Here’s a list of players with more Super Bowl Rings than Urlacher….

http://www.packers.com/team/players.html
************** Funniest post of the thread*********

Anyways, the Urlacher and Dhani thing doesn’t interest me. Someone mentioned Tiki Barber in reference to Dhani Jones, and I cannot agree more.

The London Experiment interests me. The 17th game being international is an interesting idea, however it is not feasible. Don’t want to travel during the season, won’t give up the “home opener buzz”, and won’t take the homefield advantage away late in playoff pushes.

What about the 4th preseason game? They say the league wants to make these games more interesting, putting them internationally would accomplish that. Also, the teams would have a mini-vacation after their training camps and preseason, then have plenty of rest before the regular season starts (and stays) in America. A common complaint about preseason games is also the full-price ticket for a quarter-price game. International games would fix complaint as well.

The NFL was foolish to cancel NFL Europe, if nothing else they should have waited a few years. Would it be possible to have a 16-team league internationally, with each team being a designated farm team for two NFL franchises? Or, are the 53rd men on NFL rosters just not enough “juice” to run a European franchise with?

****TL;DR?****

Dhani Jones = Tiki Barber.
No overseas regular season games.
3rd or 4th preseason week all overseas.
What’s the current viability of an NFL Europe?

You know you don’t have to drink all the Kool Aid the league puts out. Doubling revenue in a five year span for a business as established as the NFL already is? That’d be a pipe dream even without a lockout and worldwide economic recession.

And while they can no doubt win some new fans in England, their efforts have been mixed and their strategy muddled since the beginning. Remember they had an American football team there full-time until they shut down the Monarchs. They also moved the league offices from London to Germany before shuttering all of NFL Europe. Now, England is huge to them again. Okay…

Yes, I know they sell out Wembley, which is great. But the circus can sell out stadiums for one show a year, too. That doesn’t mean people are going to run home and subscribe to the Circus Channel on their TV.

I think there would be alot of people in Detroit, Seattle and Atlanta who would care if Brits suddenly stopped buying American brands.

I’m not arguing in favour of a London based franchise, because I personally don’t think that would work, but there is certainly scope IMO for an extra 17th NFL game to be played as a 16-game ‘international’ series in cities like Beijing, Berlin, Dusseldorf, Dublin, London, Mexico City, Montreal, Seoul, Tokyo, Toronto, Vancouver etc etc.

If you American guys don’t want NFL games to be played around the world, then stop calling yourselves ‘world champions’.

Any future NFL has to have an expansive international element to it, and I think a majority of NFL owners recognise this.

To the dude who mentions how quickly games sell out over there, I contend it’s the “rarity factor”more than anything else. One game selling out is nothing close to having a team based over there and trying to sell out all of them long term. I know of a British Pats fan on a message board who would likely go to that to see NFL football but he’s been a Pats fan so long that he would never actually be anything but a Pats fan.
To the dude who said the atmosphere over there was bad because of the fans caring about eating and whining to other fans to sit down more than they cared about the game, unfortunately that’s a complaint a lot of us over here have as well since so many people at our games are corporate paid tickets or people who look at it as a “see and be seen” social event.

He went on to explain that he just doesn’t like to have to travel to Europe in the middle of the season. That’s all. I generally think Urlacher’s a bit of a jerk, but it really seemed like just a casual conversation where he was answering honestly about the things he was asked about.

Look, I don’t care whether the British buy American, and when I lived in the UK, I preferred pub grub and chippies to Burger King or McDonald’s. I don’t begrudge you being fans of American football–I’m a fan of several British television series. But expanding the U.S. league to Europe and the UK is not feasible.

Let’s say we expanded to 40 teams and put one AFC and one NFC division of four teams each across the Atlantic. All teams, ours and yours, are going to face constant travel and jet-lag obstacles. Scheduling playoffs will be murder. You’ll have to import talent from the U.S. because you don’t have the pee-wee, junior high, high school, and NCAA farm system in place to provide pro-caliber players. And the wildly popular Sunday, Monday, and Thursday night games will be impossible. When those games are played in the U.S., it’s the wee hours of the morning overseas. You could watch them tape-delayed the following evening, but with the Internet, you’d already have access to the scores.

It will not work.

The smarter thing would be to have a league–like the WLAF–made up solely of teams playing that side of the Atlantic and leave the U.S. teams as they are. But I’ve read many UK fans who say they will not abandon the U.S. teams they’ve followed for many years.

