10 comments Mariotti, Paige, and Kurt Warner/Peyton Manning Insanity

Due to the fact it is Thursday and Bill Simmons has not posted for this week yet, I am going to go after some low hanging fruit, Jay Mariotti and a Woody Paige mailbag, both of which have little tidbits of bad information in them. I think possibly, maybe, Woody Paige is not stupid but rather is surrounded by people who ask him idiotic questions and that lowers his IQ.

Hey, Woody. I know CU is not looking for a new football coach, but wouldn't they be served well to hire Mike Shanahan? He would get the Buffs back to powerhouse status and also would be able to keep and live in his new Cherry Hills mansion. -- Dennis Smythe, Littleton

So the Buffs are not looking for a new football coach, partially because they hired Dan Hawkins who has the team steadily improving (even though the record does not show it), but Dennis wants the Buffs to hire a head coach who has been in the NFL since 1984 and has never been a head coach on the college football level? I just wanted to make sure I understood the question.

Dan Hawkins is tied up for four or five years, and CU can't afford, with its budget, to pay him off, and he is a good coach, and the program is on the way up, and if Shanahan wouldn't take the Florida job, he won't take the CU job, and he said at the good-bye press conference he is a pro coach, and he told me even before the season he never sees himself going back to college football (he was an assistant for years).

Dennis doesn't think we should let things like, "Shanahan doesn't want to coach there," or "Colorado can't afford to pay two expensive coaches" stop us from thinking this is a good idea. I don't like to take random people who ask questions out to the woodshed but the two type questions that irritate me a lot are those questions that propose coaches going to a team when that team already has a good coach and when readers suggest ways to "fix" a team using fantasy football/Madden methods ("Just sign x player, trade for x player and then you are done!").

As we know, the overtime in the NFL is problematic. What do you think of doing away with the coin toss and giving the team with the most first downs first possession? That way it's at least earned. -- Sean, Boise, Idaho

The team with the most first downs should get first possession? No way, that's not arbitrary enough for me. Each team's offensive and defensive lines should be weighed at the beginning of the game and at the end of the game, then the team that loses the most weight should not only get the ball first in the overtime but if a team loses 45 pounds, then they get to start at their own 45 yard line, if they lose 60 pounds, they get to start at the opponents 40 yard line. If they lose 103 pounds, screw it, that team wins the game on a touchdown, there is no overtime.

I can think of 100 other snarky ideas but the basic premise is that Sean from Idaho's idea is not good.

It's simple, Sean. At the end of regulation, visiting team gets the ball first. If it scores, home teams gets the ball, both following kickoffs. If visiting team is stopped, it punts, and there you go. Both teams should have an opportunity. Statistically, the teams that gets the ball first win more often than the other team.

The reason Woody finds this simple is that there is absolutely no endgame for his suggestion. This could go on for three or four possessions at a time with teams potentially just matching scores with each other. Overall, not the worst idea, and I believe this is actually better than the current system, but I think we can improve on this.

(Bring Bertrand Berry Back) and a linebacker (I mentioned Channing Crowder from Miami, who is relatively cheap), draft the linebacker from USC, get a big-time safety (I mentioned Mike Brown of Chicago) and draft a safety, another defensive lineman (get rid of those worthless picks from a couple of years ago) and replace Nate Webster with someone of equal financial outlay.

Simple as that! Here are the problems: Bertrand Berry will be 34 at the beginning of the next football season which is old in football years, I am not sure how Woody knows that Channing Crowder is relatively cheap because he is not a free agent yet, Rey Maualuga is probably not going to be there when Denver picks (if you believe the reports from the Senior Bowl), Mike Brown is a good safety and I have a special affinity for him because of where he went to school but he is also 30 years old and has played in 2, 12, 6, 1, and 15 games since 2004 so you may need a backup plan, and good luck getting a defensive lineman because every team in the league wants one.

Other than that, Woody has a great plan.

