NFL 2015: Playoffs: Super Bowl 50

Chairman_Mao wrote:
DSGamer wrote:
onewild wrote:

I like how all the odds go up pretty steadily and then 200-1 for the Brown's, like ha Brown as if

And still those odds don't seem low enough.

It just means the Browns have another 150 years before they start to feel really bad.

That soon?!?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/enter...

Peeps are upset at Beyoncé.

TheGameguru wrote:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/enter...

Peeps are upset at Beyoncé.

Please don't be old white men please don't be old white men... d'awwwwwwwww

Chairman_Mao wrote:
TheGameguru wrote:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/enter...

Peeps are upset at Beyoncé.

Please don't be old white men please don't be old white men... d'awwwwwwwww

I'm glad "America's Mayor" weighed in. I value his opinion. /s

So if Janet Jackson was the Wardrobe Malfunction, what's that make Beyonce? The Wardrobe Function? And fully expect that the NFL will be scrutinizing next year's halftime performers even more intensely to the point where every lyric and costume gets a once over. Can't have the only crazy old white dude who actually could somehow hear Beyonce's lyrics despite the crappy audio from Levi's and who if he couldn't can somehow gather the political statement that black women in tight black leather costumes were visually expressing would be offended enough to go on social media and cable news to talk bad about how the NFL allows this to mar a parade of black men beating their brains in buffered by ads for people having issues pooping.

Rat Boy wrote:

So if Janet Jackson was the Wardrobe Malfunction, what's that make Beyonce? The Wardrobe Function? And fully expect that the NFL will be scrutinizing next year's halftime performers even more intensely to the point where every lyric and costume gets a once over. Can't have the only crazy old white dude who actually could somehow hear Beyonce's lyrics despite the crappy audio from Levi's and who if he couldn't can somehow gather the political statement that black women in tight black leather costumes were visually expressing would be offended enough to go on social media and cable news to talk bad about how the NFL allows this to mar a parade of black men beating their brains in buffered by ads for people having issues pooping.

Issues pooping from taking too much pain medication, no less. Probably some of said football players on that medication. *sigh*

Silly blogger person on Gizmodo: what even makes you think you can afford to go to the new stadium in Inglewood in the first place?

TheGameguru wrote:

Not sure why anyone is giving Romanowski the benefit of the doubt.. the context of the tweet he sent his use of "boy" had nothing to do with growing up but a clearly racist term thrown at grown ass black men for decades. Besides it's not like Romanowski doenst have some history of racism before either so that also plays into this.

Theres a ton of ways to to give Cam a life lesson and clearly he needs one and hopefully he grows from this Super Bowl and it doesnt define his career but Romanowski wasnt in any way shape or form doing that here.

In terms of Cam becoming more humble and less arrogant I would love it if people posted that more about demonstrative white NFL players.

Yep.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/nati...

It's 2010. Peyton Manning is the quarterback for the Indianapolis Colts and it's Super Bowl XLIV against the New Orleans Saints.

Peyton and the Colts lose the game 31-17.

With time still remaining on the clock, Peyton did something that Cam Newton (or any black quarterback for that matter) would have been absolutely skewered for — he left the field.

He didn't congratulate the opposing quarterback Drew Brees, as is customary. He didn't shake any hands. He didn't try to smile. He just bailed.

Here's how Chris Chase, of Yahoo Sports recalled it in an article entitled, "Peyton Manning storms off Super Bowl field. Is he a poor sport?"

"Peyton Manning didn't shake hands with New Orleans Saints players after his Indianapolis Colts lost 31-17 in Super Bowl XLIV. Apparently some think this is a sign of poor sportsmanship from the NFL's greatest player. It's not.

Walking off the field without congratulating Drew Brees may go against our misguided notion of what sportsmanship should be, but it wasn't at all disrespectful or bitter. It shows how much Peyton Manning wanted to win the game. And who can argue about that?"

You see, it was the competitive fire of Peyton Manning that caused him to leave the field before time expired without shaking any hands or offering any congratulatory hugs to the opposing team and staff.

Never mind the fact that after the game, in which Cam was sacked and mollywhopped all night long, he went and found Peyton Manning, flashed him a genuine smile, looked him in his eyes, shook his hand, and congratulated him. That didn't really get reported though did it?

