Joe Soriano
O.J. Lewis10/2011 Football Talk: The Pouncey Brothers
October 20th 2011 15:01
Last year, one of the dumbest Pro Bowl vote-ins of all-time was made. Yet another overhyped rookie, Maurkice Pouncey, was voted as a Pro Bowl starter. The Steelers center may be a lovable figure, but he's actually a poor player. He's among the most overrated players in the game, as he is one of the worst centers in pass protection. The whole Steelers offensive line stinks, but Pouncey isn't the odd man out on the line. While he isn't all that bad of a run blocker, his pass protection is detrimental to the team. I wish fans would start watching the games more closely instead of hopping onto some bandwagon.
However, Maurkice's brother Mike has been far better so far in his early NFL career. Although he did struggle last game against a very tough opponent in the running game (Sione Pouha), he was once again lights-out as a pass protector. Mike Pouncey has already been arguably the best rookie thus far, but he hasn't had the same hype as his twin brother did last year. In fact, the newest Pouncey to the league had more attention as a draft pick. Guys, it's time to give the elder Pouncey his due. Defensive tackles will tell you that he is already a force in the Dolphins interior.
As for you Cowboys fans, stop blaming Tony Romo for all your problems. He's one of the best quarterbacks in the league, and I hate the idiots who look at box scores and try to assess a player from those. Look, interceptions have more to do with stuff out of the quarterback's control. All incompletions that are the quarterback's fault are bad, so accuracy percentage and the statistics over at PFF are much better statistical evaluaters.
While it is obvious that Romo does make his fair share of mistakes, he is actually very accurate. The problem is that he trusts his skills a little too much and tries to force the ball into coverage. That doesn't bode well for his INT numbers, but it's actually worth it to take risks in the passing game. When you average it all out, an interception negates about 30 yards, and the chance of completing a difficult pass is 40 percent, compared to a 3 percent chance of an interception. Through ten passes, the net yardage of going for those passes would be 71 yards (8 per attempt, 7.1 counting the chance of a pick). Getting sacked is worse than running the risk of being picked, and Romo is actually playing to these newfound thoughts. So don't blame him, blame the atrocious secondary and injuries to the receivers and Felix Jones. They don't have much of a running game anyway, and Jones is about league-average. However, losing him means losing more than half of an already weak production level running-wise.
I was going to talk a little bit about Eli Manning, but I'll save that post for another day. I also wanted to talk about why teams should throw it deep, and I already have a little bit of the argument written down above. In the next Football Talk post, you should expect these two topics to headline the post. For those of you who haven't caught on yet, Football Talk is a new thing I do where it's all in-depth football analysis that is usually about players and somewhat new and controversial ideas.
However, Maurkice's brother Mike has been far better so far in his early NFL career. Although he did struggle last game against a very tough opponent in the running game (Sione Pouha), he was once again lights-out as a pass protector. Mike Pouncey has already been arguably the best rookie thus far, but he hasn't had the same hype as his twin brother did last year. In fact, the newest Pouncey to the league had more attention as a draft pick. Guys, it's time to give the elder Pouncey his due. Defensive tackles will tell you that he is already a force in the Dolphins interior.
As for you Cowboys fans, stop blaming Tony Romo for all your problems. He's one of the best quarterbacks in the league, and I hate the idiots who look at box scores and try to assess a player from those. Look, interceptions have more to do with stuff out of the quarterback's control. All incompletions that are the quarterback's fault are bad, so accuracy percentage and the statistics over at PFF are much better statistical evaluaters.
While it is obvious that Romo does make his fair share of mistakes, he is actually very accurate. The problem is that he trusts his skills a little too much and tries to force the ball into coverage. That doesn't bode well for his INT numbers, but it's actually worth it to take risks in the passing game. When you average it all out, an interception negates about 30 yards, and the chance of completing a difficult pass is 40 percent, compared to a 3 percent chance of an interception. Through ten passes, the net yardage of going for those passes would be 71 yards (8 per attempt, 7.1 counting the chance of a pick). Getting sacked is worse than running the risk of being picked, and Romo is actually playing to these newfound thoughts. So don't blame him, blame the atrocious secondary and injuries to the receivers and Felix Jones. They don't have much of a running game anyway, and Jones is about league-average. However, losing him means losing more than half of an already weak production level running-wise.
I was going to talk a little bit about Eli Manning, but I'll save that post for another day. I also wanted to talk about why teams should throw it deep, and I already have a little bit of the argument written down above. In the next Football Talk post, you should expect these two topics to headline the post. For those of you who haven't caught on yet, Football Talk is a new thing I do where it's all in-depth football analysis that is usually about players and somewhat new and controversial ideas.
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