NFL - Are You Ready For Some Football?! - Off Season

[OzzyKP]

Oh no... back to Flutie..

[-Jrabbit]

I tried to warn them...

[Ben Kenobi]

Indeed you did. You guys all have my back that Albert started it all up again?

[-Jrabbit]

Actually, I believe it was Solomwi this time.

[Al B. Sure!]

http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/blog/shutdown_corner/post/Recently-retired-Glen-Coffee-arrested-for-having?urn=nfl-275674

When former San Francisco 49ers running back Glen Coffee(notes) retired from the NFL this summer at the age of 23, he said it was because God told him to leave football and enter the ministry. He didn't mention whether or not he was supposed to accept his higher calling while carrying an automatic pistol.
Coffee was arrested in Florida on Friday morning for carrying a concealed firearm, according to TMZ. Police found the weapon cocked in his center console during a traffic stop.
The former NFL player had been pulled over for speeding in his 2008 Cadillac and was soon discovered to be driving a car without insurance or registration. When police searched the car before it was to be towed, they found the loaded weapon.
[Related: MLB player leaves team in middle of playoffs]
Police arrested Coffee and charged him with a third-degree felony, which is punishable in Florida by up to five years in jail. The arrest came in Coffee's hometown of Ft. Walton Beach.
In his rookie season with the 49ers, Coffee ran the ball 83 times for 226 yards and one touchdown. He was a third-round pick out of Alabama, where he made first-team All-SEC in his junior season.

Can anyone be even more of a retarded dumbass?

[Al B. Sure!]

Glen Coffee at the time of his retirement:

“Actually, the thought entered my head when I was playing at ‘Bama. I had found Christ my junior year at ‘Bama. When I found Him, football was no longer my dream. It was just that I wanted to glorify Him in everything that I did. I left college early because I was done with football. I figured, ‘Maybe if I’m getting paid for it, I’ll be able to tolerate it.’ I knew at the time that money couldn’t buy happiness. Only true happiness comes through Christ. I still chanced it and entered the league. Obviously, that was the wrong choice. I never should have entered the draft I felt like. It’s definitely been something that I’ve prayed about and thought about for a long time… I felt like it was eventually going to happen. Maybe not this early, but I knew my career would be short.”

“I’m going to enroll back in school. I left after my junior year and had two classes left so I’m going to go finish those. And then, I don’t know man. I’ve been considering full-time ministry. I feel that that’s something that’s got to come to you. It’s not something that you can plan out like, ‘I’m going to do this. I’m going to do that.’ Right now, I’m going to let it come to me. I’m going to go to school, finish that out and maybe go for my masters, into the master’s program. But for right now man, it’s the two classes I’m going to get out the way. Whatever else happens, He’ll show me the way. As far as the ministry, I’m going to do a couple speaking events, speaking engagements because I feel like I’ve got to let it be known.”

Since he'll be serving time in Florida, I suppose he'll get really close to someone named Jesus, even if it's not the prophet...

[Lord Avalon]

Well, that's one way to get your prison ministry started.

[Tuberski]

So it's a fake stat now? Glad to see you looking it up.

If he's an average QB at the age of 40, why didn't he start?

Clearly he had the talent to perform well. There are few QBs that last as long as he did performing at an adequate level. Few who did so well after the age of 35 who are not considered to be hall of famers. They give war credit to players who were away from baseball. Why not with Flutie?

No it was an imaginary passer rating, you made up the numbers.

I'd already looked it up ands the numbers didn't match, hence, the imaginary stats.

Not my fault you can't read properly.

ACK!

[Al B. Sure!]

Coffee retired on August 18th. He hasn't even been out of football for two months and he does that!

[Al B. Sure!]

I can't believe Ben is actually extrapolating what Flutie's career numbers would have been using a supposed performance decline curve based on a single NFL season and claiming that Flutie should be a Hall of Famer. He actually predicted yardage, TDs, and win percentage!

Ben, if he really was capable of being a top passer in the NFL while he was in the CFL, why did he stay in the CFL? He wasn't a Canadian! He eventually came back into the NFL... that tells me he wasn't actually good and able to play in the NFL whenever he wanted at a high level and chose the CFL out of some loyalty to Canada.

