Amount of contact this year

[generalbrando]

This year we have those important large balls and all the small balls running around. Since these are very important I expect to see a lot of teams manipulating them. In 2001 you didn't have to worry about designing a grabber that would withstand high impacts and lots of pulling. This year should be a different story. I can see teams coming up with super strong grabbers or other means of holding the ball firmly and/or stealing it. I can also see these grabbers getting twisted into pretzels. I think this year is much more like 2000 in terms of contact because 2002/3 didn't require the same kind of extra mechanisms to accomlish the tasks while still being able to take a bit of a beating.