PatsPropaganda

An Independent Patriots Blog

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A little bday GIF for Bru, didn’t get any better than this moment in his NFL career.

https://www.patspropaganda.com/a-little-bday-gif-for-bru-didnt-get-any-better/

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Love. Hannah had such an amazing offensive lineman look despite that tiny facemask that everyone wanted to avoid on equipment day in high school. He’s was a badass, he didn’t care. Just an absolute beast.

https://www.patspropaganda.com/love-hannah-had-such-an-amazing-offensive-lineman/

Football Outsiders: 2010 Defeats

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Football Outsiders: 2010 Defeats

Football Outsiders has started posting some of their advanced stats from last season and I’ve been enjoying every post. The first and biggest one was that of “defeats”, defined as:

Defeats are defined as any play (tackle, assist, pass defensed, interception, or forced fumble) that does one of three things:

  • 1) causes a turnover
  • 2) causes a loss of yardage
  • 3) stops conversion on third or fourth down

When I first looked at the top 25 players I immediately looked for any Patriots and was disappointed to find none. The ideas for a blog post ran through my head, with things like “this is why our defense struggles” and “we need playmakers” going through my head.

But upon closer inspection I noticed something interesting: 17 of the 25 guys on the list played on teams that didn’t make the playoffs. I’m not really sure how to explain it, perhaps when your the only good player on a shitty defense you have to make plays because no one else will. Perhaps on a good team the stops are more spread around. That would seem to make sense for the Patriots defense that values balance.

But still, it can’t be all that surprising to not see a Patriots on there given their troubels on 3rd down in 2010.

For what it’s worth (and it’s not all that surprising) the Patriots ranked dead last in the NFL in pass defeats in 2010. And unfortunately FO also points out:

Unlike with Run Defeats, Pass Defeats do seem to correlate pretty well with total pass defense performance.

The Patriots had no player in top 25 or bottom 25 in Run Defeats. Average. Boring.

It’s the end of the NFL as we know it… and I don’t really feel fine

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As you might’ve noticed I’ve yet to post anything on the latest news of Judge Nelson’s ruling that technically killed the lockout yesterday. I’m not really sure why any fans were rejoicing at the ruling, because this thing is still dragging well into summer, folks. I’m trying to distract myself with the draft, but I’ve been doing that for three months and the act is wearing thin.

Now you’ve got the NFL appealing, and asking for a stay to maintain some sense of order before everything descends even further into chaos like they started to this morning. You had players showing up at work, looking for workout bonuses, and being asked to leave. This whole thing is still a nightmare, and I’m skeptical that we’re any closer to a resolution today than we were before the lockout was “enjoined”.

The players meanwhile appear to be asking Judge Nelson to force the NFL to start the league year. Under what rules? No one is quite sure, but possibly just under the old CBA.

And of course the volleys back and forth keep on coming. In keeping with the snarky, finger-pointing tone this whole negotiation has had, we have DeMaurice Smith saying it’s the NFL’s fault that chaos is now ensuing.

Then you have Commissioner Goodell’s op-ed piece in the Wall Street Journal which, in a nutshell, says that the players and their lawyers want the NFL to go to a completely free market system. No more draft. No more Franchise Tags. When a players contract expires he’s a free agent. No salary cap. Cats and Dogs living together. Total anarchy.

It’s really only one of the extreme lawyers on the players side who once made a comment that the picture Goodell painted is how he thinks it should be, not the entire FKA-NFLPA pushing for this completely new scenario, but you get the point.

All this rhetoric from both sides needs to end. They are just desperate attempts to win the fans and public opinion to their side. What they don’t realize is that they’re not winning anyone over, they’re just turning everyone away from football. The evidence is already there, people are less interested in the draft this year. Hits on NFL.com are down.

People get enough of this kind of thing from politics, especially in today’s climate in Washington. Sports are supposed to be an escape from petty arguments and the inability to compromise, not an extension of them. Damage has already been done to the sport, and the longer this drags on the NFL will no longer have to worry about “growing” the sport, they’ll just have to worry about getting it back to where it was before this whole debacle.

The NFL was preparing for a lockout for the last three years, going to specific measures to make sure that the owners would be able to shut their doors and still keep on chugging. It completely backfired for them.

They thought the deal they forced their TV partners into that pay them regardless of a lockout would hold up. It didn’t. They thought the dissolution of the NFLPA would be ruled null and void by a court. It wasn’t.

Let’s remember the wheels of this whole debacle began in 2006 when the players got a better cut of the big pie than the owners liked. Now everything the NFL has done has been to get part of that cut back, under the guise of continuing to grow the game.

I just like to watch football on Sundays. I like team building in the off-season. I don’t want my favorite form of entertainment to descend into a barely recognizable professional sport where only the teams with the most money win. Nor do I want to see a league where the players who put their life and limb on the line are not properly taken care of during and after their careers.

There are elements to both side’s arguments that the fans definitely side with so there has to be middle ground. There has to be a way to put aside all the vitriol that has built up and start from scratch to find a deal that both sides can live with.

Unfortunately given everything we’ve seen, from the petty shots via twitter to partisan and inflammatory press releases it doesn’t look like anything will get done until the sides are forced to talk again, or games begin getting cancelled.

Pretty shocking how hard it is to divide up $9 billion huh?

Lockout or no lockout the sides need to reconvene and get down to negotiating a new CBA. This is the one and only end game that will be satisfying to the NFL, the players, and the fans. Otherwise the great heyday of the NFL has passed us by.

Sports Illustrated: Fan poll on the lockout

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In this week’s Sports Illustrated they polled NFL fans to find their opinions on the current labor dispute. Here are some interesting numbers:

Nearly half of fans (44%) say they would have less future interest in the NFL after a delayed or canceled season.

In my opinion the NFL is highly underrating the effect that any missed games would have for their fan base. They just assume that the fans will come back in full force as soon as the game comes back.

But let me use the NHL lockout of 2004 as an example. I was as big of a hockey fan as anyone prior to that lockout, but afterwards I totally lost track of the sport. And it wasn’t even on purpose really. I just lost interest, found other things to do, and developed an insane obsession for football.

The owners and players should really be aware that they’re going to lose fans. They probably already have.

With a disrupted NFL season, NCAA football would gain prominence getting more attention from 57.3 percent of NFL fans.

Go Cal Bears! Yeah I have done like zero Bears research since declaring my fanship for them last week. I’m trying people, but it’s not easy to force yourself into being a fan of a random team that you have no true connection to…

Fans would also spend more time surfing the internet (56.1%), with significant others (45.1%), doing yard work chores (43.6%), playing video games (33.5%) and at church (13%). 

So it looks like God would have to be on the lockout’s side? Family members too, especially wives who want to see the front yard get mulched.

What would fans miss most if the season is disrupted? 41.8 percent of fans said watching with friends and family and 40.7 percent said following a team. Only 5.2 percent of fans said fantasy football is what they’ll most miss and only 1.3 percent said betting on games.

I found this kind of interesting because I’ve often said that the pregame/buildup to watching football is the best part. Especially when your team loses. But it looks like most fans tend to be on that side of the fence, just a little more than the actual following of the team. If you asked me I’d probably break about 51% for the experience that goes with watching games, 49% for actually following the team. I don’t give a crap about fantasy football or gambling.