Mango

If I could get a shout out on McAfee Tuesday that would be awesome!

My better half just got tickets for the @Jets game Monday. We thought they were the 50 Club. Turns out they are in the EY Coaches Club. This means we are sitting behind the Jets bench and we are in the tunnel for the Jets to take the field. I need some ideas for heckling outside of the “you suck!”. If I could get a laugh out of Rodgers, that would be huge. Nothing disrespectful enough to make him want to try harder either. https://www.newyorkjets.com/tickets/clubs/coaches-club

The NFL and football is its own crazy animal. It is so "twitchy" and requires so much strength. I think more than a lot of sports the spectrum of work v natural ability sku's to natural ability. There is a lot of downtime, and given the physical nature and impact of the sport, the body requires a lot of downtime just to recover. You just can't always put in the hours some more aerobic, or lesser impact sports do. Somebody who who swims, or runs, or plays handball probably puts in more physical fitness hours per year. But they also don't get hit by a Prius once a week for 17 weeks. I posit that means football is a bit more open to "lazier" athletes. They can have better careers just because so much more rest is built in and their natural ability can carry them through. But that means every once in a while you get a guy like Brady or Jerry Rice who do do it all, and they take over the sport entirely. Where as swimming, or water polo, or rowing are hoping for a physiological monster like Michael Phelps to show up. Thank you. I enjoy our back and forth between kicking my dog and beating my partner.

Thanks for the psychoanalysis. I like Colorado's post. I have some further concerns he doesn't. This is a good topic. I posted my thoughts and didn't make any commentary on yours, or anybody else's ethos. But you did.... Disagreements, negativity, homer-isms, nor positivity are a problem on this board. It is one of the better sports message boards on the internet for any team or sport. The biggest problem here (or any forum) is when people show up with commentary on the character of the posters here rather than partaking in conversation about the topic at hand.

I am a less concerned about Diggs numbers vs other top receivers, and more concerned about the patterns of the two teams who consistently seem to be in their conference championship games. But I don't think we are saying something much different from each other either. Here are all the SB's from Brady and Mahomes, as well as their top receiver by receptions and league rank. 2022 - Kelce - 110 (3) - Mahomes 2020 - Evans- 70 (33) - Brady 2019 - Kelce - 97 (8) - Mahomes 2018 - White - 87 (16) - Brady 2016 - Edelman - 98 (4) - Brady 2014 - Edelman - 92 (8) - Brady 2004 - Givens - 56 (41) - Brady 2003 - Branch - 57 (42) - Brady 2001- Brown - 101 (5) - Brady I was curious so I added the SB's from any QB who won 2x since 2000. 2015 - Thomas - 105 (7) - Manning 2011 - Cruz - 82 (9) - Eli 2008 - Ward - 81 (14) - Ben 2007 - Burress - 70 (30)- Eli 2006 - Harrison - 95 (3) - Manning 2005 - Ward - 69 (30) - Ben To yours (and others) points, having somebody to go to as your outlet consistently is important. But Diggs doesn't need 110 targets either. Kelce last year would be the first time that happened to a QB who won multiple SB's in a SB year. Diggs doesn't need more targets, the rest of the WR corp does. Some of this is on Beane, some on Dorsey, some on Allen, and some on the WR's themselves.

I understand the split. Without derailing the thread, different from other business ventures, the players, their personal lives, and their play on the field are the product. If the players woke up and said "We want 52% of revenue." I would support that. I don't necessarily mean they are getting jobbed. That said QB contracts are bonkers. To your point the QB contract has nearly tripled while the salary cap has only nearly doubled over the last 10 years. I definitely wish the quarterback wasn't taking such a large piece of the pie these days. I am surprised that some of these guys haven't caught on. A big part of Brady's longevity was him taking some paycuts over the years for depth at WR, OL, and of course some of those stingy New England defenses. Imagine if Burrow took $40M and said "Make sure you keep Chase, Higgins, and Boyd". EDIT: QB's are paid like they are Lebron, Kobe, Mike, etc. But honestly, in BB those guys can more or less win you a championship on their own. How many years did Rodgers flounder? Brees? You can't win in the NFL without a QB, but having a QB and paying a QB can make it difficult without being savvy elsewhere.

I was typing something on another thread about Toney and after I hit "reply" I immediately got an ESPN notification he was cut. In a weird way I respect that Mahomes kept going back to him. It is something that I think sometimes holds Rodgers back. He openly says "I won't throw x the ball because of drops" (paraphrasing). At some point you have to make the right decisions about given plays and coverage. If John Smith costs you a game that's on John Smith. But he won't get better if you never throw to him. And the job for your other WR won't get any easier if you just ignore other players on the field either.

I think the answer at WR is similar to what KC did last year/this year and the groupings the Pats won with. Very good tight end and a lot of "pretty good" with specific skill sets. The idea QB's like Allen, Mahomes, Brady, etc. need Diggs and OBJ or Hopkins, or whoever isn't the solution. Not once you pay the QB. I think the Bills have gotten close but not quite there. Knox is very good but not great. Diggs is great. Davis is good but needs some consistency with his hands. Harty, Sherfield, Kincaid, and Kalil should all be able to contribute. I think the Bills have a bigger issue at pass catcher, we don't often put our WR in a position to succeed and we do a pretty mediocre job at spreading the ball out. We have to do a better job at making the defense cover everybody rather than our top 3 all the time. Brady and Mahomes pay the bills by throwing to the guy defenses ignore. Over the course of the season that should make life easier for Diggs and Co.

