LaDainian Tomlinson Says He’d Choose Hall Of Fame Induction Over Super Bowl Victory By Michael Hurley, CBS Boston June 26, 2012 10:47 AM
Ask any truly great competitor whether he’d prefer winning championships or earning individual achievements, and almost all of them will tell you they want titles.
But not LaDainian Tomlinson.
The recently retired, future Hall of Famer who’s unquestionably one of the best running backs in NFL history said that if he had the choice to win a Super Bowl or earn a place in Canton, he’d choose enshrinement in the Hall.
“[I'd choose to be] a Hall of Fame player, just because I feel like you gotta sacrifice so much individually just to be good,” he said on NBC Sports Talk. “Now they draft you. Individually, they draft you. So you gotta back them up and make them right. And so I think at the end of the day, even though I didn’t win a Super Bowl, I felt like I backed them up for drafting me. I backed the San Diego Chargers up for picking me with the fifth pick.”
Tomlinson was also asked if he agreed with NBA star Steve Nash’s assessment that he wouldn’t need to win a championship in order to have a fulfilling career.
“I agree with him,” Tomlinson said. “Because at the end of the day, you do all that you can do individually. It’s a team sport. The only thing you can do at the end of the day is look at yourself in the mirror and say I gave it all I had. You got teammates around you, and I feel like I did that every day.”
If ever you wondered how a man with more than 3,000 rushing yards, 145 rushing touchdowns, another 17 receiving touchdowns and even seven passing touchdowns never even made it to the Super Bowl, you may have your answer: He always had an excuse.
Certainly, if his team fell short, it couldn’t have been his fault. After all, he was doing all he could do for his team.
Oh, sure, there was that whole standing on the sidelines wearing a jacket away from your teammates while your quarterback gutted his way through a torn knee during a winnable AFC Championship Game in New England. His Chargers lost 21-12, but it was a one-possession game for nearly the entire afternoon. Perhaps if Tomlinson could have contributed more than two carries for five yards and one reception for one yard, even if he could have been involved in the offense to help along teammates Michael Turner and Darren Sproles, he could have gotten that ring. Instead he stood alone, helmet on, tinted visor on, jacket on, watching. Philip Rivers played through a torn ACL and MCL that day, and he underwent surgery that offseason. Tomlinson did not.
As it turned out, that was as close as Tomlinson would ever get to the Super Bowl again. In his five playoff games after that loss in New England, he averaged 38 rushing yards. In his next trip to an AFC Championship Game with the Jets, he rushed for 16 yards on nine carries.
And really, for a player of Tomlinson’s caliber, it’s unbelievable that he only had one great playoff performance in 10 chances. That game also came against New England in the divisional round of the ’06 playoffs, when he had 123 rushing yards, two rushing touchdowns, and another 64 receiving yards. Even then, though, he embarrassed himself after the game by flipping out at the Patriots for “disrespecting” him and the Chargers for imitating Shawne Merriman’s ridiculous “Lights Out” dance. (For Tomlinson, only his teammates should be allowed to do disrespectful dances. If your team does that same dance then he won’t shake your hand.) He was so mad he went out and called the whole team classless and said such an attitude comes from head coach Bill Belichick. For good measure, he threw in, “I’m a very classy person,” which is definitely something classy people find themselves saying often.
It’s an attitude that never really changed in Tomlinson. If you talked to him in the locker room after any game, he’d be honest with you, but you’d hear “I,” “Me,” “My,” “I,” “I,” “I” and “Myself” 100 times before you heard the words “We,” “Us” and “Team.” After he and the Jets beat the Patriots in the 2010 playoffs, he spoke about how great it would be for him to play in the Super Bowl in Dallas and practice at his alma mater of TCU. He and his team still had one more game to play before getting there, but he was happy to talk about it that night in New England.
Even his charity commercial is all about him. Don’t believe me? Here’s the entire script:
“I’m lucky. I get to do something I love. It has nothing to do with touchdowns or titles. I get to play the part of someone just starting out. I help keep kids in school, and that’s the name of the game. My name is LaDainian Tomlinson. I don’t just wear this shirt; I live it.”
