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I don't know what to think about the Panthers just yet. They have some guys who could be absolute studs at important positions on both sides of the ball, and the huge question marks everywhere else. They could go out and trash the opposing team's QB with their pass rush and stuff everything with their great front 7, or they could get their secondary picked apart every game. Stewart, Williams and Newton could combine together to be the best rushing team in the NFL, or they could drop off the planet from their injuries and a weaker OL. The WRs could be a huge improvement (because it couldn't get that much worse), or somehow they could be that much worse because chemistry is a thing and Cam hasn't practiced much. But hey, I'm looking forward to it. I like playing the Bucs, because we always get fired up for them. Obviously it's not the same as back when both teams were good and we had those players who seemed to hate each other, but they're still one of our biggest rivalries.
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Sep 6, 2014 08:00
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Slowpoke! posted:I don't know what to think about the Panthers just yet. They have some guys who could be absolute studs at important positions on both sides of the ball, and the huge question marks everywhere else. They could go out and trash the opposing team's QB with their pass rush and stuff everything with their great front 7, or they could get their secondary picked apart every game. Stewart, Williams and Newton could combine together to be the best rushing team in the NFL, or they could drop off the planet from their injuries and a weaker OL. The WRs could be a huge improvement (because it couldn't get that much worse), or somehow they could be that much worse because chemistry is a thing and Cam hasn't practiced much. I'd go with the line that you should assume younger guys get better but the team as a whole regresses, unless Cam actually improves this year. Secondary should be worse, front seven should actually probably improve because their best players are all young and still probably in the upward progress stage. The offense should still be bad, and probably worse. They went from horrible selection of WRs to a worse selection + a rookie who they basically want to become Jimmy Graham. That's not bad, assuming Cam can look off defenders or the offense is sophisticated enough to create the gaps they want, or that they want to take the player who is very likely their most talented receiver and put him in the slot. The Panthers are going to be a nightmare when they shed their horrible contracts, but they should have come in a favorite for the South. Still, I'm nervous about just how great the front seven is, and in the long run that's only tempered by the size of the contracts those guys are all going to get the second Carolina shed their horrible dead weight and basically has to start over (of course my team will be in an identical situation and then the Bucs/Atlanta will re-emerge for a few horrible years). Carolina's backs combine to be the best short yardage team in the league, but their meager O Line limits second level blocking and a general strategy of "don't let the QB take 20 hits a game" (a strategy they seem pretty bad at, really) means the threat doesn't always have teeth. I think I'm with you though - with the murmurs of Cam possibly sitting the opener because of the rib injury (not likely), I found myself wondering who I wanted to win that game. I want the better team to lose, but I'm not sure which of the teams is better, or how good either team is. I know what I expect from individual players, but as a whole I don't know what the final products look like. For the matchup: I think on paper the Bucs offense has a good counter to the front seven if they take the route that Seattle use on the Saints three years ago: Line up in the shotgun with receivers set all the way at the sidelines and a single tailback. Get more receivers on the field and spread the LBs out, so that you can make the gaps large for them. Answer pressure with valves to your good RB who excels in space, and if you see your WRs are in man one on one throw it up and high to them because they're bigger than your DBs. McCown can actually do that, so they might be able to pull it off. A good D line is a counter for everything except screen passes, which the LBs reject (though Martin is really really good at screen passes). Also: throw at whoever Harper is covering. Putting Harper in the box to blitz with the current front seven feels stupid, because it just creates a gap on a defense that had no gaps at all. It's not like Harper can do anything else, though, so whatever. As for Carolina's offense: all defenses are a good counter, so and McCoy is going to annoy their line, and their defense (while not Carolina good) is really good. They don't pass rush well, but they're great against the run. Revis is gone but Verner is preeeeetty good - probably about the 7th best DB in the league and improving. Revis looked worse last year because he was kept in zone (which we/media mocked them for way more than they mock Seattle for doing essentially the same thing, despite Schiano doing it for similar reasons and getting pretty good results without anywhere near the cast Seattle has). I have no idea who Verner will cover, or what they'll do specifically against Carolina other than try to contain Cam and get coverage sacks.
