in Oakland. A kid like Welker will fight his way through just about anything and not give up.