Amidst the heady whirlwind of the first 30 days of the Jason Garrett administration, its difficult to keep up with the proliferation of posts on BTB's homepage, much less the excellent contributions of our members in the form of FanShots and FanPosts. However, judging from the number of comments many of these are generating, I'd say that the entire community is doing dedicated work (or escaping from work!) to share ideas and information. And that's what our FanPost of the Week is all about: keeping everyone up to date on what's being written, and reminding you not to overlook the terrific stuff being generated as this season meanders towards its denouement.
In the past seven days, I found many fine FanPosts; of these, two in particular stood out. The authors of these two posts present no surprises: they are former winners and regularly receive honorable mention in this space. This week's runner up is last week's winner, 5Blings. This time around, he pens a piece that received serious consideration on the sheer brilliance of its title: Romodus Operandi. In it, he wisely speculates on the various possible reasons why the Cowboys offense has managed to chug right along with a backup quarterback at the helm. In conclusion, he offers up a heaping spoonful of heresy to Romosexuals to chew on:
What if we've been lulled to sleep because of such horrendous QB play, between the time that Troy Aikman left the game and Tony Romo arrived on the scene, that we've created a heightened perceived value of Romo because of the relativistic context he got placed into with Hutchinson, Testaverde, Bledsoe, Henson, Carter and Leaf (sounds like a Los Angeles law firm)? What if he is significantly better than Chad Hutchinson and Quinthy Carther (see what I did there?) but not good enough to get this team over the hump?
For the full post, go here (judging from the astonishing number of comments, I'd guess most of you already have!). If you've already read this piece, may I suggest you take a moment to peruse all of Blings' fine work (and to ogle his avatar photo), here.
And this brings us to this week's winner, a writer who rivals the front page's resident numerologist, O.C.C., in his ability to make lucid, compelling arguments from a bunch of numbers swimming around on a spreadsheet. Yes, folks, I'm talking about Fan in Thick and Thin. Seven days ago, he authored a devilishly clever post in which he looked at all the various names that have been thrown around in the media as possible head coaching candidates, judging them in terms of their various teams' historical passing efficiency numbers. Why passing efficiency? As he's told us many times before, Thick feels strongly that passing efficiency "explains a large part of the success of an NFL football team." He explains further:
With the recent rules changes I think this is likely to become more pronounced. As such, I think that in any HC you would want to see a demonstrable ability to build teams that can pass the ball and stop the pass (or for OC an ability to pass and for a DC an ability to stop the pass). There's obviously more to football, and it's nice to have a good running game and a good run defense, but I would focus on the passing offense and pass defense first.
For those of you who know Thick's work, this argument has a familiar ring to it. Yes, he keeps beating the same passing efficiency drum-but he plays it like Jon Bonham and Keith Moon, so, as far as I'm concerned, he should keep on beating it until everyone is convinced. I know I am.
Check out Thick's winning post here. You might be surprised by his conclusions!