The SoapBoxers

Note: In the wake of Albert Pujols opting to leave the Cardinals and sign with the Angels, I asked a friend of mine who is a die-hard Cardinals fan to write about his reaction.

[Editor’s note: Brian from BeBetterNow.org (a self improvement web site) follows up his Drew Brees article last week with an article that discusses the relative merits of Tom Brady and Peyton Manning.]

In his recent love-fest article praising Drew Brees, Kosmo made this comment – “Manning will go down as the greatest quarterback of this generation (sorry, Brady, but you’re going to come up short in counting stats, such as passing yards and TDs).”

While Brady will come up short to Manning in passing yards and TDs, Manning currently comes up short in playoff record and championship rings. In addition you could look at Winning Percentage by Quarterbacks (there’s a handy sortable column there.) Tom Brady has the highest percentage in NFL history in winning 77.6% of his games. He is 3 percent better than the next best which is Staubach, who is 3% than a guy named Montana. Brady is 10% better than Manning. The difference there between the two is vast.

Manning also had a number of seasons passing to pro-bowl, possibly Hall of Fame quality receivers in Marvin Harrison and Reggie Wayne. Most of Brady’s work has been with no big names. He had two seasons with Moss and three with Wes Welker who, as an undrafted free agent, wasn’t exactly known as a great talent before playing with Brady. Finally Brady doesn’t get the advantage of playing half his games in a dome like Manning does… Brady plays in New England where the elements make passing more difficult. You don’t have to look too much futher than the Greatest Show on Turf or the Saints success of late to see that playing a dome is a different game.

When we look at quarterback efficiency (QB Rating), Brady and Manning are neck and neck with Brady having a slight edge. In addition, Brady has 2 of the top 5 best seasons. You may argue that QB rating is the best statistic. I would agree with that. For example, the statistic of touchdowns for quarterbacks is suspect. How many times have you seen a quarterback throw a 50 yard bomb to see the player get tackled on the 1. The next few plays are typically running plays to get the score. Should that quarterback be rated lower than the one whose receiver didn’t get tackle at the 1? It doesn’t make sense. However, the compenents of completion percentage, yards per attempt and interceptions make sense. Some may argue that interceptions can be deceptive as there are bad bounces, but those should even out for all quarterbacks. It shouldn’t be surprising that while Manning has great TD numbers, Brady has the far better interception numbers.

It seems you can get into the Hall two ways. You can be a Dan Marino win great stats (61,000 yards and 420 TDs), but be considered a post-season failure. You can be a Troy Aikman with a very mediocre stats (32,945 yards, 165 TDs, and a 81.6 QB rating) with three Super Bowl rings. I would suggest that Tom Brady is a more complete player at this point with the ability to put up the stats of Manning in any given season combined with 3 Super Bowl rings.

[Editor’s note:  Today’s article is written by Brian from BeBetterNow.org, a site devoted to self improvement. Today, Brian attempts to help me improve myself for telling me why I’m wrong about Drew Brees being a Hall of Famer in our midst.]

Recently Kosmo asked the question Is Drew Brees a Hall of Famer?. In it he brought up some comparisons to Peyton Manning and made a very good case that Brees belongs in the Hall.

Pass Happy NFL and Trust in your QB

Kosmo brought up a great point:

“Is Brees a product of a pass-happy era in the NFL? Sure. But there’s a reason why everyone isn’t racking up 4500 passing yards per year. Most coaches don’t trust their quarerback to throw the ball 650 times per year.”

It’s worth looking at the pass-happy era of the NFL. The rules for contact have been changed over the years. You can barely touch the quarterback any more. If you get near a receiver it is pass interference. If you are a defensive player and there’s a likelihood of getting pass interference called on you, you naturally are going to play off the receiver a bit more. This gives the quarterbacks more room to complete passes.

