Greg Bedard dealing with Playoff Level Stupidity Listening Thread

RobertWeathers · Jan 13, 2015

robbomango said:
I tried listening to them yesterday and just couldn't get through half a show, Mazz's constantly shrieking, whiney voice put's me off to an unmeasurable degree. They're like two baboons flinging verbal poo at one another.

Thanks for transcribing I always like the back and forth in these threads.

I can deal with Felger. I don't agree with most of what he says but at the very least he makes me think for a few minutes and polarizes my point of view. Thats his shtick. A buddy of mine ran into him at the Sea Dog Brew Pub in Nantucket last summer. Said he was pretty cool (I didn't believe him but he swears it to be true. "The Wood" was not around).

Mazz....the guy has a wife and small kids at home so I certainly don't want anything bad to happen to him professionally but my god....his voice is awful and he knows absolutely zero about football, basketball and hockey. He is unlistenable and has no value at all.

Bobsyouruncle · Jan 13, 2015

Brady is the reason the team won. But Brady is basically compared to himself and Rogers. If Luck or someone else did what Brady did they'd be talking about how incredible he played.

The defense was nothing special, though they came up big situationally in the fourth. Flacco had all day, plus they were creating too many penalties. The O-line was weak, running game was non-existent. Amendola came up big, but the reason this offense was #2 in the NFL is really not because of being stacked with talent.

If you named the best receivers in the league you'd get pretty far before you got to the Patriots best receiver in Edelman. Many of the playoff teams have two receivers better than any one of the Patriots. They're deep in above average guys, but when you can only put so many guys out it doesn't much matter that your guy on the bench is better then their guy on the bench. Vereen is a role player who can't go between the tackles, Blount can go between the tackles but can't catch.

In short, minus Brady the offense is middle of the road, and without a Brady they lose that game.

Fencer · Jan 13, 2015

Bobsyouruncle said:
If you named the best receivers in the league

1. Calvin Johnson (but not this past season)
2. Rob Gronkowski

Did I leave anybody out?

Bobsyouruncle · Jan 13, 2015

Fencer said:
1. Calvin Johnson (but not this past season)
2. Rob Gronkowski

Did I leave anybody out?

Gronkowski is not a WR

Sicilian · Jan 13, 2015

stcjones said:
And the sack was his mistake or bad play HOW? OL played well overall but caved on that play.....Brady had no way to avoid that bullrush!!!

There were two sacks back to back if I'm not mistaken. The first you're right, Jernigan got in so quick there was no choice. But right after that Brady had time to get rid of the ball, even if it was a throw away, and he took the sack which knocked them out of field goal range. Not a good play.

Fencer · Jan 13, 2015

Bobsyouruncle said:
Gronkowski is not a WR

You said "receiver". What's more, you evaluated the talent in the passing game without explicitly considering the tight ends.

Archeryaddict12 · Jan 13, 2015

Bobsyouruncle said:
Okay, Gronk is a TE, and at that he's the best in the NFL. But his contributions in receiving are no more special then any other person catching passes, and in simply catching passes he is not at all top 2. He's top 15 this year. As a player he can also bring a lot blocking, but when the run game produces 14 yards, even if I credit his blocking for half of those yards it's not very spectacular.

Him being a TE makes him that much higher as a receiving threat imo. The pats didn't try and run the ball. Heck Brady might have been the leading rusher. Gronk is a major mismatch and has to be doubled to be even slowed down. His hands are huge, and the fact that you don't know if he is blocking or running makes him that much more fantastic. He can be a blocker and win, or take a seam pass 70 yards. And he can make contested catches. Gronk is top 5 easily as a receiver in this league.

sarge · Jan 13, 2015

PP2 said:
You don't need to watch the all-22 to watch Kline allow 1 sack and at least 4 hits on Brady in the 2nd quarter alone.

Except that both sacks of Brady occurred before Kline came in. The second sack was the one Stork was injured on.

No sticking up for Kline. I re-watched a lot of the game and he is getting pushed back into Brady constantly which makes Brady's performance even more impressive.

PP2 · Jan 13, 2015

sarge said:
Except that both sacks of Brady occurred before Kline came in. The second sack was the one Stork was injured on.

