(Note from the Mismanagement: As promised, here's Part 2 of our summertime Mail Pouch. Part 1 can be found here. It had been several months since we updated the Mail Pouch, so the one-two punch is an effort to catch up on a lot of correspondence. The letters here and in Part 1 represent a smattering of topics we've discussed since back around the draft. Expect more frequent Mail Pouch updates during the 2006 season.)

I enjoyed your article on drafting wide receivers. Thank you for confirming something that I have long believed, but never before had the facts to back up. A lot has to go right before a WR can produce: the QB has to be good, the line has to give him good protection, and it doesn't hurt if the defense is keying on a talented RB, too. Particularly in a salary cap era, it doesn't make sense to spend high picks and money on WR. I noticed this the first year of the current system back in 1994, when teams like the Broncos created a lot of excitement by signing big-name WRs to big contracts (Anthony Miller in Denver's case) and then completely under-achieved. Meanwhile, San Diego went with lesser (and cheaper) names at WR and made it all the way to the Super Bowl. Denver obviously learned a lesson though, since they later won two Super Bowls with free agent Rod Smith and journeyman former fourth-rounder (?) Ed McCaffrey. Thanks for the knowledge! – Ryan Mc.

 

CHFF: Yeah, we were kind of surprised when we started looking at the data there on wideouts. The story came about in typical Cold, Hard Football Facts fashion: We were just perusing stat books and seeing what jumped out at us. We noticed that wideouts are drafted more than any other position. This pretty much surprised most of us. Then when we looked at the individuals drafted at wide receiver, the rate of failure was shocking. The poster boy for this phenomenon is Matt Millen – drafting a wideout No. 1 three straight seasons, with absolutely nothing to show for it. He, like most people in football, should spend a little more time studying the Cold, Hard Football Facts and less time chasing "big names."

 

Matt Millen truly is a cement-head. He did, however, have one shining moment. Think a moment......take a guess....? It was when he whacked (former New England executive) Patrick Sullivan on the head with his helmet, opening a gash on Sullivan's head. Remember that one? Maybe you could refresh us in one of your upcoming columns about that! The Sullivan Clan was the worst ownership in history of pro sports and big-mouthed Patrick, the runt of the litter, deserved that shot. How about a little fun with the Pats, Matt and the Raiders and the Sullivans for your loyal, unbiased readers!!! – Brad Young, St. Croix, Virgin Islands

 

CHFF: Well, it's a bottom-line business and the truth is that the New England franchise under the Sullivans was consistently one of the worst in football, if not all of sports. The current Kraft ownership, meanwhile, has been one of the best, as measured by any possible factor: profitability, on-field performance, ticket sales, etc.

 

For those who don't remember, the Millen-Sullivan fisticuffs stands symbolic of the second-rate ownership of the Sullivan years. The Patriots were fresh off a shocking upset in L.A. over the heavily favored Raiders, in the divisional round of the 1985 playoffs. It was at the time the biggest victory in franchise history. As the story goes, Patrick Sullivan, son of owner William Sullivan, celebrated by mouthing off to already pissed-off (and much bigger) Matt Millen. The Raiders linebacker responded by taking a shot at Sullivan that, as luck would have it, was caught on film (we found this photograph on something called yaysports.com.

 

The futility of the New England franchise is summed up by this: The franchise won just four playoff games in more than 30 years of Sullivan ownership – three of them in that 1985 postseason. The franchise has since won 13 playoff games over the past 10 years under Kraft ownership. The Sullivans built the cheap, concrete death-trap called Foxboro Stadium. The Krafts built the gorgeous and expensive Gillette Stadium.

 

But New England fans should not be too harsh on the Sullivans. They are the ones who brought pro football to the region.

 

The point is, only a fool would blame the defense for Favre's season, apologist or not. – Mike Bischoff

 

CHFF: Well, there are a lot of fools out there, then. If you're not one of them, if you took note of Favre's contributions to Green Bay's woeful season, we commend you. But that doesn't change the fact that, everywhere we looked, fans and media were blaming everyone but Favre for Green Bay's problems last year. The examples are too numerous to mention here. Suffice it to say, we were the first to detail the ways that Favre was killing his team, and the only outlet in the football media – at least to our knowledge – who highlighted so pointedly Favre's incredibly poor rate of interceptions. History has proven that QBs who throw INTs lose games. Last year, Favre threw INTs at a near-record rate.