If you look at career passer rating you’ll note that 19 of the top 30 are currently active in the league. Four of the remaining 11 retired last year (Bulger, Garcia, Culpepper, and Warner). Clearly passing is easier in this day and age. Interesting fact, Shaun Hill, who has been a back-up his entire career has a better rating than Elway, Aikman, and the aforementioned Staubach. Clearly it is a game where it is easier to get TDs, avoid interceptions, and complete more passes for a longer average. If it is easier to pass in today’s game, it is hard to compare Brees to players of previous eras.

As for trusting your quarterback to pass 650 times. I don’t buy it. When Peyton Manning had his best season in 2004 (121 QB Rating – the best ever), he only threw the ball 497 times. In Tom Brady’s best year (117.2 rating – highest scoring offense ever), he only threw the ball 578 times. Brady only topped 600 attempts one time – in 2002 when the team was 9-7 and some wondered if Brady was really talented at all. Peyton Manning never had 600 attempts in his career. Brees has thrown 630+ passes in 3 of the last 4 season… the exception being the champion season where he threw only 514 passes. I don’t think anyone could claim that Manning and Brady aren’t trusted to throw the ball.

Why does Drew Brees throw so much? I think it is because the games have been close or they have been playing catch-up. When the Saints flirted with going undefeated they could build up a quick lead and run the clock out. This year they’ve had to come from behind and endured many, many injuries to their running backs.

When looking at the number of passes, we should look at another player, Drew Bledsoe. His career ended early with his last full year at age 33. However, he did put up 44,000 yards and 251 TDs in that time in a less pass happy NFL. He did this mostly by passing a lot. Some make an argument for him to be in the Hall of Fame because he ranks in the top ten in a number of areas and beats out a number of current Hall of Famers. However, I think this article correctly points out that high volume doesn’t mean high efficiency.

It appears that Drew Brees is a combination of volume and efficiency, but I would caution against using numbers such as yards and TDs that tend to skew towards volume.

Is Brees a Hall of Famer?

Let’s get back to Kosmo’s original question. I think it might be closer than he thinks. Let’s review the numbers that Kosmo has for Brees, which I believe are fair, and compare them to others in his class:

Notes on the projected stats:

• Philip Rivers – He is three years younger than Brees. Since we added 5 years to Brees, I added 8 for Rivers. Rivers has averaged 27.2 TDs for every 16 games he’s played, but in the last three years (when he stepped up his game) he’s averaged 30.6. I projected 28 on average for the next 8 years to account for some drop-off. Similarly Rivers averages 3930 yards per full season in his career, but over the last three years he has been averaging 4324 yards a season. I calculated a 4100 as his 8 year average.
• Aaron Rodgers – It is extremely hard to project him because he only has a few seasons due to waiting out the Favre fiasco. However, I felt it would be short-sighted to leave him off the list. At age 27, he projects to play 10 more years to get to the age of 37 that we are predicting for all quarterbacks. With at least 28 TD in every season, I continued that for 10 years. With an average of 4131 yards over his full seasons, I added in 10 years of 4000 to account for some drop off – though he could get better before he gets worse.
• Ben Roethlisberger – While he is age 28, he won’t be adding until his counting stats until he’s 29. Thus I’m going to pretend he’s 29 and treat him like Drew Brees – 8 years until age 37. Due to some injury problems and off-field issues, he’s averaged fewer games than some of the above players. He’s still averaging 3214 a season and 20 TDs. I conservatively estimated the next 8 years to average 3000 yards and 18 TDs.

Big Ben may look out of place, but because he wins games, I don’t think we can discount him as a potential Hall of Fame candidate. He already has 2 rings and could add a third before he turns 29. I think it is worth focusing on Rivers and Rodgers who are often mentioned with Brees in the next tier after Brady/Manning debate. Though we have to project Rivers and Rodgers more than Brees (and hence have less accuracy in our predictions), it should be noted that they might have very similar careers.

If you put one of them in the Hall, you may have to put them all. Are voters likely to say that we have 5-6 Hall of Fame quarterback in the league right now? Has Brees separated himself from the rest of the pack? I’m not sure.

If we see Brees in the Hall of Fame in a few years, I wouldn’t be surprised. If he puts up the numbers that Kosmo suggests and doesn’t make it, I wouldn’t call it a travesty either.

