OJ's Glove

Another falsehood that is repeated incessantly by other teams fans (jokingly or otherwise) but is patently not true. Hardly anybody born in the the 1960's or later in New England was raised a Giants fan, and there were practically none left here even in the 1970's. Even when I was a kid, you had to be over 50 to even potentially be a Giants fan. The bottom line is that NE fans aren't interested in attending games if the product is lousy. I don't blame them. They'll still watch on TV, but everybody does. It's also true that every championship team gets bandwagon fans, no matter where they are. Just because Boston is obsessed with the Red Sox doesn't mean you can't walk and chew gum and be interested in both teams. A city without football fans wouldn't have obsessed and complained for 25 years about being jobbed in a 1976 playoff game against the Raiders, or have gone absolutely bananas about the '85 playoff run. Let's not overstate it, shall we? Even if it's tongue-in-cheek. A four-sport town has a historical dynamic that Buffalo fans don't have to deal with.

Almost never. Nobody's perfect, but opposing fans like to move the goalposts to minimize the guy's accomplishments. Now the two-SB winning drives ONLY needed field goals, so what's the big deal?, etc. Like I said a while back, everyone forgets the mistakes of legendary players when comparing them to current ones. Montana never threw an interception in the SB, but he threw plenty in big games, including three in "The Catch" game. But nobody remembers those, they just remember the throw to Dwight Clark. Instead they like to dwell on the interceptions Brady threw in the extremely few games the Patriots lost in the last two years. It's selective arguing and remembering in order to minimize the player. Like saying Brady lives off his great defense, when Montana (for example) never won a SB without an excellent defense. The usual.

Don't be stupid. I can taste your sour grapes from here. It was the game-winning drive in the Super Bowl, for crissakes. And he did it twice. It wasn't a home game in September, either. You act like anybody could have done it. Trying to minimize it just makes you look bad.

He has several strengths, limiting mistakes is important but only one of them. Having excellent pocket awareness and finding the open man with accuracy is also a strength and doesn't fall under the category of "limiting mistakes". Using a terrific audible near the goal line against Pittsburgh in the AFCCG which resulted in a TD isn't "limiting mistakes", either - nor is hitting Branch on the deep post twice in the game. An excellent measure of what Brady is capable of is asking how often the Patriots win when the defense has a less than stellar performance. SB 38 is always brought up as a prime example and rightfully so. The defense played great in SB 36, but they tired near the end, and what was required to win was a drive into field goal range with 1:21 and no timeouts in the highest pressure situation imaginable in the NFL. Acting like such things are pedestrian, or unimportant if Brady does them, or saying you can plug in several other QB's who could have done the same thing in the same situations just doesn't cut it. Maybe that's the case, but we'll never know.

Sheesh. I guess it's true if "throwing for a lot of yards" is your one and only definition of "productive".

OR: c.) Knows he's wrong in this case, but can't admit or cede a point of any importance to Patriots fans because it would kill him. Better to simply yell louder, pretend he's right outwardly, and hope the argument goes away. I'd ask him to pay attention to dave mcbride, but that would require actually taking someone else's advice.

Anyone with two eyes can see that Brady throws deep much more often than when he first became a starter. It's blatantly obvious, and HD's stats are correct. Watch the most recent AFCCG against Pittsburgh, and watch how often they went deep. That was a consisent part of their gameplan in 2004, not a departure from what they usually do. Obvious if you actually watch the games, I mean. It's pretty laughable for someone to criticize others about a "troll-existence", when they are seemingly trapped in a "Brady-hating existence" of their own. So much so that they would rather look foolish and dig the hole deeper than admit a mistake. Why should anyone expect you to understand statistics? Especially someone who has a completely misleading, biased and completely meaningless "statistic" in their own signature.

Everyone forgets the dumb things that "legendary" players do, and never seem to let those things influence their arguments. And the further back in the past, the worse it is. "Illogical" is the tamest thing to call it. Like the fact that Montana threw three INT's in the 81 NFCCG, and SF's defense still needed to come up big and stop the Cowboys after "The Catch". But nobody remembers that stuff - they just remember Montana to Clark in the back of the endzone and how great Montana was. Thinking about stuff like that makes me chuckle when I hear people talk about Brady throwing bad INT's and having his defense bail him out, when the numbers don't even support it. "He's just in a great situation, etc." He's a HUGE reason why the "situation" is so great. Or should we pretend Montana was just "lucky" to have Bill Walsh, Jerry Rice and the premier front office and ownership in football?