 

I understand that you require fact/statistic-filled questions from fans.  That requires a fan to have free time, and devotion to statistics. Most fans are casual fans who love watching the games more than the numbers. They love the intensity, the competition, the rivalries, the big hits, the players, the beer buddies, and everything that makes the game great. Everything but the pure numbers. Does that make them an inferior fan, which precludes them from posting questions on this board? I hope not, because here goes my question: In your draft grades based on the Fillability Index, do you factor in free agency picked up? Because it seems that the two defensive backs picked up in free agency get factored into the Chargers' score as they only picked up one CB in the draft. At the same time, the pickup of John Abraham and Lawyer Milloy did not help the Falcons' grade. Can you do a grade based on all offseason moves, including the draft, players loss, and players gained? For example, the Patriots had a very high pass offense ranking last year, but since they lost most of their receivers including their No. 2 (and No. 3?), picking a receiver high in the draft is a good idea. Or is it? – Thien Chuong Dao

 

CHFF: First, we love football for all the same reasons you do. And we understand most fans don't have the time to devote to the statistics that we do. We also understand, however, that these same fans are also easily swayed by the opinionated hacks out there in the realm of football "analysis." If someone keeps telling you that Player X is the best at his position, these fans who don't have the stats are likely to believe it – even if the Cold, Hard Football Facts fly in the face of this opinion. We try to bridge the gap between these two worlds: We try to offer entertaining pieces that are fun to read, while supporting our assertions with Cold, Hard Football Facts. If you don't have the inclination to pore over the numbers, simply read our statements and conclusions and rest assured that these assertions and conclusions are buoyed by a mountain of data.

 

As far as the Fillability Index goes, we took into consideration free agent acquisitions whenever possible. We took a lot of heat for Atlanta's grade, the lone F we issued in the Fillability Index. But people seem to be putting a lot of faith in Lawyer Milloy as the answer to the Falcons' pass-defense woes. We don't.

 

Your pizza on the grill recipe is about 10 times too complicated for average football fans. Here's the real skinny so ordinary beer-swillers can do it. Buy pizza dough, let it get warm because you'll want to stretch it thin. Roll it out or pull it gently until it's huge. You can leave holes – they char and taste great – and can pull it so thin the dough is almost translucent.

Spray with olive oil. You can't taste the difference unless you use butter. Dump gently on grill, gas or otherwise. Stretch out as much as you can. Let cook as described, until reasonably stiff so you can flip it. Flip it over, using hand and tongs. Pour on tomato sauce, if you want it, and spread with back of spoon. Add toppings and cheese. You need less cheese – about 8 ounces for a very big pizza. Don't overload the pizza because the crust is very thin and crisp. Cook till done, lifting occasionally to make sure the bottom isn't charred. You can use any heat you want; if you want to clean up, keep the heat low. A normal beer-swilling fan like me can in minutes turn out a better pizza than you can buy anywhere. The key is doing the prep work and having the ingredients next to the grill. If you really want some smoke taste beyond the char, you can actually smoke the pizza by soaking a few oak or mesquite chips in water and putting them on the grill. – Jonathan Kurtzman

 

CHFF: And how is that different than our description? Sounds pretty similar. In any case, people can make pizza on the grill many different ways. Our version had all kinds of useful hints and will certainly help anyone become a grilled pizza aficionado. The only difference is this: If you're cooking pizza on a propane grill, you're wasting your time. You might as well cook it in your gas oven at home. The whole point of hardwood is that it adds tremendous flavor. Few serious grilling aficionados use propane.

 

I'm new to your website and love it.  Harder to surf through than some, but the content is so much better! – Gregg

 

CHFF: Glad you like it. But surfing, like most physical activities, is not something we excel at. Honestly, we get few complaints about the navigation. The biggest complaint in that area is about our archives. It is hard to go back month to month – of course, you can always use the search button in the upper right corner of each page to find what you're looking for. With that said, we are working to improve the navigation through the archives.

 

And so it begins ... Making predictions before even training camp, this is beyond absurd, yet it is not surprising. How can I get a gig where you actually get paid to pontificate upon something where you have no chance of being correct, everybody knows you have no chance of being correct, and there is no penalty for being incorrect? (No, I don't want to run for Teddy Kennedy's Senate seat – I might get run over by "Patches" driving dad's Oldsmobile.) The worst part is all the shit-bags that write in screaming because some tool didn't rank their team first – boobs. Anyways, another datapoint proving the national football media is a useless pile of cow dung. – Andy SanClemente 

 

CHFF: We have to disagree. The national media is a quite useful pile of cow dung. It's given us a growing market of football fans looking for better information. The bottom line is this: If you really want to know what's going on in the world of football, you read the Cold, Hard Football Facts and not the opinions of the "pundits." Our victories over the "pundits" keep coming, too.