Instead, Cam gets a treatment from pundits and retired players alike that is altogether different than what Peyton Manning received six years ago.

Ignoring the warm gesture Cam offered Peyton, former Bronco Bill Romanowski went straight for the racist use of the word "boy" in a now deleted tweet saying, "You'll never last in the NFL with that attitude. The world doesn't revolve around you, boy!"

Conservative superhero Glenn Beck was also deeply troubled by Cam Newton and decided it was worth taking to Facebook over. He declared:

"Cam has obviously not learned how to lose with grace. I wish I could show my children how to behave after a loss but unfortunately I can't.

This is not the behavior of someone who lost the game. This is the behavior of a loser."

Over 15,000 people liked Beck's statement.

If you are ever looking at Glenn Becks tweets then you are doing it wrong anyway, you deserve what you get.

Cobble wrote:

If you are ever looking at Glenn Becks tweets then you are doing it wrong anyway, you deserve what you get.

Doing it wrong? More like lazy as that's as low hanging as fruit gets.

I hadn't heard any of this stuff about Manning and his balls. We heard all about Brady's balls last year, you'd have thunk we'd have heard about Manning's balls some more. More balls talk is what's needed.

Spoiler:

Note, I am not making light of the situation Manning was involved in, that sounds like the exact sort of crap JFF would've been involved with.

Anyway, of course there's a double standard, there always has been. It'll be a few more generations until that double standard goes away. Hopefully only a couple...

At least people are giving Manning crap for his Budweiser comment. Shoot, Denver is Coors country. Nice one, Peyton!

mere days after watching in disappointment as his brother won his second super bowl, a distraught Eli Manning is arrested in Florida for throwing a live alligator at a Wendy's drive thru employee.

http://www.ajc.com/news/news/nationa...

Somebody at work was telling me Peyton gives all his endorsement $$$ to charity? True?

Good news! I'm alive. Thanks for everyone who called 911. I was in good hands with some ace paramedics Sunday night.

Some thoughts, in no particular order:

* Denver's D was overwhelming. Carolina's O-line had been good enough all season against some decent Ds (SEA and ARI in the playoffs, for instance), but they had absolutely no answer Sunday. Wade Phillips deserves the MVP trophy.

* Denver took full advantage of some Carolina injuries. Losing Stewart (for a spell) and LG Norwell (second half) killed the last shred of the Panthers' pass protection. (It's a huge drop-off to Daryl Williams and Chris Scott.) Losing Corey Brown (he picked up a concussion along with that long catch) meant that Cam lost a key deep threat who had been getting open all night. Never mind that, though: Cam didn't have time for those routes to develop because Denver was coming not just around the edges but up the middle as well. (I'm not arguing that Carolina would have won had all those guys not gotten hurt, but those losses erased Carolina' margin for error and knocked a doubtful winning proposition into it-almost-certainly-won't happen territory.)

* I don't know why Carolina didn't use more max protect/chip-and-release schemes. Also, Fozzy Whitaker can't pass block. (Ed Dickson's usually better; not Sunday, though.)

* Sunday was a night where Cam's early-career inclination to scramble would have served him well. He's now a pocket passer, and he'll stand in there till the bitter end waiting for routes to develop. They didn't, and you see what happened.

* Aqid Talib can go f**k himself. I hope he falls off the Denver parade float and freezes in a gutter somewhere in LoDo.

* Speaking of people who can DIAF, I wish Pumpinhead a good retirement, full of all the Bud, HGH and Papa John's (pizza and owner) he can handle.

* Denver's D was awesome. That just bears repeating.

* Carolina's defense played lights out, too. They gave up only two FGs on long drives; the other Broncos scores were a short-field FG (after that botched punt cover), a defensive TD (Denver's D was good, right?) and a short-field (4 yards) TD. You magically erase those points, and it's 10-6 Carolina. (No, I'm not claiming a moral victory; I'm just saying that Carolina's D played as well as Denver's.)

* We don't have to listen to Nantz and Simms again until September. That deserves a National Day of Celebration.

* I skipped the halftime show and don't remember the commercials. I think the shock of seeing the Panthers play so badly on offense froze my brain.

