An Apology To All Dolphins Fans...

[envoy98]

I am a die hard Vikings fan, and I just want to be the first to apologize to you for Daunte's performance tonight. I know, I know...He started out looking pretty good aside from one-hopping a couple of passes on short out patterns but all in, he looked good. Then the 'fins got behind...and you were all thinking to yourselves "At least we got Daunte, if we had Fiedler or Feeley we'd be screwed. We're still in this thing!"

...and then it happened.

1st and 10, Chambers wide right, Welker and Booker split-left. Daunte takes the snap, drops back and lets it go for Chambers on the sideline and...NO IT'S BEEN INTERCEPTED BY TROY POLAMALU he's up to the 40..the 35...and finally brought down at the 31 yard line"

Believe me when I tell you, all Vikings fans feel your pain and know exactly how you feel. I have a couple of friends who are Die Hard 'Fin fans and I couldn't even call them tonight.

I wanted to believe Daunte was better than his old self, I even took him as my starting QB in one of my fantasy drafts...

Yes, Daunte will win you a couple of games on his own, usually when he runs. But his poor decision making and what appears to be a lack of zip on the ball tonight, will cost you more heartache than you may be willing or able to handle. On the bright side, he didn't fumble.

Sorry guys, I really hope it works out better for you, but based on tonights performance, I saw the same Daunte I watched for years in Purple in Gold.

[new8403]

Daunte will be fine, he just has to get used to the system in game situations. He's so used to having Randy Moss to throw the ball to, now he doesn't have that, and he's in a completely different situation than he was in Minnesota. Although I wasn't complaining a bit about his perfomance last night. But I like the guy and hope he bounces back to take out the Pats, simply because I despise them

[meuandthelot]

Man it bites!!! Daunte is 4-5 decisions per game away from a true top tier QB, he has all the tools, a cannon arm w/accuracy, he has learned to control the "Happy Feet" stays in the pocket more and finally allows plays to happen...BUT as you wrote, he forgets to put "Zip" on the ball usually at crucial points in the game, just looks lazy at times !?!??

Between him and THC boy... I wasted about 15 slabs(Arrrgh) Why didn't I just believe in my homestate boy Mr Brady, or my gut and Peyton? No, I get sold on the darned 99' Rc class, meh!!

...and then it happened.

1st and 10, Chambers wide right, Welker and Booker split-left. Daunte takes the snap, drops back and lets it go for Chambers on the sideline and...NO IT'S BEEN INTERCEPTED BY TROY POLAMALU he's up to the 40..the 35...and finally brought down at the 31 yard line"

Look at the bright side.....On his next drive he engineered a TD. Porter has good hands, huh..lol

[envoy98]

Ah Eric, he has you fooled too. He will not be fine, he's proven he is incapable of becoming that top tier QB that everyone thinks he can be.

Like I said, I put up with him for 7 years and aside from 2 fantastic years, both including Randy Moss who would go up and get just about anything put within 10 feet of him, and the other year he still had Cris Carter who may be the best posession receiver the game has ever seen. Not to mention he had one of the best offensive lines in football and Linehan is no slouch at OC.

I have a feeling that the Dolphins fans are going to endure a lot of the same things we endured here... Constantly muttering things to ourselves, like Rich said... 4-5 decisions away from a top tier qb. For some reason, the last 2 1/2 seasons he has chosen to run less and that takes away a lot of his winning magic. When he takes off running (and doesn't get his knee torn three ways of Sunday) he is as good as anyone. He's a much better passer than Vick but he just makes bad decisions with the football. Let's hope for the 'Fins sake he gets over his inability to mount a comeback because once he's down and thinks the game is out of reach, he only makes it worse. I hope that was a reflection of the inept coaching staff we had for three years vs. a Daunte character flaw but I don't think it is. The 2000 NFC Championship game certainly says otherwise.

I really am sincere in my hopes that he does well and bounces back but history tells me that after what I saw last night, it's going to just be more of the same.

...so far he's at an 0-2 deficit of INT's to TD's.

[Insane Irish]

But I like the guy and hope he bounces back to take out the Pats, simply because I despise them

Is that because they always seem to mop up the floor with the Steelers??

