PhillyB

they're just gifs. i jerked them off @MurkN's thread

i have no idea. i experimented with making videos a few weeks back but it was too much trouble to bother with. definitely interested in seeing what you came up with though

1,400 years ago in modern-day Peru an ancient people called the Wari lived long, prosperous lives amid the arid Pacific deserts and towering Andes peaks. They flourished by merrily establishing vast empires and subjugating their foes by demanding forced labor on Wari construction projects in order to not be slaughtered. They lived here for hundreds of years, spreading as far north as Ecuador and southward, deep into Bolivia and Chile. The Wari produced complex textiles and dazzling art, including vast amounts of intricate pottery (I know because I did archaeological excavation, cataloguing, and reconstruction of a billion smashed pots for three straight months in the Peruvian desert.) The Wari also were arguably the first South Americans to invent beer. This pottery shard also proves they invented Angry Birds. The Wari chugged along for half a millennium, dominating everyone around them, giving no quarter to their foes, continually renowned (if hated) for their adeptness at statecraft. By most accounts they are South America's first empire: revolutionary, insurmountable, indefatigable, beast of the South. That is, until the Inca showed up around 1100 AD and changed the world forever. Known for Machu Picchu, brutal human sacrifices, and armies of insanely-disciplined, song-singing, axe-weilding maniac soldiers, the Inca carved up the Wari Empire with little effort, forever supplanting it as the dominant native force on the continent. The Wari Empire sounds a wee bit like the New Orleans Saints. Dominant for a half a decade, they rode an extremely talented quarterback, opportunistic defense, and illegal, universally-condemned bounty program all the way to a Super Bowl win. Neighboring teams looked at them with hatred, plotting their downfall but never able to execute. But just as the Inca came, so too came the Carolina Panthers. Insanely disciplined and willing to brutally sacrifice opposing players, the Panthers have once again churned out the best defense in the league. They are merciless, they are berserk Inca warriors, and they'll produce the same on-field meat grinder for the Saints that they trotted out last week against the Cowboys. In fact, let's take a look at a few plays from Thursday's mauling of Dallas. It was Carolina's reaction time on defense that contributed most to that win, and has helped establish dominance all season long. Here's Kurt Coleman's interception return for a touchdown with :59 off the clock. The Cowboys line up with a wide trips formation at the bottom of the screen. Both outside receivers are running fly routes, with Romo reading both safeties as playing in deep zones. At the line he sees both Davis and Keuchly dropping down, showing blitz, and knows two things: (1) he's gotta get it out quick if it's a blitz, and (2) if they drop back into zone he can't throw directly to the middle off the field.. What to do? Why, throw at Colin Jones, of course! He's been getting beaten in Benwikere's spot for a while now. This makes Witten (lined up across 42) Romo's primary target: outside receivers will be bracketed up top, and a blitz leaves Witten across a vacated middle zone. Even if they drop back Witten can still get inside Jones for a strike up the seam. The ball is snapped, and below you can see Keuchly dropping into coverage. It's zone! Jones stays in, Witten finds the space around him, and looks to be going up behind 59. Tony Romo sees Witten break open! Those pesky safeties are playing the deep ball because their outside corners aren't good enough to cover those receivers! Better huck it to Witten since those safeties aren't anywh- OH GOD NO WHY GOD Tony Romo didn't realize the free safety was squatting in the zone rather than dropping deep, and his mistake went for six. But Romo's misdiagnosis aside, it's Coleman's reaction time that really makes this play possible. He was ten yards from the play when Witten made his cut and got open, but he instinctively cut inside the instant he saw Romo's eyes flash up the seam. No hesitation. In fact, he got there so fast he he almost outran the interception. That was six points, an incredible play. But somehow Luke Keuchly managed to top it. Late in the second quarter the Cowboys got the ball, determined to march down the field and score before the half. Here they line up with a 3WR 1TE set, out of the shotgun. This is a pretty nice play design. It puts strong safety Roman Harper in the unenviable position of having to diagnose three routes: the WR2 running a complex slant, the slot receiver running a quick out, and the tight end running a fly up the seam. The ball is snapped. It's important to note that Luke is the MLB playing in zone coverage: he's got a broad area assigned, the middle of the field. Notice how Witten, the tight end, is nearly open here: he's streaking the fly, with Keuchly trailing in coverage, and Roman Harper still in limbo, waiting to go deep with the TE or drop in to bracket that streaking Z receiver who's about to break into his slant. Tony Romo can choose one receiver or the other. Seeing Keuchly's back turned upfield drawn away by Witten,, Romo decides to fire at the Z-receive, the guy about to step into his slant. But right as Romo's releasing the ball, Keuchly instinctively breaks off the TE because he's leaving the zone. This releases him to the coverage safety (Harper) and Luke, knowing the strong side of the field is exposed, then instinctively breaks to his right, towards the gap in the zone, the area most likely to be exploited by a slant/out route combo. OH GOD TONY NO Ridiculous instincts, ridiculous discipline, ridiculous execution. Not many players in the league have what it takes to commit to covering a dominant tight end of Witten's caliber well enough to force Romo to a different receiver and then jump that route anyway the moment he decides to make the throw. That is true mastery of his position and the defensive scheme. It's hard to believe Luke was once criticized as being a subpar coverage linebacker. So where do the New Orleans Saints come in? It's simple: they play the Wari to the Panthers' Inca. We're facing a New Orleans team in a New Orleans dome that once represented the impregnable capital fortress of the South. But just like the advancing Inca merely sashayed into the imposing Wari palaces at Pikillacta, so too can the Carolina Panthers - playing historically great defense and set to trounce the declining Saints for the next one thousand years - march into the Superdome and emerge as victors. As a final note: this assertion is supported by the archaeological record. Behold: prophetic, pre-Inca pottery featuring a Panther stealing a Wari person's beer, and a scary winged Panther with a spear featured on a royal vase. When archaeology says you win, you don't lose. 12-0 View full article