[Editor’s note: today’s article was written by Poch.  Check out more of Poch’s writing at Plato Press.]

My small Manila hometown is very near the Philippines busiest international airport (I will not mention the name to avoid libel charges). Its main attraction and big income producer is a world-famous church which also triggers corruption among the town leaders -our town thrives on underground economy.

Illegal gambling is everywhere -it’s already part of the town’s culture. The town leaders allow vendors (and anarchy) to occupy sidewalks for a fee which collectively isn’t small -there are hundreds of illegal vendors creating street anarchy. Even some police officials get their take too.

From time to time when the corrupt leaders are taking heat from higher officials, they make a show of chasing the vendors away from the streets which turns violent sometimes causing death among vendors or law enforcers. These battles have been going on for decades until now.

I have a cousin who is an ‘official’ of one illegal gambling (locally called ‘Sakla’) that’s permitted most of the time during funerals. It’s organized if the family of the deceased wants or needs money for the funeral. The family gets a percentage of what the gambling earns from bets. After the local elections this year, this particular gambling was stopped by the city mayor. The reason? The mayor’s brother lost in our town elections and because his brother’s opponent was earning or ‘on the take’ from Sakla, he stopped it to punish his brother’s opponent. So now my cousin gets poorer and poorer everyday because Sakla is his main source of income and he’s feeding 4 children of his own. Now imagine the other many gamblers who earns less than him and also have families to feed. I really wonder how the gamblers go on for decades living this way. But mostly, I wonder why I’m being forced by fate to come back and live here again and again.

[Editor’s note: on occasion, we delve into topics that touch on Islam.  In the past, some of our writers have made an attempt to explain how Muslims may feel about issues.  However, when writers of a Judeo-Christian background do this, we don’t really have the proper background for it – we’re outsiders.  If we truly want a Muslim point of view, then it makes sense to actually ask a Muslim.

Recently, I asked my friend Z if she knew someone who would be interested in writing an article.  Z is a typical modern American woman in many ways – she loves to shop, is devoted to her husband and young son, and is a member of the Facebook generation.  I am hoping that this article, written by Z’s husband ZZ, will allow people to place a human face on Islam.]

What does Islam mean to me?

Here is some background and reality check before I get into, “what does Islam mean to me? We have been hearing that Islam is the religion of “peace”, but current global situation doesn’t help us to believe that. This is absolutely true for the individual who solely relies on media. However individuals who have a little bit of awareness of Islam wouldn’t agree with that. The biggest take away from Islam is, Islam never allows hurting anyone, never allows any sort of suppression, it always encourages helping others out regardless of caste/religion/race. This is huge; let me repeat this regardless of ANY CASTE/RACE/RELIGION. Think about that, in today’s modern western society we are still struggling on those three elements pretty much every day in and day out under “discrimination” and yet Islam mentioned and cleared those centuries ago.

Moving along, the actual definition of Islam is “to Submit” meaning submit yourself to one God or in Arabic “Allah”. Having said that, individuals (Muslims & non-Muslims) define or explain Islam based on their own knowledge, experience, interaction or perception which sometime is misleading and away from the “true” definition of Islam. Unfortunately, today’s media is not helping to identify the “true” Islam as well.

Regardless, Islam is still the same as it came hundreds of years ago. It’s the followers who make things too complicated. I always say don’t blame religion, blame “followers”. Let me try to explain this further, the fundamental difference between the “true-right” followers and what I called “mislead” followers is that, those mislead individuals don’t know and most of the time don’t want to understand the fundamentals of the “true-Islam”. It’s due to the fact that there are predefined misconception against the “true-Islam”.

Subsequently, the fundamentals of the true Islam is in this sequence; Quran, Prophet Mohammad’s actions & sayings along with the actions of his immediate families. If any Muslim misses any of the above sequence will ALWAYS be misleading and couldn’t be a true follower of Islam. So in order to understand Islam one has to do some research instead of watching 9 o’clock news— funny isn’t?

