I'm going to laugh if the Pats one and done. Manning's o-line is better. That's a joke right?

mannings been sacked 15 and brady's been sacked 31, manning has thrown more passes. you tell me.

Hypocrisy if I've ever seen it.

And when Manning played behind clearly worse Colts lines at the end of his time there (clearly worse than New England lines at the time) he managed to basically never get sacked. Getting sacked is a function of both the QB and the line. Manning is pretty much the best ever (other than maybe Dan Marino) at avoiding sacks by always knowing how much time he has to throw and where pressure will come from. Indeed the idea that he's taken 15 suggests that his line is indeed awful (the Patriots still have their all pro to probowl at least left tackle and a lot of remaning players; the Broncos don't). Indeed my buddy who played in college says Solder is probably one of the 5 best pass blocking left tackles in the NFL. Brady is good at avoiding sacks in his own right but he's not Manning. And Brady has at pretty much every point in his career played behind a better line (especially since 2006).

Which NFL players have you talked to, Crx?

Well none of them are stars or anything (although funnily enough Demarco Murray lives in my building) so you really wouldn't know them. I am friends with Ben Muth who writes the o-line column for Football Outsiders (and he is my source for the Solder stuff). I also know several guys who played for Stanford and who played with Luck, Sherman, etc.

Ah, ok. Living near Murray must be a trip (though I'm from a small town so maybe it's a non-thing).

lol, I mean, crx has already covered this, but it's well known that Manning avoids sacks better than anyone else.

Look Zephead:

http://www.grantland.com/blog/the-trian ... dly-enough

I would love to be the guy they picked to do that.

Does anybody else think the backlash over RGIII's press conferences is complete bullshit? They're saying Brady/Manning/Brees et al. would say stuff like, "I need to play better," when really they call out their teammates more than anyone. RGIII is just saying, "We as a unit have played poorly and need to get better," which seems like a fine middle ground. The media's just pissed off because he's not transcendent this year. Am I wrong in thinking this kind of character attack is usually reserved for black QBs? Even Cutler has said the same exact shit and no one batted an eyelash, and the "Cutler's a bad leader" narrative is one of the strongest and most consistent ones about him.

Wasn't aware there was a backlash, but that's ridiculous if that's what it's all about. Imagine if he was carrying a bad team and said "we're playing great." Nobody would say "oh, he should have said I'm playing great."

People have the stupidest expectations for athletes. Fans can be total homers, cocky and abrasive, and then when a player doesn't fit their perfect mold of what makes a "humble" player, they freak out.

Manning got a ton of backlash for "protection issues" when he got sacked a billion times one playoff game. I don't think it's a black thing. It might be an RG3 thing.

Yeah I was going to point that one out. It was pretty much the same phrasing. And people threw all sorts of hissy fits over it.

i dont now why you ever thought they'd be any more than a slightly below average team.