Go take a look at Miami's defenses and running game during the Marino era, and you'll have your answer.
Oh I understand that. (I shouldnt have said "I wonder" they where the original 1 trick Colts)
9-10 is pretty rough. The other bad stats for him (fair or unfair)
Faulk ran 324 times for 1319 yards and 6 TDs, and caught another 86 passes for 908 yards and 4 TDs in 1998, his last in Indy. Edgerrin James replaced him in 1999 and ran 369 times for 1553 yards and 13 TDs, and caught 62 passes for 586 yards and 4 TDs.
There were contract issues with Faulk, so they decided to trade him and draft Edgerrin James. I don't think there was really much of a dropoff in that transaction. Faulk became an MVP with the Rams, but James was no slouch.
I was looking up the stats to post this, when you...posted this. You could make an argument that the Colts would have been slightly better off because of the 2001 season when Faulk was great and Edge was hurt, but that's only 1 year. Really, between Faulk, James, and Addai, Peyton consistently had an excellent running back from 1998 thru 2007. It's only been the last 4 years where the Colts running game has been bad. Now, you could say even their 'good' running game wasn't a power scheme built for short yardage in the playoffs, and that could be reasonable. The defense during the Manning glory years also wasn't 'bad', but you could say that their Cover-2 was geared towards playing with a lead, and that could be reasonable too.
The Colts kind of abandoned the run in the playoffs in general. If you look at their playoff game log, James only had 20+ carries in one of their playoff losses. It's not like these were blowout losses either, almost all of the losses early in Peyton's career were one score games. Not sure if that was a function of bad gameplanning / playcalling, or a lack of trust in the running game, but if I had a back who ran for 1500+ yards every year I sure as hell wouldn't be afraid to give him the ball in playoff games.
from 99-2002 Faulk accumulated 8255 yards, 69TDs and 9 fumbles.
As noted above, Brady's actual playoff QB rating is 87.6. But even with Tom Brady, the sample size is so small that the career number can fluctuate wildly game to game, and certainly over a year or two. For example, after the Denver game, his career QB rating jumped almost 5 points. You're looking at his career numbers a couple of games removed from 3 straight losses. Take a look at Montana's rating after the 3 straight losses between his 2nd and 3rd SB wins, and you'll see that his career rating was significantly worse than Brady's is now. Beyond that, do you really think that 87.6 is remarkably mediocre? As for Brady's "interception problem," he's thrown 19 picks in 752 playoff passes. Montana threw 21 in 734 attempts. Also, the whole "in spite of playing in a worse passing environment" gets a bit overblown when you're talking about Joe Montana's playoff perfomances. I get the sense you weren't watching much football in the late 80s. Go back and look at Super Bowls 23 and 24, and let me know if you really think throwing to Jerry Rice was a bad passing environment.
Manning and Brady have also been victims-at least in statistical terms-of refs swallowing their whistles in the playoffs. Most of Brady and Manning's worst games have taken place when the refs gave the defense a ton of leeway to be physical with receivers. Maybe the modern NFL is a good passing environment but a playoff game where Law and Bruschi and McGinest can rape your receivers is not a good one.
You've got to counter this with the opportunity cost of taking Edgerrin with the #4 pick in the draft.
Depending on when you define the monster number stages to have begun, Brady is at Super Bowl Number Two in the four non-inured years he's had in this stage of his career. Win or lose that's pretty impressive, and a far cry from Peyton not winning a playoff game until year six.
Looks like the breaking news is the signing of Bruce Arians: http://www.colts.com/news/article-1/COLTS-ADD-ARIANS/1b7daa1b-46b9-4d54-8ae9-6817c3d12b21
I don't think that's the right way of looking at it - half the teams go 0-1. In each game, there's a winner and a loser, so the average team is .500, just like in the regular season.
Yes, thanks for raising this. There's a 'replacement level' playoff record. Just thinking out loud- if you're the 1 seed in the AFC and you perform above your seed you go 3-0. Play to the seed and go 2-1 (or 1-1). And below your level, 0-1. It'd be easy to calculate this based on historical probabilities of various seeds winning various games (if you had that data accessible which I don't).
Pro Football Reference's splits show it as being 84.3, but that's splitting hairs.
