Chuck Wagon

Cord Cutting doesn't mean "no espn". The proper execution of cord cutting is getting access to most, if not all, of what you used to watch, but cutting out the cable company and using alternate resources to save money. With Sling TV and plenty of other sources to get games, to "cord cut" and not have access to what you want to watch means you are doing it wrong.

I think it's Redzone. It's a fantastic product, no commercials, you can sit down on a Sunday afternoon and soak up the vast majority of the football for that week in a neat and tidy seven hour window. It makes the lack of flow in the primetime games that much more obvious. After getting seven hours of nonstop action, it's painful to watch a primetime game full of commercials, random stoppages and several bad matchups. As Redzone's prevalence grows, the gap between watching in that window and the viewing experience of of a single game widens. Add in that Fox and CBS aren't getting all the eyes for their premier weekly matchups anymore and it's all a snowball.

Best case, we win 3-4 more games, make the playoffs at 9-7/10-6 and get a game against Tennessee to extract the ghosts of Wycheck's forward pass (not thrilled about seeing the Chargers again), while KC turns it over to Mahomes, he looks terrible (sorry kid, I liked you but it'll hurt to see you be great), they lose out and end up with a top 10 pick. Worst case, KC turns it around, goes close to winning out to get the #3 seed in the AFC, giving us a pick in the mid-late 20s, we enter a "win and you are in, lose and you are out" game against Miami week 17 and lose.

Hit Brady high or low late, they are going to nickle and dime us down the field anyway, may as well make the yardage worth it.

Just trade with the Browns, I'm sure they would give up #1 overall for our 2 1st this year, a 2nd next year and a ham sandwich.

Find me any organization other than the Browns who actually told the media/fans they aren't trying to win right now.

Bingo. I think the actions of McBean have been pretty consistent, flush out big money or guys who aren't a fit for them, load up on draft picks and start building a sustainable base with cheap young talent. Problem is the 5-2 start, basically built off beating a bunch of teams more screwed up than us who were thought of highly at the time we played them, dramatically shifted fan expectations. Now a 6-10 or 7-9 season looks like a colossal failure.

Problem is we as fans are in a no win situation. Realistically people should speak with their wallets, playing to empty stadiums and hurting the bottom line would force accountability. Problem is, the fans here do that and the team is gone. So the Pegulas are in a win / win situation, either the stadium gets filled for an inferior product, or it doesn't and they can cash out, see a nice return on their investment and not be the bad guys when the team moves.

They drafted him because their evaluations of him as a prospect told them to draft him, they evaluated him favorably compared to guys like Mahomes or Watson relative to cost of drafting him. It's also good business to have a cheap young QB on the roster to potentially develop. They started him because they wanted to see what he could do. If he ran with the job successfully, they would likely view him as the starter this offseason and either sign a vet backup or potentially used another late round pick on a QB. If he's a complete failure, they draft one early if there's one they like. If by "fall into the same trap they always do" means win 6-7 games, pick 9th, draft after all the prime QB prospects are off the board in an area that's traditionally been a wasteland for QB talent (the mid-late 1st), then yes, they are going to fall into the same trap they always do. The Browns have to go QB #1, if they trade away ANOTHER franchise QB the closest anyone there gets to working in football again is cold calling to sell season ticket packages. The 49ers likely put their pick up for auction, the Colts and Bears may do the same, the Giants and Broncos also have to be looking at the QBs. A franchise QB is the only way this thing really gets fixed, but man, I'm hesitant to see what the price tag would be to go from pick ~12 ish to pick #2, and still potentially not get the guy we really want. Like the Jets?

I think the actions of McBean have been pretty consistent. No move they've made outside of trading for Benjamin has said they plan on making the playoffs this year and the Benjamin move could have been them just buying low in their minds. Fan expectations shifted when the team got to 5-2, but I don't see how that dramatically shifted the actions of the braintrust.

From the Senior Bowl I liked EJ the best of that QB bunch, but I viewed him as a 3rd round pick. Thinking EJ was the best QB in that class isn't exactly wrong, it's just one of the worst classes ever.

Guilty here too. I thought he would emerge widely recognized as one of the top 5 CBs in the league once he got the Patriot Bump. I'm wrong on all of our old players, I thought Gillislee would see a similar bump in production / profile and I'm shocked Watkins is little more than a decoy in one of the top offenses in the league. I admit this team got me to buy in at 5-2 with what looked like several winnable games left on the schedule and a wide open AFC. Going into the season I fully expected a 6-10 (or worse) tire fire that it looks like is still coming.

