Fair call on the Bengals, my mistake.

While the Belichick did certainly rely on a stout defence about a decade ago, since 07 the team’s been all about Tom Brady and the offense’s ability to put up huge numbers. Last year the Pats allowed the second highest amount of yards per game in the league. Football Outsders ranked them 28th and 29th in the league in their “defence-adjusted value above average” and “weighted defence” stats respectively. The Pats were decent against the run purely because Wilfork is so effective at taking away the inside lanes. But their pass-defense was atrocious. They couldn’t generate any pass-rush without blitzing, and the secondary was like a sieve, assuming you cut a hole out of the middle of the sieve. Whenever you have to play wide recievers at corner you know you’re in trouble.

This may change this year as the Pats seemed to have picked up two good defensive rookies in Jones and Hightower who should help bring the heat on quarterbacks. But it’s probably more likely this makes the Pats simply an average defense (which should be enough to make them a damn scary team) rather than a particularly scary one.

The problem with this article is you are basing it on a handful of throws in a pre-season match when no defensive co-ordinators want to indicate what crazy blitz packages they’ve been designing to steamroll Peyton. Week 1’s home match against the Steelers should be more telling, but perhaps the best indication we’ll see will be in week 15 in a chilly Baltimore.

You’re touting the Bengals and Patriots defensive units as formidable? Luckily for Peyton the best defence in the AFC West sits on his side of the field.

Because this is well beyond the 8-year exclusion period dictated by the IOC, I think that the medal is simply vacated rather than being re-allocated to the next fastest rider.

JazzyJase I guess next time you need to make it clearer if you are writing with your tongue in your cheek. Because an article devoid of facts and full of crap generalisations certainly doesn’t deserve to be taken seriously. It’s really hard to rebutt an argument as illogical as this, but I’ll try regardless.

I can’t see what running a professional sports outfit off the ground has to do with what you do on it. You suggested that by using some media jargon (and the claim that the Swans are trendsetters in the AFL here is laughable, especially considering how little media time they get) they have changed their style of play and now can’t win at the MCG? Bizarre. The 2012 Sydney Swans play a distinctly different style of football to teams of past seasons, and as such a sample size of one match says very little about their ability to win or lose at the MCG.

Sydneysiders certainly do not have a sporting rivalry with Victoria, because there’s no history there. Surely any form of this rivalry would exactly the kind of fake passion you’re raging against. Sydneysiders hate Queensland with a passion, not Victoria.

The connection between Sydney and the South Melbourne Football Club is a very real one. Witness the stacks of South Melbourne fans who still turn up to Swans games in Melbourne, and when I speak to them, still say they are very much passionate supporters of the club. Rather than “a new low in marketing tactics”, the Swans have made a concerted effort to respect the history of the club, and keep the South Melbourne community involved in the team.

As far as Freo being the only true battlers of the AFL, there are plenty of clubs like North Melbourne who would disagree.

Flacco gets canned for a reason: he is simply average. Using football outsiders’ DYAR measure (imo the best metric for QB performance), he is yet to make the top 10 QB’s in the league.

Joe has a decent deep ball, but I thin he’s just been unable to consistently read defenses and put the ball where it needs to be. If he didn’t have arguably the best halfback in the league behind him, he’d get found out a lot more often.

Yes, he may have done enough in that conference game (against a particularly weak defense, as you’ve mentioned), but he is a long way off being a legit QB.

I wouldn’t count on Jahvid Best doing a whole lot for the Lions this year, there is still no indication when he will be available to suit up, and if he would be able to handle the load of lead back for the team. Also, as you have identified, there’s no way that they’re going to win their division, and as such I think they’ll have an identical season to what they produced last year at best. If they get a wildcard spot, they’d probably travel to New Orleans or San Francisco, and I can’t see them getting over either side.

Speaking of the Saints and the 9’ers, you’ve neglected both in your predictions. I think the Saints will still win their division, Curtis Lofton seems to be filling in for the absent Vilma pretty well, and their offense should still be one of if not the most potent in the league.

The 9’ers have improved from last season in my opinion, as they’ve beefed up their offense with a number of skilled position players. They may have overachieved last season to get 13 wins, but I don’t think they’ll drop too far this season, and could be the 2nd seed in the NFC.

As far as Manning goes, let’s see how he goes in week 1 against an aggressive Steelers defence. Should speak volumes about where his recovery is at.

“He is to the track the Bradman of cricket, the Ali of boxing, the Nicklaus of golf, the Gretsky of ice-hockey, the Pele of football, the Jordan of basketball, the Laver of tennis.”

Glad to see you’ve been swept up in London fever David, but I’m not sure this one will stand in the harsh light of re-examination once things settle down in a few weeks. Surely if there’s an Ali of track and field it’s Jesse Owens. Much of what Ali contributed to sport occurred outside the ring, after all.

Considering Carl Lewis grabbed 9 gold medals across 3 Olympic games, I think Bolt still has a bit of work to do before he ends the kind of gushing praise found here.

You mis-spelled Wayne Gretzky, by the way. Clearly being an iconic NHL star only gets you so far in Australia.

Why does Bellamy have to go? Bennett had quite a few wobbly seasons at the Broncos where they looked good and fell apart after Origin. They let him stay, and he took them to another premiership.