* I'm not going to go all P&C on Cam's post-game except to say this: I wish he hadn't left the presser, but I'm not sorry he did. There are a million hot takes on the topic, but here's a piece that I largely agree with. This line in particular jumped out at me, and I speak as someone who has been in the business for more than two decades:

What makes it so depressing that so many sportswriters and personalities were so quick to jump on Newton and chastise him for his very human emotion is that is seems to confirm that despite working in a business where they cover human beings for a living, they don’t actually understand human beings.

* Although the Panthers' party came to a screeching end Sunday (my sense of doom kicked in around 7 p.m.; it felt like the ATL loss, but way, way worse), it was a fun, fun season. I had a blast. I'm still grieving (not real grief; pro sports fan grief), but I got up yesterday and came in to work, and I did the same today. What would the Panthers do? That's right: #KeepPounding.

See y'all next season.

Having lost last year, I feel for ya.

See you guys next year in the regular season and probably in the postseason for a third straight year.

Go Hawks.

Enix wrote:

* I'm not going to go all P&C on Cam's post-game except to say this: I wish he hadn't left the presser, but I'm not sorry he did. There are a million hot takes on the topic, but here's a piece that I largely agree with. This line in particular jumped out at me, and I speak as someone who has been in the business for more than two decades:

What makes it so depressing that so many sportswriters and personalities were so quick to jump on Newton and chastise him for his very human emotion is that is seems to confirm that despite working in a business where they cover human beings for a living, they don’t actually understand human beings.

I really don't want to draw out a huge discussion about Cam's press conference vs. Manning's walking off the field, but I keep having this thought.

Even though Cam was gracious in handshakes and whatnot, he basically crapped all over the media at the press conference after the game. So they're continuing to write about the negative aspects, as they do.

Manning may have been a jerk to run off the field, but he then sat down and said the right things. So, the media played nicer with him.

This thought is wholly independent from any discussion about the intersection of race and sports, of which there's plenty of meat on that bone to discuss.

Spoiler:

Fwiw, I said this yesterday:

garion333 wrote:

I really don't think Cam is unfairly being singled out for this game.

I said that before I saw all the articles and the extent of the bruhaha over him leaving the press conference. I also said that before I knew he more or less walked away because of what Chris Harris Jr. I would've walked away too.

Top_Shelf wrote:

Somebody at work was telling me Peyton gives all his endorsement $$$ to charity? True?

I find that hard to believe, even with the tax benefits that charity nets people.

Enix! You live! I was worrying Rat Boy had given you the keys to his hidey-hole and we wouldn't see you for two years.

The thing that stunned me most about the game was how Carolina was completely unable or unwilling to adapt; everything they had done this year had worked, so they just kept trying it. Cam kept getting hammered in the pocket, but they never called rollouts or bootlegs or did anything to try to cope with the fact Denver's defensive line was barely even getting slowed down. If Wade Phillips is the MVP (and he is), Carolina's play callers are the un-MVP.

Somebody over at FO made the really good point that when the sideline reporter asked Rivera the usual questions at halftime, he said the team who had the ball last would win, indicating he apparently thought he was in an offensive shootout or something. That, as much as anything, indicated how utterly incapable the Panthers' coaching staff were of changing their pre-established gameplan.

I kept expecting a lot more designed runs for Cam to exploit whatever pressure Denver was bringing. Someone should have picked up on what they were doing, based on Denver's reaction to formations, and exploited the crap out of it. Cam should have basically become a featured runner to open the second half, forcing denver to change it's strategy.

But yeah, they kept dropping back and letting Ware and Miller tee off on Cam. I'd put 90% of that loss on the Panther's coaches.

Yeah...

That offensive game plan and not changing it no matter what happened was some Ken Whisenhunt type sh*t. It probably set Mike Shula's reputation back too, especially after it was thought he might be in the head coaching mix this off season.

So, in today's Cleveland news, there's a report that the Browns lied and said Manziel had a concussion last year, when he actually showed up drunk . This strikes me as a really, really big deal.

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

So, in today's Cleveland news, there's a report that the Browns lied and said Manziel had a concussion last year, when he actually showed up drunk . This strikes me as a really, really big deal.

