NFL 2014-2015 Season: Super Bowl Champion Patriots

[ClevelandSteve]

That was a nice win. I don't want to get carried away, but the Browns are only two wins away from not having a losing season.

[Dijon Mustard]

The best thing about this game was how the Bengals' only score was a field goal at the end of a 7 play, 7 yard drive.

[Lord Raven]

not the fact that dalton had more interceptions than passer rating?

[Anacybele]

Wait, what the hell? Why are the Browns suddenly in first place in the AFC North? They literally have the exact same record as the Steelers now, even down to divisional wins and losses. They're both 6-3, won two divisionary games (Steelers beat the Browns and Ravens, the Browns beat the Steelers and the Bengals) and lost two divisionary games (Steelers lost to the Browns and the Ravens, Browns lost to the Steelers and Ravens). What makes the Browns so fucking special now? Is the NFL just giving them sympathy because it's been oh so long since they were last in this position?

EDIT: Ah, that article was misleading. Oops, my bad. The actual standings have the Steelers in "first" even though it's a literal tie. They'd be 3rd seed in the playoffs right now while the Browns would be 5th seed.

Still think your Browns have no chance to make the playoffs, Steve? :P

Edited November 7, 2014 by Anacybele

[Lord Raven]

It's to spite entitled ass Steelers fans who forget that Browns have been winning championships long before the Steelers had a single winning season, but in reality it's because you're being dumb and that's not actually what the standings are saying.

As dondon said, please do research before posting. thanks

On top of that I have absolutely no clue why you think NFL standings right now mean anything. You know there was a point halfway through 2011 when the Bengals were leading the division, the Steelers were second place, and the Ravens were third place right? Because by the end of the season it flipped so the Ravens were first, Steelers were second, and Bengals were third.

Edited November 7, 2014 by Lord Raven

[Anacybele]

Are you blind? I just did my research and looked at what the playoffs would look like if the season ended today. And it's not my fault if someone on NFL.com doesn't know how to properly write certain things in their articles.

And I'm fully aware that the Browns had championships before the Steelers did. But how many years ago was that? Yeah, several decades. Aka, it NO LONGER FUCKING MATTERS. Just like the Steelers' four Super Bowls in the 70s no longer matter. Their two Super Bowls in the 2000s don't matter anymore either. And neither will the last two weeks if the Steelers lose to another bad team on Sunday.

When did I say that the standings now meant anything? They don't. All I'm saying was that if the Steelers want to keep first, they have to keep winning. The battle between all four AFC North teams is so close that the division winner could still be any of them.

[Lord Raven]

thats literally not what you were complaining about but okay

[Anacybele]

Well, I'm admitting that that WAS misguided.

[Hawk King]

So Andy Dalton and the bengals don't just struggle in primetime games, they can't even be competitive in primetime games. Too bad for them, every playoff game is primetime. And now suddenly the Browns game doesnt look as favorable for the Bills as it did earlier in the season.

[Anacybele]

Yeah, I just hope the Ravens can handle them in the last week. The Steelers might need that.

And speaking of which, Big Ben got FedEx Air Player of the Week for the second time in a row! :D He is just so amazing lately and deserves it! Peyton Manning? Tom Brady? Pff, Ben outclasses them now! Sucks to all the fans that keep hyping Brady. Although I'd still say that Brady and Luck can compete with Ben. But as of right now, no QB is playing as well as Ben has been!

Who's the only QB ever with back-to-back six TD pass games? Ben!

Who's the only QB ever with two 500+ yard games? Big Ben, of course!

Who just trashed two great defenses and put up over 40 points on both? Big Ben!

Who are a bunch of experts, including Kurt Warner (a former Cardinals QB who had the privilege of getting beat by Ben because the Steelers played them in the SB) praising a lot now? Ben! :D Warner said that Ben is his #2 QB and places him above Brady, Manning, AND Rodgers. His #1 is Luck, but as I said, I do believe Luck can compete with Ben.