LOL


Anyway, I too believe Daunte will be OK. The Pitts. D is still awesome, so it's not like he was throwing pickles against an average or poor team. Once he and Chambers get on the same page they will flourish together.

[new8403]

[QUOTE=Insane Irish]Is that because they always seem to mop up the floor with the Steelers??
QUOTE]

Man, you know I hate them. But it's all in fun man, nothing meant by it, yet.

[justsandersplease]

Flat footed tosses on sideline patterns killed him. This was due to a two part explanation. 1: Lack of confidence in stepping up and delivering. 2. Play-calling designed to stay out of the middle away from Porter and Polamolu, who; ironically, were able to just drift and watch his eyes, having plenty of time to close in on passes that began losing velocity the second they left his hand. Besides, the throw he really needed to make was the challenge flag. Moreover, the Dolphins secondary had absolutely no business collecting a league minimum paycheck after allowing a 260 lb tight end to outrun them all. Harrington is the moomentarily solution, until Daunte is 100% and they design McNabb like rollout passes for him. His best pass of the night came on the rollout. Basically, everything else was all the receivers' work.

[envoy98]

Just so I can keep this poor thread going, and give the Dolphins fans, who I think are starting to see the light, a chance to have a small support group I've decided to bump this and post a wonderful article from ESPN that you may all enjoy. The national media has finally caught up to it's misguided notion that Culpepper was somehow going to help the Fish to playoff berth as well.

Enjoy.


