Wow. IMO there's a huge, huge difference between terrible reporting -- e.g. Tomase/Walsh -- and just making a guess about the future that turns out to be way off base. One is utterly shameful and deserves to be "called out." The other is just funny in retrospect, and comes with the territory of a job that requires predicting the unknown. (That's why they play the games, right?)
If we're going to rake people over the coals for the sin of a wrong prediction, we'd better drum up equal outrage for analysts who were excessively optimistic about the Patriots. I demand a public flogging for everyone who named Jamie Collins a DPOY candidate! They were wrong, and must be held accountable!
I agree. I don't mind the guessing, but it's the level of conviction that people hold with it. They scream at the top of their lungs sometimes, swear on their mother's life, and we just can't know.
Reiss is a good example of a guy who has opinions, but offers up counter balance and is willing to admit when he's wrong. Others double down and continue their wrongness because they can't own up to it, and it colours all of their perceptions incorrectly. That's what I have issue with.
After his erratic injury plaqued 2015 did you want to pay him $3m in 2016 and count $4m vs the cap?
The cost, I don't know...I don't think it was a cost issue, and I don't know that it was a performance issue either. I think the performance was poor, but there were obvious reasons for it. I think it came down to an attitude change, maybe from all of the constant criticism. Who knows? By the end, he was doing strange things. His comments critiquing the film study were unlike the rest of his time here.
I mean, consider:
LaFell 2014 - $3M cap hit: 119 targets, 74 catches (62.2%), 953 yards, 12.9 YPC, 7 TDs
LaFell 2015 - $3.5M cap hit: 74 targets, 37 catches (50%), 515 yards, 13.9 YPC, 0 TDs
LaFell 2016 - $2.5M cap hit (with Bengals): 106 targets, 64 catches (60.4%), 862 yards, 13.5 YPC, 6 TDs
So that 2015 year with the injuries obviously sucked, but he did okay the next year with the Bungles. No guarantee he would do the same for us obviously, but shows he didn't lose 3 steps or anything. Maybe he wouldn't be worth $4M, but we spent $5.5M against the cap this season on Hogan.
Hogan 2016 - $5.5M cap hit: 57 targets, 38 catches (66.7%), 680 yards, 17.9 YPC, 4 TDs
Hogan gave us a lot of big plays in the passing game so please don't misread what I am saying here. He gives us a younger receiver just entering his prime, a deep threat, and more cost certainty beyond just this year. I'm simply saying that LaFell for $4M for that level of production isn't totally out of line. I suspect there were other issues beyond just cost.
Exactly. I don't know a single Pats fam that was happy with giving up a first round pick to the team that just stole Curtis Martin from us for the guy who bombed in Cleveland. A division rival who seemed to be on the rise at the time and with us sliding towards the bottom. This thread is ridiculous
I'm not saying people shouldn't have opinions. My issue is how far they carry those opinions, how extreme those positions can get, and how ignorant people can be to maintain those positions. And it goes beyond just football, and into all walks of life.
People don't qualify things, they think they are experts in everything. There's this ridiculous amount of overconfidence in one's ability to make predictions, and there's really no evidence of that. And Freakonomics really summed it up in one of their podcasts:
New Freakonomics Radio Podcast: The Folly of Prediction - Freakonomics
Fact: Human beings love to predict the future.
Fact: Human beings are not very good at predicting the future.
Fact: Because the incentives to predict are quite imperfect — bad predictions are rarely punished — this situation is unlikely to change.
But wouldn’t it be nice if it did?
Instead of saying this ABSOLUTELY WILL happen, or this WILL NEVER happen, people need to think more before they speak. There are so many instances of people speaking authoritatively about things they don't even understand.
At the same time, there's more and more of people filtering out real facts and evidence. They pick a position, then entrench themselves in that position. Anything that might counter that, they ignore or throw out. Then they only listen to what supports their position. Which makes them feel even more strongly about their position.
Basically, people just need to stop being ****ing idiots.
It isn't about having an opinion. As the expression goes, opinions are like assholes, everyone has one. But some assholes never stop ****ting out opinions. And maybe if we all remembered how we're just making random guesses, we'd be a little less likely to attack others, a little more likely to listen to what the other person is saying, a little bit better at thinking and reasoning, a little less reliant on blind faith. Maybe if we remembered the mistakes we made in the past with our predictions, we'd be a little more patient about rushing into repeating them again.