Bruce Arians, a great OC and Ben's former mentor, is now saying that Ben was always great/elite and he's glad to see that people are finally recognizing him as "a damn good QB."

Bill Cowher is saying that he's never seen Ben play better! And I have to agree with him, I've never seen Ben play like this either!

So yeah, I'm so glad he's on my team. :D GO BIG BEN!

Edited November 7, 2014 by Anacybele

[ClevelandSteve]

Still think your Browns have no chance to make the playoffs, Steve? :P

Well, we beat the Bengals 24-3, but we also lost to the Jaguars 24-6. Our remaining games are against the Texans, the Falcons, the Bills, the Colts, the Bengals, the Panthers, and the Ravens. All except for the Falcons and Panthers have at least 4 wins so far, and only the Texans, Colts, and Bengals are home games for the Browns. We'll need to win at least three of those hard games to have a shot at making the playoffs, probably more due to the fact that there are eleven teams in the AFC with at least five wins right now.

So, yeah, we still don't really have a chance.

[Anacybele]

Ah, that is a pretty tough schedule. But you just gotta believe. Even when I started feeling that the Steelers had no chance (I mean, that first game against the Ravens, the loss to the Bucs, and then getting blown out by your Browns), there was still a little part of me deep in side that continued to believe they could get to the playoffs regardless. And they've started shredding good teams!

You just never know anymore, Steve. Anything can happen these days. That's why even though the Steelers should theoretically mop the floor with the Jets, I'm still a bit wary because we could very well have another Bucs scenario. But this doesn't stop me from believing.

So don't act so pessimistic! Honestly I'd rather your Browns got to the playoffs this time than the Ravens or Bengals. They deserve it now after so many years of being...well, not good. They're finally actually good!

[-Cynthia-]

Yeah, I just hope the Ravens can handle them in the last week. The Steelers might need that.

And speaking of which, Big Ben got FedEx Air Player of the Week for the second time in a row! :D He is just so amazing lately and deserves it! Peyton Manning? Tom Brady? Pff, Ben outclasses them now! Sucks to all the fans that keep hyping Brady. Although I'd still say that Brady and Luck can compete with Ben. But as of right now, no QB is playing as well as Ben has been!

Who's the only QB ever with back-to-back six TD pass games? Ben!

Who's the only QB ever with two 500+ yard games? Big Ben, of course!

Who just trashed two great defenses and put up over 40 points on both? Big Ben!

Who are a bunch of experts, including Kurt Warner (a former Cardinals QB who had the privilege of getting beat by Ben because the Steelers played them in the SB) praising a lot now? Ben! :D Warner said that Ben is his #2 QB and places him above Brady, Manning, AND Rodgers. His #1 is Luck, but as I said, I do believe Luck can compete with Ben.

Bruce Arians, a great OC and Ben's former mentor, is now saying that Ben was always great/elite and he's glad to see that people are finally recognizing him as "a damn good QB."

Bill Cowher is saying that he's never seen Ben play better! And I have to agree with him, I've never seen Ben play like this either!

So yeah, I'm so glad he's on my team. :D GO BIG BEN!

Roethlisberger has had two really good games in a row- nice for him and the Steelers, but it's only two games. They're still behind the Patriots and Broncos, might want to cool your jets a little.

[Lord Raven]

Media is very knee jerk about QBs. Flacco had a historically good postseason and people were crowning him as a #3 QB before our offensive line, running backs, and receiver situation literally and collectively shit itself. QBs should be judged based on their production relative to talent and situation. As it stands when Ben had pressure in his face he played like crap (look at the first few series of Ravens-Steelers and the first Ravens-Steelers game) whereas Manning/Rivers/Rodgers/Brady are great at avoiding pressure situations (last Sunday was an aberration for Rivers and Manning) and Luck can function over literally any situation imagineable. Bens also has more talented receivers than Brady/Rivers/Luck (man is Hakeem Nicks a dud or what? Jesus) and was playing two very depleted secondaries (both without their best corners who effectively shut down an entire half of the field).