If you’re keeping track, that’s seven uses of “I” in seven total sentences. Along the way, he managed to push the idea that kids are staying in school because of him and his T-shirt. If only he could have closed things out with, “I’m a very classy person,” it would have been a self-serving commercial perfect game!
Some folks have responded to Tomlinson’s recent comments by saying he’s right, that a bunch of nobodies — special teams scrubs and seventh linemen — are technically “Super Bowl champions” but are definitely not nearly the caliber of player that Tomlinson was. Well, that’s obvious. That’s not a point even worth making. The point is that any great athlete who’s one of the best all time to play his position should want to win a championship more than anything.
Tomlinson just didn’t. If he did, he could have gotten it done. Or, in the case of 2007, he could have at least tried.
Cam Newton: Are you willing to call him ‘Ace Boogie’?
At the close of a radio interview, Cam Newton recently referred to himself in the third person as "Ace Boogie." Seat Williams of ESPN Radio 1100 asked Newton if he should draft him for his fantasy team, and Newton said, "Hey man. Ace Boogie, man. He ain't going to let you down."
Whether or not Newton lets anyone down this season, we'll worry about at another time. Right now, I want to focus on the nickname.
I know we frown on self-applied nicknames, but it's 2012, and the nickname landscape is barren, so I say we look the other way on that one. Let's just judge this one on the merits of the nickname itself. The league needs a few, and Cam Newton is good enough and unique enough to warrant one. Let's break it down into pros and cons:
Pros:
• It has a sufficient amount of swagger. Cam Newton has never lacked for confidence ‒ miming tearing open his uniform to reveal a Superman logo is not a gesture of humility ‒ nor is there any reason he should. "Ace Boogie" reflects that.
• It applies. "Ace" references his status as a number one overall pick, and "Boogie" can be seen as a reference to his quarterbacking style and how he uses his feet.
Cons:
• It could easily lend itself to mockery by opposing fans. "Ace" could be replaced by a phonetically similar word and "Boogie" could be replaced by "Booger" for a not-so-flattering imitation.
• This probably isn't a widespread problem, but it may remind some of "Snot Boogie," referenced in the first episode of "The Wire." Things did not go well for Snot Boogie.
• It may be taken. There's an artist on iTunes going by the name of "Ace Boogie" and a couple of rappers claiming the name on Urban Dictionary. However, it is possible to callously steal someone else's alias, even if they had it before you, simply by being more famous. Isn't that right, Maurice Jones-Drew?
All said, though, I cast my vote in favor of Ace Boogie. I think it's a fine nickname for Cam Newton, and I'll do my best to help it catch on. I'm curious to know of your thoughts on Ace Boogie in the comments.
Joined: Sat Jul 29, 2006 7:04 pm Posts: 1875 Location: Atlanta, SE of Disorder Gender: Male
From Yahoo Sports:
With Peyton Manning aboard, Broncos receivers actually have to learn routes now ..By MJD
Demaryius Thomas has been a wide receiver in the NFL for two years now, and evidently hasn't spent a lot of time learning to run routes. I guess it's not all that necessary when you're watching for Kyle Orton or Tim Tebow to deliver you the football.
Via Sports Radio Interviews, Thomas told 790 The Zone in Atlanta that now that Peyton Manning is in town, the Denver receivers are going to have to bone up on their route tree a little bit.
"To get to play with a future Hall of Famer, I knew I had to step my game up and get in my book more, run routes more, because I never really ran routes much. So I thought it was gonna be a challenge, and it has been so far. But it's been good, too."
"You're gonna have to run the whole route tree now. The comebacks, the slants, the posts, the ins. And I didn't have to do that much when I was my first couple of years in the league."
Wow. Two years in the league, and he "never really ran routes much"?
What were Broncos practices like before Peyton Manning? Everyone splits into their individual groups, and the receivers all run over to the receivers coach and ask, "Hey coach, what are we working on today?" And then the receivers coach looks over and sees Tim Tebow launching footballs into the fourth row and says, "I really don't think it matters, boys."