If I were a Man U fan, I wouldn’t expect them to pull up stakes and come play in my backyard just to suit me. I’d recognize they are a Manchester team, and if I wanted to see them in person, I’d go there.

Charles Woodson
Lance Briggs
James Farrior
AJ Hawk
Nick Collins
Bart Scott
DeMarcus Ware
Clay Matthews
Terrell Suggs
Desmond Bishop

I suppose this means that if Urlacher is overrated, all these guys must be HUGELY overrated.
________________________________

Here’s a list of players with more Super Bowl Rings than Urlacher….

http://www.packers.com/team/players.html

He also made these two plays:
On a key 3rd down, Urlacher sacks Rodgers to push the Packers out of field goal range and forced them to punt.

Inside the 10 yard line, Urlacher picks off Rodgers and although he should of scored, he prevented the Packers from scoring.

Keep bringing up B Jackson juking him if you want, but Urlacher was playing his butt off making plays to help keep points off the board and helping his team win.

It’s lovely that you’ve adopted the sport. It’s unfortunate that affection didn’t spell survival for the World League of American Football, which was a financial disaster.

—————————

Although it was the six US franchises in the ten-team WLAF that were the problem and collapsed the league, not the three European ones.

It was because of the affection over in Europe that they reformulated the league without Montreal and the US teams.

They sell hotdogs at Wembley?

I’m a 30 year NFL fan and Englishman living in England, and we are completely dominated by American culture and products.

You Americans want us to fly your airlines, buy your burgers, your laptops, your software etc, etc; but you don’t want us to watch your sports !!!!!

Of course the NFL should be playing games in England/ Germany/ Japan; its a natural extension of America’s general wish to export things internationally.

The reason the NFL wants to play games in London is because the thing sells out within hours; (unlike a number of current NFL teams), and there are more hardened NFL fans in the UK and Germany than there are in alot of US states.

Get with the programme America. Try to look beyond your own post-boxes once in a while.

Thank you for an unselfish perspective that demonstrates an actual appreciation for the game and the people who play it.

Cheer up, man.

Still a great linebacker though.

I was at the 49ers-Broncos game last year and the atmosphere was terrible. Like a graveyard. The only time people cheered was when a team scored, which was only 3 times before the 4th Qtr (2 FGs and a TD). You’d have thought that a big game like this where a team had given up a HOME GAME (49ers) that people would make an effort to appreciate what the team had done. It can’t have been easy for 49er season ticket holders to learn that their team was playing a home game 12,000 miles away.

That and selfish bastards were constantly getting up to buy their overpriced beers and hotdogs. It was like a constant game of “stand up, sit down”.

I don’t care if it was sold out 5 years running. I don’t want to see teams get put through that sh*tty atmosphere again or a serios fan like me having their concerntration being constantly broken by some casual fan in a Favre Jets jersey getting up every 5 minutes.

I’ve been to all the London games + 3 games in the US and surprise surprise people buy beers in both countries! I went to Tampa/Pittsburgh last season and that atmosphere was far far far worse than the London one, which I thought was quite good – one Tampa fan left with his family as some Steelers idiots were swearing and insulting just about everyone throughout the game. I was also at the Oakland/SD game the season before – stadium about 2/3 full if that, people smoking weed in the concourse, fights in the toilets – yeh, real great atmosphere there

With regard to the tax ruling – I know for the Champions League final that an exemption was granted to allow the game to be played and I imagine the same exemption is granted for the NFL.

He may be confused with Tucker Carlson or Orville Reddenbacher. Easy mistake.

I was at the 49ers-Broncos game last year and the atmosphere was terrible. Like a graveyard. The only time people cheered was when a team scored, which was only 3 times before the 4th Qtr (2 FGs and a TD). You’d have thought that a big game like this where a team had given up a HOME GAME (49ers) that people would make an effort to appreciate what the team had done. It can’t have been easy for 49er season ticket holders to learn that their team was playing a home game 12,000 miles away.

That and selfish bastards were constantly getting up to buy their overpriced beers and hotdogs. It was like a constant game of “stand up, sit down”.

I don’t care if it was sold out 5 years running. I don’t want to see teams get put through that sh*tty atmosphere again or a serios fan like me having their concerntration being constantly broken by some casual fan in a Favre Jets jersey getting up every 5 minutes.

