... and make sure Logan Mankins is there to get beat all day.
Interesting. I was just going by my experience from making ski trips out west. The first day every flight up the stairs leaves you sucking wind. By day 3 you don't really notice the altitude anymore.
Yeah, if you can get pressure up the middle and smash his face in, he's a much less effective QB. That's up there as useful advice as make every pitch on the black of the inside and outside corners if you want to get that guy out.
Yes, but it is still progress. Since the days of Buddy Ryan and the 46 defense the NFL commentariat has equated "blitz a lot" to "defensive genius". At some point the typical NFL fan must have thought the choice pretty much boils down to "should we blitz and get a sack or an interception, or not blitz and give up a 20 yard gain?" So the idea that getting pressure with your front 4 is generally superior is actually a pretty huge step forward for the general fan.
That Wikipedia article defines High altitude = 1,500–3,500 metres (4,900–11,500 ft), so Denver is at the very low end of high altitude, which does fit my limited experience of it not affecting me much when I was hiking around that elevation. As for my wife, maybe she's a bit of a hypochondriac or the affect is more noticeable the less in shape you are, even if red blood cell production or pH levels don't vary by person.
It's not even that simple, because the Patriots quick passing offense is also unusually good at neutralizing pass rush pressure. If the Broncos secondary can't keep everyone locked down for at least two seconds, the pass rush is going to be irrelevant.
I agree that injuries were the primary reason why they lost the first game against Denver. But the Patriots defense looked gassed in the fourth quarter. That's been the conventional wisdom about playing on the road in Denver. I'm mostly in the "In Bill we trust" camp so I hear you about the routine factor, but that routine must be pretty important.
This is a great point, and the proof is in the pudding - last year's Super Bowl against Seattle, as well as the divisional game against the Ravens. Pass rush simply can't get to Brady.
The defense looked gassed late in the first Denver game at least partly because of Hightower's knee injury in the first half.
I'm no doctor, but with lack of oxygen to the brain after 3 quarters of exertion at altitude, it doesn't seem impossible that there'd be an effect on concentration. Marginal, yes, but building over the course of the game.
Harper, he of 0 offensive snaps until the end of the game, 0 targets, and 3 punt returns. You think his brain was oxygen-depleted from being 5,000 up, which led to the fumble?
Your belief is that altitude was irrelevant, and I tend to agree----but neither of us knows what was going on, either. You also are not separating your own assumptions from what we actually know to be true---for example, you have determined somehow that it was a mental lapse and not a physical one and I think you're simply making that up. This is not how good thinking gets done.
My worry about the altitude is that the defense will be tired in the fourth quarter, not dropped balls. I hope the extra day does the trick.
N/M. Derailing the thread. My only point was that blaming Harper's muff on the altitude is a huge leap.
How is football not an endurance sport? Maybe not in the same was a soccer or long distance, but it's like running intervals over long periods of time, no? 5-10 seconds of max exertion with rest periods of varied length for between 3 and 10+ repetitions.
Seems to me that actually neither you nor I knows for sure what was going on with Harper on that play, and I read you expressing certainty that is neither helpful or well-founded. Talking about probabilities and scenarios and evidence is a lot more helpful than making assumptions or pretending we know things that we simply cannot know, imo.
Aerobic endurance is defined in the situation we're talking about as being under the lactate threshold. They don't run long enough to have their legs fill with lactic acid faster than they get rid of it.
No it affects both. The anaerobic is that oxygen depleted state which pools lactic acid. It's just, with the distance they're sprinting vs the rest they're getting, it doesn't really make a tangible difference. Does that make sense?
Even for the 300 pounders? Sorry for the sidetrack, this is all interesting to me.
No one seems to be mentioning that we see shots of players getting oxygen all the time on the sidelines in Denver. Wouldn't that also combat some/most of these effects?
Not really because the moment you stop using it you're quickly back to square one. The oxygen just isn't accessible to the lungs because of the pressure.
Even in that game, they finally started to move the ball once they stopped running the long-developing routes and started going with quick screens and slants. Why it took McDaniels three and a half quarters to adjust I'll never know. They had Wes fucking Welker in his prime and Kevin Faulk (and Moss was decent across the middle too).
