WhoDat

Anybody got a tivo? Record any games? Want to see something that will settle this? Go look at where Hassleback hit his WRs when the dropped the ball vs where Brooks hit his.

There must have been 15 times this year that announcers called a pass a drop that made me see red. Boo goes on a 15 yard seam route and sits in the middle of the field b/w a zone. Brooks throws the ball 5 feet over his head - Boo goes up and gets his hands on it, but doesn\'t come down with it. The announcers say, \"That was a bit high, but it\'s a ball Boo is supposed to catch.\" Yeah, but then its a pass that Brooks is supposed to throw at the numbers. So that\'s the WR\'s fault. He\'s supposed to sell out and fully extend his body in the middle of the field b/c Brooks can\'t deliver a pass on-target. Everyone says that \"if it hits your hands you can catch it.\" Did anyone on this board play football? I played WR in high school. Not exactly the NFL by any stretch of the imagination, but do you know how difficult of a concept that is? Here\'s an idea. Go out in the back yard with a buddy, run full speed across his face and have him deliver a ball to you a foot behind your back shoulder and see how hard it is to catch that without anyone coming to take your head off. Or try having him throw as hard as he can from ten yards away at your front foot or knee, then try and go down and get that.

\"Excuses, excuses, excuses. That’s all anyone ever makes for the New Orleans Saints’ organization.\" - Eric Narcisse


\"Being a Saints fan is almost like being addicted to crack,\" he said.[i]\"You know you should stop, but you just can\'t.\"

saintswhodi

Nice points Who.

JKool

Who,

You know that lots of guys here played. We understand that the pass-catch mechanism is nowhere near as easy as the pros (even AB and Horn) make it look.

I don\'t know what your point is, but it does go to this: recording dropped passes will be too difficult, since some people think it is a dropped pass when a WR lays out and nips the ball (where that is more often than not merely a badly thrown pass or a route error), and others think it is a dropped pass when a QB nicks the WR shoulder pad causing the ball to go astray.

There is a reason that dropped passes aren\'t recorded - it is too difficult to say what constitutes a dropped pass. That is my view at the momment anyway.

As far as the pass-catch mechanism goes, it isn\'t exactly easy to put a ball between some defenders, onto a near full speed WR in stride, while somewhere between three and seven angry men try and pound you and your body is in a wide-open throwing stroke.

It seems to me this dropped pass stuff is far from resolved then.

"... I was beating them with my eyes the whole game..." - Aaron Brooks

Saint_LB

Who Dat, when I was a kid, I use to live next door to this guy who, at the time, was probably in his mid-thirties. Every time he would come home, he would holler to me, \"Where\'s the football?\" I would go in and get it, and he would throw me pass after pass after pass. I would like to think that I developed some pretty good hands because of him. Our favorite route to throw and catch was the sideline route, or, in our case, the ditch route. I would go down and out to the ditch and he would throw it so that I would have to tip-toe at the ditch to \"stay in bounds\" and still catch it. As fate would have it, while playing JC ball at Perk, I was playing CB one night and was covering a guy who was running a down and out. When the QB threw the ball, I broke on it and had a chance to use all that practice for one catch that required me tip-toeing the sideline as I caught it for an interception. Man, I loved throwing the ball with that guy.

Anyway, I don\'t know how I got into that story, but in response to your post, I agree that the throw you are talking about when you are going across the field and the ball is thrown behind you is probably the most difficult catch to make...and it doesn\'t help when you have to worry about being leveled just as the ball is hitting your hands. It is difficult enough to make the catch uncovered, but having that extra element added to it makes it almost impossible.

Whether you think you can or think you can't...you're right!

Tobias-Reiper

... well, we can twist this a little bit...
...why is a QB credited with a completion when a WR twisted his body in mid-air and reached behind his back to make a grab?
...why is the QB credited with a completion when a receiver stretches one arm out out to tip a ball in mid air to even have a chance to catch it, and somehow ends up with the ball?
..why is a QB credited for throwing a TD when the WR got the ball 5 yds from the LOS and ran it 20+ to the end zone?

.... anyway, I guess there\'s one thing we can agree on: if we cannot use the \"dropped pass\" argument for Hasselbeck\'s benefit, then neither can we use it for Brooks\' benefit, o5r any QB for that matter...

'Cause the simple man pays the thrills, the bills and the pills that kill

JKool

T-R,

Agreed. The stat doesn\'t help Hass, but it doesn\'t help AB either.