The Frankish Reich

Agreed. Just kidding about the Rodgers crush thing. Well, not really, since if you're gonna have a crush better that it be for Aaron Rodgers than, say, Kyle Orton.

How about this: I was a fan of Simmons, but he's gotten lazy. He was a damn good humor writer whose topic happened to be sports. And he was knowledgeable too. He basically doesn't write anymore, and not all of his Ringer writers are especially good. And Simmons' podcasts are just plain lazy. Why spend time at a keyboard when you can just shoot the breeze for an hour and Spotify will offer to pay you $100 million? Still some good articles though ... including these. And come on, that avatar resembles a Virgil a whole lot more than Vergil. Or at least what I think Vergil probably looked like.

I know you've got a thing for Aaron Rodgers, but ... ... this time you're right. Rodgers just had the best year of his career (well, tied for best; his 2011 was nearly identical) at age 37. I do agree with Sherman that the best comparison for Allen is "young Aaron Rodgers." I'll take that.

Good find. And there's this one too: https://www.waldrn.com/how-the-nfls-2008-rule-change-affected-coin-toss-strategy/ It also suggests a (smaller) advantage to getting the ball the start the 2nd half. One thing to bear in mind: the changing in the scoring environment. I play with baseball stats a lot more than football, and the increases in scoring in baseball had a huge impact on optimal strategy. Given the big jump in scoring this season, we might see significant changes. Bottom line, however: the effect is small, is likely overwhelmed by more immediate strategic considerations (example: wind in Buffalo expected to pick up significantly as the game goes on, so take the ball as early as possible), and probably isn't something to get too agitated about. Having said that: with our offense this year (and, umm, with our defense this year) I personally like to see our offense on the field from the opening kickoff. It's just more fun.

Well that's an uninspiring list. There was a time, before many of these would be Presidents made fools of themselves by sucking up to Trump, when the Republican Party appeared to have an impressive rising group of leaders. Not anymore. I don't see the Paul Ryans (who kept the hell out of this ever since the tax bill passed) making a comeback.

“Spiral signs” - now where have I heard about that one before? By the way, his mom is defending him as a great patriot. Wait a minute ... can anyone vouch for the whereabouts of DR?

Chad Wolf. He was just begging to be fired so he’d have a little street cred left when he goes back to being a lobbyist. He issued a statement critical of Trump, and Trump pulled his nomination to be permanent (he was in an Acting capacity) but didn’t fire him. I’m enjoying watching these former Trump loyalists scramble to put distance between themselves and Trump so they can maintain some kind of professional viability ...

Another “winner” identified, and this one is from upstate NY: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-01-12/-no-regrets-a-capitol-rioter-tells-his-story-from-inside “Former” grocery store worker who lives in a school bus. 26 years old. Stopped working because of COVID fears and was denied unemployment, but somehow is angry about COVID closure orders. Smoked a joint in a Senator’s office. Says hanging with his fellow insurrectionist losers gave him a sense of family. That’’s the American entrepreneurial spirit! “We love you” as Trump said.

Capitol stormer Ashli (sic) who was shot was let of a “throuple” with her husband and another woman. The other woman claims to be shocked to find out that Ashli harbored such beliefs even though Ashli proudly flew the QAnon flag (literally) alongside the US flag and posted that Biden is a pedo. Maybe it’s time to ask what the hell has gone wrong with our military, which produces a disproportionate number of these crazies? https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2021/01/who-dies-for-trump-the-case-of-capitol-riots-ashli-babbitt.html

Come for the right wing politics, stay for the jailbait pr0n

He’s just listing the 3 RBs on the practice squad so as not to disrespect anyone ....

This may finally be enough for some of our resident Trumpies to turn on their boy? I mean, storming the Capitol was excusable, but this crosses a line ... thankfully there’s something we can still agree on.

Exactly. Two teams that wouldn’t have made it out of the wild card round but for their QBs. Ravens and Bills drafted well, developed well, schemed well. Congrats to both clubs. Now go beat em.

The one big thing they got right: translating popular vote margin into likelihood of an electoral college win. Given the natural Republican electoral college advantage, they predicted that Biden would need a popular vote margin of at least 3-4 percent to prevail. And the final tally was spot on

My hot take on that week 17 fiasco: Pederson obviously is secure in his job or he wouldn’t be doing this New hot take: Pederson obviously wanted out and was asking to be fired

I actually like that theory. Their entire season was all one big setup. Win the division so that they controlled who they play and then lose to just to screw over Buffalo. Now it all becomes clear to me.

Agreed. Especially given that the original Browns screwed over the city of Cleveland. As long as they don't wind up beating us. We are still the leaders in the misery department and I don't want to hear anyone say otherwise.