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Sep 6, 2014 09:43
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Slowpoke! posted:I don't know what to think about the Panthers just yet. They have some guys who could be absolute studs at important positions on both sides of the ball, and the huge question marks everywhere else. They could go out and trash the opposing team's QB with their pass rush and stuff everything with their great front 7, or they could get their secondary picked apart every game. Stewart, Williams and Newton could combine together to be the best rushing team in the NFL, or they could drop off the planet from their injuries and a weaker OL. The WRs could be a huge improvement (because it couldn't get that much worse), or somehow they could be that much worse because chemistry is a thing and Cam hasn't practiced much. 7-9 to 9-7. Next year they have some cap relief and one more gettleman draft.
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Sep 6, 2014 13:01
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Intruder posted:Why do the posters at Hogs Haven think the Skins secondary is elite and I don't see anyone here say that? The answer is in the question. quote:posters at Hogs Haven
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Sep 6, 2014 13:18
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I don't go there so I can't speak on that board. The secondary is still poo poo though. Hall is serviceable and makes plays and is not Josh Wilson. Yes he gets beat but some games he can be terrific. David Amerson is who everyone has hopes for. He has speed and size but he still gets killed on double moves. Word from training camp was that he has improved so time will tell. The safeties spots are huge red flag/question marks. Meriweather is out for the next 2/4 game I have no idea. He won't be in Houston regardless. In the free spot you have ancient rear end Ryan Clark who at this point is an upgrade over everyone they have had the spot since Sean Taylor. He probably has zero range at this point and I doubt he lasts the season. Bacarri Rambo will be starting in the strong spot and he was God awful last year. Couldn't figure out how to get to a ball carrier since he took the worst angles and if he got there he couldn't tackle. It was amazing. Coaches have been optimistic about him but from what I saw in the preseason he still can't tackle. They grabbed some Nacho dude from Denvers scrap heap, he might see some action but who knows what he'll bring. I heard he an in the box safety. Yay.
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Sep 6, 2014 13:59
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Duke Ianacho ruled a lot for Denver last year, glad I can actually root for him now
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Sep 6, 2014 14:09
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For future reference, it's Duke Ihenacho 
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Sep 6, 2014 14:22
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the point is he owns
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Sep 6, 2014 14:23
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brandino posted:Re: the Panthers, is it likely they run a lot of 2 TE sets? (In part to make up for blocking with the crappy o-line, and in part to give Cam a quick pass option). I don't remember seeing a lot of that in the preseason, but they did also sign a shitload of TEs including Ed Dickson. Brandon Williams is a mountain of a man at tight end. He's gonna see lots of playing time. Unless he shits the bed he will eventually take over Dicksons spot
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Sep 6, 2014 17:07
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Duke Ihenacho is great as long as you don't expect him to actually cover anybody. He's awesome at stopping the run and tackling people after they make a catch though.
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Sep 6, 2014 17:52
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Vic Tafur @VicTafur 4h #Raiders looking to score TD in first quarter in Week 1 for first time since Michael Bush did it Sept. 14, 2009. wow that's depressing (and the streak will continue I have to imagine because Jets)
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Sep 6, 2014 20:43
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Chris de Sperg posted:Vic Tafur @VicTafur 4h How does anyone lose to this team
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Sep 6, 2014 20:48
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Chris de Sperg posted:Vic Tafur @VicTafur 4h If you score it will be on special teams or defense, so the streak will continue for the offense.
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Sep 6, 2014 20:50
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There was an awful streak a few years ago where the team hadn't had a kneeldown to end/win the game for like 5 seasons straight
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Sep 6, 2014 20:52
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Thats not even that long a streak, four Week 1 games? The Jets went like 18 straight regular season games without a 1st quarter TD from 2010-11.