By Bill Simmons
Page 2

Thanks to an overflow of panicked fantasy owners in California, we had to hold our weekly Daunte Culpepper Roto Support Group meeting at the Staples Center on Wednesday night. Nearly 14,000 people showed up, shattering the old record of 9,500 from last season. It's always a sobering crowd. You can't imagine how much damage Daunte has inflicted over the past two seasons until you see everyone crammed in one place.
I kicked things off by standing on a makeshift stage, leaning into the microphone and saying, "My name is Bill, and I'm a recovering Daunte Culpepper owner." Everyone said hello. You could feel the warmth.
Then I told everyone my story: Last season, Daunte destroyed my West Coast fantasy team. Co-owner T-Man and I had taken him in the second round. We were expecting big things. He ended up obliterating our season -- six TDs and 12 INTs in six weeks, followed by Daunte blowing out his knee in 35 places in Week 7 and leaving us for dead. We never recovered. And naturally, we vowed never to take him again.
And that's when fate intervened: Daunte was traded to the Dolphins, T-Man's favorite team. The T-Man can't think rationally when Dolphins are involved; he always ends up overvaluing them for fantasy purposes and saying stuff during drafts like, "I know it's early, but I'll tell you who I love right here: Marty Booker!" We all have friends like this. He knew we could never pick Daunte again, not after what happened, but heading into this year's draft, T-Man was super-excited about grabbing Chris Chambers with our third-round pick (No. 22 overall). I found myself getting excited about Chambers as well -- after all, Culpepper couldn't be worse than the Triple-F's (Fiedler, Feeley and Frerotte), right? Playing with a QB with a big arm, it seemed logical that Chambers would become a top-five receiver.
Only one thing worried me: By picking Chambers, we would be indirectly linked with Culpepper again. Deep down, I was hoping someone else would take him. Nobody did. We landed Tomlinson and Harrison in the first two rounds, and just as we anticipated, Chambers was sitting there at 22. It was down to him and Terrell Owens. Neither of us wanted to root for T.O; both of us wanted to root for Chambers. As an aside, this is always dangerous logic when you're picking a roto team -- you can't play favorites, not ever -- but we didn't care. We took Chambers to a barrage of muffled "nice picks!" from the room.
The T-Man and I slapped hands. We were about to enter another season of fantasy hell.
Fast-forward to last Sunday: Miami is losing to Buffalo at home. For the second straight week, Culpepper (about 30 pounds lighter, although much like with Carson Daly, this isn't necessarily a good thing) looks "Chevy Chase Show"-level uncomfortable running the West Coast offense, which relies on timing and precision, two things for which Daunte has never been known. He's taking bad sacks, getting rid of the ball too soon, short-arming sidearm passes and making weird faces after every incompletion, kinda like how someone looks when they're sitting in an airplane and someone else farts -- not when they first smell the odor, but the look about five seconds later, when the smell isn't going away. It's a look that says, "This stinks, I feel sick, I'm trapped." That was Culpepper. With every poor decision, he was giving the Bills life.
Things crested near the end of the first half, when the Fins had driven inside the 20 (finally) and Culpepper rolled to his right to escape the rush, couldn't find anyone and decided to throw the ball away ... only he threw it right to a Bills linebacker who was falling out of bounds. I'm not sure whether this was the single worst pass in NFL history, but it was definitely in the top five. And watching the other Dolphins jog incredulously off the field while Culpepper made the Stale Fart Face, three things became abundantly clear:
1. I would be losing all three of my two-team teasers with Miami in Week 2 ... which I deserved for wagering on Culpepper using the always dubious "he's not so bad that he could lose to J.P. Losman at home, right?" logic. Any time your gambling logic includes the words "he's not so bad that ...", it's probably a good sign to stay away. Whatever. As long as Art Shell remains an NFL head coach, I will not be losing money this season overall. Daunte was just cutting into my profit margin. A lesson learned.
2. Despite receiving more preseason hype than Katie Couric and "Dancing with the Stars" combined, the 2006 Dolphins would not be making the playoffs.
3. Everyone who drafted Chris Chambers as a top-25 guy was potentially screwed. As in, "not only is he relatively worthless, but he's not even a big enough name that we can talk someone else into trading for him" screwed. This news was decidedly undelightful. And if you think I was distraught, imagine poor T-Man, who had Daunte killing his fantasy team AND his real team and actually screamed the words, "I swear to God, it looks like he's throwing this game on purpose!" on Sunday.
Anyway, I finished my tale of woe, absorbed the applause from the 14,000 on hand and asked if anyone had questions. Paul from Santa Monica stood up and wondered how bad Culpepper could have been since his stats for the Buffalo game were half-decent: 23-for-32, 250 yards, one touchdown. Fair question. I explained that you really needed to see the game. His completion percentage was high because he was either (A) taking sacks instead of throwing the ball away, and (B) dumping to his closest outlet guy whenever there was pressure. (There were multiple third-and-longs when he completed harmless passes well short of the first down, the kind of throws that John Madden rips apart when you're playing "Madden" because you didn't get to the marker.) Also, his final stats were artificially inflated by a garbage-time drive in the final three minutes when Buffalo was in a prevent.
"Here's how bad he was," I told Paul and the crowd. "During the second half, the crowd was chanting, 'Jo-ey! Jo-ey! Jo-ey! Jo-ey!"
"Who's Joey?" Paul asked.
"That would be the Dolphins backup ... Joey Harrington."
There was a quick groan in the Staples Center, followed by a mortified silence, kinda like when a batter gets beaned during a baseball game.
"Oh, yeah," I said. "They were chanting for Joey Harrington. You heard me."