No more of that with Peyton Manning, though. It makes me wonder about Manning's 2012, and whether he'll be close to the same quarterback he was in Indianapolis. Even putting aside the doubts about his neck and his ability to take a hit, there are a lot of question marks there. He had such good rapport with the receivers in Indy throughout his career, and now it's like he's starting from scratch.
Thomas is probably the most physically talented receiver on the Denver roster, so getting his routes precise will be important. Manning's going to have to have a lot of patience with his young receivers.
_________________ From under my lone palm i can look out on the day
Joined: Fri Oct 22, 2004 12:47 pm Posts: 9282 Location: Atlanta Gender: Male
Thomas went to Georgia Tech. At best he knows how to get open once in a while and how to block. Running Routes is not something Paul Johnson cares about I don't think. He's not going to know what to do with himself getting balls thrown to a spot on timing. I don't think he's ever had to do that.
Seriously. Bay Bay is very fast and athletic with good body control. Most of his career has been sand lot receiving.
Joined: Sat Oct 16, 2004 11:15 pm Posts: 25452 Location: Under my wing like Sanford & Son Gender: Male
Yep. Thomas can probably run three routes well, the deep post, the deep in, and of course the go route. People underestimate how difficult it is to run all the west coast routes well, especially when Peyton Manning expects them to be perfect to the inch.
_________________ Now that god no longer exists, the desire for another world still remains.
On Monday, the Broncos came to terms with kicker Matt Prater on a four-year deal. Prater, who was the team's franchise player before the deal was signed, will receive a $3 million signing bonus as part of a $13 million contract. And it's not entirely clear that the Broncos should have brought him back if he offered to play for the veteran's minimum.
In the past, we've covered why slapping your kicker with the franchise tag is an ill-advised move. For a quick reminder, consider the table below, which notes the incredible lack of consistency in the field goal percentage of kickers with 20 attempts in consecutive seasons: From To Kickers Group Avg, Year 2 70.0% 74.9% 30 82.4% 75.0% 79.9% 52 81.8% 80.0% 84.9% 74 82.8% 85.0% 88.9% 59 82.6% 89.0% 99.9% 41 81.1%
The point is simple: There's no year-to-year consistency with kickers, so there's no point in paying a premium for an "accurate" kicker. Teams who spend money on their kickers are usually paying for the illusion of certainty as opposed to any real comfort. Do you know who the highest-paid kicker in football was last year? It was Billy Cundiff, who parlayed a career year with the Ravens in 2010 into a $15 million contract before last season. You might also remember Cundiff subsequently missing the single most important kick of the year, a 32-yard chip shot against the Patriots that would have pushed the AFC Championship Game into overtime.
Things are a little different with the Broncos and Matt Prater. Normally, teams lock up their kickers after they've had fantastic seasons. It's fair to say that Matt Prater's had a noteworthy season. An eventful season. Certainly, an exciting one. But it's not entirely clear that Matt Prater was an above-average kicker in 2011, and Denver's decision to lock him up represents one of the many ways in which organizations fool themselves into spending money in the wrong places.
Start with the facts. Matt Prater hit 19 of his 25 field goals last year, producing a conversion rate of 76.0 percent. Among qualifying kickers, that placed him 28th out of 33. And it would be one thing if Prater had just come off of an off year — after all, the chart above points out how random kicker accuracy can be — but he's now hit 78.4 percent of his field goals across five pro seasons. That ranks 37th out of 44 regular kickers over that time frame, so it's safe to say that Prater's not known for his accuracy.
Ah, but his leg strength! Prater is regarded as having a boomer, and the stats back it up, as Prater is 12-for-16 from 50-plus yards during his time with the Broncos. It's certainly fair to give Prater some bonus points for attempting (and converting) so many field goals from distance, but remember that Prater's also attempting many of those kicks in the thin air of Denver, where every kicker in the league gets the benefit of some extra leg.
