New Orleans Saints Forums - blackandgold.com - The concern of Tampa being any good was wholly unfounded

Quote:

Originally Posted by CHA_CHING (Post 860134)

The Colts were 2-14 cause they tanked 2011 in the "Suck 4 Luck" campaign. That's just my opinion.

That team was 14-2 in the SB, and then 10-6 the year before it all went down hill. They may have overachieved a bit, but that was not a dumpster fire team. I have always strongly believed they tanked due to how their whole plan for the year without Manning was to get Kerry Collins and then throw Curtis Painter out there. That was a set up from the beginning to tank IMO and then after it was done, Irsay said it himself in the press conference when they let go of Manning - "I want Super Bowls, not Star Wars numbers".

I used to talk football a lot with Colts fans and some of them would argue against the tanking narrative and they had some good arguments. These fans would point to how badly Bill Polian had drafted in the final 5 years and they would argue that Manning was really the glue holding them together. Most of their wins in 2009 when they started 14-0 were close and that's why Manning's 4QC stat was high and possibly why he got the MVP that year over Brees and Favre. There is evidence that Polian's drafts in those final years were poor when it came to defensive players (Bob Sanders was his last great defensive draft pick and he stayed injured all the time). I think there is truth on both sides; I think they overachieved in 2009 thanks to having a HoF QB and a stacked offense, but I also believe they tanked when Manning had to sit out with his neck injury.

The Colts from 2012 to 2015 were benefiting from a horrible AFC South, not unlike how they had benefited all through Manning's prime beating up on trash Jacksonville, Houston and Tennessee teams. The same thing that everyone accuses the Patriots of doing; only difference is New England makes it to the SB and don't get embarrassed in the playoffs. The AFC South was so bad that they were able to tank one year, then go 11-5 the next year easily. Even when Houston won the division a couple times, no one feared them.

Their 3 consecutive 11-5 seasons, they went either 5-1 or 6-0 vs the AFC South and then 5-5 the rest of the way through. If that was the Patriots, people would never stop talking about it. But for some reason, it's completely ignored when the Colts or Packers benefit from their crap divisions and barely go 11-5 or 10-6 thanks to the 5-1 or 6-0 record vs their divisional foes.

Arizona went 13-3 in 2015 and because Arians decided to stupidly play his starters in the final week against Seattle, they lost their mojo. They struggled against a crappy GB team they had blown out a few weeks prior, then they got throttled in Carolina. That's on Arians for being a big macho man not wanting to rest his starters and allowing them to get exposed in a meaningless game vs the Seahawks.

Arians isn't well liked by Steelers fans either. Some of them blame him for the 2010 SB loss cause they were facing a legit Packers secondary that was great that year; he comes out with his bomb throwing offense and they ended up in a 21-3 hole early. GB was weak against the run that year and Pittsburgh waited until the second half to really utilize their RBs in that game.

He's a good coach at times but massively overrated.

I appreciate your effort in going out of your way to tie a bunch of miscellaneous information together to say that Arians is overrated. Your original statement was that he wasn't all that good of a coach and that the Bucs weren't going anywhere.

The fact that he made some tactical errors in certain games, or situations, is something that can be said about just about ANY coach. Your take that the Colts tanked in 2011 is strictly conspiratorial. If you look at that roster, it was mostly crap, and many of the recognizable names were over the hill veterans. And, again, it doesn't matter how bad the division was, they still improved by nine games. They went 2-14 in the very same crappy division. You're relying on a conspiracy theory to prove your opinion.

With the Cardinals, he took a bad team with a QB who hadn't played well in years. The success that Palmer had with that team can only be attributed to coaching. There was nothing special about Palmer, himself.

So you can call him overrated all you want to, but when you try to paint it like he's done nothing, I gotta call you out on it. And I can't stand the guy. I just happen to also dislike when people over state an opinion, based on seemingly nothing but a need to prove some point you tried to make weeks ago.

The Saints also once beat a Bill Belichick coached team, 38-17. Is he a bad coach? I'm not saying Arians is anywhere near his level, but do you see the point? You're making a lot of assumptions on what the Bucs will do, based on a very small sample size.