Remember, this was mere days before Manziel was out in Vegas in his wig as "Billy".

Mike Silver wrote:

Let's please stop talking about football with this guy. He's not even that good of a football player

Thank you Mike Silver.

I can't get worked up about Cam Newton leaving his press conference. I can pretty much transcribe every player press conference ever:

Winning player: This is great! I feel great! Everything is great!

Losing player: This sucks. We didn't play well enough. We'll be back.

There's zero informational value in these things. Let the celebrating guys smile into the camera but leave the rest of them alone.

While we're at it, really could have done without every Joey with a microphone sticking it in Peyton Manning's face trying to get him to say he's retiring. Leave him the f*ck alone and let him enjoy the moment.

We could just eliminate players having to deal with media after the game, and nothing of value would be lost.

*Legion* wrote:

We could just eliminate players having to deal with media after the game, and nothing of value would be lost.

Yup.

But epic coach meltdowns would definitely still need to be a thing.

Yeah coaches have to talk to the media still. But I'd be fine with just letting the players go. Especially the losing team.

If Steph Curry wants to bring his daughter out for press conferences, that's still fun.

Speaking of Steph Curry, did you hear about Presidential hopeful and current Ohio governor John Kasich was asked about his favorite basketball player and he said Steph Curry?

Head coach interviews are different - they manage the entire team, they have a top-down team-wide perspective that can (and does) yield something of value in a press conference. And standing up and being the face of the team to the media is their job. Those can stay. Leave the players alone.

*Legion* wrote:

Head coach interviews are difference - they manage the entire team, they have a top-down team-wide perspective that can (and does) yield something of value in a press conference. And standing up and being the face of the team to the media is their job. Those can stay. Leave the players alone.

Except for halftime interviews, which are just as worthless as the athlete interviews.

You know what would be better? More Jay Feely. I just can't get enough of CBS asking a kicker about punting. It's completely valuable in every non-sarcastic way I could possibly imagine.

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

Except for halftime interviews, which are just as worthless as the athlete interviews.

Yeah, the grab-the-coach-on-his-way-off-the-field interview is a waste of everyone's time.

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

You know what would be better? More Jay Feely. I just can't get enough of CBS asking a kicker about punting. It's completely valuable in every non-sarcastic way I could possibly imagine.

I'd probably trust Jay Feely's input on punting more than Mike Carey's on officiating.

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

Enix! You live! ...

After today at work, I wish I had the keys to the hidey-hole. (Rat Boy! PM incoming. ...)

I don't know if anyone asked the Riverboat about the play-calling (I might have missed it in the blitz of hot takes over Cam), but I suspect he'd answer it this way:

We had scored one offensive TD already, we're moving the ball some, our defense is playing really well and Cam is our QB. We just need someone to step up and make some plays.

Remember, Carolina was down just 6 points until Cam got strip-sacked for a second time in the game. I think the Panthers were feeling OK about their chances of scoring eventually and, like you said, MMD, it had worked all season. In hindsight, obviously, Rivera and Shula were wrong. #KeepPounding isn't always the best game plan, especially against a D that's treating your O-like like a speed bump.

The weird thing is, the Panthers completely locked down JJ Watt in Week 2. I figured they would dust off that game plan. But maybe they figured they couldn't run away from both Ware and Miller? I don't know. Cam will learn and grow from this experience; I suspect the coaches will, too.

I think the playcalling deserves some criticism, but the biggest failure was unforced errors, not scheme. As great of a job as Denver did, a good chunk of Carolina's offensive woes were self-inflicted. Take those away and the story would be quite a bit different.

I do think Carolina failed in not spreading themselves out in the passing game - while the WRs would still be outmatched in their 1-on-1s against the better Denver defenders, forcing the linebackers to line up out in space would have eased the blitz pressure on Cam, and given more room to Olsen. Staying in max protect actually made things worse because of the green dog blitzes - it meant every extra blocker was not only canceled out by an additional pass rusher coming (making them no longer "extra"), but the extra blockers were backs and TEs matched up on linebackers, creating an additional mismatch for the defense.

Staying in 5-man protect against a 4-man rush with Ware or Miller creating a mismatch is probably scary, but their alternative was to be in 6-man protect against a 5-man rush that had 2 mismatches.