Football Outsiders adjusts every field goal attempt for both the distance of the kick and the stadium in which the kick is being attempted, assigns that kick a value based upon the historical likelihood of success, and then notes whether the kicker's produced more points on field goals than the league average in the same situations might suggest. As it turns out, in Prater's case, it's less. Even if you throw out his dreadful 2008 season, Prater's been a below-average kicker during his tenure with the Broncos. Year Prater Points vs. Expectation 2011 -5.2 2010 2.4 2009 -1.1 2008 -12.2 Total -16.1
It's hard to find any hint of that big leg on kickoffs, either, especially after the league instituted the shorter field for kickoffs before last season. Last year, there were 75 kickoffs (excluding onside kicks) in Denver home games and just 15 of those were returned. Prater was responsible for just three of the 15 kickoffs that were returned, which suggests that he was booting the ball deeper than opposing kickers, but that wasn't really the case. Nine of those 12 kicks returned by the Broncos were plays in which the ball went five or more yards deep into the end zone and Denver chose to run the ball out anyway. For the Broncos, that was a purposeful tactic: With an offense that struggled to move the ball, the kickoff return could have ranked among their most effective plays. There were only two kickoffs last season in Denver that failed to reach the end zone, and one was by Prater.
Away from Denver, Prater produced touchbacks on 50 percent of his kickoffs last year. Excluding games played in the thin air of Denver, the rest of the league's kickers booted touchbacks on the road at about a 47 percent clip. That's a difference of about one extra touchback on the road per year. Perhaps Prater will do better next season, but at the moment, he looks to be about a league-average kickoff guy.3
So if he has below-average accuracy and is average on kickoffs, why are the Broncos paying Prater? Because he hit a bunch of game-winning field goals, you dummy! In fact, four Broncos games during the 2011 season ended with a game-winning Prater field goal, three of which came in overtime. Throw in a key onside kick against the Dolphins, and you've got a clutch kicker on your hands, right?
It's pretty easy to poke holes in that logic. For one, let's start with that onside kick. Watch it again and you see a kick that hits an unmolested Miami player right in the hands, only for the snakebitten Dolphins to fumble the kick right away. The outcome was great, but the execution was questionable. Either way, one onside kick isn't enough to form an opinion about whether Prater's good or bad at the task. Most kickers don't produce onside kicks frequently enough over the course of an entire career to form a meaningful sample.
As for the walkoffs, while they were valuable, they're far more indicative of opportunity than skill. Think about why Prater had the opportunity to kick four game-winning field goals at all. Hint: The reason's in New York now. The Broncos played a disproportionate number of close games this year, and because they ran an extremely conservative offense with the game on the line under Tim Tebow, they were happy to hand the ball over to their kicker for game-winning kicks, even if it meant ignoring the possibility of scoring a touchdown. Consider that Prater had three game-winners in overtime this past season and just one over his previous four years in the league. Even if he was some sort of clutch kicker, he's not going to have the opportunities to show that skill off at any sort of meaningful level over the next four years. And in Prater's case, it's going to take a heck of a lot of clutch kicks to overcome how average he is before those clutch moments.
Finally, while it's fun to build myths around kickers conquering their nerves and hitting huge field goals for their teams in key situations, the reality is that there isn't anything extraordinary about hitting field goals in overtime. From 2006 to 2011, kickers hit 82.2 percent of their field goals in regulation and 82.7 percent of their kicks in overtime. There's some bias in there, as teams are likely to settle for short field goals in overtime in a way that isn't the case during regulation, but it's pretty clear that kickers don't turn to dust once overtime begins.
OK. So the Broncos overpaid for Prater. It's only a little over $3 million per year, and Denver gets to reward a player who made their fan base very happy last season. Who cares, right? Well, if you're a Broncos fan, you should care, because the Prater signing creates problems for the team in terms of opportunity cost. The difference between using Prater and signing someone like Shayne Graham will be close to $2.5 million per year over the terms of the deal. That's $2.5 million that the Broncos can't use on a deal to lock up left tackle Ryan Clady or on a steady backup behind Willis McGahee at halfback. And there's no guarantee that Prater will be any better of a kicker in 2012 than Graham would be.