No sticking up for Kline. I re-watched a lot of the game and he is getting pushed back into Brady constantly which makes Brady's performance even more impressive.

I don't have the ability to review the game but I seem to recollect him giving up a sack in the 2nd quarter.

Anyway, as I have said, I am holding him responsible for everything that has gone wrong under the sun since the dawn of time.

Fencer · Jan 14, 2015

Archeryaddict12 said:
Him being a TE makes him that much higher as a receiving threat imo. The pats didn't try and run the ball. Heck Brady might have been the leading rusher. Gronk is a major mismatch and has to be doubled to be even slowed down. His hands are huge, and the fact that you don't know if he is blocking or running makes him that much more fantastic. He can be a blocker and win, or take a seam pass 70 yards. And he can make contested catches. Gronk is top 5 easily as a receiver in this league.

I'd frame it more as saying that Gronk is a part-time receiver, yet he produces like one of the better full-time receivers in the league. So on the numbers, he is indeed among the best of the best.

And by the way, he was first in the league in receiving TDs in 2011, and fourth in 2014. But he's only 18th in the league in career receiving yards/game, among active players, and 31st all time, sandwiched between Reggie Wayne and Steve Smith.

rochrist · Jan 14, 2015

Archeryaddict12 said:
So let's assess all 3 of the picks. I didn't see the Detroit game. Gronk at Indy. Happened because Tom COULDNT step into his throw. Back foot lob. NOT a bad decision because Gronk was open. Bad execution from oline and Tom forced the pick. Get a pass imo

Chargers game. Again Gronk wide open. Oline fails to get rusher. Tom has to rush his throw. Brady then can't get his mechanics right, throws the pick. Again it was a result that was initiated by the offensive line. Not Brady. Again a GREAT decision, not executed fully

This last pick. Oline does well. But in a game where Brady throws 50 times, and has one pick that was a result of a bad throw. Sucks, but it happens. Don't want bad throws to happen in the playoffs, but we're all human. Again GOOD decision as Gronk was open, bad execution.

Finally, this game was won BECAUSE of Tom Brady and not in SPITE of Tom Brady. I think maybe a healthy Rodgers would be the only qb that could have done what Tom Brady did that day. I think Brady had 3 bad throws all that night, out of 50. That's 6% of his throws. Say the pats had a balanced attack and Brady threw 31 times. That isn't even 2 bad throws in a game and we are moaning about 3?

What has happened at the end of halfs have been execution problems. Not bad decision problems by Brady. I know it comes off sounding like I am defending Brady to my grave, but he did about as well as you could hope given the oline and Baltimores strength. Brady would have been a minuscule reason as to why we lost and is probably the biggest reason we are in the AFCCG.

To sum it up, had the pats lost given Brady's performance, it would have fallen on the defense AGAIN. Brady had to match Baltimore blow for blow most of the game, until the defense got some stops.

If he's under so much pressure that he can't execute the throws, then it wasn't a great decision to make those throws. Not to mention that, at least for the most recent case, they were unnecessary risks. In a tight, every point counts game with plenty of time left in the half, there wasn't any need to gamble on the big gain there when he had options wide open at 10-15 yards.

supafly · Jan 14, 2015

Fencer said:
1. Calvin Johnson (but not this past season)
2. Rob Gronkowski

Did I leave anybody out?

Brandon Marshall?

Julio Jones?

AJ Green?

Demarius Thomas?

Odell Beckham?

Antonio Brown?

Larry Fitzgerald?

Hell, you could probably argue at least 10-12 wide receivers who are clearly more talented than Julian Edelman. That's just silly (no knock meant on Edelman, b/c I think he plays with a ton of heart, and that takes him very far).

If you wish to include a broader term of the word "receivers" and count TEs, then you'd definitely be much further into the late teens by the time you got to Edelman--accounting for the likes of Graham, Gates, etc.

supafly · Jan 14, 2015

PP2 said:
I don't have the ability to review the game but I seem to recollect him giving up a sack in the 2nd quarter.

The 2 sacks came on consecutive plays. In other words, if he gave up one sack then he would likely have given up both.