The Broncos need seven new starters on defense. Haynesworth would be just one and costs what seven would cost. I said Julius Peppers in last week's mailbag, and a guy from Carolina wrote me that I was an idiot. OK. I'm an idiot. I still like Peppers.

I guarantee you Julius Peppers is either going to cost you at least a 1st round pick if he is franchised then traded or in excess of $70 million dollars if you sign him as a free agent, maybe more depending on the length of the contract. You could easily get Albert Haynesworth for that amount of money. You are an idiot and I am from Carolina, so count two of us who think that.

If anyone is qualified to talk about who should make the Hall of Fame, it is definitely not Jay Mariotti. He, of course, has a HoF vote.

There are days, many days, when Amy Winehouse, Nick Nolte and a gaggle of Trappist monks would vote with more responsibly than sports media people.

See, Jay no longer writes for a newspaper so he doesn't think he is a journalist anymore, which means he also believes he can take cheap shots at "the sports media." He will tell you more about this on ESPN later tonight.

I did notice in the comments this...

10. mjack08 said...
http://firejaymariotti.blogspot.com/

That is awesome. I wish I got shout outs in the comments section of a column. I don't really wish this, because knowing my luck the worst column I have ever posted would be linked. Similar to when Cliff Corcoran (from Bronx Banter Blog and he contributes to CNNSI) somehow found his way to this site and read my mocking of National League Championship Game 4 preview he did that was admittedly not my best work. I was incredibly nitpicky in it and then took me to task a bit in the comments. The worst part is he schooled me on who picks out the headline and all other journalism intrigue I did not know, which makes me feel like an ass, then followed it up with thanking me for reading. Basically that means, "you suck, I don't." If this was "Yo Mama" I would have been out of the game at that point.

Why does a baseball beat writer in Chicago embarrass his profession by blessing the decidedly unspectacular A.J. Pierzynski -- his go-to source and BFF -- with a lonely 10th-place MVP vote?

Why does an ESPN and mainstream media family member insist on working out old grudges no matter where he goes?

We should be reporting the news. We should be commenting on the news. We shouldn't be screwing up the news,

When Cincinnati pitcher Edinson Volquez finishes fourth in National League Rookie of the Year balloting -- a nice honor if he actually was a rookie, as three writers mistakenly assumed -- you know the process is wacked.

Way to screw up the news asshole. That was actually MLB's fault.

Volquez's presence on that list is definitely unique: No longer a rookie, the pitcher was mistakenly placed on the ballot and received three votes for second, thus there was an obligation to include him in the final results.

It's not like the writers just randomly decided to put him on the ballot, MLB made a mistake and the writers saw his name and voted for him. Should they have known better? Maybe, but reporting it as the writer's fault is screwing up the news, which Mariotti does well, since he mistakes his opinion for news quite frequently.

To see Big Mac stonewalled suggests the distrust and disgust is permanent, that he'll never reach the Hall.

Ty Cobb once beat an African American man up in an elevator, was a violent racist, and beat up a handicapped man in the stands. Gaylord Perry did everything but admit he cheated and threw a spitball, as did other pitchers who are currently in the Hall of Fame. There were rumors Whitey Ford scuffed the ball with his wedding ring and that Don Drysdale did something similar. Phil Niekro's brother Joe, got caught cheating in a game and there were always rumors Phil made his knuckleball dance with a little extra special help from Joe's methods. Don Sutton was also accused of scuffing the baseball and Lew Burdette also allegedly threw a spitball. I can go on and on, if you would like, concerning incidents of cheating in major league baseball that has not kept players out of the Hall of Fame.

I am not saying McGwire should be in the HoF, but I am saying to keep him out when he has never been proven guilty of something is a double standard if we are going to elect these other players to the HoF.

Clemens is the most dominant pitcher of his time, Bonds the most prolific slugger of his time -- a sense is developing that they, too, could be rejected under the same rationale: Liars and cheats aren't allowed in Cooperstown.