That rattled the crowd. Finally, Rob from Manhattan Beach stood up and said, "I don't understand ... this guy was the best fantasy QB alive two years ago. He made the Pro Bowl in 2003 and 2004 and threw for a combined 8,200 yards, 64 TDs and just 22 interceptions, plus he ran for more than 800 yards and six TDs. And he's not even 30 yet. How can somebody just lose it like that unless drugs were involved, or a crippling car accident or something? It doesn't seem possible."
I was prepared for this question. My response: Running QBs are like professional wrestlers and porn stars. In other words, it's such a taxing profession on so many levels, and you end up taking such a pounding, there's only a five- or six-year shelf life before things turn sour.
Think about it. The same variable that made guys like Randall Cunningham, Steve Young, Kordell Stewart, Jeff Garcia, Aaron Brooks, Steve McNair and Culpepper successful was the one that killed their longevity: Namely, defenses always had to pay attention to their scrambling (which opened up more passing options downfield), but by scrambling 6-7 times per game to keep defenses honest, they subjected themselves to more punishment than the average QB. As they neared their 30s and their bodies started to break down, they realized they couldn't scramble as much anymore, and so did their coaching staffs, which led to two major problems: First, defenses realized it as well (removing their advantage downfield), and second, they were trying to become something they weren't (efficient passers who remained in the pocket). Taking away that scrambling threat was almost like removing Pedro Martinez's slider AND his changeup in 2001, then expecting him to adjust and win 20 games every season.
Look at those aforementioned QBs again. Cunningham had four good seasons, peaked as a runner in '91 (118 carries, 942 yards, 11 TDs), blew out his knee the following season and was never the same. Kordell started for five up-and-down seasons, peaked as a runner in 2002 (96 carries, 537 yards, five TDs), and within four years, he was out of football. Garcia made three straight Pro Bowls, averaging 72 carries and four TDs during those seasons, and now he's a backup in Philly. Brooks carried the ball 80 times in his first full season (2001), remained a running "threat" for the next 2-3 seasons (even though the stats didn't reflect it), tried to become more of a pocket QB, and now he's on his way out of the league. McNair had a longer run of seven seasons in Tennessee, peaking as a runner in '97 (101 carries, 674 yards, 8 TDs) before his body broke down in 2003 (now he's starting for Baltimore and looks terrible). Culpepper had a five-season run, peaked as a runner in 2002 (105 carries, 609 yards, 10 TD's), and within three seasons, he was a complete mess.
Only Young excelled for a prolonged stretch: Seven straight Pro Bowl seasons before concussions did him in. (By the way, notice how these running QBs keep getting hurt?) As Young's career evolved, he picked his spots with scrambling and became more of a pocket QB, something Donovan McNabb is mastering now and Michael Vick can't seem to grasp at all; he's even going the other way and running MORE. The thing is, you can't keep scrambling in the 21st century, not with 350-pound behemoths flying around and smelling blood every time a QB leaves his pocket. Mark Brunell (80 carries in his second full season) realized this almost immediately, that's one of the reasons he's still playing. McNabb realized it, too. Vick is still in denial. And Culpepper realized it too late.
"So you think Culpepper will be out of the league in a few seasons?" Rob from Manhattan Beach asked.
"All evidence suggests that he will," I said. "He used to be a force of nature -- threw the ball 60 yards, scrambled for extra time, barreled over 300-pound lineman for first downs, always made 3-4 "Wow!" plays per game (with help from Moss). Now he's just a pocket QB with a bum knee who makes too many mistakes. He'll have some good weeks and some bad weeks, but I don't see him ever being an elite guy again. And history seems to agree."
Dickie from Monrovia stood up: "So if we took Culpepper this season, we're screwed?"
"Yup," I nodded. "Pretty much."
Everyone groaned. I took questions for another 20 minutes, then we broke off into groups and did our exercises. At 10 p.m., everyone left except for a few dozen disgruntled owners who tried to get a LaMont Jordan spinoff support group launched. While I was driving home, I couldn't help but wonder what will happen if Culpepper submits another stinkbomb this Sunday, or if the Dolphins' crowd derisively chants "Jo-ey! Jo-ey!" for four quarters? Forget that we'd have to move next week's meeting to the Rose Bowl ... will that finally finish Culpepper's career as a starting QB? Will our long national nightmare be over? And most importantly, should I be more or less excited for the Chris Chambers Roto Era with Joey Harrington involved?
One thing's for sure: There are nearly 1,600 players in the National Football League, but it's hard to imagine anyone who's affected more fans than Culpepper. Minnesota fans are delighted he's gone. Miami fans are suddenly terrified that he's there. Gamblers have been burned by him to the point that it should be illegal to throw any Culpepper team into a tease. Everyone who had him in a 2005 fantasy league is still recovering, and everyone who has him or Chambers in 2006 is panicking as we speak. He even helped ruin the promising concept of having bachelor parties on chartered yachts. Add everything up and he's been the single most influential player in the league. Remember the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" game? Now we have "One Degree of Daunte Culpepper."
Of course, he could solve every problem by just becoming a good quarterback again. Culpepper's defenders argue that we shouldn't give up on him yet, that he's still getting comfortable with a surgically repaired knee. After last weekend's loss to Buffalo, even Bills linebacker London Fletcher told reporters, "He's not healthy, he's not the same guy I've seen."
And that would be fine ... except it doesn't explain why Culpepper played so poorly last season. Maybe he's not healthy yet, but he's also not the same guy London Fletcher remembers. That guy is long gone. Someday, we're even going to realize it.

[Aikman_TheGreat]

I didnt check how long that was before I started reading. That was way too long man. Pretty good though haha.

[envoy98]

yeah, it's a long read, but pretty funny I thought.