Originally posted by ckparrothead
Sorry, but calls for anti-intelligence just don't ever fly with me. The more you know, the more you know. How can you claim that you know more about how well Wade Smith did tonight by statistics than by watching game tape? This is EXACTLY what Rick Spielman and Dave Wannstedt do to evaluate players. They don't just look at the stat book and say "hey, no tackles, no sacks, Nails had to bail him out one time...wow you're the next coming of Richmond Webb!" They look at the tape. The tape doesn't lie. And on the tape it wasn't like Wade Smith did not get beaten by Hugh Douglas. He did. And on multiple other occasions, Douglas definitely gave him a handful. And, on most other plays where they butted heads, Hugh Douglas did not even have a reasonable chance to do anything on the play.
Sorry but you can't say to me "know less, and you'll know more!"
This is false. I watched the tape, I know exactly what was going on on that play, and Wade Smith himself admits that he got beaten on this play but got help from Jamie Nails. Nails was free to help because his DT was stunting to the outside. If the DT rushes forward, Nails is not able to help Smith on the play and Jay Fiedler is sacked. That is the bottom line.
I think you're grasping at wisps by trying to argue without being able to review the tape. I'm not saying I know more than you, I'm saying that I have a game tape right here handy and I've pretty much looked at and scrutinized each of the 19 times that Wade Smith matched up against Hugh Douglas. Therefore, yes, I am in a far better position than you to give a tad bit of judgement on how Smith did. He did very well, but to start making statements like "he looked more comfortable out there and better than Mark Dixon ever did" thats definitely going too far. He had less than a half work against Hugh Douglas, and it was only a coincidence that kept Hugh Douglas from getting a sack in that amount of work.
THOSE, are the FACTS. We're not talking about over-analyzation. Wade Smith faced off with Hugh Douglas 19 times over the course of about a quarter and a half, and on 1 of those 19 matchups, Hugh Douglas beat Wade Smith for what should have been a sack except for the coincidence of Jamie Nails bailing him out. And I say coincidence, because yes I did get a chance to see just about every play Jamie Nails ran and he very very rarely got afforded the opportunity to help someone else other than himself. There is literally a 0% chance that the play was somehow "designed" so that Nails could help Smith out. For that to be true, somehow Norv Turner would have to know that the DT was stunting...and Norv may be good, but he's not clairvoyant. Sorry.