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Sep 6, 2014 20:58
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Ozu posted:Thats not even that long a streak, four Week 1 games? The Jets went like 18 straight regular season games without a 1st quarter TD from 2010-11. As far as I can tell, the Browns haven't scored one yet since they've come back.
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Sep 6, 2014 21:09
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The browns have started 0-1 like 12 years in a row or something
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Sep 6, 2014 21:17
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Something like that, only Browns QB to win week 1 since coming back was Jeff Garcia in '04.
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Sep 6, 2014 21:22
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The Browns are going to be really odd this year. Browns O-Line vs Pittsburgh D-Line: The Browns o-line comes out this year with another above average o-line that people will hear about being "elite" but watch and call "garbage." Joe Thomas and Alex Mack are still great, top 5 in the league type players, Joel Bitonio is a rookie but apparently looks like a year 2/3 player, John Grecco is having a career resurgence. Mitchell Schwartz is the weakest part of the line and with be abused by the Steelers. The Browns lovely receivers vs the Steelers below-average secondary: The Steelers secondary looks not great because not long ago they were gently caress-off amazing. The Browns receivers looks bad because they are bad. Andrew Hawkins, known as BabyHawk by heartsick Bengals fans, is their #1 receiver. The marinette of blood and sinew known as Miles Austin #2. They are not looking great in the WR dept. The Steelers secondary are going to abuse the Browns WRs. The Browns RBs vs The Steeler Run D This is going to be the Browns saving grace this game. Ben Tate is in Cleveland after years of weird lusting-after by Browns fans. Terrence West is going be the steal of this draft and he's going to be very, very good in the coming years. The Steelers Run D has been suspect at best and dogshit in reality. Watch for the run game to break free late in the second quarter and then eventually be stifled in the fourth because it's not like the Browns WRs are going to pull any pressure off Tate/West. Over/Under: Johnny Clipboard shots: 5.5 Take the over.
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Sep 6, 2014 23:55
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no streak beats the Chiefs going 9 games into the 2012 season without ever holding a lead at any point.
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Sep 6, 2014 23:58
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Parlett316 posted:Bacarri Rambo will be starting in the strong spot and he was God awful last year. Couldn't figure out how to get to a ball carrier since he took the worst angles and if he got there he couldn't tackle. It was amazing. Coaches have been optimistic about him but from what I saw in the preseason he still can't tackle.
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Sep 7, 2014 05:10
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so it was 1:30 am and I'm up with a summer flu and watching the Packer/Seahawk game on Game Rewind since I need my football fix and my lovely team doesn't play til Monday. Decided I'd do a mini breakdown of some of what seattle's defense does since I've seen a lot of people asking why Rodgers didn't try and force throws at Sherman, and how Seattle just plays defense in general. I did a few of these last year and they go pretty quickly so if people like them I can do more. So here are some low res game rewind coaches film pictures of how Seattle tends to play defense and what the Packers did to try and counter it.  From Seattle's POV, this is what I'd call their base defensive alignment. How it differs from your average NFL defense is that Kam Chancellor plays in the box as an 8th man a solid 90% of non-goal line snaps. Even against 3 WR personnel as you see here. It allows Seattle to have an advantage at stopping quick inside runs while weakening their pass defense a bit. But they trust their outside corners Sherman and Maxwell enough to run this as their basic look. As most people know, Sherman lines up on the defense's left side exclusively in most of their games. You can only really run two types of defense out of this alignment, which would be - Cover 1 Robber - man defense across the board with a linebacker (or Chancellor) in a shallow zone/QB spy over the middle. Earl Thomas generally plays the middle of the field, although he does cheat away from Sherman's side or just align away from Sherman a fair amount.  