Furthermore, Quran verses are always connected to Prophet Mohammad’s sayings & his actions (which sometimes are elaborations of Quran verses) and actions of prophet Mohammad’s immediate family resulting in the True Islam, OR in other words the simple and basic formula of following the true Islam is:

Quran + Prophet Mohammad’s actions & sayings + Actions of Prophet Mohammad’s Immediate families = TRUE ISLAM!!!

So technically, person who take ONLY Quran is not justifying and following the “true” Islam because following only the Quran is not sufficient and in fact it causes confusions and misleads the followers.

I’ll explain why those three are in the sequence and why one can’t ONLY follow the Quran some other time.

Having said that, one doesn’t have to be a Muslim to understand how Islam continues after death of Prophet Mohammad and how prophet Mohammad immediate families showed the world, how to live forever with dignity and kept the Islam alive.  Even non-Muslims researchers recognize this connection. There are thousands of examples on that, but few of those are as follows….

Mahatma Gandhi
– “My faith is that the progress of Islam does not depend on the use of sword by its believers, but the result of the supreme sacrifice of Hussain (A.S.), the great saint.”

-I’ve learned from “Husain” (A.S) how to be oppressed yet victorious.

Dr. Radha Krishnan
“Though Imam Hussain gave his life years ago, but his indestructible soul rules the hearts of people even today.

Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru
“Imam Hussain’s (A.S.) sacrifice is for all groups and communities, an example of the path of righteousness.”

• Husain (A.S) was the grandson of Prophet Mohammad.

Like any other religion, Islam teaches about peace, non-violence, patience, meditation, helping others and encourage to do good deeds in one’s life. There is one famous saying of Prophet Mohammad’s – regardless of race/religion/caste, if your neighbor is not happy with you, God will not be with you. This means Islam dictates that one should keep peace all the time.

Look around you – you’ll find your neighbors, co-workers, employees, relatives, and family friends are the followers of Islam and most of them are good law obedient citizens and have been a part of U.S melting pot for years. And this is what true Islam means to me…  

Now, let’s compare that to “Taliban” or “Al-Qaida” (handful of people) and see if their actions are close to what I mentioned above, or not? In fact do their ANY ACTION come close to what I mentioned above? And the answer is “NO”. Now the question is WHY??? … and the answer is very simple. It’s because they don’t follow the “sequence”.

Taliban is nothing but a culture. Let me give you a simple example, it’s like a cult group. Same as what David Koresh had, they have their own believes and fundamentals. Taliban have their own believes, culture and fundamentals. By the way they followed the ancient culture.

The recent fight between “mislead” Muslims (“Taliban” or “Al-Qaida”) are rest of the world is the fight of two civilizations…and of course there is a political motivation and some “hidden” agenda and forces who escalates them and financing those “misleading” forces … which is not hard to find, as they say, follow the money trail you’ll find the answer.

At the end, I’ll leave this up to you all— what you all think, which Islam Prophet Mohammad and Prophet Jesus would have left for their followers …

[Editor’s note: we’re always looking for reporters to give account of the news with a local flavor.  Longtime reader Poch comes to us from the Philippines and gives his thoughts on the recent victory by Manny Pacquiao.  Check out Poch’s web site, Plato Press.]

When my great fellow countryman Manny ‘PacMan’ Pacquiao started dipping his toes in politics, I somewhat lost faith in him thinking he’s a fool. I should know – I risked my life during the EDSA Uprising in 1986 and after all, corruption still reigned.

Then comes this Pacquiao-Margarito fight when PacMan was already an elected congressman after some election failures. When I heard after the bout that his opponent Margarito was 17 pounds heavier, I thought with awe “What more miracle would this man do?”  (When PacMan was the same bantamweight with me, I imagined and itched of fighting with him)

And so now the House of Representatives is preparing a hero’s party for him. “We’ll prepare as best as we can”, the Speaker of the House said.

