The Weird, Wacky and Awesome World of the NFL - General Banter thread V2

I know people have been saying Peyton's age has really showed these last two years, but that screenshot of the youtube video is jarring!

Why does every second special teams highlight ever seem to be against GB?

baby and crumble wrote: »

Cos for the last while our special teams have been pretty darn terrible?

But I thought special teams "are not football"... so how come it has had such an impact on some of our results (I'm looking at you, NFC Championship game)?




Didn't mean that as a swipe at you, just a major personal gripe. Funny how the Patriots put a lot of effort into ST and are consistently among the top teams in the league... yet even a few days ago, some of the NFL media were baulking at the idea of tagging Gostkowski, simply because he is a kicker.

The same goes for how some immediately see it as either a joke or even an insult when Steve Tasker, the greatest special teamer of all time, is brought up. Not like he was one of the most important players on a team that went to four straight Superbowls or anything... :P

Corvus Maximus wrote: »

The comments about Gost just shows you the stupidity of some media types. Being a very reliable strong & accurate kicker, against the strong winds in Gillette is nothing to be scoffed at or underestimated imo. Belichick has always put an equal emphasis on ST's than he does on the defensive & offensive components of the game. A lot of teams make the mistake of treating ST's as a chore, the Pats do the very opposite and I think it pays off.

Not many teams would keep a guy like Matthew Slater on the roster, he's a WR with one career catch for 46 yards in seven seasons. But on ST's he is simply brilliant and he is probably the most influential ST player in the league. He has made so many huge ST plays down the years, I wouldn't know where to start. Now NFL Total Access will probably laugh at his lack of gaudy career stats as a WR when he retires. But his contribution on ST's has been immeasurable and will go largely unsung.

The PAckers also had Jarrett Bush, who trailed off a bit the last year or two (he went 31 this spring) but was an exceptional special teamer for a decade - I would agree Slater has been the best, but Bush could have pushed for #2. Despite being one of the worst CBs in the league for years, he was held on to (later developing into a 'just barely ok' #5/6 CB) and it often paid back well, as at times we have had glaring holes in other areas. Likewise with our long snapper Brett Goode, who has possibly been the best in the league over the last 8-10 ears (don't think he has botched one single snap in his pro career). Yet every offseason, you would hear a murmur about getting rid of these guys for a 'completely raw, all upside' corner (read: excellent athlete, not a footballer player) or 'someone who can actually play on offense if required' in relation to Goode.

But then we get idiots like this...


At 1:40, you get a guy specifically saying he will never vote for a special teamer on the basis that he would only vote for "an every down player" and not "a guy who plays 5 or 6 downs a game". Two things
1. I hope he has never voted for almost any player in NFL modern history then, because the number of 'every down players' over the last 15-20 years I can remember consists of: Deion Sanders, Deion Branch (was it Branch? I remember a Pats player playing 'both ways' quite a bit, a little over a decade back).

2. Does this guy even watch the sport? No seriously, does he? How often do you see "5-6" special teams plays in a whole game (as Tasker played everything but FGs and XPs, as best I know). Given that the kickoffs would make two, you would need it to be a 3-2 or 7-0 final scoreline with zero punts, just endless turnovers for what would be a game that would surely last hours and hours and hours on end.

I seem to rant about this a few times every off season but it really is baffling the level of sheer disrespect that special teamers get from their own sport. And the constant, stubborn, frankly childish refusal to except being wrong by teams that ignore ST over and over and over, and get stung over and over and over as a result of it.