The Capitol Stormers - generally NOT the best and the brightest, and definitely not the winners of the world. Trump complained that he didn't like the optics because the looked "low class." Let's take a look at what we know so far: - The woman who got shot. https://www.shethepeople.tv/news/ashli-babbit-was-deep-into-conspiracy-theories-like-qanon-experts/ (I'm including non-paywall links, but there's plenty more from the NYT, WSJ, WashPost, etc.). She and her husband are Air Force vets with about 14 years in. Her military career was distinguished mostly by her being a loudmouth who liked to complain. She became obsessed with QAnon conspiracy theories. Despite all the benefits accorded vets, she apparently had no interested in working for somebody else anymore. I used to do hiring for a federal agency, and believe me, it's awfully hard to not hire a vet for a job. I'm not talking about dead end Amazon warehouse jobs. These are often clerical jobs that in a city like San Diego top out at about $80,000. She and her husband could easily have been making a combined $160,000 a year within 5 years or so, and the military time counts toward federal retirement. The median family salary in America is about $60,000. She also could have taken advantage of higher education programs for vets. In other words, lots and lots of opportunities out there. A lot of people complain about affirmative action, but the only real affirmative action program is for veterans, and even more so for disabled vets, with a very relaxed standard for who qualifies as having a service related disability. Despite all that, she apparently didn't want to work for somebody else anymore so she started a pool maintenance business. (There's also great small business loan programs for veterans.) She would up defaulting on about $70,000 of loan payments. 35 years old, made basically zero progress in establishing a career. Yet all to ready to blame someone else for her failures. - The woman trampled to death. https://www.shethepeople.tv/news/rosanne-boyland-capitol-hill-attack-qanon-trump/ A recovering drug addict, also obsessed with QAnon crap. No indication that she had any particular education, skills, or talents, or that she tried to do anything to improve her prospects. I guess it's China's fault? - The guy reported as having died after he tasered himself in the, umm, "Rotundas." https://wbhm.org/feature/2021/one-alabamian-dies-during-siege-at-u-s-capitol/ 55 years old, seemed to have been living a perfectly middle class life as a kind of Dunder-Mifflin salesman type. There's really nothing in his bio that would suggest that the U.S. government had somehow frustrated any greater talent to emerge. Yet harbored a ton of anger over something. His family says he went as a peaceful protester, but his social media included things like, "you think the riots were bad over the summer ... you ain't seen sh!te yet." - Another "medical event" death. https://6abc.com/benjamin-phillips-4-dead-at-us-capitol-ashli-babbit-shot-woman/9448265/ Tried to start a social media site called "Trumparoo." (Who needs Twitter?) Actually has a computer science degree, but other than starting Trumparoo and other silly websites it's not clear how he used it.

I expect to see Taiwan out there at RB too. It's easy to disparage him after he dropped that TD catch. But remember who caught the long TD pass in the playoffs against us last year. He's fast and he's a threat out of the backfield. As for Yeldon, he's still a perfectly fine RB without a whole lot of mileage on him. The whole history of fumbling thing is way overblown. He's fumbled 7 times in almost 700 touches in his NFL career, about 1 in 100. Singletary has fumbled 5 times in 374 touches in his career ...

Right. You're in the same place as me. The core Republican Party ideas still exist out there: limited government, fiscal discipline, strong national security (to protect against real foreign adversaries, not a national police state), reform of entitlement programs, elimination of cumbersome regulations that impose unreasonable costs on the economy, free trade to the maximum extent it's consistent with our foreign policy, controlled but substantial levels of legal immigration to continue to enrich and replenish our economic energy, etc, etc. My hope: once Trump is no longer in the White House, some of those core beliefs return to form the core of the new Republican Party. My fear: the Trumpists continue to hold sway and delay that reform from happening for at least one or two more election cycles.

Yep. The best QB play they've had all year, and it comes in the playoffs.

1. Trump can use the official POTUS account for official government messaging. That's the only twitter account his predecessor used. It's not like the ability of the President to communicate with the people has been cut off. The primary vehicle for a former candidate for President's demagoguery has been eliminated. That's not the same thing. 2. He can move to Parler. He can set up his Trumpster or whatever. He says he's worth $6 billion. I think he can create that for .001% of his (claimed) net worth. 3. He can move to billsfans.com, where some rabid conspiracy theorists have cleverly hidden a QAnon site behind a fake football fan site.

Trump still has the White House twitter available to him for official communications. And since his campaign is over, there's no need for campaign communications, which his Real Donald Trump account was presumably for. So no more "come to DC on 1/20, it'll be wild" incitements. Just a little too late ....

World's #1 Gasbag finally on mute.

Russia. No extradition treaty. And a friendly leader. I am dead serious. Once he gets wind of a NYS indictment (even a heads-up that it's coming) ... https://apnews.com/article/c5180bffb84d424ba11cf3384a665eb5#:~:text=The United States has no,its citizens to foreign countries.&text=“Never.,to anyone%2C” Putin said.