The truth of the matter is that I don't believe that he gave up either, although as mentioned--he did get pushed back and manhandled plenty of times.

letekro · Jan 14, 2015

Thanks Rob and Miguel

Ivan · Jan 14, 2015

How about we all chip in and hire a Tony Mazz lookalike dominatrix for Rob next season?

ivanvamp · Jan 14, 2015

robertweathers said:
I can deal with Felger. I don't agree with most of what he says but at the very least he makes me think for a few minutes and polarizes my point of view. Thats his shtick. A buddy of mine ran into him at the Sea Dog Brew Pub in Nantucket last summer. Said he was pretty cool (I didn't believe him but he swears it to be true. "The Wood" was not around).

Mazz....the guy has a wife and small kids at home so I certainly don't want anything bad to happen to him professionally but my god....his voice is awful and he knows absolutely zero about football, basketball and hockey. He is unlistenable and has no value at all.

I don't know when it began, but there's quite a trend in recent years of putting print media guys on the radio regularly. Years ago (when I was in the business), you had, generally speaking, two types of media: print media and on-air media (TV/radio). And they were two very different types of people. The print media wrote print-style, and nobody cared what they looked like or sounded like because, well, nobody ever heard their voice or saw their face. But the radio and TV guys had to look good (in the case of TV), and they sure as heck had to have a good on-air voice and personality. Nobody cared if they could write an article for a newspaper.

Now, these print media guys with awful voices (Bradford, Mazz, Felger, Callahan, et al) are feature guys on the radio and it's horrible. John Dennis, on the other hand, whatever you think of him politically or whatever, has a great radio voice. He's a true radio guy.

RobertWeathers · Jan 14, 2015

ivanvamp said:
I don't know when it began, but there's quite a trend in recent years of putting print media guys on the radio regularly. Years ago (when I was in the business), you had, generally speaking, two types of media: print media and on-air media (TV/radio). And they were two very different types of people. The print media wrote print-style, and nobody cared what they looked like or sounded like because, well, nobody ever heard their voice or saw their face. But the radio and TV guys had to look good (in the case of TV), and they sure as heck had to have a good on-air voice and personality. Nobody cared if they could write an article for a newspaper.

Now, these print media guys with awful voices (Bradford, Mazz, Felger, Callahan, et al) are feature guys on the radio and it's horrible. John Dennis, on the other hand, whatever you think of him politically or whatever, has a great radio voice. He's a true radio guy.

I think it was the late 90s when EEI had the "Touchdown Twins" (Kevin Mannix and Ron Hobson) and then Big O started bringing in Shanks, Steve Buckley, Bob Ryan, etc. I contend that b/c of how accessible information is (web, blogs, etc) in order to ensure their listeners where receiving quality content in a more real-time fashion, the had to bring those guys in to add value to the programming.

I do respect Mazz and Bradford's baseball knowledge but their voices....fingernails on a chalkboard.

reflexblue · Jan 14, 2015

mosi said:
Was it some sort of deception?

Isn't a big part of football deception? thats why when i heard harbough say that i laughed. For example the "zone blitz" i wonder what the hell did harbough say when he first saw d lineman dropping back into coverage? Making the other team think your doing one thing when your doing another is an intergral part of the game.

Marqui · Jan 14, 2015

PP2 said:
I don't have the ability to review the game but I seem to recollect him giving up a sack in the 2nd quarter.

Anyway, as I have said, I am holding him responsible for everything that has gone wrong under the sun since the dawn of time.

Wendell gave up the sack, not Kline.

billdog3484 · Jan 14, 2015

Marqui said:
Wendell gave up the sack, not Kline.

just watching all 22.

1st sack. wendell got beat 1 on 1 by jernigan. that sack was 100% wendell. on that play, Connelly and Stork worked a double team and there was no movement.

2nd sack. Brady had clean pocket. held on to ball for about 4 seconds. more of a coverage sack, ravens only blitzed 4. the 2 interior D lineman ran into middle where Wendell, Stork and Conelly stuffed them. nobody really got to brady. brady had bolden underneath, nothing else really, shouldve dumped it to him and kept us in FG range. Thats more brady's fault than anyone

Greg Bedard dealing with Playoff Level Stupidity Listening Thread

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