Romeo Crenell… Leading a team who’s best player is coming back from a knee re-construction (often the end of the line for running backs… Winning ten games? I guess you have to have one crazy prediction. When was Cassel’s job under fire? Surely you’re not suggesting that Tyler Palko was pressing for a starting job. Just want to re-iterate that you have backed Romeo to lead a team above .500 with the worst QB of his division, and a potentially washed up running back.

How on earth did you reach that calculation? Even if you peg our population at 20 million to keep it simple, if we had a medal for every 50,000 people here we’d have 400 medals!

http://simon.forsyth.net/olympics.html

This excellent resource places us 7th in total medals per million, which is impressive but when you consider that Grenada has 10 times the amount of medals per million that we do, we’re a long way off first.

The Giants were an average team last year that came good in the final month of the season. They lost to the Redskins twice, and were gifted a berth in the playoffs by some poor special teams play by the Cowboys. The Giants have been wildly inconsistent, along with the entire NFC East over the past few years. Hard to see the G men putting two solid seasons together.

I’m certainly not ready to write off the Saints just yet. Vilma may not be out for the season, as rumours are still suggesting they will cut his suspension significantly. The Saints still have a super scary offensive game, especially as Jimmy Graham continues to develop. In their dome, I can’t see them dropping below .500.

Obviously your major leap of faith is with the Cowboys. 3-13! I’m leaning completely the opposite way, as I think they will push Philly for the top seed in the division. Just about everything that could go wrong did go wrong last year, and still went 8-8. The NFC East does have a habit of throwing up crazy results, but I think its the Giants’ turn to bomb this year.

I copy pasted the text out of your article Tim! It comes right after your bold heading “How does his record compare to Carl Lewis?”.

“Lewis, widely considered to be the greatest Olympian of all time” is a huge, huge call. Especially in the context of what Phelps has accomplished this time around, not sure that anyone is widely considered to be the greatest Olympian of all time.

Channel 9 viewers are still oblivious of this entire match. Instead we’re watching highlight montages.

How would you break this down in terms of collapse/comeback? 50/50?

I think you’ll find that the NFL doesn’t use a lottery system for it’s draft, it’s mainly decided by the win-loss record of each side. As far as the EPL goes, I wasn’t aware that they used a draft at all!

Tanking is definitely present in the NBA, and although it’s not frowned upon to the same extent that we have seen in the AFL, it’s still a concern. I think the simplest system is that every team that didn’t finish in the 8 has an equal chance in a draft lottery, with the top 8 based on final standing.

This is pretty pertinent to the whole big man conversation. It is interesting to consider the absence of any super elite bigmen in the NBA.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnMIvEH9srw

An intriguing column, but it may be a slight overraction to one post-season. While I do agree that the lines are definitely blurred between guards and forwards, there are two ideas I take issue with.

You claim that no big man had an influence on the finals, which is true, but just over 12 months ago Tyson Chandler was arguably the second most important player to the Dallas Mavericks. Indiana didn’t make it to the conference Finals, just as an aside, but Boston did, and Kevin Garnett was hugely influential despite being far from an athletic big man.

As far as starting goes, the reality is this still definitely matters to some people who play the sport. Whilst there are some players who are certainly happy to sit on the bench despite being of a starter’s quality (Ginobli and Harden spring to mind) the reality is that being a starter provides a clear separation between yourself and around 60% of the league, and provides leverage in contract negotiations.

It’s a bit dismissive to just pass off some very extensive and lucid arguments as “being in awe of Lin”. I’m not convinced anyone is dismissing the cause of loyalty in sports, but rather that it doesn’t really apply here! He only has played 35 games for the team, and was the beneficiary more from circumstance than any sort of goodwill or long term development on the Knicks behalf.

As far as his value goes, is he not one of if not the most marketable stars in an Asian market that has been hugely important for the Rockets over the past decade?

I’m not sure that the Peleton chased down Rolland. When they eventually decided to go ahead and catch him, he was around 2 minutes ahead, but briefly afterwards he was pretty much freewheeling as he got caught by the pack. It seemed like an awfully quick chase, with the more likely scenario that he finally got the message from the team director to stop being a jerk and slow up.

Was certainly a dramatic stage, and a beautiful one too. Liggett and Sherwin kept wondering why no more attacks came up that final climb, but I think once Sky got three riders up the front, everyone was just trying to keep uo. Once Froome is up there it seems pointless to attack, he’s demonstrated more explosive acceleration up a hill than anyone else in the tour this year

If he was getting carried away with his racist claims, as you seem to be claiming here (it’s quite hard to follow the…logic…of…your…posts), why did you make the comparison to the ’68 olympics?

Jocelyn, you have stated quite a few times now that John has been misrepresented by the media and unfairly painted as selfish in his claims. But the whole crux of your piece stems from your original statement that John should have been selected instead of Solomon!

Another impressive wrap Kit, like the line about Voeckler’s effervescence. Love seeing big Jens up the front, he’ll be a huge loss to the sport when he retires (which will probably be when he turns 60, judging by his current longevity).

Both Cadel and Nibali do seem to lack the answers required to deal with Sky, I’m not sure that anything other than an accident or stroke of luck can open up this race.

Not all these moves were trades. Kidd, Lewis, and Allen were signed as free agents rather than traded for. Nash is definitely the biggest move so far, although Dwight could change that.