fergie's ire

Agreed. This is how it's done:

Sounds reasonable....until you consider I'm a geezer who's never been on the Twitter. But this is looking very YOLO-esque. Thank you. Now....if we can just get somebody to pin it.

It's no secret that Hackett did NOT call plays in Green Bay. La Fleur said after the 2020 season that he might decide to cede the play calling to Hackett....but he did not.

Do you remember when these "week #" threads would get pinned and there would be a bunch of info like tweets from reporters who were at practice? What happened. I know, I know....no YOLO.

Nothing from the Mike Mularkey era please. Wasn't the stupid backward pass to the back on 3rd or 4th and short cribbed from that staff? I hated their trickery that blew up in the offense's face about 9 out of 10 times.

Yeah, outside of playoffs, no games get players more fired up than Monday night. As you can see, Monday night numbers and rookie numbers are virtually identical. Hard to tell them apart, honestly. Monday Night: Rating 113.9, Pct. 68.3, 18 TDs, 2 Int Rookie: Rating 67.9, Pct. 52.8, 10 TD, 12 Int

I would really, really love for this game to be the equivalent of when we played the Jets week 1 with Mario Williams and we were thinking how great our defense would be and that we were going to make a run at the playoffs....and got immediately smacked down. I am not confident that it WILL happen, but it is certainly a possibility and the ensuing meltdown would be awesome.

I have been thinking about this, since I knew it would come up. I had pretty much decided on that quick slant to Kincaid that we saw a lot in pre-season, and I was only a bit more optimistic than you. I was thinking 8 yard gain. But....since you picked that....I will go with one of my other two choices. One is a fake handoff to Cook, only to set up a middle screen to Cook. I saw them run this at least once in pre-season and it would be a good play to help slow down the interior rush. The other is Kincaid in motion and at the snap he seals the end, allowing Cook to run wide. I think I'm going to go with the middle screen....for 17 yards.

Ya know...when there are two players close to the cut line with the name Anderson, we gotta use first names. I was really confused for a moment.....Sure, Anderson was claimed off waivers, but we decided to keep Anderson.

I seem to remember the Patriots did exactly the same thing two years ago, when Jones was a rookie. They decided to move on from Cam Newton and figured they could probably re-sign Brian Hoyer. Maybe they had an agreement, maybe they didn't. It's really not a bad strategy. Would we have been too upset if we cut Kyle Allen and just left Josh on the roster and then either re-signed Kyle or picked someone else up (like maybe Cunnningham off the waiver wire)? Here's the 2021 "final" Patriots roster before the 21 season: https://www.patspulpit.com/2021/8/31/22648576/new-england-patriots-initial-53-man-roster-after-cutdown-day

It's VERY easy to get him through since he's not subject to waivers. It's why, even though I agree he sucks, I think he might be coming back.

Lots of discussion about Quessenberry in the "non-discussion" cuts thread...and thought I would reply here. There seems to be a lot of concern about the lack of backup Tackles. It could be that there is someone else out there that they are hoping to pick up after cuts, but I also think Quess is a likely candidate to be re-signed once we slide someone like Shakir to IR.

Wouldn't Isabella be subject to waivers? How many years before a player is a veteran who does not need to go through the waiver process? Seems like the move in the past was to cut a vet who they plan to keep and who has agreed to re-sign 48 hours later.

He better get that worked out. I remember Shakir doing exactly the same thing last year and it seemed like it was right after he whiffed on that block that his playing time dwindled. Unlike many I think McDermott WILL play rookies, but he has a very quick hook with them when they make mistakes. Hopefully, he will see that Kincaids abilities greatly outweigh his deficits and will keep him on the field.

I think McDermott's handling of Williams is influenced by his experience with Bernard last year. I heard him saying that Bernard's head was spinning last year because there was too much for him to learn. Matches what we saw on the field. A player whose strength was supposed to be reacting and quickness was slow and a step behind. It always looked like he was thinking too much and unsure of himself. Again, sometime during OTAs, I heard McDermott mention that and mentioning that they wanted to keep things simpler for Williams. If they keep it simple by having him just focus on learning the Will, he can be a valuable backup and sub, unlike Bernard who was useless last year.

He should've taken a tip from an old Bills QB and run out of bound.

Yeah. You'd never see the Chiefs do anything like that. They started Marquez Valdes-Scantling.

Looks to have the dreaded slow eyes.

I wonder if Shorter is a candidate to mysteriously fall to the ground screaming "My LEG! MY LEGGGGG!!" in the last preseason game and then be awarded the Marquez Stevenson "spend the year on IR" award. Based on Gunner's description of Basham's success it seems like he could play the Shaq role making Lawson the odd man out. Of course, it might come down to what players draw an interest from other teams. They might be able to trade Basham for something but not Shaq. Just seems that Basham still has potential upside so if he can already come close to giving us what Shaq gives us, it would make sense to stick with the younger player.

I know the Dolphins offense last year was designed to get the ball out quickly and that may have taken care of the problem, but I remember that the year before Tua was terrible at reading blitzes. I thought our defense was going to kill him and that was before he had the concussion issues. Has he gotten better? If not, and you're willing to risk jamming their receivers and blitzing, it could get really dangerous for him.

I think we largely agree. Need to stagger so you aren't paying two #1s at their peak. I guess I don't believe Gabe will ever be a REAL #1. Think he is good if he's healthy and could put up monster numbers and seem like a number 1...so that some lesser team will covet him as a number 1. Very much like Pearless Price back in the day. Hopefully they can develop Shorter or someone else to stagger as a #2 and then invest in a future #1 soon.

Yeah, I think once you pay a franchise quarterback, given what the market has been for receivers lately, the best case scenario is to draft a receiver who is a good number 2 who you can develop into a 1 and then let him walk. I was really hoping that Davis would ball out LAST year and we could've traded him as a 1 and gotten a haul....but just getting the comp pick might have to be enough.

What? You don't miss the days of "original" drafting like picking a run of the mill safety with the 10th pick of the draft or moving into the first round to pick a DT who was the third best DL on his Maryland team? Or what about having zero talent on the team and being in desperate need of constructing a legit NFL roster and so using your early 1st round pick to get a "waterbug" running back. Ahhhh, yes. Original drafting. Those were the days.

Yeah, hearing this makes me very happy because I've always felt this team plays better when they are having fun and being loose. Haven't seen as much of that end of last year and start of this year. Hoping the fun bunch is back.

I think there's evidence that Kraft is not crazy about Belichick and he probably blames him for losing the great love of his life: Tommy. So, I think he could be on the hot seat and has a shorter leash than expected for a coach with his record. https://nypost.com/2021/09/29/robert-kraft-called-bill-belichick-the-biggest-f-king-a-hole-in-my-life/