[Sick of hearing people say Wilson is better than Luck]

Well you could just stick to watching games and not all the pregame shows and football related shows, Just a thought

Agreed.  The mediots really don't know what they're talking about and should be ignored.  For example, my routine every SB is not to turn my TV on until five minutes before kickoff.  But I digress.

 

Luck is already superior to Wilson, who plays with a surreal defense and the Beast.  As Luck matures, he will surpass Wilson to an even greater degree and will soon be in the class of Brees, P. Manning, Rivers and Rodgers.

[Colts sign ex. CFL OG Ben Heenan]

Two big takeaways, among many, from Sunday's game:

 

1) Based on Chris Matthews' performance, every team in the League should be taking a closer look at the CFL.  I admit that I don't follow the League at all, but if the quality of play has improved significantly (especially since the demise of NFL Europe or whatever they called it), there might be a lot of unrecognized talent there.

 

2) Based on the play of Malcolm Butler (not just on "The Pick" but on many other plays...people focus on the fact that he didn't succeed in breaking up Kearse's catch, but he was the only one in the vicinity to have the presence of mind to realize that the play was still alive and tackle him before he walked five yards into the endzone... his uncalled trip of an open Kearse earlier in the game was a veteran play), UDFA's from outside D-I should also get much closer looks.  I suspect that a lot of these guys have a "story" that kept them out of a big time school (mentoring, low profile HS, small local media market, some problems with the law as a juvenile that they recognize were a mistake).

[Surprising stat about Aaron Rodgers]

It's an interesting set of numbers, but there are too few observations to be able to draw any meaningful conclusions.  the author doesn't detail the games captured for the others, but he does mention that it is only 16 for Rodgers.  Over a five year period, with all the variables that can come into play in an NFL game, I really don't know what you can make of data from 16 games.  There are so many other variables that could come into play that any measure of statistical reliability would have to be very low.

 

The fact that Rodgers' supposedly "poor" record is not confirmed by his performance in the final five minutes throws even more dust into the field of vision, and even that is hard to assess because the article admits that it is looking at only 104 Attempts over a six year period.  The Standard Deviation around any of these numbers has got to be much larger than the mean, making the analysis suspect at best.

 

The bottom line for me is that their low scores in the left hand column of that table doesn't change my opinion of Rodgers or Flacco or Big Ben or Eli.  They still have the rings and they didn't get them from a gumball machine. 

[Encroachment at End]

I don't hate Brady, then that would be my problem. I just don't buy into the greatest ever talk. He's been beat by Eli Manning twice. He got outplayed both times. Eli has had no problem beating the Patriots. My thinking is Tom Coughlin was smart enough not to let the Patriots steal his game plan. Peyton Manning has choked in some big games, but the biggest choke of all time was when Brady choked in that undefeated season. I'm sure if Belichick could have a do over, he would rest some guys at the end of the regular season. You could clearly see in the Superbowl Brady was a little tired. Eli on the other hand played great.

I agree.  I always thought that the Patriots were wearing down at the end of that season and they would have been better off losing a game (or two) in December.  I remember watching them have to battle to beat the Giants to go 18--0 and they were out of emotional gas by the SB.  

[Encroachment at End]

Yes, the entertainment factor is pretty great when the Patriots play in the SB.

 

I'm new to the Board and live in NYC.  

 

In today's NYTimes, there's an article on the Sports Page entitled "10 Most Painful Losses in Super Bowl History." (I don't think I'm allowed to post links yet as a new poster or I would, but just go to the Times web page, click on sports and you can find it).

 

Anyway, the Patriots figure in three of the ten:

# 9: 2002 when they beat the 14 point favorite Rams on a walk-off Vinatieri FG.

#3: 2008 when they lose on the Tyree Catch

#2: Sunday's game when they almost lose on the Kearse Catch and then win on The Pick.

 

So out of 50 games, they figure in three of the most memorable endings.