2013 NFL Playoffs

Araysar_sl said:

Statistically Flacco had a worse season this year than 2010 and a worse W/L record too.

You're not seeing an improved Flacco, you're seeing a Flacco who got lucky a few times this postseason when normally he wouldn't in the last 5 years.


Game winning bomb past a broncos secondary that completely fucked up the coverage to send the game into over time for a win? Flacco was less than a minute away from being one and done in the playoffs, again.

49ers will make Flacco remember who he really is again, his luck is about to run out. Evil Flacco is about to return to claim his rightful throne.

Click to expand...

Look I agree completely they got all the breaks in that game. You take away the lucky Hail Mary and his stats look very pedestrian over that game (not to mention the extra quarter). He's still got 8 TD's versus 0 picks and beat manning and Brady on the road. I think he gets a little more respect after this playoffs, win or lose in the Super Bowl. I'll be the first one to expect him to have a clunker eventually, but he's done enough to earn a little more respect in my book.

There's obviously no way to know for sure how he'll play against the Ravens, but Kaepernick's 2 best games of his career have been their 2 playoff games. They weren't playing against great defenses, but take away the first quarter of both games where the offense started slow, and they've been insane with Kaepernick and Gore. 8 touchdowns, 1 field goal, 1 missed field goal, 1 fumble at the 1, and1 punt(other than the one at the end of the game vs. Atl). Keeping his poise down 17 points in a swarming Atlanta dome was amazing.

BurnemWizfyre_sl said:

As much as I dislike Ray Lewis, I hope he wins because Ed Reed needs a ring.

Click to expand...

Fixed that for you.

I actually hate Ray Lewis so much, I'm rooting for the 49ers, even though all you fucking bandwagon 49ers fans piss me the hell off.

This is honestly the worst possible Superbowl.

Itlan_sl said:

I actually hate Ray Lewis so much, I'm rooting for the 49ers, even though all you fucking bandwagon 49ers fans piss me the hell off.

This is honestly the worst possible Superbowl.

Click to expand...

Worse then Atlanta vs New England would have been? You get the Patriots and a team nobody gives a shit about. That would have been soooo amazing.

Commander Vimeseh_sl said:

Worse then Atlanta vs New England would have been? You get the Patriots and a team nobody gives a shit about. That would have been soooo amazing.

Click to expand...

Yes. I wouldn't have cared if Brady got his 4th or Ryan got his first. But Ray Lewis, getting another? Or Kaeperbro leading the fucking 49ers to the promise land? Ugh.

Araysar_sl said:

Statistically Flacco had a worse season this year than 2010 and a worse W/L record too.

You're not seeing an improved Flacco, you're seeing a Flacco who got lucky a few times this postseason when normally he wouldn't in the last 5 years.

Click to expand...

This. Merrith, you are trying to credit someone as improved because they are on a lucky streak when their overall stats point to no growth or slight regression. This is not even broaching the performance of the other 20 starters, the backups, and coaches/playcalling that contributes to a QB's success.

Cathan_sl said:

So I'm guessing Ravens fans are happy with Caldwell as OC so far? I haven't heard any Ravens fans bitch about the play calling and well... Ravens have been winning when it counts...

Click to expand...

Well the team announced that he's the OC for next year. I'm not going to go all homer crazy on Joe here but the people who have been saying that Cameron was holding the offense back more than Flacco are looking correct so far. Remains to be seen but there is certainly plenty of talent on the offense even if Joe's only a top 15 QB over the course of his past and future career. Joe has been rolling out more. The recievers have gone in motion more. We have attacked the middle more and at better times. No more bone headed 3rd and short playcalling. Caldwell has stuck with the run and maintained balance at times when Cam would have had Rice sitting on the bench. We haven't gone into needless panic mode when we get scored on and haven't turtled up and played terribly conservatively as soon as we get a three point lead. So yeah, its the same playbook but a noticeably smarter use of it so far. Too soon to tell for sure but we are all encouraged.

I thought when we brought him in that maybe he was a back up plan in case we got to the point this year that Cam had to go mid season, we would have someone in house to audition for the job as an interim. Sure he came in with a reputation as a good QB coach, but in hindsight he seems to have been Cameron's understudy as well.

You still have to give some credit to execution as well, no more season killing dropped balls this time, but ever since Caldwell took over as OC the playcalling, game plan, and second half adjustments have all improved.

It also greatly helped when we reshuffled the O line at the end of the season, mostly due to injury. Put Oher back on the right where he belongs, our slam dunk draft pick Osemele at our weak LG slot, and an aging but now fresh and healthy McKinnie to show us what our line can look like with an actual bona fide left tackle. If our pick for C works out and we can find a franchise LT somewhere, our line could actually have some long term stability for a change. That alone probably had as much to do with our postseason success as anything. I was shocked that we didn't get blown the fuck up by Wilfork again this year.

Araysar_sl said:

Dont forget that Patriots eked out 13 points in 1 game. I can't even remember the last time they had so few points.


edit: looked it up. the last time pats scored 13 pts or less was September 20, 2009 against the Jets when they lost 9-16.

Click to expand...

They could have put up 27 and they still would have lost. They had 6 trips inside the Ravens 25 yard line, their own fault they didn't put more points up.

mimirswell_sl said:

This. Merrith, you are trying to credit someone as improved because they are on a lucky streak when their overall stats point to no growth or slight regression. This is not even broaching the performance of the other 20 starters, the backups, and coaches/playcalling that contributes to a QB's success.

Click to expand...