I find it ironic that many of the same people who use comparisons between players of today and those already in the Hall of Fame to prove a player should make it if the past player made it, a kind of compounding a past mistake, are the same ones who think cheaters and liars (many of whom are in the HoF) should not make it. When it comes to players like McGwire and Bonds the same argument about past players cheating and lying is not used, but now these people want to draw a line in the sand and say, "this is where it stops." I realize Shoeless Joe Jackson and Pete Rose are not in the HoF, but both were banned, so that is a different story, I am talking about rumors that may/may not be true.

This doesn't even count the players we don't know cheated because they kept it quiet. Maybe Ricky Henderson cheated, we just never knew about it. Basically, I think if you are going to compare Omar Vizquel to Ozzie Smith and let him in, I think you have to compare Roger Clemens to Gaylord Perry and let him in.

Not that I want Roger Clemens in the Hall of Fame but I get kind of tired of everyone playing the moral majority and forgetting the other players that have been allowed in the Hall of Fame who were never proven to cheat but did not have the 24/7 media around to help prove it.

I hate talking about the Hall of Fame.

Didn't even notice his name, in fact. I wrote too many tributes about him, too many gooey paragraphs in 1998, to ever forgive him. He made me -- and a lot of baseball fans -- look very dumb and gullible back then.

This is payback.

Shockingly Jay is making part of his vote against Mark McGwire personal. We would not expect that at all would we? I bet it is not so much the cheating but the fact that he made Jay look like the ass he writes like which causes him to not get a Mariotti HoF vote.

(Of course as I proofread this, I find this on ESPN.)

I think Kurt Warner is a better postseason QB than Peyton Manning but the writer of this column seems to disagree, thinking Warner is better than Manning overall, and uses postseason statistics to prove it. I respectfully disagree.

Some of you may notice I don't use statistics on this site that much, and I don't have a disdain for them, but as someone who uses numbers all day I know you can use numbers to prove absolutely anything you want. I also know that sometimes numbers can be misleading. Most numbers that try and prove a point are cherry picked anyway, but I believe numbers when they are well thought out and persuade me on an argument's merits. I don't think this one does that simply because each QB has had a different consistency level since 1998.

From Cliff Corcoran I have learned CNNSI writes the heading to columns many times, so the writer is not always responsible for that. This one says, "Why Kurt Warner is a Better QB than Peyton Manning," so I have to go from there and assume this is also the premise of the article, which it is.

Warner torched this stingy unit, completing 21 of 28 passes (75 percent) for 279 yards, 9.96 yards per attempt, four touchdowns, no interceptions and a 145.7 passer rating.

It was a nearly perfect statistical game. In fact, over the course of the game, Warner jumped past Joe Montana and into second place on the all-time postseason passer rating list:

Kurt Warner is one of the best postseason quarterbacks of all time, I will agree with that.

That's not to say Warner is a better quarterback than Montana. He's not.

I agree.

It also tells us that Warner is better than Manning.

I disagree.

Let's get the numbers that were used:

• Manning is second in NFL history with a 94.7 career passer rating.

• Warner is third in NFL history with a 93.8 career passer rating.

These two quarterbacks are very close over a long period of time. The problem is that Warner has suffered from inconsistency over that time span and Peyton Manning has consistently put up great numbers, which makes me believe he is a better QB. If Warner had injuries that caused the consistency, I could give him credit for that, but his consistency is because of poor performance. This is not a Sandy Koufax situation.

Second, when it comes to all-important postseason play, there is no comparison:

Warner is better than Manning any which way you want to slice it or dice it.

Warner in the postseason (10 games):230 of 360 (63.9 percent), 2,991 yards, 8.31 YPA, 299 yards per game, 23 TD, 12 INT, 97.3 passer rating.

Manning in the postseason (15 games):348 of 565 (61.6 percent), 4,207 yards, 7.4 YPA, 280 yards per game, 22 TD, 17 INT, 84.9 passer rating.

You'll notice Warner is better than Manning in almost every single efficiency stat and has actually thrown more postseason TD passes than Manning (23 to 22) -- despite playing in five fewer games.