Really Charles Woodson, a cornerback, you expect him to have as many tackles as a middle linebacker? I noticed you didn’t have ANY middle linebackers in your list of players with fewer tackles, kinda odd since you know.. Your middle linebacker generally leads your team in tackles over the course of a season.

PS. I noticed Urlacher didn’t catch any touchdowns last year. He must be overrated compared to: Greg Lewis, Jordy Nelson, Riley Cooper and Brandon Banks.

Your logic = flawed.

Charles Woodson
Lance Briggs
James Farrior
AJ Hawk
Nick Collins
Bart Scott
DeMarcus Ware
Clay Matthews
Terrell Suggs
Desmond Bishop

I suppose this means that if Urlacher is overrated, all these guys must be HUGELY overrated.
————

if DB’s and LB’s are statistically comparable, then my apple is so much better than your orange — and redder too. By choosing 2 of GB’s DB’s to throw into your list you reveal yourself as a biased Bears fan intent on ripping some Packers in the process of your lousy straw-man argument. It’s kind of cute, really.

Urlacher’s 2010 line (via Pro-football-reference.com) includes 4 sacks, 1 pic, 1 FF, and 97 tackles. It’s a good season, very good considering it was a pretty major bounce-back from recent down years. But it’s NOT “premier.” It’s not “elite.”

A good metric to use to keep things simple is the “AV” or “approximate value” metric, PFR’s conglomerate stat. Early in his career, Urlacher had a couple of monster years. He had AV’s of 21, 19, and 18 in 2001, 2005, and 2006, respectively. Those years he was an elite player in the NFL. In 2010, his AV was 15 — a great improvement over his previous two full seasons when he had an AV of 8 and 9, but still not “elite.” Urlacher’s best years are behind him, and he hasn’t been a premier defender since 2006, period.

This year’s “elite” defenders in that 20-ish AV range include Clay Matthews, Julius Peppers, James Harrison, etc.

Love it!

Urlacher: 7x Pro Bowl selection, 4x All-Pro

Jones: ZERO NFL accolades, sorry the 3x All-Big Ten selctions doesn’t count at the next level.

Face Dhani, if it weren’t for your librarian nerd glasses and your hippie bow ties….you’re irrelevant.

Hippies don’t wear bow ties… just sayin’

_______
Only thing that matters is a superbowl ring…

Tackle stats don’t tell the whole story of a player. I haven’t disrespected Urlacher, but you can’t seriously claim he’s a better linebacker today than Clay Matthews. I thought Matthews should have been Super Bowl MVP–and that’s coming from a Steelers fan.

As for our Farrior–he’s 36 and has played his whole career. Urlacher is 33 and has lost nearly two seasons to injury, so he has the body of a 31-year-old. How do you compare players with that kind of age disparity? Farrior is splitting tackles with, arguably, the best linebacking corps in football: James Harrison, LaMarr Woodley, and Lawrence Timmons. And if I’m not mistaken, the Bears run a 4/3. Your tackle numbers are meaningless in a discussion of Urlacher’s value.

Love it!

Urlacher: 7x Pro Bowl selection, 4x All-Pro

Jones: ZERO NFL accolades, sorry the 3x All-Big Ten selctions doesn’t count at the next level.

Face Dhani, if it weren’t for your librarian nerd glasses and your hippie bow ties….you’re irrelevant.

Hippies don’t wear bow ties… just sayin’

HILARIOUS!!!

Charles Woodson
Lance Briggs
James Farrior
AJ Hawk
Nick Collins
Bart Scott
DeMarcus Ware
Clay Matthews
Terrell Suggs
Desmond Bishop

I suppose this means that if Urlacher is overrated, all these guys must be HUGELY overrated.

————————————————

To me it means that Urlacher is the only guy that can tackle on that team and his D Line sucks. Half the guys you mention play for the Packers… if you want to make a comparison, add up the total tackles of the Bears 5 players. My guess is that the Packers are more balanced.

Well, considering that 5 of those players play for the same team tells me that

Charles Woodson
Lance Briggs
James Farrior
AJ Hawk
Nick Collins
Bart Scott
DeMarcus Ware
Clay Matthews
Terrell Suggs
Desmond Bishop

I suppose this means that if Urlacher is overrated, all these guys must be HUGELY overrated.