great work

romo is an excellent quarterback, definitely top ten in this league, especially with dez bryant. he is the difference between a 3-7 cowboys team and a playoff cowboys team. he will be the second best quarterback we've played this season and the third-hardest matchup. i think we'll pull it out.

hahahaha amazing.

oh poo a formal complaint. i would let this one go in the interest of self preservation panthro

how does one remember deep lesions in the flesh, or a suppressed memory of abuse? scars and therapy. so it is with dallas cowboys games

oh yeah speaking of which, everyone go read this awesome blog post by @Moorgan and help me decide whether or not i've ripped off his brilliance yet again

i know i was making a funny

now that is independent thinking :-)

i hate conspiracy theories and seeing games like the playoffs last year where the refs said dez bryant didn't secure the catch gives me hope. but my gosh, it's just unbelievable. especially the james anderson horse collar in 2012. no-calls are one thing. but calling a critical 4th quarter 15-yarder on something that didn't even actually happen and should've been challenged by every other judge on the field? inexcusable, unforgivable.

i wish there was a way to quantify bad calls per game so i could statistically back my fury at these games. maybe it's just my hatred clouding my vision but how is it every. single. cowboys game we play has some unbelievably, objectively awful call or no-call?

fug you dallas

dallas cowboys forum here has a couple of threads going on this, including a good one by @hepcat... i will try to get some answers by regulars there regarding team weaknesses. they seem to be generally down on hardy, which is interesting.

incidentally it's also the site of a civil war battlefield where your ancestors fought to preserve slavery. mods can we get a ban on this chucklefug unless he wants to discuss the cowboys-panthers history in this goat thread

for narrative purposes it seemed appropriate to begin it after our last win - which, incidentally, was the year of our superb owl appearance. winning this one would make a very nice bookend to the saga, especially if it culminates in a second superb owl.