No quarterback's success is "solely based on him", nor is anyone making that argument. Again, to pretend that a change in QB's in 2001 had nothing to do with the turnaround from losing to winning is absurd. Anyone interested in looking at the Patriots record with Brady starting and the defense giving up 20 or more points? I'll bet it's damned good. Nearly all championship teams have good defenses, but the question is will your QB be good enough to compensate for the times the defense isn't playing it's best? Super Bowl XXXVIII is the highest-profile example of what I'm talking about.

I agree that it was a miracle that the Patriots won it all while averaging one offensive touchdown per game in the playoffs. But Brady had an enormous clutch drive in the snow against Oakland where he was (I believe) 6 for 6 and ran for the score himself. The weather kept scoring low in that game, and then he gets hurt against the Steelers. The defense does a tremendous job in SB 36, and when they finally tire in the 4th quarter and they need a game winning drive, the kid delivered it. He was also extremely important to the six-game winning streak that ended the regular season and guaranteed the first-round bye. Patriots fans realized at the time that Brady had certain attributes as a player. Certain things that can't really be coached - things that he had and Bledsoe didn't have. The rest of his career so far has simply solidified those initial impressions people had, while seeing his overall stats improve measurably since that 2001 season. I just think pretending that it doesn't matter who Belichick's QB is happens to be beyond foolish.

Am I correct in assuming that MBD thinks the Pats turnaround, which happened to coincide with a switch at QB, actually had nothing to do with the quarterback position? I guarantee you the Patriots don't beat the Rams with Bledsoe at QB. Not because Bledsoe is a humpty and Brady is Jesus Christ, but simply because the game plan against the high-powered Rams required a number of things - one of importance was forcing turnovers without committing any yourself. I'd bet dollars to donuts that Bledsoe would have turned it over at least once in that game, and in a game that close it would have probably made the difference. Brady wasn't God in 2001 based on his statistics, but don't pretend he was simply along for the ride and coming up big in clutch situations doesn't mean anything. You'd be wrong on both counts.

You said it in a better way than I have been trying to. I guess what I'm getting at is there has to be some reason that the survivor of the NFC (not always the same team) seemed to usually make easy work of the AFC Champ (not always the same team). 1990 was the exception, but games that close were rare. People complained about how boring the SB was, and one conference won every freaking year. Three or four times in a row might be a statistical anomaly, but when one side wins thirteen times in a row, I'll bet good money that there is a reason for that. DeOssie is a blowhard, but it doesn't make him wrong about what he remembers about the attitude of players around the league when he was playing. Maybe there's a different reason for the NFC dominance of the period, and I'm certainly willing to entertain suggestions. The idea that the higher-tier NFC teams were more physical in the trenches seems reasonable. Any other ideas? It isn't just about the Bills and the early 90's: NFC SB dominance went from '84-'96. I rooted for the Bills all four times, BTW.

Again, it's conjecture on your side, too. We just don't know. Saying the Bills would have beaten any other NFC team except for the team they actually played seems a bit like whistling-past-the-graveyard reasoning. All I know is the NFC trend was extremely strong, so strong that most of the SB's were blowouts, and the best chance the AFC had to break the streak (1990), they still couldn't do it. As an AFC guy, I hated seeing the other conference win so many years in a row, but all I can do is tip my cap. I would have liked any NFC team that happened to survive the NFC playoffs against the Bills, and not because the Bills were lousy. When you're running a streak like that, it's smart money to bet that the streak will continue, even though all streaks eventually end. The streak continued for a long time and involved a myriad of different teams on both sides. There was something that gave the NFC winner a huge advantage in the Super Bowl during those 13 straight years. I'm not sure exactly what it was, but it held sway for a long time. I personally think DeOssie's claim sounds reasonable.

Again, you are correct in saying this is all conjecture. In the real world, the Bills only played one team, the team that happened to survive the NFC playoffs. We'll never know what would happen if another team had managed to win the NFC in that period. The point I'm making is that Reilly's opinion that the AFC "stunk" is directly related to their performances in the Super Bowl, which was generally horrendous during that time - even by the Bills who dominated the conference. They only played one close game out of four and lost it. I don't think it matters much what happened in regular season interconference play, because all bets seemed to be off when it came to the Super Bowl. The post season seemed to have a different dynamic going on. No matter which NFC team made it, it was usually a slaughter. Bears, Giants, 49ers, Redskins, Cowboys, it didn't matter. I would have bet money on the NFC every time during that period, no matter who it was. The trend was pretty strong. There has to be a reason for it, because the Bills were talented but looked bad three out of four times. They essentially looked like nearly every other AFC champ during that time.

