Giving Credit Where It's Not Due (1 Viewer)

[Phantom Knight]

It's a fair enough point. Flipping it from Ben to Rodgers - should we view Rodgers any differently now that he has a ring than we would if the Steelers had scored a TD on the final drive and won? On Sunday night Rodgers was as advertised - top-notch ball placement and decision making that led to multiple TDs, no picks, and a nice yardage total. Sure, it's the biggest stage in football, but it's not as if Rodgers went out there and did anything he hasn't been doing his whole career, right?

Exactly.I think one should view Rodgers absolutely the same whether or not PIT scored and won on that final drive.

But if Roethlisberger had handed the ball off to Mendenhall on that last play and the RB broke away for a TD, I think today most people would be viewing Roethlisberger and Rodgers differently than they are today. And I think that's wrong.

J

+1 I always view a player on what he did on the field... without looking at the final score.And this is well said as well:

Yes and No. Football is a game of big plays. Seven times out of ten, a game is close enough that one or two big plays decide it. So, in this sense, the players who make big plays consistently are the players who make a real difference.

 

[Iwannabeacowboybaby!]

Sorry for the ramble here. I've got a thought you guys can help me develop here.I was listening today to this week's Bill Simmons podcast. Sal said something along the lines that Ben Roethlisberger was Santonio Holmes with one of the greatest catches in Super Bowl history and a few Seattle holding calls away from being a 3 time Super Bowl loser.This got me thinking.I've always hated our tendency as sports fans to let a super small sample size color our overall judgement of a player. First off, Football is such a team dependent game. With QBs, so much of what gets attributed to the QB is absolutely out of his control. The receiver obviously has a huge impact on him. As does a great defensive player and of course the rest of the offense. And it works both ways. Holmes helps Roethlisberger with a fantastic catch a few years ago. James Jones kills Aaron Rodgers with a terrible drop this year. Both of those plays could have easily gone the other way with the QB having done nothing different.It seems to me that we put way too much emphasis on a few plays. And not enough on the entire body of work. It seems like poor statistical methodology. But I fully and completely understand the "big time players deliver in clutch moments" thing too. So I can see both sides.Thoughts on this?J

I can't stand people who try and twist history around and say things like Ben's a few plays from being winless in Super Bowls. Do you know how many championships in sports were determined by inches and tenths of seconds? It is what it is, Ben accomplished those Super Bowls and this one he came up short. It's nothing more and nothing less.We see it on these boards ALL THE TIME. Peyton Manning loses in the playoffs, so the Tom Brady fans are out in force the next day with the Tom Brady stats and how he's a better QB. Tony Romo comes up short and the next day all of the Cowboy haters are out with their facts saying how Romo will never lead them to the big game. They use "the moment" as a weapon to help prove their point instead of looking at their entire body of work. They hope that people who are undecided on the topic are swayed to their way of thinking. Maybe Big Ben really isn't that good. He's only a few plays from being a 3 time loser. But guess what......HE'S NOT. Someone should pinch that guy real hard and tell him to wake up and deal with reality, and reality is that he does have 2 rings and that there have been many championships decided by the slimmest of margins and those that ended up on the right side are called champions.I sort of disagree with you on the small sample size topic you brought up. When you're talking about the Super Bowl or Championship Games in various sports, the sample size will be small. It is these small sample sizes where we determine some of our greatest heroes in sports because of these moments. Joe Montana is considered by most the greatest QB of all time because of how he played in 4 games. Of course there are other great games he played in but so did many other QB's have great games in playoff games or important regular season games, but in the 4 SB's he was in, nobody really compares and delivered like he did. Whether we agree or disagree with putting that much importance on a small sample size, it's just the way it is. Everyone knows the rules and how it is so when you get to that game, you better win it or suffer the eternal consequences that losing those kinds of games brands you with.I grow tiresome of the arguments like the Big Ben one you mentioned. I think they create topics like that just to stir things up and talk about stuff on the radio or whatever so they can play devil's advocate for a day. I told myself about a year ago I'm done listening to that kind of talk because it's really a waste of time. He won 2 Super Bowls and spending an afternoon on what ifs seems like such a waste of time. The bottom line is he did win those other games.What if Scott Norwood would have kicked that field goal to beat the Giants? Would that victory have stirred the Bills to then win 4 SB's instead of losing 4? I think so, call 1-800-playsme and let's talk about it and how the Bills were only a few yards off from being the greatest dynasty of all time.

 

[Carolina Hustler]

It's very accurate, but it's a reflection of our society...and really, the media/personalities who paint the picture in the easiest, most convenient way possible. Bottom line is don't let your own opinions be formed by others, and don't be afraid to have them. Just argue them with the understanding that it is actually an opinion and others may feel differently from you. Big Ben has 2 rings: fact.Big Ben is the most/least clutch: opinion.

Kickers and bench players get rings too.. He's in good company, what does it prove?

 

[comfortably numb]

Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser.

