Duckjake said:
The take on the wide receivers is way off base. There are two ways to win the big one. With a tough clutch defense or a big time wide receiver. Smith with Denver, Freeman with Green Bay, Irvin in Dallas, Rice with SF, Swann with Pitt. Even NE and Tampa had an experienced #1 WR when they won their first SB's.
The NFL today is a pass oriented league and to win you have to pass and stop the pass. Rushing is nothing other than a means to protect your lead by keeping the other team from being able to pass the ball.
I said in my post we need solid reliable wide recievers. What you don't need is a gamebreaking elite wideout. Rod Smith is not an elite wideout. He never was. He had some good years, especially when Davis was eating up yards on the ground. He is a very solid wide reciever that was taken at the beggining of the second round in 1992, 35th overall. He is exactly the type of pick I suggested in my previous posts.
Swann had the lock down D dude. And he and Rice don't even count. Free agency + salary cap completely changed the game. Even the 94 Niners had Young because they were able to get him when teams could still afford to pay a good QB just to sit for years at a time.
Freeman looked no better than Robert Brooks did because of Favre. Or Sterling Sharpe. All solid WR's in tandem, not one all star. The original post I replied too specifically mentioned winning in the 21st century as well, thats why I left out the 70's 80's and 90's.
Uh Irvin was a joke right? Tell me you actually think the Cowboys would have won all those Super Bowls if they had oh say Chad Hutchinson and Troy Hambrick instead of these guys named Troy Aikman and Emmit Smith.
And oh yeah, Irvin wasn't picked in the top 10. He was, oh you're gonna love this, the left over after two other wideouts were taken before him. The Cowboys didn't need a 3rd pick to get Irvin. They needed an 11. So I ask again. Why can't we drop to 7-9, AND STILL GET WHICHEVER WR IS LEFT? The fact that Tim Brown and Sterling Sharpe were taken first didn't hurt the Cowboys did it? So why is the sky falling down on the Valley if we don't get Fitz or MW and are left with Roy. Oh No!
And thanks Mao for pointing out the Patriots points allowed. That was the point I was trying to make. That's why I said not the defense that gives up the fewest yards, but a clutch defense. I do type excessively so maybe it was overlooked.
But that was my point. NE didn't lock down Indy in either game. They clutched up when the game was on the line. If we had played them our defense would have been so outgunned that we would not even be able to put ourselves in the situation to have a goal line stand to win a game, or stick to our plain ordinary offense with average RB's, decent non-flashy WR's and a make no mistake QB.
But the fact is, we couldn't even hang with the Colts in a game this past year. And for any clown who thinks of responding with "If we had a killer offense like the Colts we could hang with them."
Ask any New England fan (footballoutsiders.com is crawling with them) which years they prefered. The Drew Beldsoe shoot it out with Dan Marino years, or the Tom Brady, keep 'em out of the endzone, clutch up and win in OT years. I'm guessing the former would not be that popular an answer.
I'm going to let this die after this because I think I've made my point and it's gotten way off topic. Efficient not flashy offense, killer D, killer special teams is what I think the answer is.
