The Great iBoldin

Unnecessary roughness on Weddle I believe. He hit Gronkowski as the touchdown was caught. Worst call I've seen in a while.

How is that an unnecessary roughness penalty? LOL

Neither run tremendous routes though, Vincent has gotten better but a lot of the Air Coyrell is simple patterns and they run a lot of deep stuff. But I suppose if Ochocinco can be competent in a Patriots offense with his route running these two could pick it up.

Tim Tebow is in the game.. as a slot wide receiver

It works incredibly well for the Air Coyrell offense and the fact they have Rivers passing to them. It's money.

The Lions are for real. Jim Schwartz for coach of the year.

The Sedins are going to have a down year, most of the Canucks will. We're missing a bunch of key players to start the season such as Kesler, Hamhuis and Mason Raymond. We'll start making our ascension in January or so but will probably end up as a 3 seed or so.

Also, Canada plays France tonight. I'm not expecting much, but I think we can keep the score respectable. If we somehow beat the French I wouldn't even care about the rest of the RWC. A high profile win like this would really give a shot to the popularity of the game here.

Ireland beat Australia last night. Wow, I was so impressed by the Irish, what a huge win for them. Probably play Wales instead of South Africa in the Quarterfinals too. South Africa and Australia would be awesomeeeee.

I think it certainly helps to have a proven player on the backend, especially with playersl ike Bobby Sanguinetti coming through and the continual emergence of Jamie McBain. They brought in Bryan Allen for defensive purposes and already have Pitkanen and Gleason. That`s a nice defensive core and Ward has done more with a lot less. The team is a lot more defensively responsible up front, let`s not forget. Brandon Sutter, Bowman, Boychuk are all young players who have come up playing two-way games.

I don't think Cam Ward gets enough recognition for his overall body of work. Has a Cup ring, has shown up in the playoffs but plays in front of what has generally been a shitty team. Now that he has a somewhat competent defense I think he's going to shine. No doubt about it.

I like Philadelphia because they just have a bunch of young talented hockey players who love the game and play it with passion. I would say it's the definition of hockey swagger, they have so many talented young players. Go out and play without much pressure and just go out in win. Now that they have some semi-dependable goaltending I think the Flyers are definitely a top five team in the East.

Real Deal, why blitz when you can drop into their zones and defend that pass so conservatively?

Yeah, and the Patriots just let Chad Henne throw for over 400 years. Cam Newton just threw for an NFL rookie record in his first ever game. It's irrelevant, it was the first year off a shortened off-season. These defenses haven't had a chance to gel yet, it takes a lot longer for a defense to come together then it does an offense. The Saints have players like Aubrayo Franklin, Sedrick Ellis, Jonathan Vilma, Malcolm Jenkins, Tracy Porter and Jabari Greer. Including key rotational players like Shaun Rodgers, Cam Jordan, Martez Wilson, etc. It's a vibrant defense with a lot of speed and skill with one of the best coordinators in the NFL. Yes, it's an elite defense. By the end of the game, Green Bay wasn't 'marching up with ease' at all. New Orleans hunkered down and starting playing some defense as the game wore on. No, Briggs is not an elite player. His last all-pro selection was two years ago, who gives a shit about pro bowls. I will give you Julius Peppers, he's an elite player. Devin Hester is not a good football player outside of being a great kick returner. Kick returners are not elite commodities in the NFL, and they especially aren't now that a kicker with any sort of leg should pound the ball out of the end zone 80% of the time. Brian Urlacher received 2 votes, that's not even in contention. Ed Reed got a vote and he played 10 games last year. Urlacher wasn't in contention to win that award, there's a difference between getting two votes and getting 15 votes. I'm basing Green Bay being better then Chicago because they have more talent, have players that win football games and has one of the best quarterbacks in the game right now along with the best offense in football.

They have talent all over the defense and one of the best coordinators in the game in Gregg Williams. That was last year, but if you want to play that game I can play it, too. Green Bay still won that game, on the road. Green Bay still won the Super Bowl. Green Bay were ravaged by injuries including one to a position where they had visibly no depth and a crucial part to winning a Super Bowl at running back. Chicago doesn't win that game with Cutler either. You must have a very loose term on what is an "elite" player. Lance Briggs is not an elite player. The Bears don't have an elite player. Before you come in with elite players = elite units, yes they are completely separate entities.

New Orleans has an elite defense that is going to make the necessary adjustments and beat Chicago by 14 points. Green Bay is a much better team then the Bears, like 6 wins better.But that's my opinion.