Let's put it this way. What is your explanation for the Bills managing to play the NFC well in the regular season yet get blown out in the SB? Why should this happen, and happen in very similar fashion (with few exceptions) to every other AFC Champ during that same period? I'm gathering you think there's some reason for it, but you seem to discount DeOssie's idea without substituting one of your own. DeOssie isn't just speaking for himself, but he claims his Giants teammates felt the same way, not to mention players he knew on other teams, including the Redskins and 49ers. Are all these guys imagining it? I understand the general reason many people give as to why Super Bowls are more likely to be lopsided than other games. But this doesn't explain why the NFC manages to be on the winning side every damned time, including three lopsided times when you claim the Bills were plenty competitive with the best the NFC had to offer. Another example is the Patriots playing the Bears at Soldier Field in 1985. The Bears won, but only won by 13 points on their home field. The Bears then whipped NE by 36 points at a neutral site in SBXX. Again, playing the other conference in a competitive manner during the regular season didn't seem to translate to the post season. I'm curious why this is, and general ideas about SB blowouts don't seem to explain why the NFC always managed to win. That's why I find Deossie's idea about the difference in attitude between the confrences to be at least somewhat compelling, considering he played on some of those teams. It makes sense to me that being more physical overall would seem to matter more in the postseason when the two conference winners finally face off. I'm curious what you think about it, without limiting the discussion to just the Bills. It's pretty obvious to me there was some larger trend going on.

So you're basically telling me that the NFC winning 13 SB in a row is nothing but a statistical anomaly, says absolutely nothing about any difference or perceived difference between the conferences, and can be chalked up to luck. You're telling me that the Bills, who you claim were at the very least the second best team in football between 1990 and 1993, managed to get beat soundly three times, and still managed to lose a close game to a team that most people expected them to beat? We aren't just talking about the Bills here, either. We're talking about every single AFC Champ for 13 years straight. Former player Steve DeOssie, who played for Parcells' Giants in the 80's, claims he and his teammates used to consider a game against an AFC team to be like a "week off". This didn't mean they would automatically win or automatically be more talented than the team they were playing. But they did feel that AFC teams in general played more of a finesse game and were less physical both at the line of scrimmage and in the overall game. Even if they lost the game, they nearly always felt they wouldn't be hit as hard when playing an AFC opponent. I'm not making this up, he's talked about it regularly when the subject comes up. I tend to think this made a difference at playoff time, when the eventual NFC Champ most likely played a more physical style than the AFC Champ, and also was more likely to have to get past very physical competition during the conference playoffs. I'm not the only person to ever bring this up. Perhaps you have another theory about it, or perhaps you want to insist that it's meaningless. I'm not willing to simply dismiss it as a statistical blip, and say that the Bills and every other AFC Champ just had a bad day 13 times in a row.

For thirteen straight years, the team that survived the NFC playoff tournament beat the AFC team in the Super Bowl. This was often a severe beating, and close games were somewhat rare. That ain't conjecture. Are you telling me it's just dumb luck? The one time the AFC was supposed to win against the NFC (XXV) according to Vegas, they STILL couldn't do it. What are your conclusions about why that is the case? This streak lasted a long time and involved several teams. If the Dolphins, Pats, Broncos, Bills, Chargers, Bengals and Steelers couldn't beat the NFC even once during that time, it definitely means something. Don't tell me it means nothing. The NFC team was often a double-digit favorite during that time, and they often covered the spread easily. That's dominance of one conference over another involving the top teams, something overall interconference records won't show.

In saying the AFC "stunk", the relevant point is that there were several top teams in the NFC that were better than the best AFC team (Buffalo), and they had to get through each other to get to the SB. Whether the Bills had a good record against the NFC in the regular season might not matter a whit - depends on which teams they played, when, and where. When one conference "dominates" another, the overall interconference record can be very misleading. The fact that the NFC won the SB for thirteen straight years was not a statistical blip. There were good reasons behind it. That's what Reilly means when he says the AFC "stunk".