So 3.3 points is splitting hairs? Because it's 87.6. If you have a good reason why his stats against Denver shouldn't count, I'd love to hear it.
And his postseason performance is 16-5. 87.6 would be good enough for top 15 all-time, better than Dan Marino's career passer rating. Joe Flacco's regular season career passer rating is niether remarkably mediocre nor did it come solely against playoff teams. Brady has basically averaged 23-36, 240 yards, 1.75 TD/.9 INT in elimination games aginst the best teams in the league. If you really think that those numbers are mediocre, I don't know what to tell you. Yes, his playoff numbers are not as good as his regular season numbers. Neither were Larry Bird's or Pedro's. Brady's legacy or reputation was never based on his playoff passer rating. When he was 9-0 in the playoffs with three SB rings, his playoff QB rating was 88.8.
What do you think Montana's rep is? Many consider him the best QB of all time. All I can really take away from this is that you just are having a hard time digesting the effect a handful of games can have on an average when the total sample is only ~20 games. Montana's playoff rating is sky high because Jerry Rice went into beast mode for about 6 straight games. It counts, but you seem to be reading way too much into it.
Duh. Btw, you guys need to view the 'rant' by Phil Sims on the "Inside The NFL". Showtime (sho.com) has it online. He and Collinsworth are talking about the different eras and they had Maurice Jones Drew as a guest who 'tag teamed' with Warren Sapp. A great interview which brought up an interesting point. In 'his day', which I remember well, it was a more physical game and you were allowed to be more agressive with your play against WR's and QB's. I think a lot of older QB's, deep down, wish they played in today's atmosphere.
Also for today's money. On one of those NFL Top 10 shows on NFLN, about Dan Dierdorf maybe, they mentioned an average annual salary of 7 - 11K in his day. Maybe it was for linemen, sounds awfully low.
There is no more barely-analyzed, yet rotely-repeated NFL meme than that the uptick in passing yardage and passer rating at the top levels is a direct result of favorable rule changes. Of course, there is at least as much reason to believe that the (relatively small) increases have more to do with the inevitible, yet snail's-pace recognition by the powers-that-be (coaches) that an accurate short-passing game is much more productive than the macho, time-honored "three yards and a cloud of dust" runs, followed by a 3rd and long vertical pass play. And even more safe. And, as more colleges and systems utilize this approach, QBs are being better groomed and coached to implement it.
No...that's not what I said. I said MORE teams are having better TD/INT ratios because they are implementing the Walsh system. However, like Walsh's and Siefert's teams, most teams have been unwilling to exploit this success by passing the optimal number of times (at least closer to 2/3; maybe more). It is likely that only a few are able to succeed at such a volume, just as only a few would have been able to do so in 1995. But those who have done so, have put up big numbers.
This is why this forum is the red-headed stepchild of the site. You'd be banned for being an idiot with nothing useful to say and bragging about it on the main board.
Shouldn't those also apply to defense? And if they did, I'd expect it would mean more INTs (big plays) and fewer overall scores or, at least, TDs (avoiding big plays). Your data suggests a slight decrease in INTs -- could that simply be a one-year change? maybe 2010 had more INTs?
As far as I know, Bill Walsh never had undefeated season, didn't win every Super Bowl, and occasionally had to punt. Why are you so convinced he extracted the aosolute maximum number of yards, passing yards, first downs or touchdowns out of his team? And where did you get the idea that it was even the point? Winning the Super Bowl is what matters. Drew Brees did not do that this year. Steve Young did so in 1994. My point is that Steve Young very likely would have thrown for 5,000+ yards in that season if the 49ers had chucked it 650 times. Would they have still won the Super Bowl? I have no idea, but Young didn't need the current rules to have passed for that amount.
Maybe, but not necessarily. It's possible that offensive schemes or playcalling were farther from optimal than defensive schemes are. That is to say, I believe defensive athletes are probably improving at the same rate as offensive athletes, but the systems/coaching/execution could have more room for improvement on the offensive side of the ball. Remember, teams are still only passing the ball 55% of the time compared to 54% in 1984. If the rules have made it so easy to pass, there has got to be a playcalling inefficiency here, no?
And amazingly a ton of people "know" it again because it didn't work that one time.
Marino threw 20 INTs only 4 times in 17 years and not once in his last 10 seasons.