ignore him, he's a cop from bentonville, nc that occasionally drunkposts flagrantly racist stuff about black people in the tinderbox and remains unbanned only because nobody can decipher his imaginative syntax and nonexistent spelling. he just wrote a butthurt resignation post down there and now he's taking it out on useful peoples' useful threads. only poster worse than pantherunited imho

i worked at chickfila back then. i remember bribing one of the kitchen crew to stay and double up closing duties to let me out an hour and a half early, clearing out at exactly 830, and hauling ass to old towne draught house in greensboro to catch the game. this was in the middle of so much college bullshit girl drama that i desperately needed a panthers win as an escape from personal existential crisis and emotional damnation. ...and then that poo happened. fug you dallas, this one's personal

pass rush is hot/cold. i can't really key in on it exactly (and i haven't watched enough game film to give you any meaningful breakdowns there.) they are 23rd in sacks and dead last in forced fumbles, for whatever that's worth. running game has been pretty good (especially with romo behind center) but mcfadden pulled his groin or something against the dolphins and he's questionable for sunday.

pie to anyone able to provide gifs or highlight vids of any of the moments specified in the article... youtube didn't yield much at all. i'd love to re-watch that field goal block in the 2005 game.

early weeks require early measures. i wrote most of this bleary-eyed in the terminal at denver international airport waiting for a super-delayed red eye flight (and surrounded by donkey fans.) thankfully i didn't see any dallas jerseys. re-living these games was downright cathartic and i should probably go see a doctor about my blood pressure now.