Mike, you aren't the only person (far from it) who seems confused about what is actually in the original King Kong, which is why I made the point originally. Re-read your original post. You seem dumbfounded as to why dinosaurs would be in the movie to begin with, when in reality they are in the new movie because they are supposed to be there. I really don't care whether the film interests you. I'm more interested in the complete lack of understanding of film history a lot of young moviegoers have these days. I find it quite maddening, frankly. This is just the latest manifestation. A guy I work with actually thought the 1976 debacle was the "original" film. Argh. No dinosaurs in that one, by the way. Just a very lame giant snake. Since I'm also entitled to my opinion, I'll try not to get overly defensive and call you a "dumbass" in return.

Am I the only person who finds it really disturbing the amount of people who don't know the details or haven't seen the 1933 King Kong, one of the iconic productions in the history of film? It was really groundbreaking and extremely important. I really want to slap my forehead every time I hear somebody blame Peter Jackson for putting dinosaurs in the movie, when Kong fighting the T-Rex is one of the most famous sequences in movie history. Sigh....

YOU DON'T GET IT. Continually. The interconference records top to bottom don't mean anything. What matters is which conference holds the top teams in each era - the teams that have a chance to go to the Super Bowl. If you were power ranking teams during the time of NFC dominance in the 80's you would list AT LEAST four powerhouse NFC teams before you would come to the first AFC team. At least. There's a reason the NFC Champ was nearly always a double-digit favorite over the AFC whipping boy. Vegas isn't stupid, and the teams backed it up. In the 70's, the only team worth a damn in the NFC was Dallas, and they could never beat Pittsburgh. Miami, Pitt and Oakland were the class of the league. That's AFC dominance, and it don't matter one whit what teams at the bottom of the standings did against other also-rans in interconference play. Irrelevant. The NFC won THIRTEEN SUPER BOWLS IN A ROW. Use your head, please. That's dominance of one conference over another. That is clearly NOT what we have now, obvious to anyone with eyes that can see. Last year, you'll find plently of people willing to argue that Philly was truly the second best team in the league. You won't find anyone with a brain who would argue seriously that Denver, Buffalo, NE or Cincy were truly the league's second-best team when they became AFC Champions in the 80's and 90's Nobody. I'm sure you can grasp what I'm getting at. SB 25 was the exception that proves the rule. It was one of the few times the AFC team was favored to win, and they STILL couldn't do it. What does that tell you? It was only after the salary cap came in that Denver was finally able to beat Green Bay and end the logjam. But even since then, The Rams and Bucs managed to win Titles, and the Rams were overwhelming favorites to win two. The AFC hasn't dominated a damned thing since the cap started. They have more SB wins than the NFC since 97, but that's nowhere close to what conferences did in years past, and you know it. It's much more balanced. Super Bowls have been more competitive overall (not always) since the cap, and that is NOT a coincidence. Again, the most competitive teams are spread out more. They aren't all stuck in one conference. New England played the second-best team in football at least twice in their three SB wins (Rams and Eagles). The Cowboys of the 90's NEVER played the second best team in the Super Bowl. The Bills and Steelers were NOT better than the Niners and Packers. But you are trying to artificially give the Cowboys more credit for beating a second-rate team in the Super Bowl, when Belichick's Pats have never played a second-rate opponent in the Super Bowl. Again, the Cowboys played close games against their toughest opponents in the NFC playoffs, and so did every other NFC team that won Titles during that time. What I'm saying is so blatantly obvious, I'm convinced you're arguing just for the sake of arguing.

You're wrong, and using the wrong numbers to back yourself up. There has been no dominant conference since the salary cap started.There just hasn't. In the 80's and 90's, you could argue that five teams were head and shoulders above the rest: Dallas, SF, Giants, Redskins and Packers. They are all in the same conference, not to mention the Bears for one year. That didn't mean that a crappy NFC team was better than a crappy AFC team, and the results should reflect that. The NFC was dominant because their TOP teams - several of them - were superior to anything the AFC offered. How the conferences competed top to bottom isn't relevant. Interconference records taken as a whole don't matter. There is no analogous situation today. You will find plenty of people willing to argue that the Eagles aren't quite as good as the Patriots, but they're possibly better than the Steelers and Colts. You won't find the same situation looking back at when the NFC dominated the big game. You're giving to much weight to blowing out an inferior team in the Super Bowl, and not enough weight to beating a team close to your own level in the Super Bowl. The laltter situation is what is happening now. The Cowboys of the 90's did have teams close to their own level, but they just had to play them before the Super Bowl instead of at the Super Bowl.