What PacMan’s fellow citizens are saying (quotes are from the Philippine Daily Inquirer – most were translated from the local language):

• “He becomes a symbol of hope, that one could work hard and be successful”, a kitchen helper said.
• Many are wondering why Pacquiao didn’t knock down Margarito when it seemed easy for PacMan to. “Manny is truly a gentleman”, a female accountant commented. “In the 11th and 12th rounds, he could have knocked out Margarito but he didn’t to avoid making worse the latter’s condition.”
• “I pity Margarito“, a public jeepney driver said. “He tore off PacMan’s photo in a magazine during Solar’s prefight interview… Now it was Margarito’s turn to be torn.”
• The most overheard comment about Margarito’s arrogance: “Serves him right for being so cocksure.”

I still think politics would ruin our dear PacMan and hope that it wouldn’t be so.

[Editor’s note: Check out more PacMan coverage on the Inquirer’s web site – there’s a special section for him.]

here.  And now, the conclusion …

My mom came the next morning.  My daughter was already up.  I was standing in the kitchen with my mom and I started crying.  My daughter was standing in the hall looking at me and wondering what was wrong with mommy.  My mom told her that mommy would be alright.  I told my daughter that too although I didn’t believe it.

My husband and I parked in the ramp.  When I was walking across the sky walk and the hall towards the elevator, I felt like I was walking to my doomsday.  I was here to lose my baby.  I told my husband I can understand the blood sugars being good if I wasn’t pregnant, but I didn’t understand how my blood pressure could be so low if I wasn’t pregnant.  Pregnancy causes low blood pressure in the first trimester.  I said I had been sick too, but not like I had been with our daughter.  We checked in with the guy I like at reception.  I could tell he could see what I was there for even though he didn’t say anything.  They must have had my appointments in the computer backwards, but he quickly corrected it so that I had the ultrasound and then saw the OB.  He didn’t say he was doing that, but I could tell from what he did say.  He was friendly and professional, but not quite the same as he had been in the past.

We went to the waiting room to wait to be called by the sonographer.  There was one lady in the waiting room.  I tried watching TV to take my mind off everything.  It didn’t work.  I don’t like crying in public or in front of others, but I broke down and started crying.  The lady ignored me and kept reading her magazine which I was thankful for.  They called my name.

The sonographer had to do a vaginal ultrasound since it was early in the pregnancy.  She found the baby right away and the baby was alive and seemed ok!  I was so happy!  I asked if the baby was ok and she said that she had to take all the usual measurements and dopplers.  Everything looked good!  It was too early to tell if it was a boy or girl.  She determined that the OB had been looking at a cyst or fibroid.  We knew that I had that from the 7 week ultrasound.  Even with my tipped uterus, the sonographer found the baby right away!  We were sent back to the waiting room.  The lady was still in there.  A few more people were in there too.  I called my mom and told her that the doctors were wrong and that the baby was fine!  I saw the lady smiling.  I called my dad to tell him the good news.  I called a friend at work.  She had a sad voice when she answered, but then was excited when I told her the baby was fine.

We went to a room and waited for the OB.  She came in and was so happy that she was wrong and the baby was fine.  She was going to let my OB know.

We went home.  I was so tired, but too keyed up to take a nap.  My mom went home.  My husband worked downstairs.  I took care of my daughter.  My daughter took a nap in the afternoon.  I tried to take a nap, but I couldn’t sleep even though I was very tired.  Even though we received the best news that our baby was ok, I was still shaken at the thought of losing my baby and everything I went through.

I e-mailed my OB also as I had a question if she wanted to see me in 3 or 5 weeks since she was out of town in 4 weeks.  She e-mailed me back and said she was so happy and she almost had tears in her eyes.

This incident still shakes me up and still makes me cry sometimes when I think about it even though everything turned out ok.  I am so happy to have my happy and healthy baby boy today.  My baby boy is 6 months old.  I always wanted children and knew I would cherish them.  I may even cherish my children more due to the hardships I went through to get pregnant with them both, the high risk pregnancy and complications with my daughter, all of the additional tests and things for my son due to my first high risk pregnancy, and this “complication” with my son of walking to my doomsday.

part 2.