Week 9 other games thread

[Fritz]

All the crazy games this week make me think the Bears are going to come in and play like crazy. Man, a Hester special teams touchdown, a defensive touchdown, and suddenly it's going to go down to the wire.

[pbmax]

That's the same thought process that made ZBS the flavour of the week for a bit...lots of undersized agile linemen out there later in the draft. That didn't work out so well, and I think Luck will be the QB from the last batch to find the most success. Strangely enough, I think CK will as well, SF's O seems to have moved away from him running.

Well, there is precisely one Luck in the draft every what, 5 years? 10 years? You cannot get that guy whenever you wish to. That's how Ryan Leaf gets drafted early. Or Alex Smith. Or Vince Young.

You need to try for the statuesque QB who can do it all, but need a backup option (pun intended). It costs less and if indeed the running QB gets injured, its less to costly to cut bait and sign someone else.

Its not a total overhaul like ZBS, its a question of QB depth and backups. And the read option numbers are down as an average, but the total number of plays are up. So teams think there is something here. And almost every franchise, even the Broncos with Manning, are using read concepts to gain a player advantage elsewhere.

The play may disappear entirely, but the idea behind it will last.

[CaptainKickass]

Its now a possible stroke.

Too soon?

[ThunderDan]

Well, there is precisely one Luck in the draft every what, 5 years? 10 years? You cannot get that guy whenever you wish to. That's how Ryan Leaf gets drafted early. Or Alex Smith. Or Vince Young.

You need to try for the statuesque QB who can do it all, but need a backup option (pun intended). It costs less and if indeed the running QB gets injured, its less to costly to cut bait and sign someone else.

Its not a total overhaul like ZBS, its a question of QB depth and backups. And the read option numbers are down as an average, but the total number of plays are up. So teams think there is something here. And almost every franchise, even the Broncos with Manning, are using read concepts to gain a player advantage elsewhere.

The play may disappear entirely, but the idea behind it will last.

I'll give you Ryan Leaf and Vince Young but Alex Smith seems to have turned it around late in SF before the injury and now in KC.

Maybe he finally has coaches that tailor the offense to what he can do.

[channtheman]

Dehydration could make you dizzy, but the replay showed his first reaction was to grab his head. That makes a stroke seem very likely especially with the tPA. Hopefully they got him to the hospital quickly enough and started treatment soon enough for him to have a good recovery. I would not be surprised to see him forced in to retirement over this.

Luckily his "stroke" was witnessed and just being within the time frame to get tPA will drastically increase his chances of a favorable recovery. What I found odd was that he didn't have many of the typical stroke symptoms. No slurred speech or difficulty talking, no weakness on one side, etc. An interesting situation for sure and one I'm curious what really happened. I don't think he'll have to retire over this though.

[channtheman]

And now I just saw on the ESPN scroll, John Fox underwent heart surgery and will miss multiple weeks. If it was a cardiac cath with a stent placed I couldn't see him missing multiple weeks with that. Did he have open heart surgery? Crazy stuff going on with some of these coaches.

[red]

Case on point, the Chicago Bears. Over the Wolf/Sherman/Thompson time frame, they have had some excellent defenses and some fantastic special teams. If Favre then Rodgers had been Bears, how much more successful might they have been?

Humility for each aside, maybe the genius of Wolf was not being afraid to go out and give enough to get Favre, and the genius of Thompson was "wasting" a first round pick on Rodgers when he was available. It was more than just luck.

would the bears have been able to still have those defenses and special teams if they had to pay favre and rodgers the big contracts that those two guys got?

also, lets say they did have favre, would they still build that killer d , or would they have focused they money and draft picks on getting more weapons for favre?

i think the bears went bargain basement on the QB and offense and put all their focus on the D for the last 30 or 40 years

or they could have gotten a coach at some point that knows how to coach an offense

[Harlan Huckleby]

I like that Tony Romo doesn't take the game too seriously, has some fun. And that's how the mentions in the media are treating it - "that rascal Tony Romo." Would they say that about a defensive linemen kicking the ball? Romo should have been flagged.

Why didn't the refs look the other way when Terrell Owens autographed his football in the endzone? That was really funny.

[pbmax]

And now I just saw on the ESPN scroll, John Fox underwent heart surgery and will miss multiple weeks. If it was a cardiac cath with a stent placed I couldn't see him missing multiple weeks with that. Did he have open heart surgery? Crazy stuff going on with some of these coaches.

Fox had an aortic valve replaced.

[channtheman]

Fox had an aortic valve replaced.

Thanks. And yeah pretty extensive surgery there.

[pbmax]

Ian Rapoport @RapSheet 44m
My report from last night on Gary Kubiak suffering a TIA, called a mini-stroke (tho not technically a stroke): http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap200...ng-texans-game …

I know something about this. Transient ischemic attack is caused by the same factors as a stroke, but the clot blockage either dissolves quickly or is broken up before more permanent damage can occur. The unfortunate part is as a diagnosis, its hard to pinpoint cause and preventative measures other than being hyper vigilant.

1/3 of people who have a TIA have a full stroke within a year.