A few things: The Steelers had several key players there for all 4 Titles, including Bradshaw and Joe Greene. Are you actually giving the Niners credit for taking so long to win five? If the Patriots happen to do the same thing in fewer years, they don't qualify? The Packers won championships before Lombardi under Curly Lambeau. That's what helps cement them as a dynasty, not Favre. Lombardi's era qualifies as a dynasty all by itself. Also: The problem I have is that you're cherry-picking this one statistic, and invested it with an amount of importance that I don't think it deserves. If feel like people are responding, but not talking about the central point of the disparity or lack of disparity between the conferences. It isn't a coincidence that the NFC won 13 Super Bowls in a row. Former Giant Steve DeOssie always said that he and his teammates considered a game against an AFC team to be almost like a week off. The NFC dominance at that time was staggering. the 13 in a row was no fluke. So why are you investing blow-outs in the Super Bowl with such importance? If you come out of the dominant conference, and your opponent is the weak-sister survivor of the inferior conference, why should we be impressed by soundly beating them? That's what should happen in most cases. The salary cap has basically helped to eliminate the lopsided dominance of one conference. The result is that the SB is more likely to be competitive. I know Bills fans have a vested interest in talking up the 90's Cowboys, because the greater they are the less it reflects badly on the Bills. But we need to admit how weak the AFC was and not pretend that it doesn't matter. These days, that isn't the case. No one can argue that the Rams or the Eagles didn't belong in the Super Bowl, and even arguing the Panthers is debatable. Dominance needs to be determined by looking at the whole package, not at one piece of data that supports your argument. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that the Patriots were in the NFC and not the AFC. If they had beaten the Eagles in the Conference Championship Game 24-21, and then soundly beaten the Steelers (41-27) or the Colts (20-3) in the Super Bowl, we wouldn't even be having this discussion. But that's just the dumb luck of which team happens to be in which conference. It shouldn't reflect badly on the team that ultimately wins. The Patriots are 34-4 over two seasons. They won 21 straight. When Carolina briefly went slightly ahead of them in SB 38, it was the first time they had even trailed in a game since before Thanksgiving. Brady is 57-14 as a starter, and in the one season the Patriots didn't win the SB (2002), he still led the league in TD passes. We need to stop looking at one debatable stat of questionable importance, an instead take everything into account.

I stand corrected, but still a close game. The Bengals had their chances and were not outclassed. If the Niners are excused for allowing Cincinnati to make a comeback, I don't think NE should be penalized for the same thing. IIRC, it's the Bengals that were trying to come back to win 28-26 but couldn't score.

The margins are not an indication of dominance, as the level of compeition needs to be taken into account. The AFC was extremely weak in the 80's and 90's. You're falsely discounting that. Dominating the SB doesn't mean anything if the team you're playing doesn't even belong there, and you had a tough time winning against an excellent team in your own conference two weeks earlier. Another bad use of stats is lumping in the 85 Patriots who got schooled by the Bears in with the current team. Irrelevant. You're only doing it to make your stats look artificially better. I might agree with the Packers, but Tom Landry's Cowboys have nothing to do with Jimmy Johnson's, and the team was crappy in the interim. There's no connection but the name. Even the front office is completely different. Same thing with Bart Starr and Brett Favre. Lombardi's tenure alone was dynastic, but Favre has nothing to do with that, and he only won the SB once. Even the Steve Young 95 team doesn't have much in common with that first Montana team that beat Cincinnatti in 81. The only link is the front office. The Niners have five Super Bowls, but it took them 14 years to do it. Good for them, but to argue that that is objectively better than what NE is doing now just because you feel like saying it is where I cry foul. Another example is how the Steelers were able to outclass the Vikings, Rams and even the Cowboys. But it took them six years to win four Super Bowls, and they never won three out of four. And they always had difficulty in their own conference, especially with the Raiders and Dolphins - truly great teams that happened to be on the playoff schedule befor the Super Bowl. Again, just an artefact of scheduling and which teams play in which conference. You might want to try the Bob Ryan theory that the only truly multigenerational dynasties are the Yankees, Celtics, Lakers, Canadiens and Packers (not because of Favre, but because they won Titles before Lombardi and when you add that to Lombardi's tenure, it qualifies). I don't really see you arguing that though, since you seem to be talking up the Niners, Steelers and Cowboys. I assume your definition of dynasty is more liberal than that. I disagree that they Steelers qualify as multigenerational. They don't. They sucked for 40 years, then dominated the late 70's. They've been back to the Super Bowl once since then and lost. How on earth does that qualify? It doesn't.