or Cover 3 - a straight zone across the board where Chancellor gets an easy coverage responsibility near the LOS, while Earl Thomas basically chills in centerfield all game. Madden players will be familiar with the zone colorings I use, where teal = flat coverage (or curl to flat, a slightly deeper version to take away curl routes), yellow = hook zones in the middle/deep middle, dark blue = deep portion of the field  You can always throw in wrinkles to these two looks, but they'll be the base of what Seattle does most of the time, and a solid 90+% of this game against the Packers. Their front 4 generated enough pressure against the Packers' poo poo line that they ran next to no blitzes and played these generic coverages all game. The play above would look like man coverage to Rodgers' pre-snap because the corners, particularly the slot corner, are so tight in coverage. One counter to this type of aggressive man coverage is to run pick plays. The Packers' did that to an extent with a quick screen to Jordy Nelson at the bottom of the screen, but Rodgers misfired. I feel like I have enough pictures in this one so I'm not gonna go through that whole play. So pick plays would be one to way to beat bump and run man coverage. The Packers ran a few of them, but the Seahawks didn't play up at the line all too often. Another strategy is to avoid the Seahawks' top 2 corners altogether. The Packers are fortunate enough to have a legit slot WR in Randall Cobb and Mike McCarthy uses him well. Here's a formation the Packers went to very often as the game progressed:  Trips to the side away from Sherman, basically flooding that side of the field. side note: look at those DL splits, they put the wide 9 to shame. Randall Cobb is the third man in, aligned across from Kam Chancellor here  This formation forces the Seahawks to either 1) Declare they are in man coverage by moving one of their top 2 corners off the outside of the field to the inside to account for Cobb, which gives Rodgers an advantage pre-snap 2) Give Rodgers a pretty good inkling that they're playing cover 3 or a cover 3 variant as described earlier 3) Bite the bullet and play man across the board with Kam Chancellor vs. Randall Cobb, a very, very large advantage for the Packers. They could also incorporate a bracket coverage, where Chancellor and Wagner would essentially double team Cobb with Chancellor taking away the sideline and Wagner the middle of the field. The Seahawks don't give Chancellor challenging matchups however, so this is very unlikely. It winds up being #2, as you could probably guess. McCarthy has a pretty good idea of how Seattle will play this. The Seahawks' defensive call is as follows  and the Packers run a play that many Madden players will recognize, commonly referred to as 4 verticals. It's a play that many people abuse (maybe myself once or twice in the past) because it ruins zone coverages that don't have 4+ people deep. Here are the routes:  if you can visualize the play developing (because I can't make gifs) you can kinda see how the biggest responsibility of coverage for this play now shifts to Earl Thomas in the middle of the field. His deep middle zone is now being threatened by two people. Bobby Wagner (LB) in a hook zone now is also forced to try and run with Randall Cobb.  You can see the dilemma Thomas is put in. The WR to his right is well inside the deep third corner (the only other play on the field who could make a play on him besides Thomas) while Cobb is sprinting toward the opposite pylon being covered by a linebacker. Thomas plays it as well as he can by splitting the difference between the two and waiting til Rodgers makes his decision. But the fact that Rodgers was forced to roll to his right makes the decision for him and he went at Cobb. Wagner runs with Cobb for 45 yards but eventually gets beaten and basically tackles him, drawing flags from two referees for a 45 yard pass interference call. Like I said earlier, the Packers went back to this look a few times. They ran the exact same 4 verticals play the next quarter with Cobb aligning in the middle of the trips receivers, where he was the target again and gained ~25 yards. So people may still question why Rodgers avoided Sherman the entire night. And you can see that Sherman rarely had help. But the Packers had their ideas on how to attack the Seahawks' secondary without involving Sherman, and I think if their line held up, would have had a decent shot. Every Seahawks corner beyond their top 2 was beaten quite a bit. But most of the time, Rodgers was lying face down by the time he could've seen it. Some teams, like the Gilbride-led Giants, would see pictures like this and call for isolation routes and jump balls to people like Hakeem Nicks all game. It doesn't work very well.  But I think the Packers' strategy was a lot better. They just need guys like Bulaga to stay healthy for it to work. Iodised QQ fucked around with this message at 07:44 on Sep 7, 2014 |
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Sep 7, 2014 07:41
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It would also help if their defense could stop anybody but let's not put the cart before the horse I suppose.