Six weeks ago we visited the immortal fate of Sisyphus, Greek king damned to a fate of eternally rolling a boulder up a hill, only to have it roll back down right when it reached the top. The folks over at Existential Comics did a nice job with it (it's a lot funnier now that we've pushed that boulder over the crest with the downfall of the Seattle Seahawks.) But alas, as is the case with any franchise plagued by long periods of mediocrity, we still have lots of mileage to get out of the Sisyphean analogy. If Sisyphus is Panthers, and the boulder an NFL team, there is perhaps no candidate more appropriate than the Dallas Cowboys. This is a matchup that reflexively triggers bad tastes in the mouths of Carolina fans at its mere mention, tapping into a frustrating legacy of bad teams caught at bad times and good teams caught at bad times and good teams at good times caught by bad referees. That cursed boulder has been tumbling backwards for as long as any of us can remember. With Thanksgiving a scant three days away, and an impending matchup that invokes ineffable angst deep in the stomach pits of all Panthers fans, I've decided to assemble an abbreviated history of the Carolina-Dallas matchups. It's abbreviated because I've marked 2005 as the genesis of Sisyphean tendencies; it's latter-day Cowboys games that've proved so maddening. Five games punctuate our history, each more gut-wrenchingly infuriating than the last. Let's have a look. 2005 (L 20-24) With ten years of hindsight a lot of people point to this as the greatest Panthers offense of all time. Jake Delhomme had come off a career year in 2004 and extended it with Steve Smith's triple crown season. The team rolled into this late-season game with a 10-4 record, a game ahead of the Bucs for first place in a highly competitive NFCS. Winning this game and then beating the hapless Falcons would seal the division and leave the Panthers with a first-round bye. Needless to say, this would be a bad contest to drop. Two terrible things happened in this game. Midway through the third quarter Terrance Newman hit Steve Smith out of bounds, and Smith ran up to a ref to (rightly) complain about the no-call. He committed the cardinal sin of touching that ref and was promptly flagged for unsportsmanlike conduct and ejected. Smith was livid. Fox was livid. Delhomme was livid. I was livid, I almost died. But Delhomme threw the game on his back, marched down in the fourth quarter in response, and threw a touchdown to Ricky Proehl for a late three-point lead. Here Sisyphus surfaced for the first time. With their final possession the Cowboys marched down the field and lined up for what would be a game-tying field goal, leaving Carolina three minutes on the clock to go grab a game-winner. Julius Peppers and Ken Lucas miraculously blocked it - and then were famously flagged for roughing the kicker. It was the worst single-play ref job in Panthers history. "I definitely touched the ball, both me and God know it," Lucas said about the play, after Drew Bledsoe, given a new set of downs, tossed the game-winning touchdown. God, Ken Lucas, and all of us know this atrocious call kicked off a full decade of equally atrocious Panthers-Cowboys matchups. 2006 (L 14-35) This season was a disappointment from the start, so a screw job in a Cowboys game was a natural fit on the menu. Keyshawn Johnson was supposed to be the key free agent that would put the Panthers over the top, but the first two games quickly upended those expectations. Two crushing losses followed by a narrow win over the Buccaneers summed up that season. It was up and down all year. Dallas rolled into town to face a 4-3 squad that might actually be the streakiest team in Panthers history. Sometimes brilliant, sometimes atrocious, this game was a microcosm of that season. The offense scored early, the defense forced a turnover, and then a Steve Smith rushing touchdown made it 14-0 Panthers. But Dallas went on to score 35 unanswered points, led by a young undrafted free agent named Tony Romo. A deplorable defensive secondary (that day) and an anemic passing attack (supplemented by referees refusing to call flagrant holds on Julius Peppers for four quarters, rendering him sackless on the day) contributed to another crushing loss. A win here would've put a 9-7 Panthers team in the playoffs. Instead it was another moribund 8-8 John Fox season, on the bright brink of vitality but, as usual, only grazing it. 2007 (L 13-20) Miracles do happen. The Panthers beat an outstanding Seattle Seahawks squad at home in week fifteen, only allowing a touchdown in the final seconds when Quinton Teal or somebody went for the interception instead of just batting it down. This was a tremendous upset, and it placed the Matt Moore-led Panthers at 6-8, mathematically still alive for the playoffs. Winning out - with some help - could land the Panthers a wild card spot. Just gotta beat Dallas on that newfangled Saturday Night Football thing! This game was fairly unremarkable. Both teams traded momentum all night, though the Panthers never led. They stayed in it the whole game, though, answering every Cowboys score with one of their own, and halfway into the fourth quarter a gorgeous Thomas Davis interception put the Panthers one score away from tying it up. Wunderkind quarterback Matt Moore got the ball back with a chance to go win the ballgame on national television, and began a march down the field. Never in my life will I forget watching Drew Carter run his route up the middle of the field on 3rd and 8, beating linebacker Jacques Reeves, who then proceeded to cling to him like superman's cape for the next eight yards while a perfectly-placed ball dropped into Carter's molested, premature-tackle-contorted body. No flag. Unforgivably terrible no-call; there was no subjectivity involved. It was a flagrant pass interference in front of two referees, uncalled. Carolina punted, gave up a field goal, and lost the game. Jobbed. 