If he was good enough to be a Hall of Famer why didn't he play in the NFL during his heydey?

[Al B. Sure!]

I know what happened. I was young and didn't pay much attention to the workings of every football team at the time but I can surmise what was going on with the Bills in 1998 when Flutie made his second NFL debut.

Maybe some of the older posters can corroborate or disagree with this:

In 1997, Jim Kelly had retired and his heir, Todd Collins, struggled to lead the Bills to a 6-10 record despite the team retaining most of the pieces of their early 90's dominant team. After that season, coach Marv Levy retired and Wade Philips was brought in and the team made a big trade, giving up a 1st rounder to acquire Rob Johnson from the Jaguars, Johnson having made his name with a stunning performance in place of an injured Mark Brunell (Johnson had one of the best QB performances in a starting debut). The Bills, with a bunch of aging veterans but some young explosive talent in Eric Moulds and Antowain Smith, were in a win-now mode and saw that Collins wasn't going to be ready to take them anywhere, so were more than willing to take a gamble on a guy like Johnson. Furthermore, there wasn't much depth in that year's rookie QB class with Peyton Manning and Ryan Leaf the two standouts expected to go right away and no one else behind them (the 3rd QB taken that year was Charlie Batch at the bottom of the 2nd round).

Having released Collins, the team needed a backup QB. The backup the year before had been the 27 year old Alex Van Pelt and the team looked for a veteran presence (Kelly had not been willing to give up his starting job to mentor a young Collins so a veteran was lacking at the QB position) and found that they could get that just across the border with CFL QB, Flutie. (Consider Buffalo's proximity to Canada and the large number of Canadian Bills fans).

There was no clamor for Doug Flutie among Bills management. It just made sense to get a veteran to backup a young signal caller whom you just gave up a 1st rounder for.

Now, Rob Johnson actually played very well statistically but he did get off to a 1-3 start, with the Bills losing some very close games (16-14 to the Chargers [Flutie actually played most of this game], 13-7 to Marino's Dolphins, 34-33 to the Rams [Two 4th quarter TDs by the Rams in the comeback win]; his win came in a duel with Steve Young's 49ers). Johnson was not terrible and losses were all so close and not really his fault. In fact, in the Rams loss, Johnson had thrown 3 TDs to give the Bills a comfortable 28-10 lead late in the 3rd quarter before the defense collapsed to what would have been a very lackluster Rams offense.

Johnson got injured the next game and Flutie came in and, as I'm sure Ben would tell you, played well, leading the Bills to finish off the year 10-6 and make the playoffs.

Now, that needs to be looked at a little deeper... these are the teams Flutie played against and their end-of-season records:

Wins:
2 wins against Colts (3-13)
Jaguars (11-5)
Panthers (4-12)
Dolphins (10-6)
Patriots (9-7)
Bengals (3-13)
Raiders (8-8)

5 out of 8 wins were against .500 or worse teams.

Losses:
2 losses to the Jets (12-4)
Patriots (9-7)

For the most part, Flutie's Bills beat who they were supposed to beat and lost two games to the Jets who would go on to a 12-4 record.

The other thing to keep in mind is that this Bills team was more stacked then you think, coupling aging veterans with explosive young talent. A backfield with Thurman Thomas and Antowain Smith, Eric Moulds and Andre Reed at receiver. Bruce Smith was coming off a 14 sack season and would have 10 sacks this year. The defense would finish the year with a very impressive 43 sacks and a solid 18 INTs. In fact, the 1998 Bills were one of the best defenses of the year, ranking 6th in yards allowed.

And lest you scoff at Antowain Smith and an old Thurman Thomas, the 1998 Bills were the #3 team in the league running the ball with a total of 2,161 rushing yards between the backs.

Doug Flutie did exactly what a veteran QB is expected to do. Nothing more.

Consider Wade Phillips' play-calling: that year, the Bills were ranked 28th (remember, this is when there were only 30 teams) in number of pass attempts with 461 pass attempts yet were #1 in rushing attempts with 531 rushing attempts. I can't re-iterate that enough... 3rd FEWEST pass attempts, 1st in rushing attempts.