I was quite vocal and posted a lot of stats about how Flacco had gotten lucky in the past, and I agree for all the credit he got for the Denver game, I really didn't feel like he outplayed Manning until the final pick ruined Manning's game (as his other pick should have been PI and 7 less points for the Ravens). But when you look at his body of work in this playoffs it's been better than he's been in any other year, he had his best career year in passing yards while barely playing in the final game of the season. Is he elite? No, I don't think so, but it's pretty clear he's good enough to help the Ravens win a Super Bowl.

mimirswell_sl said:

This. Merrith, you are trying to credit someone as improved because they are on a lucky streak when their overall stats point to no growth or slight regression.

Click to expand...

Post season stats. Explain again how the last two years have been worse than his first two despite less turnovers, more total yards, and SIX more TD's in 2010/2011, with one less game played than in 2008/2009? How is this regression in your world?

Merrith_sl said:

I was quite vocal and posted a lot of stats about how Flacco had gotten lucky in the past, and I agree for all the credit he got for the Denver game, I really didn't feel like he outplayed Manning until the final pick ruined Manning's game (as his other pick should have been PI and 7 less points for the Ravens). But when you look at his body of work in this playoffs it's been better than he's been in any other year, he had his best career year in passing yards while barely playing in the final game of the season. Is he elite? No, I don't think so, but it's pretty clear he's good enough to help the Ravens win a Super Bowl.

Click to expand...

I agree with everything you said here. He is having a great playoff run and had the Ravens lost either of those games, you could not point to Flacco as being at fault. I just wanted to be clear that having a good/great run in the playoffs is not indicative of skill because of the small sample size. Obviously great players are more likely to go on this type of run than mediocre players but Bayesian statistics would indicate based on the rest of his season (and his career actually) that this is an outlier, not indicative of him being elite or even moving towards greatness. If the next season he continues to put out these kinds of statistics, we would have to re-evaluate.

Famm_sl said:

Post season stats.

Click to expand...

Here is what those stats look like condensed and then extrapolated into a single season:

GP: 12 -> 16
CMP: 185 -> 247
ATT: 340 -> 454
CMP%: 54.4
YDS: 2385 -> 3180
TD: 16 -> 21
INT: 8 -> 10.5
FUM: 2 -> 3

Oh, it looks slightly worse than his average season over the last few years (mostly due to how bad his first season playoff was). Two-three games together extrapolated to mean anything is pretty pointless, you can find hundreds of instances from almost any quarterback where they go on terrible or amazing runs over two-three games.

This whole Buccaneers - Oakland Super Bowl thing is insane.

And here's regular season. I'm not really seeing regression here either. If anything, throw out his rookie year and he's been consistently the same QB every year. Obviously not the best stats in the league or top five, but serviceable. Going forward to next year it should show us how much of our inconsistency was Flacco and how much was Cameron.

Famm_sl said:

And here's regular season. I'm not really seeing regression here either. If anything, throw out his rookie year and he's been consistently the same QB every year. Obviously not the best stats in the league or top five, but serviceable. Going forward to next year it should show us how much of our inconsistency was Flacco and how much was Cameron.

Click to expand...

I've said same or slight regression (Pass %). I think he's a remarkably consistent Quarterback and gets unfair treatment and I happen to agree with you that he's not elite but close enough that it doesn't matter if the defense remains above average.

mimirswell_sl said:

Oh, it looks slightly worse than his average season over the last few years (probably due to the tougher schedule of playoff competitors).

Click to expand...

Yes, didn't we hear the "tougher teams in the playoffs" excuse for Manning's post season stats last week? So if Manning can be forgiven for stinking in the playoffs, shouldn't someone who's postseason records have gotten better every year be getting credit for being a playoff winner? For Manning its the tough opponents making him go Brett Favre, but with Flacco its a fluke that he keeps winning and getting better stats each playoff appearance. Totally luck. Not that we ever get knocked out by the eventual superbowl winners or anything. Not as if we sent him into Pittsburgh at the height of their recent mini dynasty every year.

Famm_sl said:

Yes, didn't we hear the "tougher teams in the playoffs" excuse for Manning's post season stats last week? So if Manning can be forgiven for stinking in the playoffs, shouldn't someone who's postseason records have gotten better every year be getting credit for being a playoff winner? For Manning its the tough opponents making him go Brett Favre, but with Flacco its a fluke that he keeps winning and getting better stats each playoff appearance. Totally luck. Not that we ever get knocked out by the eventual superbowl winners or anything. Not as if we sent him into Pittsburgh at the height of their recent mini dynasty every year.

Click to expand...

Sorry, I wasn't part of the people posting about Manning nor did I actually happen to read any of it. I should also clarify slightly (I did once already but it was nuanced). Right now, until we have a larger body of games to study, its much more likely that his performance is luck rather than a sudden increase in skill. Next season, we could come back to this and make a much firmer conclusion about this series. If I was going to bet, I would bet on luck but I wouldn't say it with certainty.

I can accept luck more in the Denver game but not last week. Obviously its too soon to tell but there are a bunch of people hell bent on giving him no credit whatsoever despite him making every throw he needed to in the second half Sunday and NOT a bunch of PI's or lucky bombs downfield. You can call the long ball luck and yes there's an aspect of it, but our air Coryell offensive playbook is partially built on the deep threat and Flacco's arm lends itself to taking those shots multiple times a game. I honestly think the offense was used more efficiently with Cameron gone, from not just Joe but down to every other player on that side of the ball. But its too small a sample size to tell on the whole just as with the passing stats specifically.