 

Hey there. I noticed the great write-up about Doug Flutie's career and wanted to show my support. However, one of my friends forwarded this link to me. Prisco's doing his usual worthless blabbing, but really cuts down Flutie's career in the second bullet point. (I could make the obvious joke about cutting down a short man, but I won't.)  He also thinks Kerry Collins might help the Titans win ... In any case, thanks very much for standing up with an informed perspective on players' careers rather than just looking to slander someone. I still can't believe they pay that guy Prisco. – Joel Wilcox 

CHFF: Flutie is a perfect example of what happens when hype forges an image that takes on a life of its own. The image of Flutie, as perpetuated by the "pundits," is that of a plucky little everyman. The truth, when you simply step back and look at his career through the microscope of the Cold, Hard Football Facts, is that he was a highly productive, winning QB at every level of his career – right from high school, through college, Canada and the NFL. If you looked only at his career numbers – all those numbers other than his height – you'd see one of the great pigskin performers of our time.

 

As for Prisco, he was tugging Kerry Collins' ballbag last year, after the Raiders signed Randy Moss. We, of course, saw no reason to believe that Collins-to-Moss would rewrite the NFL record books. The result: Collins passed for a respectable 3,759 yards, but completed just 53.5 percent of his passes for 20 TDs. Moss caught 60 passes for 1,005 yards and 8 TDs. The Raiders scored just 290 points, won a mere four games and finished dead last in the AFC West. Again, another example of Prisco putting his faith in headline hype ahead of Cold, Hard Football Facts.

By the way, you don't have a hair on your ass if you don't post my response. It's not so much what you said but what you chose to leave out. And if you didn't know any better, you shouldn't write on a subject you know nothing about. – Tony Gould

 

CHFF: First, we must disagree with your first assertion: We don't write "editorials." That implies opinions. And opinions we have none. In fact, we've devoted our lives to beating the piss out of opinions and we're quite good at it. We merely have irrefutable Cold, Hard Football Facts.

 

Second, you certainly pulled that piece deep out of the Cold, Hard Football Facts archives. (It ran back in October 2004, a month after we launched the site.) The truth, however, is that we didn't leave out anything. We refuted numerous widely held myths about Marino. The arguments on his behalf are repeated ad nauseam, to the point that there was no need for us to make them again. We wanted simply to offer the truth about Marino, a truth few are willing or able to discuss. The truth is this: Marino lost playoff games because he threw INTs in playoff games. Yes, there were times when he played with middling running backs and poor defenses, but you would think a transcendent QB, as Marino supporters claim he was, would have been able to overcome these handicaps. He could not because ... again, he threw too many INTs in the playoffs. End of story.

 

That being said, here is my question. How can you judge the win or loss of a game; not to mention every regular season and postseason game, on the performance of one player; even if it happens to be the QB? It doesn't matter how successful a QB or an offense is, if they don't have a defense to compliment them, it is almost impossible to win a championship. Yet this is what you and everyone else does when they give their argument for why Marino is not the greatest QB ever. – David Plunk

 

CHFF: See our previous answer. And, please, enough with the excuses for Marino. Funny, his teams were good enough to win all those games in the regular season. Suddenly, they weren't good enough to win in the postseason. What happened? Oh, that's right: Marino was not the same QB in the postseason. He threw TOO MANY INTERCEPTIONS. What don't you people get? And, yes, it's tough to pin wins and losses on a single player, but when the player in question is a QB, it's certainly fair. As you'll see this season, courtesy of some of our new research and the research provided by one of our 2006 contributors, Coach T.J. Troup, quarterbacks have a profound impact on wins and losses. QBs who play well win championships. QBs who play poorly do not.

 

Hey CHFF, I like your new gig, "Line of Scrimmage." The back-and-forth is kinda cool. I would have to say that John Dudley was able to successfully defend his article, which I had no problems with to begin with. That only 3 out of 13 underclassman QB's taken in the first round have had any real success at all speaks for itself. Good job, John. – Keith from Norwood, Mass.

 

CHFF: We hope to have some great debates this season, including a few intra-troll battles.

 

I'm from Indianapolis, and I'm a homer. THAT'S why Peyton Manning is better. (Weeping) – Matt

 

CHFF: Well, at least you have your sense of humor about you. But, generally, this is the level to which anyone who refutes us is routinely reduced: a quivering mass of tears, remorse and self-doubt.

 

1. Peyton Manning, QB, Colts. Pete says: "When he finally does win a Super Bowl, he will finally get his due."

2. Tom Brady, QB, Patriots. Pete says: "He is right up there with Manning, just a smidge under him in the ratings."

7. Randy Moss, WR, Raiders. Pete says: "He didn't have the type of season many expected in Oakland in 2005, but he is still the league's most explosive receiver."

