My take on ALL the drops yesterday.

[Rawky77]

The conditions were the same for both teams so why did the Jets receivers make so many more catches, with much fewer opportunities i might add, then the Pat's superior receiving core?

My thoughts while watching the game were that a lot of the drops were in fact caused by TB's superior velocity and rotation on the ball.

Pennington's weaker arm and softer passes were actually, in this one instance in all of history, to his receivers being able to catch the ball due to the conditions.

Now this may be simply looking for excuses but many of the drops yesterday were more like ricochets rather then receivers mishandling the ball.

Anyone else have an opinion?

 

[xmarkd400x]

There is some sense in that. A noodle-armed throw is less likely to slip through a recievers hands than a typical Brady 2-seamer.

 

[PatsfanGlo]

My take on this is that it was bit of lack of concentration and cold affecting receivers hands. Can't really fault them too much though imo. I bet timing of route running was bit off with field condition.

 

[sieglo]

Pats were running deeper routes than the Jets. The deeper the throw, the longer the ball is in the air, the more it is affected by the wind and rain, the harder it is to catch.

 

[Rawky77]

Pats were running deeper routes than the Jets. The deeper the throw, the longer the ball is in the air, the more it is affected by the wind and rain, the harder it is to catch.

i will agree we threw more deep balls then the Jets but i saw a lot of crossing, out and slats dropped that were not caught when they were really good throws from a location aspect.

 

[hwc]

Parcells talked about throwing in the wind last night on ESPN and the impact drops had on many games Sunday.

The Tuna said that a well thrown ball cuts through the air fine for the first part of its trajectory. However, as it approaches the receiver on a windy day, it starts behaving like a knuckleball -- moving around in unpredictable ways. The receiver has to constantly readjust to the ball, just like a catcher trying to catch a knuckleballer. It's the last second "dancing around" of the ball as it arrives that leads to all the drops. It's not the actual position of the ball that makes the catch difficult, but the fact that the ball is arriving in a slightly different place than the receiver calculated just a split second earlier.

Randy Moss described exactly the same challenge after the windy Baltimore game. The receiver is timing everything (the jump, the catch, the body position) based on an assessment of the ball's trajectory. When the trajectory changes at the last moment due to the wind, it makes catching the ball difficult.

 

[ShrewBeer]

i dont believe the weather had much to do with the passing game sunday. if you can, go back and watch the film. brady was so far off it was nuts. a few times he had more than 4 seconds and threw at an open reciever, and still could not hit him. a few times he even looked down moss the entire play, then threw to him when he was not open. this is very uncharachteristic of brady, but if you watch film from his other "fart games" in december, you will see the same thing. he'll bounce back, no worries here.
the recievers have been dropping a lot of balls lately though, and im not sure why. this is two weeks in a row with more than 7 drops