Big TO blowup on Twitter and PFT

[JohnTurney]

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/20 ... ny-passes/

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/20 ... eivers-do/

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/20 ... -than-t-o/


Michael David Smith did a LOT of editing to the top link. At first he went after Borges as implied that Borges was making it up. But on Twitter he said he couldn't find TOs drops himself https://twitter.com/MichaelDavSmith/sta ... 7166686209

https://twitter.com/billbarnwell/status ... 3035412480

https://twitter.com/billbarnwell/status ... 3866915840

https://twitter.com/billbarnwell/status ... 8784289797

Chris Pika, very smart guy tells Barnwell and MDS where to find
https://twitter.com/BlogAndTackle/statu ... 7002312704

Then Bill Barnwell, also unaware of drops, then quickly see them then they both try an discount the meaning of it.

it went from at first, where is stat coming from to okay, what Borges said was true, owens in top 4 in drops 8 times to
https://twitter.com/billbarnwell/status ... 7058328577

Tim Brown in top 7 four times. And Rice, for years stat available was 4 times in top 10. None of those = 8 in top 4.

Sure, all those can be explained, WRs targeted do drop some passes. But issue is not TO in HOF. It's TO not in HOF as of yet.

this is about right now. And these guys post like he's been Pete Rosed from HOF

[Rupert Patrick]

This is why I don't do the Twitter.

[JohnTurney]

This is why I don't do the Twitter.

Been doing it for a couple years. with one year pretty often. It's kind of fun. But it's also their posts on PFT and so on... Twitter causes lots of miscommunication with lack of charters. But really, here it's really a post-versus-post thing.

It shows, at least to me, that a massive blow of of system would be disaster.

[jeckle_and_heckle]

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/20 ... ny-passes/

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/20 ... eivers-do/

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/20 ... -than-t-o/


Michael David Smith did a LOT of editing to the top link. At first he went after Borges as implied that Borges was making it up. But on Twitter he said he couldn't find TOs drops himself https://twitter.com/MichaelDavSmith/sta ... 7166686209

https://twitter.com/billbarnwell/status ... 3035412480

https://twitter.com/billbarnwell/status ... 3866915840

https://twitter.com/billbarnwell/status ... 8784289797

Chris Pika, very smart guy tells Barnwell and MDS where to find
https://twitter.com/BlogAndTackle/statu ... 7002312704

Then Bill Barnwell, also unaware of drops, then quickly see them then they both try an discount the meaning of it.

it went from at first, where is stat coming from to okay, what Borges said was true, owens in top 4 in drops 8 times to
https://twitter.com/billbarnwell/status ... 7058328577

Tim Brown in top 7 four times. And Rice, for years stat available was 4 times in top 10. None of those = 8 in top 4.

Sure, all those can be explained, WRs targeted do drop some passes. But issue is not TO in HOF. It's TO not in HOF as of yet.

this is about right now. And these guys post like he's been Pete Rosed from HOF

We had them in the flatlands, in the mountains, and, some say, even in the cities but now we can all know what it must have been like to suffer with a "party line" telephone.
"But operator, this is an important call."
one ringy-dingy, two ringy-dingys ...

[conace21]

When I think of TO and drops, three games come to mind.

The 1996 (season) playoff game against Green Bay. Owens dropped three passes in the first half from Elvis Grbac. One was a route down the sidelines where he might have scored; he was wide open, IIRC. The last was a ball bobbled across the middle that Craig Newsome caught, setting up a Packers TD and a 21-0 lead. That's a 14 point turnaround. The final was 35-14, but SF had closed to 21-14 in the third quarter. For the day, Owens finished with 0 catches on 6 targets.

Two years later, he had a few drops and a fumble against Green Bay in the wild card round (before his late heroics.) These have been well documented.
Steve Young and others have said that this was the game where TO replaced Terrell Owens, who was just a quiet, shy, hardworking WR.

The ultimate "TO" moment came in 2001, IMO, against Chicago. SF had a 28-9 lead in the 3rd quarter, and 31-16 with 5 minutes to play. The Bears scored twice to send the game to OT. On the first play, Owens bobbled a Jeff Garcia pass over the middle. Mike Brown caught the deflection and scored to win the game. After the game, Owens blamed the loss on Steve Mariucci not going for the kill because he didn't want to embarass Chicago coach Dick Jauron, a friend. That embodies TO's refusal to accept blame.

[jeckle_and_heckle]

This is much ado about nothing, akin to reporting a certain automobile burns through tires like Carter through liver pills but not reporting that said car also logged the most miles.

As for Borges, he was suspended by the Boston Globe for two months back in 2007 for plagiarizing the Tacoma News Tribune, after which he left the paper to pursue "new projects in journalism." So there's that.

[Reaser]

This is why I don't do the Twitter.

Me either. Unfortunately I still see references to it all the time.

-Media who never played sports and lack the knowledge of even a casual sports fan use largely irrelevant stats because that's all they can do since they don't actually know anything about sports.
-Other media who have never played sports, lack knowledge and don't have basic research skills jump in to agree/disagree.
-The story becomes more about them arguing about sports than the actual sports they allegedly cover. Exactly how they want it so they can play the 'expert' even though all they've really done is shown their lack of knowledge.

Then of course they all go back to their blogs/websites/twitter to comment on it while their sycophants spam forums and social networks to back 'their' guy in the argument.

It's an ugly cousin of modern sports media and the so-called "hot take". Where oddly, people actually care what the Skip Bayless' of the world say and the now numerous shows where non-athletic people shout asinine unintelligent nonsense at eachother are somehow popular. People actually watch/follow this nonsense where media-types argue about sports. I've never understood it.

Nice Borges/Sando reference, jeckle.

[jeckle_and_heckle]

As for Twitter, I won't blame the medium for peoples' behavior. Like anything else, there are honest, non-sensational posts on Twitter, and posts considerably less so.

Mark Twain: If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're misinformed.

Pardon my french, but it ain't Twitter.

[JohnTurney]

with a good post.


http://www.footballperspective.com/terr ... d-the-hof/

[Rupert Patrick]

As for Twitter, I won't blame the medium for peoples' behavior. Like anything else, there are honest, non-sensational posts on Twitter, and posts considerably less so.

Mark Twain: If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're misinformed.

Pardon my french, but it ain't Twitter.

The thing about Twitter I don't like is the 140 (or whatever it is) character limit on a post. It is impossible to construct a convincing argument in such a small number of characters, so people just latch onto one point like his dropped passes as if that is the sole thing keeping him out of the HOF. There are other things, I think, that may have kept him out of the HOF. And despite his stats, I don't think of TO as in inner circle guy. Hall of Famer and inner circle guy are not the same thing - Franco Harris was a Hall of Famer, but Walter Payton was an inner circle guy, who I think of as sort of an upper tier Hall of Famer, for maybe the top four or five at each position, guys like Jim Brown or Lawrence Taylor or Merlin Olsen or, one day, Tom Brady.

The statistical standards are constantly changing at WR, more than any other position, even QB. From a statistical standpoint, taking his era into consideration, he is one of the top ten WR's of all time. He is not one of the top five. I do not put him in the inner circle with Rice and Hutson, he is on a lower notch. He did not change the game other than help usher in (along with Randy Moss) the era of the prima donna wide receivers, and they are such headaches that teams are often eager to get rid of them, and even release them outright if they can't trade them. This was, like it or not, part of TO's pro football career.