You might have something when it comes to defenses starting slowly due to the lockout.  They looked awful at the begining of the year.  How hard defenders are allowed to hit QBs does influence passing yards though.  I will give the example of the NFC Championship game last year, since I know that you watched that one.  The first two drives Aaron Rodgers wen right through the Bears like they weren't even there.  He took a lick when scoring the second TD by Walt Harris and then another one from Julius Peppers starting the next drive.  After that, Aaron Rodgers played woefully and the Packers didn't score another point because of him.  Cooincidence?  I think not.  Bumps and bruises not only physically slow a guy down, but getting hit hit after or during a play HARD makes a QB think every time that he throws the ball.  Also, it's not just after the ball is thrown.  Now when a player sacks a QB, there are instructions on how to do it.  Warren Sapp was demonstrating on I believe Inside the NFL ealier the season how this works.  Now a defender cannot drive a QB to the ground backward forcefully or even land on top of him without being flagged.   Now you have to grab the QB with two arms and roll sideways with your butt hitting first in order to cushion the blow. 

The reason that the best QBs in the league are throwing for a ridiculous number of yards is the rule changes.  Sorry Rol.  Just a few years ago a QB couldn't drop back and  throw every play without getting killed.  Why?  When a guy would drop back every play they would blitz the crap out of him and when he was brought down it didn't have to be like a carton of eggs.  Football always has been a physical game and now it isn't for QBs and it's also getting that way for WRs.  It used to be that if a WR went over the middle for a pass he had to fear for his life.  Not so much anymore.  Why?  Now a defensive back has to worry about his helmet touching the WRs inadvertently which is an automatic 15 yards regardless of the intent.  This causes them to let up.  The only skill position that isn't protected now is the RB.  It's pretty obvious that the NFL wants more scoring and doesn't care about defense anymore because the "casual" fan doesn't.  Sad really.

I'll agree with you that the mediocre QBs are very mediocre.  Why?  Right now we have an overall crappy group of QBs, besides for the elite ones.  Granted now the QBs overall are better than they were in the late 90's, but it's not even a comparison which group was better, now or the 80's.  No disrespect to the four guys mentioned, but I'd take Marino, Elway, Montana, Fouts, and Moon (pick four of these five) as a group over them.  Brady is an all time great QB that belongs with them and Brees is approaching that status, but Rodger is early in his career and still needs to play a lot longer to be an all time great and Eli Manning is very good (but that's about it).  People were calling for his head up until this year.  Could you imagine Dan Marino playing the 1984 season under these rules?  The guy would have thrown for 6,000 yards.  A comparison of the second tier of QBs between the 80s and present is laughable.  Bernie Kosar, Neil Lomax, Dave Kreig, and Jim Kelly were all better than Matt Ryan or Matt Schaub.  I could argue that one of the backups at the time (Steve Young) was as good as anyone playing now including Brady.  So please don't give me that there are more great QBs playing now then ever.  Sure, you show me stats that indicate otherwise but back then QBs were allowed to be hit and hit hard.

The rules have made this a pass happy league. 

Yes, congratulations to the Texans.  They deserve everything that they achieve this year.  The amount of heart they have shown should be getting much more attention.

Yes. Marion Barber ran out of bounds with less than two minutes after Denver scored a touchdown on a 60 something yard drive. That gave the Broncos a good 40 or more seconds before the game ended, and allowed Prater to kick a 59 yard field goal to send it into overtime. I believe Tebow was 15 for 20 in the last quarter, including a spike to stop the clock (I think?). In overtime, the Bears got the ball first and were in field goal range, when Marion had the ball stripped and the Broncos recovered. They set up a 51 yard field goal for Prater who hit it with plenty to spare.

To be fair, Demaryius Thomas did drop what would have been a touchdown, and Prater also had a 28 yard field goal blocked. Also, a lot of those other incompletions in the first three quarters were dropped. Something like 4 or 5, which would have put Tebow at about 50% completion for the rest of the game too. Against Tebow (aside from the awful 3/15 completions) was the fumble and interception, which I believe was his worst game for turnovers this year. I could be wrong on that though.

Appreciate that amp. I hope the Bears can get in as well, Bears D are doing they're job,but, they can't score on offense. Let's see how it goes against the Seahawks.

Nice to see another Texans fan on this site. Since your a Texans fan who lives in Denver, I'm going to root for the Broncos to beat the Patriots this week.

I've been following the NFL thread daily for the last 3 years on this website and have never posted once in it, I have no idea why. I don't even know why I'm starting my first post in this thread on such an arbitrary week but oh well.

Just to let everyone know I live near Boston and I'm a huge Patriots fan, so with that said here are my pics

I'm thinking Brady is going to score early forcing Tebow to play catchup and making him play a style he's not comfortable with. I just pray that our defense can play semi coherently for once :/

Alot of games this week that could go either way, its going to be an interesting week.

Well Tebow is a lot more sturdy than some of these others QBs playing these days so the rules woudn't be completly at his disadvantage. 

And to be fair, today's rules are a lot more applied when sacking Brady or Aaron Rodgers than others QBs. ( case in point, referee missing face mask on Vikings QB this week end).

Like someone already said, Denvers receivers dropped 4 pass in the first 3 quarters.

And by now everyone watching the Broncos or the Cowboys should know that the only meaninfull part of their game is in the 4th quarter...

No matter what happens the first 3 quarters, you know that if the game is close, the Broncos will win, and the Cowboys will loose...

Funny we have to still explain what truly happened in each Denver game to Rol. The Broncos games are now fought over by abc, fox and nbc because Tebow = ratings. CBS barely kept this weeks Patriots-Broncos game at the normal 2:15 PM start partly because the Patriots were crying for it to remain that way (it would be a very late game on the east coast). NBC is mad they are still stuck with San Diego and Baltimore.

If I remember correctly, he was 3 for 16 until approximately 5 minutes left in the game.  The Bears were leading 10-0.  Then Lovie Smith being the brilliant mind he is decides to go into prevent defense mode thinking that it will take the Broncos will take to long to score twice.  Ironically he was actually right, if Barber didn't run out of bounds like has already been mentioned.  This gave Tebow enough time to get the Broncos "in range" for a 59 yard field goal.  Then in overtime Barber fumbled the ball when the Bears were on the Broncos 35 yard line.  Ugh.