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Sep 7, 2014 08:12
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Yo this was super interesting and I really liked reading it at 1:30am. I'd love to see more of this kind of stuff but I'm to incompetent to type it all up to contribute. Really good read.
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Sep 7, 2014 09:26
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My matchup analysis: the Eagles will Win And It Will Own. Football's back everyone. Oh and that long game breakdown post was good and I liked it.
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Sep 7, 2014 15:49
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Menamino posted:Lots of good stuff In a thread filled with quality posts already, this was excellent.
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Sep 7, 2014 15:55
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Menamino that post loving owned and this thread is incredible.
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Sep 7, 2014 17:01
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Spoeank posted:Menamino that post loving owned and this thread is incredible. This seriously was the best thread idea.
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Sep 7, 2014 17:28
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Glad some people enjoyed it. I didn't watch a ton of game rewind as the season went on last year because I was too emo over the Giants' season, but now that I don't have much in the way of expectations for them I should be checking it out more this year. So if I have some free time/see stuff that people want covered I could do some more of those kinda breakdowns.
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Sep 7, 2014 17:46
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Menamino posted:Glad some people enjoyed it. I didn't watch a ton of game rewind as the season went on last year because I was too emo over the Giants' season, but now that I don't have much in the way of expectations for them I should be checking it out more this year. So if I have some free time/see stuff that people want covered I could do some more of those kinda breakdowns. That would be excellent. Even one a week would be pretty great.
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Sep 7, 2014 17:48
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Menamino posted:Glad some people enjoyed it. I didn't watch a ton of game rewind as the season went on last year because I was too emo over the Giants' season, but now that I don't have much in the way of expectations for them I should be checking it out more this year. So if I have some free time/see stuff that people want covered I could do some more of those kinda breakdowns. This would be awesome. I would suggest trying to do a different team every week or something like that.
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Sep 8, 2014 09:56
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Menamino posted:Glad some people enjoyed it. I didn't watch a ton of game rewind as the season went on last year because I was too emo over the Giants' season, but now that I don't have much in the way of expectations for them I should be checking it out more this year. So if I have some free time/see stuff that people want covered I could do some more of those kinda breakdowns. You can be our own Ben Muth!
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Sep 8, 2014 14:22
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Menamino posted:Great analysis Just a heads up, I think your analysis compares favorably to stuff people are getting paid for.
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Sep 9, 2014 15:12
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Menamino posted:Glad some people enjoyed it. I didn't watch a ton of game rewind as the season went on last year because I was too emo over the Giants' season, but now that I don't have much in the way of expectations for them I should be checking it out more this year. So if I have some free time/see stuff that people want covered I could do some more of those kinda breakdowns. This is great, thanks and really helps me understand how plays develop and get a better understanding of what's happening before the snap
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Sep 9, 2014 15:27
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I was hoping to do something similar looking at the Saints game, particularly contrasting Thomas and Byrd and see how Atlanta torched us. If it pans out, we should create a blog to repository this stuff. I'd really enjoy working on it. Didn't see coaches film available for me as of yesterday, though.
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Sep 9, 2014 16:19
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Here's a cool chart on the missed tackles by winning and losing teams. I'm surprised the Bears only had 6, unless those were all by Chris Conte on Fred Jackson's last run?
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Sep 9, 2014 16:34
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23 missed tackles in a game 
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Sep 9, 2014 16:36
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Intruder posted:23 missed tackles in a game A third of it is just Kenny Vacarro and half of it is him and Byrd.
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Sep 9, 2014 16:56
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MJBuddy posted:A third of it is just Kenny Vacarro and half of it is him and Byrd. Is Kenny Vaccaro any good? I thought he had a solid rookie year last year.
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Sep 9, 2014 16:59
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Kirios posted:Is Kenny Vaccaro any good? I thought he had a solid rookie year last year. He showed a lot of promise and I was excited about him this year. Let's just say that my expectations have somewhat tempered. I still think he has the potential but, I don't know, I'm sorta afraid that he'll be a total bust.
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Sep 9, 2014 17:29
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