Offseason thought: Is Brady still one of the league's elite QBs?

[Fencer]

Happy April Fool's Day!

To be clear -- this was not a serious question.

 

[aluminum seats]

Glad you did this with something harmless, instead of some moron posting that Brady hurt himself or something.

 

[Fencer]

Glad you did this with something harmless, instead of some moron posting that Brady hurt himself or something.

The goal is to fool people without them feeling bad about having been fooled.

 

[WaterfallJumper]

I'd take Johnny Football and RG333 over him right now.

 

[Tony2046]

Happy April Fool's Day!

To be clear -- this was not a serious question.

HOW DARE YOU QUESTI............ OH. d%#*!@t. You got me.

 

[Flash]

Tebow should have won the starting job when he was on the roster.

 

[Ross12]

I don't know dude, I think this is the season that the torch is passed to Andrew Luck. I mean it has to happen eventually right? The media keeps telling me so.

 

[Hammer of Thor]

You know what, I think Roger Goodell has been unfairly assaulted by this community here. Roger's just trying to get it right. Brady should just accept his suspension and admit that he cheated. Then Goodell can finally fully concentrate on noble causes like concussion research; he's already proven this is a core value and passion of his through the award that he earned.

 

[1960Pats]

Now that Peyton has retired Tom Brady finally moved to the top.

 

[1960Pats]

The goal is to fool people without them feeling bad about having been fooled.

Someone should have told that to the pranksters who set up a fake public works work-site in NYC and jack-hammered a trench across the street and then took off. I couldn't find the info on it but I remember it being discussed many years ago on the Johnny Carson Show.

 

[WaterfallJumper]

Someone should have told that to the pranksters who set up a fake public works work-site in NYC and jack-hammered a trench across the street and then took off. I couldn't find the info on it but I remember it being discussed many years ago on the Johnny Carson Show.

This has happened several times around the world. People just don't question "official" looking personnel. Somehow, I can't help but draw a parallel to Goodell; no authorization, creates a mess, and doesn't have to take responsibility for his actions.

 

[RobertWeathers]

Damn. I was in the mood to start shredding souls....

 

[Froob]

I don't know dude, I think this is the season that the torch is passed to Andrew Luck. I mean it has to happen eventually right? The media keeps telling me so.

I think he might be good one day. For a mediocre team like the Colts, huge blow to have their best QB retire. Wonder if Hasselbeck might pull a Favre.

 

[Ross12]

I think he might be good one day. For a mediocre team like the Colts, huge blow to have their best QB retire. Wonder if Hasselbeck might pull a Favre.

Hasselbeck isn't kinda guy to do that. He's already got his gig set up at ESPN. He will be happy doing that.

 

[PatriotsReign]

Happy April Fool's Day!

To be clear -- this was not a serious question.

You got me....call me sucker!

 

[1960Pats]

This has happened several times around the world. People just don't question "official" looking personnel. Somehow, I can't help but draw a parallel to Goodell; no authorization, creates a mess, and doesn't have to take responsibility for his actions.

Unfortunately, Fraudell isn't an April fools joke. He's the real McCoy.

 

[Tony2046]

Happy April Fool's Day!

To be clear -- this was not a serious question.

Funny but understandable that you felt the need to add the disclaimer.

 

[Joker]

you fooled me...I was loaded for bear when I opened this thread...bastich!

 

[The Brandon Five]

Someone should have told that to the pranksters who set up a fake public works work-site in NYC and jack-hammered a trench across the street and then took off. I couldn't find the info on it but I remember it being discussed many years ago on the Johnny Carson Show.

They stole that bit from William Horace de Vere Cole (Neville Chamberlain's brother-in-law), who got Neville to help him with a similar prank:

'Downton' Was Right Neville Chamberlain's Family Prankster

And, though it wasn’t mentioned in his remembrance, the prank in which Downton claims Chamberlain participated was real too—though some accounts say that Cole and his friends didn’t dig their own trench across one of London’s busiest intersections, but rather directed a crew of workers to do so.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/01/opinion/01davis.html?pagewanted=2&ref=april_fools_day

Wearing workman's clothing he set up barriers on Piccadilly Circus and tore up the road while hoodwinked policemen rerouted traffic.

You might know of him as "Old King Cole", who pulled off the Dreadnought hoax and others (from the Times Op/Ed above:

APRIL FOOLS' DAY leaves a lot to be desired. No one gets a day off work when it falls on a weekday. And work is harder when you find yourself doing whatever you do with your shoelaces tied together.