QB: Pats RB: Push, Forte is a good player but the Pats have a better stable of backs. Could go either way. I love BJGE. WR: Pats, neither are anything special as a group. TE: Pats OL: Pats DL: Push - Bears are better on the edge, Pats better in the interior. LB: Bears, I guess. Briggs wanted out and he's not as good as he once was. DB: Bears, but I don't think either are that good. Chad Henne pumped the Pats as they played way too much zone. ST: Bears The Bears are not a good team, that's the problem.

LSU @ Miss. St Boise St. @ Toledo Oklahoma @ Florida St. North Texas @ Alabama Stanford @ Arizona Wisconsin @ Northern Illinois Oklahoma St. @ Tulsa Idaho @ Texas A&M Washington @ Nebraska Navy @ South Carolina Arkansas St. @ Virginia Tech Troy @ Arkansas Michigan St. @ Notre Dame Tennessee @ Florida Ohio St. @ Miami (FL) West Virginia @ Maryland Auburn @ Clemson Arizona St. @ Illinois LA-Monroe @ TCU Texas @ UCLA Utah @ BYU Pittsburgh @ Iowa Ole Miss @ Vanderbilt Louisville @ Kentucky Duke @ Boston College

I will say this: When ECN formulates ideas without trolling, being incredibly biased, telling people they have reading comprehension problems and all of that sort, he is knowledgeable and a good poster. But this thread is the exact epitome of what has been his downfall in the eyes of members for at least the past year.

My favourite part of this thread was when ECN said let's put 1 and 1 together for a minute :lol:

England and Scotland on October 1st is going to be the game that decides Pool B. England's beaten Argentina and I think Scotland will as well, and I don't see England losing to the pair of Romania and Georgia, as well as those two countries have developed their rugby programs over the last few years. The RWC this year is going to be fantastic when it gets to the knockout stages. The overall quality is absolutely tremendous, all of the top twenty teams in the world are in this tournament and countries like Russia, Georgia, Canada and Japan have pushed their programs into where they need to be in order to be competitive. Of course, they're likely never going to be too competitive with the All Blacks, SA, the Wallabies, etc. But it's that middle of the order, between spots 9 and 15 where rugby is going to get extremely competitive between now and 2015 when it's back again. That brings to me to this point - I definitely believe the RWC should have included that three teams from each pool go through and give it a 12-team wildcard knockout stage. The top four teams in each pool get a bye into the quarterfinals, but with that level and talent increasing by the year, doesn't it make sense to see if Canada (likely to be the third place team in Pool A) can challenge a team like England? What about Samoa, ranked 10th in the world, in this years group of death with South Africa and Wales, two top-six teams in the world, playing a notably weaker USA team? It just makes too much sense not to implement it, and both 2011 and 2015 would've been great opportunities to try. Giving the best teams in the world the benefit of the doubt is understandable because of the beatings they can put on these teams, but if I was Australia, I wouldn't want battle tested Samoa or Wales anyways. If they went to this three-team advancement idea, it would probably be Pool A v. Pool D, Pool B v. Pool C in order to get away from any potential rematches. Any world cup should be all about flavour and you shouldn't have to play a team twice until you're into the finals anyways. If they were to go to this idea, the match-ups would probably look something like: Byes: New Zealand, England, Australia, South Africa. 2nd place: France, Scotland, Ireland, Wales. Qualifiers: Canada, Argentina, Italy, Samoa. France v. Samoa - Awesome game. Canada v. Wales Scotland v. Italy Argentina v. Ireland If you look at those match-ups, the real upset potential is Samoa against France who I think wouldn't match up tremendously with the Samoans. The rest are likely to stay the same anyways, but it's just the competitive factor. Here are my rest of the tournament predictions. Australia v. Wales - Australia England v. France - France South Africa v. Ireland - SA New Zealand v. Scotland - NZ Those would be absolutely tremendous games. Australia v. France South Africa v. New Zealand I think we're looking at an All-Oceanic final, All Blacks taking it all. They need to, it's home soil. I am high as hell right now and it took a long ass time to write all of this out. I was so paranoid of losing this all and all of my thoughts. And no one will likely read this. I love rugby.

After I seen Brandon Stokley signed with the Giants today, it reminded me of his catch in Week 1 of last year. The Gus Johnson call (of course). Anyways, the play before that was Brandon Marshall almost making a tough grab in double coverage but was pushed out of bounds. Two or three years ago they get that catch based on the force out rule. Would you guys bring back the force out rule? Or do you think it was a good idea to get rid of it in the first place? I personally would like it back.

Canada beat Tonga last night, I was very excite. Finally we don't disappoint in something, against a good team as well.

Hue Jackson. Used to run the offensive line in Baltimore, terrific offensive mind.

Did anyone notice that huge voice crack when McFadden almost scored? lol'd hard