This was nothing more than a run-first team with a defense adept at getting to the QB, generating turnovers, and very stingy with the yards. Sounds to me like Doug Flutie is more like Trent Dilfer without the Super Bowl ring than anything else.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Well done Albert... but its not going to work.

[Al B. Sure!]

Now, what about the next year? Doug Flutie started 15 games for the 11-5 Bills before his infamous benching for the season finale.

His wins and the end-of-year records:
Jets (8-8)
Eagles (5-11)
2 wins against Dolphins (9-7)
Steelers (6-10)
Ravens (8-8)
Redskins (10-6)
2 wins against Patriots (8-8)
Cardinals (6-10)

7 out of 10 wins were against .500 or worse teams

Losses:
Colts (13-3)
Raiders (8-8)
Seahawks (9-7)
Jets (8-8)
Giants (7-9)

I should note Rob Johnson's performance the final week against the Colts (yes, Peyton Manning and the starters DID play until the Bills lead became too significant). You consider that Johnson threw for just under 300 yards and 2 TDs in a stunning 31-6 win over the 13-3 Colts, then a divisional rival, and of course you start Johnson heading into the play-offs!

In fact, the Rob Johnson loss in the play-offs to the Titans looks to have been misremembered by Bills fans. The Bills had a 16-15 lead late in a defensive slugfest (Steve McNair's performance was far worse than Johnson's) when the Titans playoffs were saved by a 75 kickoff return by Kevin Dyson. What could Rob Johnson do about that? Ten Bills penalties over the course of the game didn't help matters for the Bills either. And nevermind the fact that this was the Titans team that lost a nail-biter to Warner's Rams in the Super Bowl a few weeks later. In fact, the Rams were the only team to put up more points against the Titans in the playoffs than the Johnson-led Bills.

Now, how did these 1999 Bills rank in statistical categories? They were an even better defensive team than the year before! Out of 31 teams...

The Bills Defense was the #1 defense in the league, giving up the fewest total yards. They were #1 against the pass and #4 against the run. When defenses finish in the top 5 against both the run and the pass, they're REALLY good.

They were 8th in rushing yards and 19th in passing yards

24th in passing attempts with 513 attempts and #2 in rushing attempts with 519.


Yet again, run-first team with a dominant defense.

[Al B. Sure!]

Well done Albert... but its not going to work.

I know because Ben is going to say that Flutie was 36 and he's positing something that is not falsifiable... that Flutie would have been good if he played in the NFL in his prime, which he did not.

I'm just posting this research in case anyone stumbles on this thread and starts believing his mess.

[Al B. Sure!]

Now Bills fans like to talk about a Flutie Curse but the 8-8 2000 Bills season really had much more to do with injuries to Antowain Smith (and a falling out with Wade Philips) than Rob Johnson. Rob Johnson was effective with 2125 yards 12 TDs and 7 picks in 11 starts.

In fact, the team dropped to 13th in rushing yards but did shoot up to 11th in passing yards with Johnson playing most of the games. The running game that had been there for many years just wasn't there anymore with their feature back missing many games. The playcalling changed as a result as, for the first time since Jim Kelly, the team passed more than they ran... 71 more passing attempts, in fact, than rushing attempts with Rob Johnson.

Yes, Rob Johnson went 4-7 in his 11 starts while Flutie went 4-1, but Flutie definitely got the lucky end of the stick with matchups.

Consider the teams Johnson started against and their end-of-season records:

Wins:
Titans (13-3)
Packers (9-7)
Chargers (1-15)
Chiefs (7-9)

Losses:
Jets (9-7)
2 against Colts (10-6)
2 against Dolphins (11-5)
Buccaneers (10-6)
Patriots (5-11)

Combined records of Johnson's opponents: 96-80 (.545)


Flutie's games:

Wins:
Jets (9-7)
Patriots (5-11)
Bears (5-11)
Seahawks (6-10)

Loss:
Vikings (11-5)

Combined records of Flutie's opponents: 36-44 (.450)