Well, we beat the Bengals 24-3, but we also lost to the Jaguars 24-6. Our remaining games are against the Texans, the Falcons, the Bills, the Colts, the Bengals, the Panthers, and the Ravens. All except for the Falcons and Panthers have at least 4 wins so far, and only the Texans, Colts, and Bengals are home games for the Browns. We'll need to win at least three of those hard games to have a shot at making the playoffs, probably more due to the fact that there are eleven teams in the AFC with at least five wins right now.

So, yeah, we still don't really have a chance.

I think a lot of that 4-6 wins is inflated because it seems like the AFC and NFC have played a lot of games and they haven't had many divisional games.

Most of the afcn has played 2-4 divisional games while we are standing at 5 in the first 9 weeks. I fully expected us to be 5-4 going into week 10 because we had three away divisional games.

Edited November 7, 2014 by Lord Raven

[Anacybele]

The Texans game was good too. 24 points in three minutes! Though that WAS due to a bit of luck on Kiesel's part. Yes, sometimes Ben doesn't do well under pressure and yes, he does have trouble holding onto the ball sometimes for some reason (despite that he can pump fake so well that the camera moves with the ball, wut...). But don't all QBs have their weaknesses? Peyton just got his ass handed to him. Dalton just got his ass handed to him. Brady was terrible in the beginning of the season, getting his ass handed to him by the Dolphins and Chiefs. Luck fell completely apart against the Steeler defense at times who wasn't too great before that.

I'm not arguing that they're not good QBs. They're right up there with Ben. I just think that the past three games finally let him show how good he really is. Every team and QB has up moments and down moments. It just seems that certain QBs have better up moments and worse down moments than others.

Yes, Ben has had several great receivers in his time. But that's one thing that helps show how good he is. He can't complete passes or drives if he has receivers that drop them or lose them all the time. He can't do much if his o-line doesn't protect him (much like a certain other team I root for... Poor Cam Newton...). And at the same time, Ben helps show how good his receivers are by throwing good passes to them and such.

So, really, it can be kind of hard to pinpoint when a team has good receivers, but a meh QB or meh receivers, but a good QB. The Steelers seem to have both a great QB AND great receivers, plus a decent o-line now (though still not amazing, stupid three sacks in a row. That's still wtf), so the last two games let them lay the black and gold on everybody.

Roethlisberger has had two really good games in a row- nice for him and the Steelers, but it's only two games. They're still behind the Patriots and Broncos, might want to cool your jets a little.

Oh, Ben can cool the Jets alright this Sunday... Like I said, given the last two games, and the fact that the Jets' secondary has given up more TDs this season than any other secondary, he and his receivers will rip these guys to pieces.

Edited November 7, 2014 by Anacybele

[-Cynthia-]

Luck got 400 yards and the Colts scored 34 points, "fell completely apart" is not the term I would use. Andy Dalton having a quarterback rating of 2.0 (that is not a typo) against the Browns would be completely falling apart.

Edited November 7, 2014 by -Cynthia-

[Anacybele]

I said completely falling apart AT TIMES, not all the time. :P You're right, and it's partly due to our defense not being as good as it should be. Steeler football was always more about the Steel Curtain defense than it was about a killer offense (though a killer offense helps, of course). I mean, the team is called the Steelers, named after the Steel City of Pittsburgh that once produced most of the nation's steel (and still does produce a lot of steel)! And steel is a metal, tough and hard to get through. A Steeler defense being like that makes the cool name totally worth it!

Edited November 7, 2014 by Anacybele

[Lord Raven]

Ben got destroyed by the Browns and Ravens, so what is the point you are making...? He also only put up 10 on the Jags and struggled against a Buccs team labeled "Legion of Room"... So I wouldn't put too much stock on the fact that some QBs have had one or two bad games.

Luck AFAIK has only lost one game by 17 this year - and it was a game where the offense put up 34. You tend to win more games where you put up 34 than lose them. That's definitely asking too much from anyone to match 51 points, it's exactly like the people who blamed Romo for the Cowboys-Broncos game that ended 51-48.

