Tuesday 9/19/23
Dan Marino recently claimed that he could throw for 6000 yards in today's NFL on account of how the game is now played and the rules in place. Quarterbacking, certainly, is easier than ever. The league wants offense, and the teams that are the most successful are teams that are offense-oriented, which is one more reason why the Patriots can only fail now, unless they buck all trends with some radical and effective style of play based not on offense. Good luck with that.
Is there merit to Marino's claim? Perhaps. Marino was the best thrower of the football that I've ever seen. He could make every throw there is, at an elite level, with the quickest release the game has ever seen. He was far more elusive, too, than people give him credit for. He played in an age when you could murder the quarterback. You could do anything you wished to a quarterback. No one cared about concussions, helmet on helmet hits, driving a player into the ground with the weight of your body atop him. It was good, clean, hard-nosed football. Did I prefer it? Yes, admittedly, I did. I've always felt if you don't want to scramble your brains, do something else than be a football player. But that's just me.
A while back, Tom Brady had said that he realized at an early age he could throw the shit out of the football. I know that's how Brady thought of himself. Not as this master reader of defenses, first and foremost, though he was that. For Brady, it began with his arm. If you watched him, he had one of the greatest arms in history, like Marino. Brady became Mr. Intangible to everyone, but that's just wrong. Wayne Gretzky was also this way for people, and both players have always had their massive physical gifts overlooked.
Here's what I'd say about Marino and numbers: Yes, he had eye-popping statistical seasons, like in 1984, when he became the first passer--and for a long time, the only passer--to throw for over 5000 yards, but he didn't have the separation you might think he had. Marino hit a round number like 5000 yards, but it's not like that was 1000 yards more than anyone else. For instance, during that 1984 campaign, Marino threw for 5084 yards, but Neil Lomax--Neil Lomax!--of the St. Louis Cardinals--threw for 4614. Does that mean that Neil Lomax could throw for 5000 yards today?
Lomax was regularly prolific, actually. He led the league in passing yards in 1987, which was his penultimate year, despite throwing for 3395 yards in 1988 in fourteen games. That was his aged twenty-nine season, and then he was done. Had 136 TDs against 90 INTs for his career, which was a very good ratio back then, but you never hear anything about him.
I seem to remember someone saying that the Patriots la-de-da approach to the preseason would hurt them come the start of the regular season. That they wouldn't be ready, they weren't focused, and they were going to have another poor year. Hmmm? Who was it who said that?
And so here we are, with the Patriots at 0-2. The game has passed Bill Belichick by, which is bad enough in itself, and is made worse when you're not trying nearly as hard as you should be trying. I think he likes having his kids around, his cronies, his cronies' kids, his boat, and it's straight coasting for BB.
Do you know when the Patriots will be good again? When you turn on the TV and you see all new faces. You don't see Belichick, you don't see Robert Kraft, you don't see Mac Jones. You don't see Bill O'Brien, you don't see Jered Mayo. You see people and think, "Who is that?" if you had been asleep for ten years, which might be how many years it takes.
Any time you enter a season with Mac Jones as the guy, the quarterback you're counting on, you're adding another year to how long it will take until you're good again. People can cite his passing yards to me all they wish, but he is throwing the ball a ton for not much production given how many times he puts the ball in the air, where it stays for a long, long time, even though he's throwing short passes for the most part. He throws an interception every game. That seems like a pretty big problem to me, though others don't appear to be troubled by quarterback play that can result in 17 INTs on the season. You're not going to overcome that with your pop gun offense. I correctly said--I mean, it was so obvious--that Cam Newton couldn't throw, and I am correct in saying you will get nowhere with Mac Jones as your quarterback.
The Patriots are slow, they don't have playmakers, but you need a quarterback who can go out and win you games. Mac Jones cannot win you games. Best case scenario, he can not screw them up and get you 23 points without costing you anything, but also not really getting you all that much. How successful do you think you'll be like that in the current NFL? I heard him say that during his rookie year, things were also not going "so hot" and then the Patriots had a long winning streak. What really happened is they got into the weaker part of their schedule, and every team they won against during that streak had big-time players out of the line-up because of injuries and COVID. They got everyone at the most vulnerable time. A very misleading winning streak. Jones had his opening 300-yard passing game against the Eagles, with his fifty plus attempts--so it becomes almost impossible not to have 3000 yards therefore--and then Kirk Cousins of all people shredded that Philly secondary. So what does that tell you?
It is not going to work with this coach, this staff, this owner, this quarterback. The owner is a star fucker who lives in the past. The Brady thing was ridiculous to me. Move on, guy. That is over. You suck now. Stop fawning over this man on national television while the team you're running out there is as bad and boring and behind the times and unprepared as they are.
The Patriots can have a little run where they get a couple games above .500, but it will be temporary and it won't matter in the end, because they weren't ready to start the season and you don't get those games back. They don't have playmakers, and you can't win without playmakers. You need speed, you need talent. They don't have either. You can beat bad teams in low-scoring games. But what they have in place is a formula for low-grade mediocrity, not even "Maybe if this happens, if that happens, they can contend" mediocrity.
On Saturday, I went out to Chestnut Hill to watch Boston College take on #3 Florida State. Florida State had no business being the third-ranked team in the country. BC should have won and would have won by 10 if they were not perhaps the least disciplined and poorly coached--from a discipline standpoint--college football team I've seen. Jeff Hafley is a disaster as a coach. He chomps on that gum on the sideline looking like a clown. Be professional. BC had eighteen penalties on the game, which was a school record and there were at most two that they didn't deserve.
I'm sure it was a letdown for Florida St. coming to tiny Alumni Stadium for a noon kickoff against a sad-sack ACC team that seems to be doing everything it can to prove it doesn't belong in the conference, but still that was a weak showing. Florida St. was up 31-10 in the second half and BC still could have won that game multiple times over. I'd say that right up to the final penalty--a face mask violation that kept BC from getting the ball back for a last possession--they were going to win that game and if Florida State had punted they would have. BC should have been up before that.
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