Denver's thin air allows them to get more out of average kickers than anyone else in football. They should use that to their advantage and exploit a built-in market inefficiency by being thrifty at kicker and applying the savings elsewhere. Instead, the Broncos have handcuffed themselves to a known mediocrity for years to come
_________________ "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." -- John Steinbeck
Joined: Tue Nov 27, 2007 3:16 am Posts: 2576 Location: Maine, formerly MA
The only kicker who proved he was worth big money IMO was Vinatieri...the two snow kicks against Oakland (the first being one of the greatest kicks ever), and the one against Tennessee the following season in sub zero weather were ballsy
Joined: Sun Feb 26, 2006 3:28 am Posts: 28541 Location: PORTLAND, ME
MattA751 wrote:
The only kicker who proved he was worth big money IMO was Vinatieri...the two snow kicks against Oakland (the first being one of the greatest kicks ever), and the one against Tennessee the following season in sub zero weather were ballsy
i was at said tennessee game. bethel johnson's highlight reel.
you also forget the vinatieri then went on to win another super bowl w/ the colts... though i don't recall any dramatic kicks during that run.
Joined: Tue Nov 27, 2007 3:16 am Posts: 2576 Location: Maine, formerly MA
EllisEamos wrote:
MattA751 wrote:
The only kicker who proved he was worth big money IMO was Vinatieri...the two snow kicks against Oakland (the first being one of the greatest kicks ever), and the one against Tennessee the following season in sub zero weather were ballsy
i was at said tennessee game. bethel johnson's highlight reel.
you also forget the vinatieri then went on to win another super bowl w/ the colts... though i don't recall any dramatic kicks during that run.
I don't know if any of the kicks were that hard, but he did singlehandedly beat the Ravens that run with a 4 or 5 FG game
Joined: Sun Feb 26, 2006 3:28 am Posts: 28541 Location: PORTLAND, ME
MattA751 wrote:
EllisEamos wrote:
MattA751 wrote:
The only kicker who proved he was worth big money IMO was Vinatieri...the two snow kicks against Oakland (the first being one of the greatest kicks ever), and the one against Tennessee the following season in sub zero weather were ballsy
i was at said tennessee game. bethel johnson's highlight reel.
you also forget the vinatieri then went on to win another super bowl w/ the colts... though i don't recall any dramatic kicks during that run.
I don't know if any of the kicks were that hard, but he did singlehandedly beat the Ravens that run with a 4 or 5 FG game
Joined: Tue Nov 27, 2007 3:16 am Posts: 2576 Location: Maine, formerly MA
EllisEamos wrote:
MattA751 wrote:
EllisEamos wrote:
MattA751 wrote:
The only kicker who proved he was worth big money IMO was Vinatieri...the two snow kicks against Oakland (the first being one of the greatest kicks ever), and the one against Tennessee the following season in sub zero weather were ballsy
i was at said tennessee game. bethel johnson's highlight reel.
you also forget the vinatieri then went on to win another super bowl w/ the colts... though i don't recall any dramatic kicks during that run.
I don't know if any of the kicks were that hard, but he did singlehandedly beat the Ravens that run with a 4 or 5 FG game
well then don't forget it!!
I'd rather forget that Manning actually won a Super Bowl (not that he played all that well, nor did he play all that good of a team)...kinda like LeBron, things were a lot more fun when they hadn't won anything
Joined: Sun Feb 26, 2006 3:28 am Posts: 28541 Location: PORTLAND, ME
MattA751 wrote:
EllisEamos wrote:
MattA751 wrote:
EllisEamos wrote:
MattA751 wrote:
The only kicker who proved he was worth big money IMO was Vinatieri...the two snow kicks against Oakland (the first being one of the greatest kicks ever), and the one against Tennessee the following season in sub zero weather were ballsy
i was at said tennessee game. bethel johnson's highlight reel.
you also forget the vinatieri then went on to win another super bowl w/ the colts... though i don't recall any dramatic kicks during that run.
I don't know if any of the kicks were that hard, but he did singlehandedly beat the Ravens that run with a 4 or 5 FG game
well then don't forget it!!
I'd rather forget that Manning actually won a Super Bowl (not that he played all that well, nor did he play all that good of a team)...kinda like LeBron, things were a lot more fun when they hadn't won anything
i'm much more broken up about Eli having 2 rings... and how he got them both.
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