The other Colts losses were by 3 and 7.

Edited November 7, 2014 by Lord Raven

[Anacybele]

Ben just blew out the Ravens too though. Also, the Ravens had home field advantage in week 2. And even then, I'm pretty sure Ben has defeated them in Baltimore before. The second Browns game though, yeah, that was atrocious. But Brady and Peyton have had atrocious games this season too and they're supposed to be the best.

Also, I wouldn't say Ben struggled against the Bucs, I would say the whole team is to blame because of penalities, penalties, and did I mention penalties? Ugh. Also, the refs missed blatant game changing calls that could've made a huge difference. That game was a big fluke.

The other losses though, yeah, there's really no good excuse.

[Lord Raven]

Refs also missed a blatant PI on Vincent Jackson during Glennons first attempt at a game winning drive but I don't see you complaining about that.

At any rate, Ben has had two explosive games and a bunch of games where he didn't play as well as Brady/Manning/Rivers/Luck/Rodgers. These guys had solid and steady performances of 3-4 TDs week to week with a few goose eggs, whereas Ben has had as many bad games as good games this season. Do you not see the issue with your logic? HFA was definitely not the only reason the offense put up 6 points and 51/43 points. There are more factors to this game than the simplistic picture you are trying to paint. If Ben has one more 6 TD game and like the rest of the season is 1-2 TD games while Manning/Rodgers/Brady/Luck/Rivers have a bunch of 2-4 TD games then who are the better QBs?

And as I said Flacco spent an entire postseason not only as the best QB in football but what may have been the best performance by a QB in NFL history but that doesn't mean much in his overall body of work that season. He was still probably ranked like #10 that season.

[Anacybele]

Did I not already say that Ben's receivers and o-line were factors as well? I just feel that Ben was the biggest one, is all.

And I'd say that Ben has only had two really bad games (week 2 and the second game against the Browns) and the rest of his team had three (those first two plus the Bucs game). But they've all had three great games so far (vs Texans, vs Colts, vs Ravens). And one mediocre game (vs Jags). Brady has had two bad games as well and Peyton has had at least one. Rodgers has had at least one too if memory serves.

Trust me, I understand what you're saying and you're right in some ways. But the thing is, at his absolute best, Ben was able to produce more points and TD passes than even Brady. I do see some difference, but not much.

Honestly, I'm beginning to think now that there's no true best QB, but a group of them. That group right now being Brady, Manning, Rodgers, Luck, and Ben.

[Lord Raven]

But the thing is, at his absolute best, Ben was able to produce more points and TD passes than even Brady

And at Flacco's best he put up 5 TDs faster than anyone else in NFL history (and not only faster but faster by 12 minutes - 5 of his first 13 passing attempts went for touchdowns, 7 of his 8 incompletions were drops that would've also gone for touchdowns). He also put up more TDs in a single postseason run than anyone else in NFL History except Joe Montana and Kurt Warner (and he threw one less pick than Kurt Warner, meaning he threw zero picks). Also is the only QB who put up 4 straight 100+ passer rating games on road playoff games in the history of the NFL. Also some of those teams were like Top 5-10 in pass defense. His receiving corps was mediocre as a unit and his system was something reminiscent of Don Coryell's playbook in the early 80s so heavily outdated. If I were to take a two game sample to judge a player, I would put Flacco's divisional game against Denver and his game against Tampa, and he would actually look like the greatest QB in NFL History because of the magnitude of the conditions he faced in the Denver game and the serious lack of quality of players he's had to throw to. Tony Carter, Chris Harris, Mike Adams, Rahim Moore, and Champ Bailey is not a secondary that anyone would both like to fuck with and would ever fuck with in 2012.