2009 (L 7-21) Tony Fiammetta was drafted this year in hopes of developing the world's best running attack. It was largely a success, but in true fashion general manager Marty Hurney ignored gaping needs elsewhere. The Panthers went into week three with Nick Hayden and Everette Brown as mainstays on the defensive line with two ugly losses under their belts. This year was a harbinger of horrors to come in the following one, and the Cowboys provided the salt in the opening wound. As one of the league's best running teams that year (remember Marion Barber, Tashard Choice, and Felix Jones back when that three-headed-monster thing was in vogue?) they were able to consistently punch it past Hayden, Damione Lewis, and the rest of that recalcitrantly inept defensive front seven (Beason was still Beason, but consistently marginalized by upfield blockers all year.) With the score 7-3 in the Panthers' favor midway through the third quarter (it one of the few good defensive games that squad put together) Jake Delhomme's dying arm lobbed a deep ball for Muhsin Muhammed, who caught it for a deep touchdown, the big-play game-breaker Carolina desperately needed. Then the refs called it back for a ticky-tack offensive pass interference call at odds with the tenor they'd set for officiating all game. It led to a Carolina punt, a Dallas field goal, and then Jake Delhomme's dying arm's game-losing pick-six. So it goes. 2012 (L 14-19) Maybe it's just because it's lodged in recent memory, but this game might actually have been the most maddening of the five. Keep in mind the 2012 season was maddening to begin with; the Panthers had seen Chudzinski's offense crumble in the season opener and enjoyed one win over the Saints before being humbled by a home drubbing by the Giants, a certain Haruki Nakamura play, and another loss to the Seahawks. They went into their bye 1-4 and came out of it facing the Dallas Cowboys. This game was strange to watch because familiar icons like Cam and Luke were surrounded by people that seem like ancient history. Louis Murphy, James Anderson, ol' Bullethead. It was strange to watch plays that I've seen the Panthers succeed on a thousand times over this season, but absolutely fell apart in that year. This Cowboys game was no exception. It was maddening. I know, I was there with my pregnant wife trying not to jostle her while I flailed with rage. Score-wise the game wasn't so bad. Tolbert grabbed the lead on a goal-line thrust part way through the fourth, putting the Panthers up by a point. But, characteristically, officiating knocked it out of reach. Two calls in particular were unforgivably bad: a no-call on blatant fourth-down DPI that left Louis Murphy and the entire stadium insane with fury and the Cowboys with great field position, and then immediately after that a phantom horse collar tackle on James Anderson that showed up on the replay as a perfectly legal tackle nowhere near the horse collar. Both were crucial, game-deciding calls by an arbitration crew expected not to affect the outcome of a game. Perhaps more than in any other Panthers game they failed, and Dallas walked away with a win, sending the Panthers packing to Chicago at a lowly 1-5. It may have been the worst loss of the season. Sisyphus takes many forms. So what do we make of this Sisyphean trend? French existential philosopher Albert Camus has his own take on it. Opposing many philosophers who suggested that a true embracing of the absurdity of Sisyphean life is suicide, Camus proposed that the only true response is revolt. Weave your meaning through struggle. Throw down the iron chains of nihilism and an ever-plunging boulder and wrestle that son of a bitch to the top. Camus was onto something; while plenty of us have considered suicide after watching the last five Cowboys matchups, it's in the spirit of the 2015 Carolina Panthers to revolt. They've done it all year, pushed that boulder upward with single-minded determination. How, exactly: They can revolt by taking down a mid-tier Cowboys secondary forced to start rookie free safety Byron Jones in place of injured CB Morris Claiborne. The Dolphins beat him like a drum all day. They can revolt by stifling a suddenly vulnerable-looking Cowboys offensive line that consists of Doug Free struggling against speed rushers and interior guards susceptible to talented, stunting under tackles (like Kawann Short.) They can revolt by frustrating an incredibly emotional Dez Bryant into making stupid, game-losing plays (or lack of plays entirely.) They can revolt by forcing Tony Romo into impressively desperate throws that invariably turn into picks, as happened multiple times against the Dolphins. They can revolt by grinding out tough ground yards against a Cowboys defensive line susceptible to undisciplined run defense, poor contain, and consistently leaving gaping holes between guard and tackle. They can revolt by punching Dallas in the mouth, and, collectively, punching the throats of every mealy-mouthed pundit, informationless fan, wheedling bookie, and narrative-driven columnist calling for a "juggernaut" 3-7 Cowboys team to ruin the season of the most overrated 10-0 team in existence. So get out the turkey and pop open some cranberry sauce: in three days' time we'll have a new page in the abbreviated history of the Panthers and Cowboys. It'll begin - and end - with revolt. View full article

i was looking for the guy in your avi. that's not you?

great work jeremy... i will tweeter it