--- General George S. Patton

Winning isn’t everything, it’s the ONLY thing.

--- Vince Lombardi

Winning makes all the difference. Ask Dan Marino, Jim Kelly, Fran Tarkenton, or Ron Jaworski. Would anyone remember Joe Namath if the Colts win SB III. He would be Steve Grogan and not in the HOF.

I consider John Elway the best QB of all-time, but there is no way he could be considered that without back to back SB wins his last 2 years. He carried 3 teams to the SB on his back early in his career but he didn’t win, so he was not thought of as worthy of the greatest label.

America is about winning and sports is the last place where people can define who is a winner and who isn’t. And yes, QBs get more credit when they win and more blame when they lose but that is what drives kids to that position. They want the chance to stand on the podium and hold up the Lombardi, it’s the greatest position in sports, and it comes with the most pressure. You know that going in if you succeed you will be immortalized and if you fail you will be considered a bum.

I agree with everything you say, but it's just ironic.

The bolded statement above.

When Elway was carried by a superstar RB is when we finally give him his label of greatest.

 

[FreeBaGeL]

What if Scott Norwood would have kicked that field goal to beat the Giants? Would that victory have stirred the Bills to then win 4 SB's instead of losing 4?

How about we look at that question from another angle. What if Scott Norwood would have kicked that field goal to beat the Giants? Would that have made Jim Kelly a better player? The obvious answer is no, because he was standing on the sidelines and literally had no effect on the play. Unless it's your argument that Jim Kelly was praying really hard then he had no effect on the outcome of that play. It doesn't affect how good or bad he *actually* is in any way, yet if that field goal had gone through the uprights it undoubtedly would have vastly changed most people's *perception* of how good Jim Kelly was.And that's one of the big disconnects with this "winning" thing. You can't honestly look at that play and tell me it actually affected how good or bad Jim Kelly was, yet you can easily look at it and say it greatly affected the perception of how good Kelly was (1 ring vs no ring).

Here's another big problem with the "winning" thing. Why does it apply only to quarterbacks? I know quarterbacks are the most important individual players on the field, but they're not more important than entire units, so why can't we apply the same rules within the domain of the question we're asking? For instance, if we're talking about defenses, where do the 2009 Saints rank among the top defenses of all time? Most people would laugh at the mention of them. Where do they rank among just comparisons to defenses in 2009? Most people would laugh at the idea that anyone would even think about calling them "elite" in 2009.

Yet, what is the difference between the 2009 Saints' defense and the 2008 Ben Roethlisberger that led to people calling Roethlisberger "elite" and one of the greatest of all time? Think about it. In the NFC Championship game and the Super Bowl, the two most important games, they were faced with having to stop a game-winning drive from Brett Favre and Peyton Manning. This isn't Roethlisberger leading his team down the field against the 26th ranked defense in the league. This is them having to stop two of the greatest quarterbacks in the history of the game, who also happen to be among the top in NFL history in game winning drives, and who were leading possibly the top 2 offenses in the league. Yet they intercepted both of them to win the games.

Imagine for a second that instead of Roethlisberger's super bowl wins coming on the backs of a bad performance against a mediocre defense (Seahawks) and a game winning drive against one of the league's worst defenses (Cardinals), they had come on game winning drives against the 85 Bears defense and against the 2000 Ravens defense. People would probably be calling him the greatest player ever by now. That's the equivalent to what the Saints defense did in 2009.

Now, if you were starting up a team from scratch right now, how many people would consider starting it with the Saints defense instead of the Steelers or Jets defense? No one.

It's a catch-22. You can't sit here and say guys like Roethlisberger are among the all-time great just because he has delivered in a couple of key situations, and then on the flip side not say the same thing about the Saints defense in 2009 who did an even BETTER job of that against MUCH TOUGHER competition.

And that's what makes these arguments so maddening. The people on the "winning is all that matters" side are so unwilling to step outside their little world and look at their arguments objectively. Reason and logic be damned, throwing around a couple of buzzwords like "winner" and "champion" passes off as a real argument these days. That's something I'd expect at the water cooler from Joe Dude who caught the end of the game while he was hitting on some girl at a bar, not from people on a forum that claims to be able to see beyond the ESPN hype and actually look deeper into the game.

 

[Ridgelake]

I've shaken my head for a long time about people calling Romo a loser or not a big game player. In the Giants playoff game a couple years ago, he hit a receiver between the numbers for what would have been the winning score. It was dropped. Dallas lost. Did they lose because Romo choked? He put the ball dead on the money. What more could he have done?

Romo got (dis)credit for many other "big game" losses. In many cases, things like Witten slipping coming out of his break leading to a pick six got blamed on Romo. Romo threw the ball when he was supposed to, before Witten made his break. He put it right where it was supposed to go. But Witten wasnt there because he slipped. Romo took the blame.

So yes, Joe, I think you're on to a very relevant point. We do overemphasize the final outcome in assessing players' ability. Not that its going to change anything in the mainstream, however. But its a fun topic to discuss.