But this isn't about Flacco and I'm not trying to argue Flacco is the greatest QB in NFL History or even Top 5 in the NFL today, I'm arguing that small samples don't matter, and Ben had two huge games with a mix of poor to mediocre games this season. His best game was against Tampa - which was a loss because he struggled the entire game to put up 3 TDs against a poor Buccs secondary. He struggled like hell against Jacksonville, whose secondary kinda sucks, because 10 points against one of the worst defenses in points allowed is pathetic. He struggled against a Baltimore team whose secondary also sucked ass early in the season. He struggled against the Browns trememdously. That is 3 really bad games, and then a couple of games that are quite average (namely the Carolina, first Cleveland, and Houston games).

Brady struggled against the Dolphins (who are good and many QBs are struggling in Miami), Raiders, and Chiefs but bounced the fuck back. There are statistics that show that he's thrown like 19 TDs, 1 int, and had like 70% completion since the KC game. While Ben has thrown more TDs than Brady over the span of two weeks (and in all honesty you're really delusional if you think Ben > Brady, Brady's pocket presence is second to none) he has not outplayed Brady over a span of 5 weeks. Same argument with Manning, who was actually very steady and at worst very good until the New England game where the entire team melted down. And Luck has torched every D he has faced except for the Ravens D. Rodgers had his struggles early on too but he has been steady as a rock, has thrown very very few picks, and has shown that amazing pocket presence and elusiveness that makes him the best QB in the NFL right now.

Finally, Rivers doesn't get enough love because he has the shittiest offensive line out of all of them in raw talent (for real he has been through like 4-5 starting centers this season) and he gets rid of the ball so quickly that pressure doesn't matter as much for him. He has had two bad games this season, but he was rock steady and played very, very, very well, limiting turnovers and hitting his receivers with great anticipation and accuracy prior to the Dolphins game. I would take that over a string of poor to mediocre games with two explosive games against heavily depleted secondaries. As I said, knee jerk.

Trust me, I understand what you're saying and you're right in some ways.

I'm right in more ways than you are.

Honestly, I'm beginning to think now that there's no true best QB, but a group of them. That group right now being Brady, Manning, Rodgers, Luck, and Ben.

Currently, there is a true best, and it's Rodgers. Ben doesn't belong in the same group as those other four you just listed. Edited November 7, 2014 by Lord Raven

[Anacybele]

tl;dr.

YOU don't think he belongs. But most people seem to think he does now (even if they still say Brady or someone else is better).

[Lord Raven]

"Most people"? Did you poll the entire population?

tl;dr.

Fucking sick of hearing you say this. You say shit, then I refute just about everything you say and provide arguments in favor of my position, and you go tl;dr. You know how fucking irritating this is? It's condescending and it makes you look petulant. You could ask me to make my posts shorter but then I miss every single point I want to touch upon because this isn't a simple sport to decompose. This is literally the third time you've done something like this, and I put in a decent amount of effort to prove you wrong on top of inform you and you don't give any sort of shit because you are using this thread as a soapbox and not as a means of discussion.

How about this as a simpler argument, Rivers/Manning/Brady/Luck/Rodgers have had tougher schedules than Ben and are putting up just as good if not better numbers. They get ignored constantly because the media is inherently biased in favor of teams like the Cowboys, Steelers, etc because those teams have greater fanbases. You honestly believe everything mainstream media tells you or do you just think this for no other reason than being a Steelers fan and just look to the media for confirmation bias?

Edited November 7, 2014 by Lord Raven

[Anacybele]

Uh no. Way to totally exaggerate my point. I meant that it's coming from not only experts (and I don't simply mean media, I mean actual former/current players and coaches who were/are good, like Kurt Warner, Bill Cowher, etc.), but also a lot of fans. Not just Steeler fans either. Hell, I've even seen Ravens and Browns fans praise Ben.

And if everyone is so biased towards the Cowboys and Steelers, how come they're only JUST now hyping Ben when they've previously been hyping Brady, Manning, and Rodgers a lot more?

And I wouldn't be saying "tl;dr" so much if you didn't make half your posts as long as a god damn essay. Do you know how irritating THAT is? To have to read through so much text on unrelated crap (as you said, this isn't about Flacco).

Edited November 7, 2014 by Anacybele