Reason 1,000,001 to hate the Patriots, RE: Bruschi Options

[KYBillsFan]

Let me start this by saying I'm still pissed about the ESPN Sunday Night crew's coverage of the Bruschi stroke game 3 years ago. You should all know what I'm talking about. Remember when they came up with a new stat called "hits" or something and tracked that for Bruschi? He had a bunch of "hits" in the game but few tackles (if anyone remembers the fake stat, let me know).

That is the backstory. I'm in a fantasy league with individual defensive players where the bulk of our points come from solo tackles. Early in the season, I sift through all of the box scores to see who is getting a bunch of solo tackles. Along with solo tackles they also list assisted tackles. Assisted tackles are vague and players usually don't get many of them. For instance, London Fletcher had a good fantasy day today with 12 solo tackles and 5 assisted tackles. It's normal for the elite linebackers to often get about a third to a half as many assisted tackles as solo tackles. Five assisted tackles was highest in the NFL this week. Well almost highest. Rodney Harrison had 7 solo tackles and 7 assisted tackles for New England. That was only second highest. Bruschi had 2 solo tackles and a whopping 10 assisted tackles this week. I searched around for background on awarding assisted tackles and found this:

"Tackles (solos and assists) are not an official stat, as you noted, so every stadium's stat crew awards them differently. Some crews (STL, ATL) award assists extremely rarely, others award assists to the second player in on nearly every tackle. The only consistent aspect of assisted tackles is that, while two players may be given an assist (and no solo awarded) on a given play, there's no more than two players credited with an assist on a single play and never more than one assist when a solo tackle has already been awarded. There's probably some criteria for judging assisted tackles given to the stat crews, but I don't believe it's been made public and it's clearly applied differently by everyone anyway."

Since it was a home game, I'm assuming that any time those two are near the ball, the New England stat crew gives them credit for an assisted tackle. It's low on my list, but just another reason to hate them.

[gmac17]

please give me back 2 minutes.

[GripnRip]

Your thread would've been more effective had you simply said "With Tom Brady being injured, this is a good time to reflect on how much we hate ESPN and Tedy Bruschi"