But the real problem, as the other spring holidays make clear by contrast, is that there's no personality attached to April Fools' Day. Just look at the celebrations you can build around an Irish missionary or a somnolent rodent, to say nothing of a messiah or a plague-wielding patriarch. What April 1 needs is a patron saint of the practical joke.

Fortunately, there's a clear choice for the job. It's hard to say whether the Anglo-Irish prankster Horace de Vere Cole's birth in May 1881 really occurred at Blarney, in County Cork, as he would later maintain. But the claim was (as James Frey said to Oprah Winfrey) "essentially true."

Cole's family must have seen his foolish streak early on, and it seems they tried to squash it with education, first at Eton and later at Cambridge. But Cole's inner jester only flourished. At Cambridge, for example, when Cole and his friend Adrian Stephen learned that the Sultan of Zanzibar was touring England, they had themselves made up in "oriental" garb and sent a telegram to the mayor, announcing the sultan's imminent arrival.

The Cambridge town clerk met their train at the station and escorted the royal party, with full pomp, to the Guildhall, where the mayor gave them a formal reception. Cole and Stephen spent the day touring the town and its colleges, dodging a retired missionary who tried to speak with the sultan in his native language. Cole, posing as the sovereign's bilingual uncle, finally informed the woman that she was not permitted to address the sultan unless she wanted to join his harem.

When the Cambridge entourage finally ushered the two back to the station, there was nothing left to do but hike up the skirts of their costumes and dash away through the crowd.

The Sultan of Zanzibar episode was but a dry run for a much bigger escapade a few years later, when Britain and Germany were engaged in an arms race that would soon flare into war. In 1906, the British Navy launched the Dreadnought, a fast, heavily armed behemoth that changed naval warfare. Its awesome power was the focus of attention abroad, just as its shocking expense was a point of debate at home. In 1910, Cole decided it was worth a look.

He recruited a crew of pranksters from his Bloomsbury set, including Stephen, the painter Duncan Grant, and Stephen's sister Virginia, later Virginia Woolf. Posing as a member of the Foreign Office, Cole then wired the Admiralty to announce that the Emperor of Abyssinia would soon arrive to inspect the Home Fleet.

Virginia, Grant and a few others were made up in beards and blackface, and the group boarded the train for Weymouth, where the fleet was docked. On the way down, Stephen, who would play the role of translator, worked up a few words of Swahili from a missionary grammar, on the assumption that one African language would sound like another to the officers of the British Navy.

Once again Cole's party was met by an official entourage, this time in full military regalia. The emperor was invited on board the Dreadnought and shown the ship's innovations. Stephen, who had already forgotten his Swahili, carried off the translator's duties by garbling the pronunciation of Greek and Latin passages from Homer and Virgil.

After inspecting the honor guard and watching the guns swivel for a while, the party declined lunch on the ground that, as Stephen later put it, "the religious beliefs of Abyssinia made it impossible for the royal family to touch food unless it was prepared in quite special ways." As the royal party disembarked, the Navy bandmaster, explaining that the music for the Abyssinian national anthem was unavailable, launched into the Zanzibar anthem, a more appropriate choice than he knew.

The prank started to unravel some weeks later. Some reports maintain that the Navy investigated after a young officer petitioned for permission to wear on his uniform a medal Cole had presented him. It's more likely that Cole himself sent the story to The Daily Mirror, along with a photo of the emperor and his party. It's unclear where the Mirror reporter got the idea that the fake Abyssinians had used the phrase "Bunga, bunga," but after the account appeared, the words soon turned up in music hall songs, and boys used them to taunt naval officers on the streets. Although the Navy never took official action against the hoaxers, a group of officers showed up at Cole's house and gave him a ceremonial whipping.

According to Virginia Woolf, when the real Emperor of Abyssinia arrived in London weeks later, wherever he went, "the street boys ran after him calling out 'Bunga, bunga.' " And when the emperor asked if he could look at the British fleet, the first lord of the Admiralty "replied that he regretted to inform his majesty that it was quite impossible."

 

[Fencer]

When I attended Ohio State, it was on the quarter system, and April 1 fell the first week of classes. I posted a note on the door to one of my classes saying it had been canceled. I borrowed the materials for the prank from a professor who was one of my advisors, so I figured I had some cover if everything went south ...