well after having a disgustingly raw day today ol breezy is i think something like 300 yards away from marinos single season passing yd record. does anyone think he will break it?
well, records are made to be broken. And personally the leagues rules screwed Marino out of all of his records when they cracked down on the secondary, making it much easier for receivers to run free and get open, and hopefully, score more points. Is it really surprising that it only took a few years for not one, but two QBs to break Marinos single season TD record after the league restructured the defensive holding call? Seriously, marino had to have thought to himself "I wish the league would have created more rules for MY receivers to get open easier in the 80s. Damn."
Oh everyone knows, that Dan's record is still more impressive than Brady's and Peyton after they implemented the Peyton rule (maybe that's why I don't like Peyton. His crying got the rule changed). CBs were allowed to butt rape WRs down the field back then.
Well the Saints are definitely letting him try. They were up by 28 points yesterday and he was still throwing the ball nearly every down.
If they tweaked those rules while Marino was active he wins at least 2 superbowls, IMHO. But to answer the thread, I wouldn't be heartbroken if Brees breaks Marino's record, but I'm not going to be cheering for it. I don't think he racks up 400 yards on Carolina's secondary.
Who cares? I think the fact that every year for like the last half a decade someone has been threatening one of Marino's records gives a pretty good indication the nature of the passing game in the modern NFL.
Somebody's got to get it. Might as well be Brees. Amazing that it's stood for 24 seasons. The eras are a bit different. But then again, Marino's era was more passer-friendly than say, Johnny U's era, where they REALLY could go at receivers, you could beat the hell out of the QB, still grab the facemask, 12 and 14-game schedules, etc. That's one reason why INT totals were many times high for the great passers. The fact that guys threw for 30+ TD's in the late 50's/early 60's is really impressive when you look at it in that context. George Blanda (1961) and YA Tittle's (1963) mark of 36 TD's stood until Marino broke it in 1984. They were in their mid-late 30's when they did it. And to this day, only 6 players have topped that mark. Guys like them and Johnny U who were ahead of the game would dominate today. Unitas called his own plays, invented the 2-minute offense, etc. Hard for me to imagine an innovator like that not destroying records today when he threw 32 TD's in 12 games in 1959. Marino's record is special. He obliterated the records. But when looking at the records, I have to look beyond his era for context.
He only had 350 against the Lions and that seemed like an amazing game for the saints O. I found it funny yesterday when CBS was showing highlights of the Saints game and Dan Marino chimed in and said yea he will probably throw it 150 times next week.
In 1977 NFL scoring hit rock-bottom -- lowest level in decades. The next year they moved the hashmarks, let offensive linemen hold their arms away from their bodies, and stopped defensive backs from bumping receivers more than five yards past the line of scrimmage. Those rule changes (particular the blocking and bumping changes) dwarf anything that's happened in recent years. NFL football pre- and post-1978 is almost two different games. Fouts and Marino were the beneficiaries of those changes. If Marino can complain about recent rule changes, guys like Unitas, Kenny Anderson, Y.A. Tittle etc. can complain much louder about the 1978 changes. Brees possibly beating Marino's record bothers me much less than the fact that we passed on Brees twice.
