Round Up

The NFL Draft Guys present their 2008 NFL Combine All-Snubbed Team. The two players there who really stand out: Georgia center/guard Fernando Velasco and Connecticut LB Danny Lansanah. Although, as much as I liked watching Lansanah at UConn (fan bias alert), I'm even more surprised that Oklahoma State LB Rodrick Johnson didn't get an invite. The Draft Guys also have an interview with one of my “pet cats” Eastern Michigan's Jason Jones.

Yakuza Rich takes A Statistical Look at the Last 30 Super Bowls and finds some interesting results related to the NFL's Passer Rating, such as “the G-Men won the Super Bowl despite having the worst QB rating differential of any team that has gone to the last 30 Super Bowls” and “[the Giants] also had the largest QB rating differential margin to overcome as the Pats had a 37.9 QB rating differential compared to the G-Men’s -9.5 QB rating differential.”

NFL Stats has a fascinating three-part post on The Passing Paradox. Covering similar ground, PFR asks Why do teams run the ball?.

Detroit Lions Weblog on the Patriot's loss and In Defense of Greatness.

Over at Hashmarks Mike Sando breaks down the Patriots' personnel used in Super Bowl 42. One interesting nugget: “Tom Brady averaged 6.2 yards per pass attempt with four or fewer pass rushers coming his way, but 2.6 yards per attempt with more than four.”

Finally, a quick note on the heels of Adam Schefter's report that Chris Long's draft stock is rising and that “the widespread consensus is that Miami football operations chief Bill Parcells believes there is less risk with Long than any other potential No. 1 overall pick.” With so many mock drafts across the Web these days, I'm sure some of them had this earlier, but when I moved Chris Long into the number one spot in my mock draft last month, none of the “major” mock drafts online had gone there yet. As an added kick: I had Chris Long as a first-rounder before the 2007 season started when few others did. Having paid particularly close attention to the personnel decisions (both on the field and in the front office) made by the Dallas Cowboys during Bill Parcells' tenure there, I even had Long going to a Jeff Ireland team!