NFL Season - 2004

[SqUaReD 80]

Thought I'd start by making a post dedicated to football. Chime in with any thoughts on your team. Unless your a Packer fan, though. Here is basically a copy/paste from my last post on another forum to get things going...

How about the always over-rated "my name is John Madden and I want to f*ck him in the ass" Brett Favre? Hey, he only had 4 INT's against the Titans. So what if he leads the league again in INT's. GO FUDGE-PACKERS! Maybe not.

I don't know if you guys have watched any Vikings game, but the numbers Culpepper is putting up are only half the story. His O-Line now sucks for some reason (Dorsey and Goldberg). You should see the decisions he makes these days, as compared to years past when he was stupid as hell in his decisions.

Talk about an injury bug. How good would we be at full strength? All of these guys are out. Bring on RB #5, Larry Ned!!!

WR Randy Moss - Pro Bowl Starter
RT Mike Rosenthal - Pro Bowl Starter
C Matt Birk - Pro Bowl Starter
C2 Cory Withrow - Back-Up to Birk
TE Jimmy Kleinsasser - Pro Bowl Starter
TE Jermaine Wiggins - Starter
RB Michael Bennett - Pro Bowl Starter
RB2 Moe Williams - Work horse
RB3 Onterrio Smith - Makes them miss
RB4 Mewelde Moore - Breaks tackles
MLB EJ Henderson - Starter
OLB Chris Claiborne - Starter
OLB Dontarrious Thomans - Starter
DT Chris Hovan - Pro Bowl Starter
CB Ken Irvin - Starter

[RC Cola]

I'm a Cowboys fan and you guys tore us up in the season opener, although I somewhat expected that. Now that I think about it, Culpepper seemed to make some pretty good decisions that game. Dallas tried to just double Moss all game and try to get Culpepper to find someone else to kill them, or kill them himself by running. I'm sure part of that had to do with the secondary of the Cowboys playing pretty crappy this season, but I got to give the Vikes credit on that one.

I'm somewhat ticked off at the Cowboys right now. I went into the season with high hopes, but they, IMO, aren't playing very well. In fact, I've even questioned Bill Parcells a few times, something I never did last year. The passing attack seems a lot better and our pass rushing seems better, but they're making some dumb mistakes. The past two losses could have been wins had they played a little smarter, IMO. For the most part, we've been somewhat healthy especially compared to the Vikes ( never noticed how many guys were hurt on that team), so it isn't too much of an excuse there. Darren Woodson and Julius Jones were pretty big blows, and you can see that both the secondary and running game hasn't done too well, but I don't think those two had that much of an effect on the team.

[SqUaReD 80]

I, too, have been surprisingly unimpressed with Bill Parcells so far this year. You guys really need a runningback (I don't know about Julius Jones... I really don't). After Vinny, where do you guys go? Antonio Bryant is gone.. maybe that's for the best, though. I'd hate to say the dreaded words 'rebuilding year(s),' but I don't see where your 'Boys are headed. Correct me if I'm wrong, but that's my impression.

[RC Cola]

I can't really explain this team all that well. Compared to last year's team and how they did, this team should be performing a lot better, especially with Bill Parcells. I know plently mention the running backs not having talent here (nothing against you since everybody pretty much says it), but we had even worse backs last year. Troy Hambrick just flat out sucked and his Aveion Cason, his backup, was a little too small to run that much. Eddie George is at least as good if not better than Hambrick and I think Reshard Lee would do pretty well if he got some more carries. You may not know him, but if you remember the game against us in the opener, he was the guy who returned a kick for very good yardage and then ran the ball pretty well after that. I think the commentators mentioned how he was doing it all, especially since the Cowboys offense had hit that snag already. To me, he seems to have a real good combo of speed, strength and balance. This is his 1st NFL season and I think he came to the NFL a little early from college, so I hope he can improve more. Of course, we also got Richie Anderson running the ball a little more this year and he also has a nice combo of speed and strength, although he's starting to get up there in age. I was ok with the JJ selection, mostly because it gave us at least a back who had nice speed as well as another #1 pick next year. He also led the team in rushing yards, I believe, in the preseason. Losing him does hurt, although I think the others should be able to divide the load between them

With all that said, I bring about the problem of the Cowboys. All those backs are ok, yet we can't get many rushing yards. It really isn't the line since it is pretty much last year's line but a little better. With Vinny being a better passer along with the addition of Keyshawn and the emergence of Witten, we got a nice passing game. On defense, we have a better pass rush, a deeper LB core, and maybe a slightly worse secondary. The secondary is the weakest part of the D, but it was the problem last year as well. I think Darren Woodson being injured probably hurt big time, but it seems like now Terrence Newman is getting burned a lot, something that I don't seem to recall all that much last year. Basically, it seems like we should be at least as good as last year but probably a lot better with veteran experience added and a little more talent, not to mention Parcells in his second year, but I haven't really seen that on the field yet.

Personally, I think the Antonio Bryant trade was stupid. He's played nicely at least in the 1st few games and has made some nice grabs. In a way, I could see his side of the story in the disputes he's had with the team since it seems like he just wanted to take on a bigger role for the team. Even if I didn't really see him having a spot on the team, trading him for another 3rd string WR with similar numbers doesn't really excite me. I hope Quincy Morgan could prove me wrong, but we needed help in other areas, not WR. I think this trade could also come back to bite us in the butt.

