Episode 38 Heckle

I am the Sports Trough Heckler. My role is to provide a check on the claims and egos of the podcast personalities. If they make an assertion that the facts don’t support, get away with saying something stupid on air, or generally do anything that warrants derision, I’ll be glad to provide it. In addition to that, I’ll try and keep the conversation going in whatever area it strikes me that the podcast didn’t fully cover in a subject.

I’ll start off by reviewing our Losers League final standings, as it’s only fair that you know to take any analysis or advice you get from me with a healthy dose of salt. For a recap on the rules and draft we established at the beginning of the season, click here. As the playoffs worn on, Cassidy’s margin of victory only grew, with my embarrassing score shrinking by a mere half a point. The points Cassidy shed were distributed evenly to Jeff and Justin, leaving them with a distance 2^nd and 3^rd respectively: 

On to the Super Bowl. As usual, I’ll refrain from parroting when I think our hosts got it right unless I have something substantive to add to it; as an ego-boost it’s nice, but it’s pretty boring to read.

With that in mind, I did still want to give due credit to Justin for being a grounded fan in his admission that this game probably would’ve ended differently if Rob Gronkowski’s was playing at 100%. In a game so close, Gronkowski’s injury was almost certainly enough to turn the tide for the Giants in the Super Bowl. You can point to a thousand different cruxes in any game that comes down to the last play, it’s just important to keep prospective and know when you got lucky.

On the other hand, I can’t second Justin’s admittedly biased Eli Hall of Fame campaign. Not yet, at least. His play this year at times showed brilliance, and gave me enough of a reason to sit and think about the stones I cast at him at the beginning of the season. But the argument we had was about whether he was borderline elite – not a shoe-in for Canton.

As Bill Barnwell points out, during the period between his two Super Bowls, his supposed ascendance, Eli was somewhere around the 10^th-best QB (a point I also made early in the season). Hardly a HoF stat. If he continues on an upswing, or even levels out where he finished this season, it would be hard to make an argument against his enshrinement. If, on the other hand, this was a statistical peak and he slides somewhere back into his pre-2011 numbers, this will become a fairly bitter argument on the year of his retirement.

The fact that he’s only 30 gives him quite a few good years left to prove himself, and the fact that his team is suddenly winning not in spite of him but because of him doesn’t hurt his chances of being in the spotlight for some more games on a big stage. While Canton may have denied one QB with two rings, I don’t think Eli could play poorly enough in the rest of his career to be rejected if he adds a third, joining only four other quarterbacks. Hey, Eli won a Super Bowl with two pretty mediocre teams, why not a third in the next six years? Then we probably wouldn’t have to bring this up again.

As for Eli’s coach, Tom Coughlin is not the guarantee that our hosts make it seem – at least not for the reasons they gave. Don’t get me wrong, I think he’ll make it, especially considering what he accomplished with the Jaguars as a fresh expansion team, but his Super Bowl rings are not an automatic qualifier. Only 6 out of 10 of the eligible coaches with two Super Bowl wins made the hall. This is a rate quite a bit worse than QBs – 5 out of 6 with two Super Bowls have made the Hall – serving to discredit the notion that was put forth on the podcast that Super Bowl wins are weighed more heavily for coaches than quarterbacks.

One point to distinguish between Eli and Roethlisberger in their Super Bowl runs is who got the credit in the end. If you’re making a hardware argument for enshrinement, Eli went 2 for 2 in Super Bowl MVP awards, whereas it Roethlisberger saw one of his receivers collect the award each trip. From that perspective, Eli’s Super Bowls mean something more than Ben’s, and gives him a slightly better case.

I understand it’s early to talk about the Hall of Fame chances of either of these quarterbacks when they might each play another decade, but there are 8 football-less months staring back at us at this point and I’m already feeling itchy. I personally promise more manufactured discussions on the NFL to come.

Tags: Episode 38, Heckler