20. Shaun Alexander, RB, Seahawks. Pete says: "He was the MVP in 2005, quieting some of his critics. Yet there is still a perception that he isn't exactly an elite back."

As you can see, this list is filled with big names, overrated underachievers, and has-beens. – Name Deleted by Accident 

 

CHFF: We're sorry we cut your name because, well, you did quite a good job, and we don't need to add much. Honestly, we never see Prisco's stuff until people like you send it to us. It seems everything he writes is easily deconstructed by the trolls. And, since our job is to know about football, there's really no reason to read the Minister of Hackery.

 

The list proves, as if any Cold, Hard Football Facts reader needed more evidence, that Prisco analyzes football simply by reading the headlines of hype and not by looking at actual performance. The Alexander ranking might be the worst. If there is a perception that Alexander is not an elite back, it's because fact-less hacks like Prisco are perpetuating this notion. For the record, we ranked Alexander the No. 3 RB in football last year, BEFORE his MVP performance in 2005. He'd probably be No. 1 on the list today after taking that performance into account. The Cold, Hard Football Facts are way ahead of the curve. Prisco is standing behind the curve of football knowledge waiting to hitch a ride to Tool Town ... as always.

 

Not Brady, or Starr. I assume it is regular season only. – William Berry

 

CHFF: Yes, it is regular season only. Brady and Starr remain Nos. 1 and 2, respectively, in postseason INT rate. Not so coincidentally, as we stated numerous times before, they are the two most successful postseason QBs in NFL history. Again, QBs who throw INTs lose football games, especially in the playoffs. QBs who do not throw INTs win football games, especially in the playoffs. With that said, the names leading the list are pretty surprising. But when you consider all three have had their fair share of postseason success in their careers, the low INT rate helps explain a lot. Consider McNabb ... his teams have always done well in the regular season. It's his INTs that have cost the Eagles so many times in the postseason. In the three NFC title games Philly famously lost in consecutive seasons (2001-03), McNabb threw five INTs and just 1 TD. In SB XXXIX, he threw three INTs, negating his three spectacular TD passes. If Brady instead of McNabb threw three INTs in SB XXXIX, Philly would have been the NFL champion. But the low INT rate in the regular season certainly helps explain the success of the Eagles during his career.

 

It gets even worse for Freeney when you look behind the numbers: 8 of his 11 sacks came in six games against Houston, Tennessee, San Francisco and Cleveland. All poor teams with poor offensive lines. He registered three of his 11 sacks in the third game of the season against Cleveland. He had just seven sacks in the final 13 games of the season. Freeney has had the luxury of playing Houston's porous offensive line twice every year to rack up his sack totals. He has had considerable luck facing Tennessee and Jacksonville's less-than-stout lines also. In 2004, Freeney racked up a career best 16 sacks: 6 of these sacks came in back-to-back games against Houston and Tennessee. He failed to record a sack in 7 of 16 games in 2004. Freeney likes to rack up his sack totals in spurts against weak opposition. A liability against the run and his effectiveness greatly reduced when not facing a revolving door of an offensive lineman, it is my opinion that Dwight Freeney is the most overrated defensive player in the NFL. Not from just watching him, but also backed up by Cold, Hard Football Facts. – Aaron, London

 

CHFF: Well, those are some startling Cold, Hard Football Facts. We brought up the myth of Freeney back in December, when we published our Second Annual All-Douched Team. Tennessee DE Kyle Vanden Bosch earned the Massengill Award as the league's most douched player because he failed to make the Pro Bowl, while Freeney did. Vanden Bosch was a far superior player last year but he didn't have ... that's right, the hype from the "pundits." Freeney, we said, is a "one-trick pony." But as your Cold, Hard Football Facts show, even that one trick isn't so hot.

 

Easy there, big boys, you're a bit presumptuous there. Nobody said nothing to the effect that you don't suck!!! To have the balls to make us impatient, in need of immediate gratification (hence the shots while we're chugging our beer), lazy, beer-swilling, burrito-eating bastards (don't let that compliment go to your heads either) make us wait for two whole days for the AFC East Fillability report and think you don't suck. You're damn lucky they took the vote when they did ... keep trying not to suck you're getting it!! On another note, we all already knew the New England draft was f*d up, but that's why we pay brother Bill the big bucks!!! – John Chaisson

 

CHFF: Well, a lot has changed since we got this e-mail back after draft day. Oh sure, our suckosity remains one of the true universal constants here on Planet Pigskin, like gravity or getting kicked out of strip joints. But it turns out "Brother Bill" is doing a lot more with the big bucks than fielding Super Bowl contenders.