Quote:
Originally Posted by Amnorix
Wow, Belichick had some tough words for the pick play by Welker that took out Talib. About as tough as it ever gets from BB.
Bill Belichick: " It was a deliberate play by the receiver to take out Aqib. No attempt to get open. ...
Bill Belichick: "I’ll let the league handle the discipline on that play, whatever they decide. It’s one of the worst plays I’ve seen. ..."
Bill Belichick: "That’sall I’ll say about that.”
https://twitter.com/MikeReiss |
I think I said that I thought BB would challenge the Rub WR, and this is one form of doing that. It's sad that the NFL let this happen all year but I suspect they'll fix it now because more teams will master it and a lot (more) players are going to get hurt. If nothing else they'll explain how it was OK.
Unfortunately too few teams mastered the skill once it was determined that it wasn't going to be called as a pick. Or they just didn't have the right player mix to make it work.
But all credit to Manning and the Broncos for swimming in that gray area long enough to figure out that the NFL wasn't going to call it for what it really is and using it to their advantage to help get them to the super bowl. Good things come to creative people who are willing with test the rules.
Just like the cut blocks that so many of us hate, the Broncos were the masters of it, incorporated it into the design of there one-cut-and-go design, and didn't really care what the rest of us thought about its effect on the lives of the players being cut, it worked for them and the league defended them no matter what the rest of the world thought of the tactic. And the truth is, nobody did anything about it so they had little incentive to stop doing it. Again, credit to the Broncos franchise.