Actual Pats Fan
Pro Bowl Player
- Joined
- May 26, 2016
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Redskins stuck with Riggins, wore out the Fins D and won it all.In another its Martin.
Pats did not stick with Martin, badly exposing the not-that-good Bledsoe who got eaten alive (much like his #11 predecessor at the same venue 11 years earlier) and lost.
Particularly amid endlessly continuing to give Julius Adams the Houston Antwine treatment.I'm not sure it will survive the admittance to Bill Parcells to the Pats HOF.
Indeed, it is entirely plausible that he was under pressure from ownership. See Fairbanks, Chuck.I didn't know that. Do we know that Holovak was the one to make the decision?
I don't think we'll ever know. I was lucky enough to have a nice phone conversation with his wife from Florida before he passed; if I'd known then I would have asked her about it.
Interestingly, I thought Tony was indeed pretty tough. He did get up after most of those sacks to take the next snap. When he came off the bench after Grogan got knocked out at the Jets in '85, he got a nasty cut on his face but still kept the Pats in the game with clutch throws. A year later he basically willed the team past the Rams in Anaheim, pulling a daring maneuver to gain some extra yards in the game's penultimate play, before screaming at Morgan and Fryar in the huddle, "I'm throwing that ball up there, and YOU'RE going to catch it!!!" while pointing directly at them. Irving made the walk off TD catch after Stanley tipped it.Actually Eason was a good QB who lacked a key ingredient of a GREAT one. He wasn't physically tough.
Ron Meyer was not in favor of drafting Eason, for the very reason of a lack of toughness. In Hog's defense, NOBODY was ever as tough as Grogan. The problem with Eason is exactly the same as with Bledsoe: managing a football game, reacting effectively to pressure, converting seemingly simple plays in the most critical situations, avoiding the fatal mistake and leading and inspiring the offense and by extension the entire team with poise, awareness, calm and determination separate the great quarterbacks from the ones who throw for a lot of yards but don't win the game. Flutie, Plunkett, and Grogan were loaded with that ability.
Tony was okay. Not nearly in the class of Earl Morrall. Maybe Don Strock.
He didn't screw up. He was called upon to make very few throws, but he made them count. The running game, defense and special teams carried the team in those playoffs. Berry was fooling himself when he obviously thought that could continue versus the Bears. Starting the then healthy and vastly better and more experienced Grogan and having a methodical, ball control, slow the game down game plan, to go with an opportunistic defense that did not need the extra pressure of starting a Super Bowl with an inferior kid running for his life, were some of the needed and not implemented strategies for orchestrating the historic upset it would have been.the QB who led the team through 3 very tough games to get the team to NO.
Plunkett was so obviously the real deal. The wins he did lead us to were impressive. I was not surprised at all when he succeeded with the Raiders.I often wonder about how so called QB busts like David Carr would have faired if they hadn't been fed to the dogs their first few years