Giants played their worst game of the year yesterday and still won. I expect better when we play the junior half of the Mara/Rooney empire next week.
Has there ever been a player better than Peanut Tillman at punching the ball out of his opponent's hands? 4 forced fumbles today, 3 recovered by the Bears. And that's coming on the heels of winning the NFC Defensive Player of the Week twice within the last month.
Yeah, but we can't do this against everybody. Eventually, we're going to encounter some great offensive and defensive squads. I'll take the win, tho.
Pittsburgh outplayed the Giants in every aspect of the game. Time of possession, yardage, first downs (almost two to one in those key categories), the only stats the Steelers didn't excel in were turnovers and penalty yards.
I gotta admit that seeing Wallace put on the afterburners for his touchdown was incredible. It was like watching a car go from first gear to fourth gear on a dime. Simply a thing of beauty.
Thought this might be the year the Falcons take the Saints down twice, but Brees seems to live to crush our dreams on that front.
While I'd love the Saints to crush your dreams of perfection , I just don't see it happening this week. The Saints' offense has improved, but the defense is still awful. Don't let the performance against a terrible Eagles' O-line fool you. The Falcons will not make the same bonehead mistakes that the Eagles did. Still... putting my irrational Black & Gold glasses back on, I'll not count out the Saints just yet and will predict a 38-34 Saints win.
Saints/Falcons games always provide some high-quality entertainment. Usually really close and high-scoring, and there's always a chance for an unexpected result. I still think the Falcons will win, but it will be close.
I got everything but the result correct. Good on the Aints. They seem to be turning it around. Maybe.
A lot of concussions yesterday. Unfortunately concussion reduction technology cannot address the main cause of concussions - the brain slamming into the skull as a result of sudden deceleration. It's just going to get worse as players continue to become faster and bigger. "As athletic trainer and Concussion Blog author Dustin Fink wrote on Wednesday: "We need to remember that concussions are mainly a result of acceleration, deceleration, rotational, and angular forces. Linear forces, where CRT is proven to attenuate, is low on the list of concussion culprits. There is no way this product can attenuate the most troublesome forces that create concussions." http://www.slate.com/articles/sport..._magical_helmets_and_other_ways_football.html
So long as contact sports have been played, concussions have been a part of the game. There's no amount of equipment that protect the brain from crashing into the skull. I think the best bet is to remove the equipment completely, and that includes shoulder pads. This won't eliminate the concussions, but it will drastically reduce them. The equipment has gotten so light that players don't have to use their skills to tackle when they can just use themselves as a missile. Rugby players still suffer concussions, but nowhere to the degree that NFL players do, and I think that has a tremendous amount to do with the fact that rugby players don't use their bodies as weapons because they don't have the equipment that football players do.
Problem is, no one wants to see a bunch of guys playing NFL ball as tho it was rugby. This is the NFL- players aren't necessarily going to dial it all the way down to rugby level just because they aren't wearing pads. It's be smarter to set and enforce an "all pads" rule- players must wear a helmet, shoulder pads, thigh pads, knee pads, hip pads, cup, all with a minimum weight for each league-approved pad. Plenty of NFL players don't wear every pad they make, and it's so they can be faster. Make 'em wear all the pads and stipulate the weight minimum to the manufacturers. The players will be slowed down. How much? Don't know, but the fact that many players pass on certain pads for increased speed says enough about it all to me.
I completely disagree on your first premise. People would watch NFL games if they were playing football in tutus. I've never heard anyone say, "I would never watch another NFL game again if they made them take their pads off."