The thing that really scares me that I already mentioned is the problem with Parcells. I don't remember if there were any bad calls that I could think of in the Minnesota game, but there were some in other games. In one game, we had basically 4th and an inch, but we decided to take a few steps back to handoff to a RB instead of just doing a quick little QB dive. Later in the game, we were only down like 6 points and still had like 10 minutes to go in the game, but Parcells decided to go for it on 4th and 1 when we could have pinned the other team deep and possible gotten the ball in good field position. Instead, IIRC, we didn't convert and gave the other team good field position which allowed them to score. There are others, but basically, I'm trying to say that I don't recall ever really questioning the play calling last year, but I find myself doing it a few times this year. For comparison, I questioned the play-calling a lot back before Parcells was coach.

I guess we'll see if he can turn the team around in these following weeks. We already dug a big hole with 2 losses that we probably should have won so it won't be easy to make a return to the playoffs. Maybe I'm just being a little pessimistic, but I had some pretty high hopes for the team and they haven't come close to really reaching them. If they don't do something, they'd probably be a little closer to rebuilding than they would be to the Super Bowl with the age of several big playmakers for the team and the age of Parcells. Maybe they could come back strong next year with 2 1st rd picks though; that's basically what I did in ESPN NFL 2K5. After Vinny retired, I traded up in the draft to get the number 4 pick and got a Michael Vick lite at QB and paired him with a healthy JJ. That really seemed to add a little to the team. If only running a NFL team was that easy...

Wow...I kind of went off a little bit.

[SqUaReD 80]

Yeah, I don't know what Bill's been thinking about, but he sure isn't playing classic Bill Parcell's football, I'll say that much. As with Antonio Bryant, good numbers or not, he didn't want to be there. Any player who doesn't get along with his coach, or is not happy with his role, is A) Not going to be as good as he could be, and B) Is going to bring down the rest of the team with him. You're better off in the long run. Quincy Morgan? Eh, time will tell, I suppose.

Moss probably won't play this week unless it's a goal line situation. Meaning, the double-triple coverage he sees every game won't be there, so they'll probably double up Marcus Robinson, and put an extra man in the box. People don't really know how great Randy Moss is until he's not in the game. It just boggles the mind. Did you see that Terrell Owens interview on ESPN a couple weeks ago?

"I see the same coverages as him, so I don't see why he's better than me."

TO has no idea what he's talking about. Just being the over-rated talking head that he always has been. In the history of the NFL, nobody has EVER seen what Moss sees every game. The ENTIRE defensive scheme has to start with him. I'm worried the lack of his presence will have a profound effect on our offense. Culpepper will still do great, but I'm worried about our running game this week. Bennett will be back for the first time in a year (with very limited action), and Mewelde Moore will still be in for the majority of the carries... I suppose we won't know until Sunday how we react without the NFL's most dangerous offensive threat.

[RC Cola]

The thing about Bryant though is that he has shown flashes of greatness that would definitly put him over Glenn and Keyshawn. I don't know if I should go out on a limb and say he would have performed better than they would have if he was the #1 or #2 WR, but he brings something that those two can't. However, part of what I didn't like about the trade was basically who we got. I'm not trying to say anything against Quincy (I'd love him to prove me wrong), but I just wanted to get help in other areas instead of swapping 3rd string WR's with similar numbers, especially since the Dallas passing attack is doing ok.

Yeah, I pretty much felt the same away about the comments. Granted, I like Moss better than TO anyways though. I pretty much hate TO whenever he did that thing on the Dallas star a couple years ago. Moss, on the other hand, I like to watch, sort of a like a Michael Vick or somebody like that.(wait a minute, is there anyone else like Vick? :wink: ) Maybe knowing that Dallas could have had him if they were smart factors into it or something, but I like watching him. Like you said, teams do scheme around Moss. IIRC, Dallas tried to put at least 2 guys on Moss at all times, and they even tried to take some cheap shots on him, something I didn't like. Of course, that probably didn't matter so much to Moss since they were finding other ways to pick apart the defense and he still was able to beat the coverage on him a couple of times. No doubt, him missing time will affect the team. Hope he can get healthy and help you guys again soon.

[SqUaReD 80]

Obviously Moss came in just to keep his streak of games going, but his streak of 101 games with a ctach is over, as well as his streak of TD cataches (11 games?).

Mewelde Moore: STRAIGHT. UP. STUD.

Who needs Michael Bennett? We should just trade him away for a second round pick. Maybe Miami wants him next year. Culpepper tore it up as usual, spreading the ball around without Moss in the lineup. Scott Linehan (our ofeensive coordinator) continues to piss me off. His playcalling is horendous. All these NFL announcers (who are unfortunately very subjective, which they shouldn't be), keep saying how Linehan is a genius. Do they even watch our games? Or just look at our numbers? If the Vikings offense was under any other O-Coordinator, the numbers would be better, and we would actually be able to score when we get inside the 20 yard line. We're at the bottom of the leagu in red-zone scoring because of bonehead play calls.

GO COWBOYS! I hope you beat the Fudge-Packers asses.

And your quote about Vick? Let's not go nuts. He can run like nobody's business, but when it comes to starting Quarterbacks in the league, not many are worse than Michael Vick. Incompletes, INT's, etc. He is just not a good quarterback. Period. I don't know why he says he likes the newly-implemented West Coast offense... because it's obvious he just doesn't get it (or have the ability to play up to it). The Falcons need to put Vick in a position where he runs the ball 50% of the time. Michael Vick and "passing" don't go very well together. It's the media's fault for building him up to be the best QB of the last 20 years. On that note, go Culpepper! :wink: