Felger and Mazz - Creating False Naratives one day at a time

tims4wins

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Like, if they had beaten Washington 23-17, while KC rolled Indy 40-0, then yeah, I could see them saying "if they played KC yesterday they'd have lost". No one would disagree.

But they literally played Buffalo last week, basically played no different on D than they did yesterday, played better offensively yesterday than last week... it's a nonsensical comment.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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Imagine if the Patriots were 3-2 or worse?

I mean, I get that the show can't be four-hour, five day Chris Farley Show, but quit being so blatant about your trolling.
 

cshea

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Felger thinks Brady is taking more sacks to protect his passer rating and completion percentage. Or because he is mad about Brown and is making a point his weapons stink. Haha.
 

Ralphwiggum

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Felger thinks Brady is taking more sacks to protect his passer rating and completion percentage. Or because he is mad about Brown and is making a point his weapons stink. Haha.
Was just coming here to post that. Amazing the narratives they are willing to run with without any actual evidence. All of a sudden at age 42 Brady is concerned about his QB rating.
 

tims4wins

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Was just coming here to post that. Amazing the narratives they are willing to run with without any actual evidence. All of a sudden at age 42 Brady is concerned about his QB rating.
Especially after taking 4 total sacks in the first 4 games. THEN he got pissed and decided to start taking sacks.
 

colinfleminglit.com

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We might be watching history. The numbers are starting to stack. Nearly 1/3 of the way through the season. What this defense has done in that time—it’s no middling amount, but a real chunk—wallops where the ‘85 Bears were at. The offense will improve; that is the year in, year out theme, with limited exceptions. This could end up as the best Patriots team of all time. Or not. But that’s a reasonable surmise at present, and worth monitoring. I see a team that will beat the Chiefs because of its defense. As for Brady, his game has less holes than a Mahomes, who is a different kind of player when confined to the pocket. Brady is a snapping turtle. A snapping turtle picks its spots. Waits for the right time and place, bides time in the meanwhile. Maybe they should talk about some of these ideas. I can no longer stomach so much as three seconds’ worth of the show—Maz reminds me of that obsequious little rat dude who hung out with Jabba the Hutt—he’s pure churlish toady—and the accounts I encounter in this fine forum underscore the wisdom in staying away. You don’t have to make up shit on the radio. You can be more thoughtful and knowledgeable—and still with some edge—than the garden variety fan, and that carries the day. More shows ought to try that.
 

j-man

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We might be watching history. The numbers are starting to stack. Nearly 1/3 of the way through the season. What this defense has done in that time—it’s no middling amount, but a real chunk—wallops where the ‘85 Bears were at. The offense will improve; that is the year in, year out theme, with limited exceptions. This could end up as the best Patriots team of all time. Or not. But that’s a reasonable surmise at present, and worth monitoring. I see a team that will beat the Chiefs because of its defense. As for Brady, his game has less holes than a Mahomes, who is a different kind of player when confined to the pocket. Brady is a snapping turtle. A snapping turtle picks its spots. Waits for the right time and place, bides time in the meanwhile. Maybe they should talk about some of these ideas. I can no longer stomach so much as three seconds’ worth of the show—Maz reminds me of that obsequious little rat dude who hung out with Jabba the Hutt—he’s pure churlish toady—and the accounts I encounter in this fine forum underscore the wisdom in staying away. You don’t have to make up shit on the radio. You can be more thoughtful and knowledgeable—and still with some edge—than the garden variety fan, and that carries the day. More shows ought to try that.
unless u play the saints in miami the pats is going to win the super bowl and even if u play no i dont see now they get more than 17 u have a 50% at 19-0
 

joe dokes

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"Brady is a system QB now."
--Jim Murray

Brady is on pace to have over 35 touchdowns and less than 10 interceptions.
And Gisele is a "system model." And Jim Murray is a "system moron." (Although to be fair, I think Murray could be a very effective moron even without a microphone and radio station.)
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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Why do you guys listen to these obvious attempts to yank your chains? I mean, this shit isn't even clever. What's the appeal?
I haven't listened to these clowns in months. The hot takez that the toughest guy in the room (and indoor sunglasses wearer) Jim Murray makes me laugh. "These guys are all wimps, unlike me who has to wear sunglasses inside because the light hurts my eyes. But fuck them."

So tough.
 

Ralphwiggum

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Why do you guys listen to these obvious attempts to yank your chains? I mean, this shit isn't even clever. What's the appeal?
I catch small bits and pieces of the show for two reasons. First, because I sometimes listen to Toucher & Rich in the morning and when I get in my car to drive home it is on so I listen for a minute (literally a minute or two) until it becomes unbearable. Second, because sometimes I get the urge to hear some sports (mostly NFL) discussion on the radio during my drive home so I foolishly tune in, and that typically lasts for just a minute or two as well. If they have Bedard, Price or Gasper in studio and if they are talking general NFL and not focusing solely on the Pats, it can sometimes be OK. When it is just F&M and Murray talking Pats it is unlistenable.
 

Mystic Merlin

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I did like how Bedard pinned Felger (I only listen to Bedard’s weekly segments) on the tension between his positions that the ‘cap is crap’ and ‘signing AB fucked them under the cap.’
 

Haunted

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I catch small bits and pieces of the show for two reasons. First, because I sometimes listen to Toucher & Rich in the morning and when I get in my car to drive home it is on so I listen for a minute (literally a minute or two) until it becomes unbearable. Second, because sometimes I get the urge to hear some sports (mostly NFL) discussion on the radio during my drive home so I foolishly tune in, and that typically lasts for just a minute or two as well. If they have Bedard, Price or Gasper in studio and if they are talking general NFL and not focusing solely on the Pats, it can sometimes be OK. When it is just F&M and Murray talking Pats it is unlistenable.
Minus the interest in the NFL, this is what I hear of the show too. I usually have T&R on for my morning commute, so when I return to the car, F&M is on. My listening time is typically under 5 minutes. That, along with following this thread, is sufficient to keep me away from the show. I'm not a hate listener.
 

Vinho Tinto

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Is this Ticket Fugitive thing supposed to be funny? This is 100% a Jim Murray not funny joke.
It’s a parody of a hack radio bit. It was too inside baseball and sounded slapped together. While the Fugitive gimmick has been used for a long time by top 40 stations across the country, it’s still not something that most people will immediately know.

EDIT: If not Murray, the producers put this together for their own amusement.
 

cshea

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I’ve never been a huge Bedard fan, and don’t subscribe to his site, but I generally liked his weekly appearances on F&M. Now he seems to be falling into the F&M vortex of hot take suck.

He’s shouting about the Patriots offensive performance last Thursday being the worst offensive performance since the 2014 KC (we’re on to Cincinnati) game. That seems like a significant stretch to me, though I’m far from an expert. He also won’t blame the refs for the debacle last night in Green Bay saying Detroit blew it by kicking FG’s and the defense not getting to 3rd down on the final GB. Except they did get to 3rd down, and made a stop that got overturned by a bad call that the league has already appologized for according to Murray’s update. Both can be true. The refs hosed Detroit and Detroit could’ve put the game out of reach earlier.

Now we’re into the Brady bashing portion of the program. This is why I stopped listening in the first place.
 

RedOctober3829

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I’ve never been a huge Bedard fan, and don’t subscribe to his site, but I generally liked his weekly appearances on F&M. Now he seems to be falling into the F&M vortex of hot take suck.

He’s shouting about the Patriots offensive performance last Thursday being the worst offensive performance since the 2014 KC (we’re on to Cincinnati) game. That seems like a significant stretch to me, though I’m far from an expert. He also won’t blame the refs for the debacle last night in Green Bay saying Detroit blew it by kicking FG’s and the defense not getting to 3rd down on the final GB. Except they did get to 3rd down, and made a stop that got overturned by a bad call that the league has already appologized for according to Murray’s update. Both can be true. The refs hosed Detroit and Detroit could’ve put the game out of reach earlier.

Now we’re into the Brady bashing portion of the program. This is why I stopped listening in the first place.
No surprise Bedard can't criticize anything Packers-related.
 

RedOctober3829

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Mike Felger declared the Patriots 20 year run "being the biggest little person". No worthy adversaries and the teams of the 80s would have done much better against this era. Murray challenged him pretty well and Mazz is just shaking his head.
 

tims4wins

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Mike Felger declared the Patriots 20 year run "being the biggest little person". No worthy adversaries and the teams of the 80s would have done much better against this era. Murray challenged him pretty well and Mazz is just shaking his head.
Peyton 2003-2004, Mahomes 2018, Peyton 2012-2014... and on and on... not worthy adversaries. That is just flaming hot.

He should just go all the way and say that they should have won more, the fact that they haven't won 9-10 times means they've underperformed.
 

John Marzano Olympic Hero

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This is track one from F&M's greatest hits. Massarotti said the exact same thing the week before the Super Bowl against the Falcons. He said something to the affect that that if the Pats won that Super Bowl, it wouldn't matter much because all of the other NFL teams stunk so bad. He wondered where the 1990 Giants were, the 80s 49ers, the 85 Bears, etc. "Big deal you beat the Falcons, who cares?"

I mean he was right, IIRC that was a pretty boring Super Bowl.
 

bankshot1

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Mike Felger declared the Patriots 20 year run "being the biggest little person". No worthy adversaries and the teams of the 80s would have done much better against this era. Murray challenged him pretty well and Mazz is just shaking his head.
I came home and heard about 3 minutes of Felger's biggest little person hot take and turned it off. I just couldn't bring myself to listen to his "no agenda Friday" agenda.
 

joe dokes

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Mike Felger declared the Patriots 20 year run "being the biggest little person". No worthy adversaries and the teams of the 80s would have done much better against this era. Murray challenged him pretty well and Mazz is just shaking his head.
The "Texaco Star Theatre" would have trounced F&M in the ratings.
 

scottyno

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Teams of the 80s didn't have a salary cap or modern free agency so i'd hope that they could contend with successful teams that are forced into massive turnover every year. That's actually a huge point in the pats favor because they have to reinvent themselves year after year, but I know cap is crap
 

tims4wins

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Teams of the 80s didn't have a salary cap or modern free agency so i'd hope that they could contend with successful teams that are forced into massive turnover every year. That's actually a huge point in the pats favor because they have to reinvent themselves year after year, but I know cap is crap
What F&M fail to acknowledge in their “cap is crap” mantra is that while it is true that the cap is crap in any individual season, it is anything but crap over the long haul. If Aaron Donald, Von Miller, Julio Jones, Travis Kelce, etc were all free agents then any team could sign ALL of them for the following year. But the ensuing years would be a complete disaster. The Pats mastering the cap, and mastering the middle third of the roster, is why they are competitive every year, and have all the rings.
 

cornwalls@6

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Teams of the 80s didn't have a salary cap or modern free agency so i'd hope that they could contend with successful teams that are forced into massive turnover every year. That's actually a huge point in the pats favor because they have to reinvent themselves year after year, but I know cap is crap
Exactly. Plus, football players are just bigger, stronger, faster, more athletic and better now than they were in the 80's. The Pats 2nd and third stringers would probably match-up favorably with starters from the 80's super teams. I stopped even dabbling with these rodeo clowns a while ago now, but check in here every now and again to get a feel for how bad it is. Why anyone chooses to actively listen to this idiocy at this point is beyond me.
 

lexrageorge

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Their contention at one point is that guys like Bill Walsh and Joe Gibbs (!!) could coach circles around Belichick, even though agreeing that BB is the best coach in the league today. Their evidence is Belichick's years in Cleveland, which for some reason means a lot more than his years with the Patriots (they actually said this).

They were also claiming that the modern era teams are weaker because of the salary cap, while conveniently ignoring the fact that Belichick the GM has outmaneuvered his colleagues in that department despite the salary cap. And that other teams nowadays are just stupid, so the Pats dominance deserves big asterisks.
 

bankshot1

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The easy argument is the salary cap strives to drive the teams to approxinate parity, and despite that goal, the Pats have an unparalled record of excellence for close to 20 years.

The BB in Cleveland argument is flawed. He took a 3-win team (1990) and improved them to an 11-win team 4 years later. Modell introduced chaos by orchestrating the move to Baltimore and turning BB's last year in Cleveland into pure hell for the team and fans..
 

lexrageorge

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The easy argument is the salary cap strives to drive the teams to approxinate parity, and despite that goal, the Pats have an unparalled record of excellence for close to 20 years.

The BB in Cleveland argument is flawed. He took a 3-win team (1990) and improved them to an 11-win team 4 years later. Modell introduced chaos by orchestrating the move to Baltimore and turning BB's last year in Cleveland into pure hell for the team and fans..
I'll argue that their argument is not flawed.

Because flawed has a connotation that it could be potentially fixable, as well as a presumption of validity. Neither applies here.
 

bankshot1

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I'll argue that their argument is not flawed.

Because flawed has a connotation that it could be potentially fixable, as well as a presumption of validity. Neither applies here.
I think we're on the same page re their argument. The F&M argument (BB failed in Cleveland) is flawed as they either out of ignorance or malice ignore the facts of BB's tenure in Cleveland and turn it into a marketable hot take from which to profit. They could fix the flaw and tell a more nuanced and fact-filled narrative, but then the hot take isn't as sellable. I think the unfixable flaw is the F&M need to troll their audience.
 

mikeford

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If there were truly no worthy adversaries in this 20 year stretch, than why didn't they win more titles?

There was a 10 year drought, you know.
 

Mystic Merlin

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Well, a big reason they haven’t won 9-10 titles is precisely because there HAS been competition year over year. Because they’ve done it for 20 years at a peerless level, naturally those teams have changed. And the league’s ruthless pursuit of points and parity has by and large worked. Their sustained presence as a top 5 team virtually every year - which nobody else has remotely approached - is the real magic.

Anyone who thinks the Pats should be running away with the league every year is ignorant. They are not head and shoulders above every team every year in terms of talent, resources, and coaching a la Alabama. What they have is a generational QB and perhaps the best coach/administrator in sports history, and a related ability to do better than enough teams at enough things over time to win on the margins.

Like, 9-10 Super Bowls? What? That’s like mid century Yankees shit, and this league has the distinction of having 32 teams (as opposed to like 16), a hard salary cap, free agency, and - contrary to popular belief - many of those teams are full of smart people that run them like quasi-military operations. Sometimes they get beat because - SHOCKER - other teams run their shops well, too, if not for as long in any given case, and this is - also SHOCKER - not a science. Hell, just look at the draft. Nobody is consistently ‘great’ at hitting on players percentage-wise.

Their take is so internally inconsistent and counter factual that it’s actually difficult to focus on and do justice to any one of its myriad deficiencies. In that sense, it’s perfect for a call in talk show where your callers get like 20 seconds to make a point.

By their logic, Belichick actually ISNT a great coach/administrator because he’s squandered several title opportunities.....yet we are to believe that they’ve underachieved BECAUSE he is so good and therefore they should have won more. What? If you assess each year, it’s not surprising they’ve come out with 9 SB appearances with 6 wins. Some years they probably shouldn’t have gotten so far yet did, others they probably shouldve gotten farther and did not.
 

CantKeepmedown

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I know they had a beef of some sorts last year, but what exactly is Felger's problem with Van Noy? It's embarrassing.


For those who can't see it, they played KVN's response to being told about the Darnold ghost stuff. KVN's reaction was completely normal, laughing and saying "really?" Felger mocks him and then says that KVN is a patriot fan in a uniform.
 

Nator

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Peyton 2003-2004, Mahomes 2018, Peyton 2012-2014... and on and on... not worthy adversaries. That is just flaming hot.

He should just go all the way and say that they should have won more, the fact that they haven't won 9-10 times means they've underperformed.
Christ. In 2003 they went 4-0 against teams lead by NFL Co-MVP's. Their schedule that season was brutal.
 

nazz45

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I know they had a beef of some sorts last year, but what exactly is Felger's problem with Van Noy? It's embarrassing.


For those who can't see it, they played KVN's response to being told about the Darnold ghost stuff. KVN's reaction was completely normal, laughing and saying "really?" Felger mocks him and then says that KVN is a patriot fan in a uniform.
He literally doe not like him as a person. Doesn’t like the way he “talks.” Or his attitude and whatever other micro aggressions he has used in the past for his reasoning. That’s it. KVN called them out on this, basically saying you can criticize my play but don’t attack me personally if you don’t know my character.

It’s no surprise that an incredibly thin-skinned, petty person would continue to attack him, especially since he will never have to interact with him in real life. But he also knows comments like these get fans to respond so it works in his favor.
 

PC Drunken Friar

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He literally doe not like him as a person. Doesn’t like the way he “talks.” Or his attitude and whatever other micro aggressions he has used in the past for his reasoning. That’s it. KVN called them out on this, basically saying you can criticize my play but don’t attack me personally if you don’t know my character.

It’s no surprise that an incredibly thin-skinned, petty person would continue to attack him, especially since he will never have to interact with him in real life. But he also knows comments like these get fans to respond so it works in his favor.
In think it also entails he was absolutely wrong about his character and people let MF know it. He was honored as man of the year or honored for his community outreach. Felger ain't crow and did do a mea culpa (at least for 2 years it seems)
 

NDame616

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Did Felger give him grief for missing a game because of his kid's birth? We know that's a huge issue for him
 

HomeBrew1901

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Did Felger give him grief for missing a game because of his kid's birth? We know that's a huge issue for him
I don't recall Felger even mentioning it, but the issue for him with Hurley (?) wasn't that he missed a day or 2 due to the birth of his child, it was Felger's disdain of Dad's getting FMLA almost proportionate to mothers now and he got absolutely hammered for it. I'm not surprised if he didn't mention it at all considering...
 

cshea

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Mass: “if you take away all the good Patriots plays, they actually sucked!”

First segment he has thrown out the 3 turnovers, the White screen pass and ensuing Edelman TD reception.
 

steveluck7

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First caller says it was a bad overall game from the Pats. Either people are in fact this stupid or the Pats have set such high standards that yesterday is considered a bad game.
On the fans side, it's mostly the latter, I believe. "Style points" come in to play for far too many fans.
As for the hosts, it's definitely stupidity