I don't think you will get that many arguments Kurt Warner is better than Peyton Manning in the postseason, based on actually watching them each play and the numbers presented. This doesn't mean Peyton Manning is a lesser QB than Kurt Warner.

Three other things to consider:

1) Warner is much more likely to play well in the postseason.

2) Warner is far less likely to lay an egg in the postseason.

3) Most importantly, Warner's teams are much more likely to win the playoffs.

What do all three of these have in common? They are all talking about the postseason. Normally that would be fine if you the premise of the article was that Warner is a better postseason QB than Manning but it is not qualifed with just the postseason and indicates Warner is better overall, which I can not agree with.

You can't not include regular season numbers in this article if you are talking about overall. That's like me saying Jim Leyritz is a better baseball than Alex Rodriguez is, but then only base it on postseason performance. The only number used in this article from the regular season is QB rating, which Manning has a slight advantage over Warner.

Let's look at regular season numbers and see which quarterback is actually better (Manning has played more games than Warner, even though Warner is 37 and Manning is 32, which proves Manning has been better over a long period of time, so I will try to leave out numbers that are affected by games played, though it is hard to compare these two without seeing the different volume of numbers they put up):

(Warner's numbers, Manning's numbers)

Both joined the league in 1998, so the fact Warner has 75 less starts than Manning tells me what each coaching staff thought about each QB and also tells me about the long term performance of Warner to Manning.

Game started: Warner- 85, Manning- 160

TD%: Warner- 5.1%, Manning- 5.6%

INT%: Warner- 3.2%, Manning- 2.8%

Yards per attempt: Warner- 8.0, Manning- 7.7

Yards per game: Warner- 259.9, Manning- 259.3

Sack%- Warner- 6.2%, Manning- 3.3%

These numbers show that it is a pretty close race between the two QB's. I only showed these to get to my basic premise that when Kurt Warner is good, he is as good as Peyton Manning can be. The key is "when Kurt Warner is good," which so far has been 5 seasons in his NFL career, compared to Manning putting up great numbers every year but his rookie year. The total numbers completely support Manning being the superior QB and I would argue the fact Manning has displayed such consistency over such a long period of time, he is really the better QB between the two.

I don't think this is a case of perception that Kurt Warner is not as good as Peyton Manning, I think it is a case of consistency and if you asked 100 players who they would rather have as their QB, Manning would win in a landslide. I have no proof of this, of course, but you can't merely use postseason statistics to say Warner is a better QB. Just because Warner had spurts of greatness in his career, I don't think this means the overall greatness of Manning should be ignored. I believe a QB who consistently puts up great numbers is better than a QB that puts up great numbers intermittenly.

More remarkable is that Warner has done it with historically dysfunctional organizations. Before Warner took them to the big game, the Rams had reached just one Super Bowl (XIV) in their history, including their time in Los Angeles. Warner led the franchise to its only Super Bowl victory and to its first NFL title since 1951.

The Colts were not exactly a model franchise before Peyton Manning arrived. They did have the #1 pick in the draft.

The Rams have fallen off the face of the earth since he left.

The decline of Marshall Faulk had something to do with this as well. Also, the Rams have struggled lately, but they did make the postseason two years without Warner as the QB and the Giants became a better team with a rookie Eli Manning as the QB. You have to factor these things in as well.

For his part, Manning remains the Picasso of Choke Artists and the master of the one-and-done. Six times in nine visits his vaunted Colts have exited the playoffs without a single victory and he's underperformed almost each and every time.

No argument from me here.

Given Manning's and Warner's career accomplishments, we'd take Warner over Manning to lead our team six days a week and certainly on Sunday -- especially if that Sunday is in January.

You are crazy. The overall numbers support that Manning is a slightly better QB and the numbers over his career prove in a given season Peyton Manning is likely to perform better than Kurt Warner. If you want a QB who wavers from year to year over a QB that is great every single year, you take Warner with his fumbles and I will take Peyton Manning. I will win.