Sort of like the Bills, the Chiefs aren’t done until they’re done. They’re king of the hill until they’re not. I dislike saying it, but it is what it is. Mahomes was pressing fairly hard. I think his WR group is good enough with or without Kelce. Toney catching 1/5 was bonkers. History makes me inclined to believe they will figure it out.

I actually don’t mind the contract value. It’s billionaires paying millionaires a fraction of the product they produce. I’d be for the salary cap taking a larger percentage. I do wish the QB market was less of a percentage though.

I needed that Pacheco TD there.

Oh for sure. I was just taking cap numbers. I don’t care how much Pegula has paid him. Just his cap number.

Not disparaging Allen or Beane, but Allen basically hasn’t started getting paid on that deal. He’s only counting $18M this year. He’ll be bouncing in the 40’s and even low 50’s going forward.

We are 3 series into this thing, and I am hating I parlayed the over, with TD’s from St. Brown and Pacheco.

Our of pocket so I couldn’t pull the data myself. But I see that the NFL home win% since the introduction of instant replay in 1999 is 56.9%. So 59.1% from Cheffers isn’t crazy. I would be curious of his yearly breakdown next to the league average. Home win % has been trending down for some time with a plummet during covid. https://www.covers.com/nfl/home-field-advantage

The guy was 314 at the combine. He was 370. He was big enough all offseason for this board to crack jokes about him playing two OL positions at the same time. Now we are talking about water weight.

And his crash diet was fudging Chipotle. Gaining 5 lbs per week for a few months. Then crash dieting 5 lbs per week for a few months is not the mark of an elite athlete committed to his craft. Hoping the was a reset for him. He’s learned he botched this whole thing both on the way up and way down and he finds some stability. But I’d be lying if I wasn’t concerned.

Tagging this just to see my post above. Check the Performance Science team out for the Bills. Collins, Beanland, and Dziedzic didn’t recommend it. Guaranteed. The EIS (lottery funded) and AIS are two of the premier sports science institutions in the world. They’re in the range of being the Cleveland Clinics of sports science. This was a S&C coach operating out of bounds.

Yes a number do. I have some experience with my involvement in international sport that’s valid but I should also say I have some bias. When my sport moved to OKC (oil money) the S&C team was contracted out to coaches who were by and large big time football people. They literally took bids. Programs paid to treat us not the other way around. I had a few injuries mismanaged so did some others Those people were removed. Letters were written to the USOC to step in by other USOC specialists etc. I ended up working with some trainers from the Thunder instead as well as some people from US Ski and Snowboard. They all said the same thing. That said I think Dawkins verbiage is important. He called strong to and conditioning. The performance science team for the Bills has been educated and worked for world class sports science universities and Olympic sports. I have 100% faith that that group did not sign off on Dawkins 800 calories of Chipotle a day diet as a reasonable solution. I guarantee it. My comment was more geared toward the strength and conditioning team and S&C coaches in football. These are the kind of meatheads that recommend 800 calorie per day diets for 6’5 professional athletes.

and DE and OC. (and maybe RT)

Neither do you. None of us know more about anything than just about any person employed by an NFL team. This is such a low grade response that if taken seriously prohibits all conversations here about basically anything. I will say I’ve worked with and spoken to a number of physiologists, S&C coaches, and RD’s across a number of different sports as part of the USOC and a couple from other National Governing Bodies. There isn’t a lot of praise for those working in football.

My Allen jersey is my slump buster. I’m also not a huge I’d consider maybe going Tasked full time and peppering in Allen? Some years I do. Some I don’t. I am in tech sales and was recently part of some large layoffs. Not a huge deal but there are some horror stories going on in tech right now about how difficult it is to find work. $100 for a new jersey can be done, it’s not the most responsible of decisions at the moment.

As somebody who had to weigh in for my post collegiate sports career there’s no way he got months of meaningful offseason work in on that diet. He’s either lying, or this is what he did without much physical activity. That sort of caloric intake on a 6’5 person over the course of weeks can do long term damage to his organs as well. It sounds like he called somebody on the S&C team and this was the outcome. Chipotle twice per day and a couple gallons of water. I really hope this was not signed off on by somebody on the Bills staff. This is wildly irresponsible of a professional. But honestly, the NFL doesn’t necessarily attract the best physiologists and dietitians on the planet so it’s not hugely surprisingly. If somebody on the S&C came up with or approved this I would very seriously consider letting them go. The USOC would let somebody go for this kind of advice.

This is crazy and a really bad plan to approach his weight issues. This might actually makes me more skeptical of him this season not less. A crazy crash diet like that by a tenured professional athlete with all the resources in the world to get a chef and registered dietician is really irresponsible. He’s going to continue to struggle with his weight.

Great post and I largely agree. I think it’s his FA spend plus the draft that put the team in a tough spot at times. One thing about Bills v Chiefs draft comparisons. The Chiefs won the SB starting 4 rookies all year. That’s a big draft.