Woods has really stood out for them lately, Sammy has to be considered a disappointment, but he's still drawing defensive attention and Kupp is a quality target. Austin went from being their only quality target to a role that suits him as more of a "gadget" player. They made major improvements in their Oline with Whitworth and Sullivan and went from one of the most stale coaches in Fisher to McVey, who is bringing a lot of new ideas. Amazing how upgrading a QBs skill talent around him, the oline and the coaching can take a guy people were ready to write off as a bust and flip him around.

Everytime something like this comes up I'm reminded how many people here only watch Bills games. If the Colts actually put Luck on the market and he's medically cleared, I'd give up 2 1st plus a little more easily. However, getting that medical clearance does not seem overly likely. I think it's a moot point though, it doesn't seem teams are too enamored with the QBs this year absent Darnold and if they are the Browns and Giants are almost surely going QB and will likely pick above the Colts, not to mention Denver, Cincy or the Chargers could go QB and pay a ransom for San Fran's pick if they put it on the block. Basically it's a catch 22, if Indy is willing to trade Luck there's a reason and teams are rolling the dice. As for comparing his upside to Peterman, or comparing them as prospects, people have rocks in their head.

The Jets beat the Dolphins pretty easily the first time they played. The Jets are not a terrible football team, they lost 3 straight but were competitive in all 3 and a Thursday night game in their stadium after we got smoke blown up our butts all week should not have been viewed as a sure win. (I took the Jets +2.5 in my pick 'em but expected a win) People treating them like the Browns or 49ers haven't been paying attention. It was certainly a winnable game and the team didn't look prepared to play for the first time all season which is very concerning, but now there's nothing left to do but prep for the Saints.

The last 20 years with this franchise has taught me they'll lose the next two, we'll write them off, then they'll have a convincing victory against KC to get our hopes back up only to come back and get crushed by the Pats the next week, beat the Colts and one of the Dolphins games and it's just another typical 8-8 year.

That's a lot of it. Teams like Green Bay & Seattle operate on a pay structure where they pay A LOT of money to their core guys who exemplify their strength (Rodgers in Green Bay, Wilson and the D in Seattle). It forces them to fill their roster with cheap draft picks / UDFA talent. It squeezes out the middle term vets, guys like Hyde who are good enough to make a decent salary but not good enough to be a "core" guy in Green Bay for what they do. Whaley was taking us down this path with Watkins / Dareus / Shady / Glenn / Mario. Basically this model requires your high priced guys to be good enough to cover huge holes on your roster, for the Packers it's Rodgers being good enough to cover for an otherwise poor D, for Seattle it's Wilson's elusiveness being good enough to cover for the worst O-Line in football. Our roster doesn't exactly possess the top end name talent, but that's also allowed us to avoid many glaring holes. It's allowed us to fill the roster with guys who know their jobs and do them well, but don't need to be the focal point of the team. It really reminds me of the early '00s Pats teams, a couple of top end guys but otherwise a collection of guys with their heads on right who play hard every game.

To be clear, I think MKC 100% reports what she's told to full accuracy. I just think the team feeds her a heaping load of BS and she sends it out without questioning it, the last reporter in town to do it which has helped her career and access with the team tremendously.

Hill didn't break out until this point of the season last year. Not to mention they replaced a pretty marginal RB tandem of Ware / West with a potential rookie of the year in Hunt.

No kidding. Claiming Gronk and Cooks isn't much either.

The league office saying the Browns screwed it up and the Browns sending their mouthpiece Mary Kay out to claim it was the Bengals fault looks incredibly bad IMO. I would have to think that does damage to the relationship with other teams for future deals. My crackpot theory is Hue told the FO to get McCarron, they got the deal done but purposely flubbed it because the FO didn't actually want to do it, then blamed it on the Bengals.

Hope is we go 4-2 over the next 6 games to put us at 9-4 coming down the stretch. Expectation is we lose the next 3, then win in KC to get hopes back up, then get curb stomped by the Pats as our season spirals into another 8-8/7-9 quagmire of a year.

Florio claims the Browns excuse doesn't hold weight, that procedure is each team individual sends their paperwork into the league and the league executes the deal after receiving paperwork from each team. The Browns didn't send theirs in, then they sent their mouthpiece Mary Kay Cabbage out to blame the Bengals. It's likely for the best they flubbed it (or did it on purpose depending what you want to believe), I'd have to imagine another full scale housecleaning is in order, let the new regime have the draft picks over a QB whose clock is ticking. A large amount of the Browns fans I've met totally deserve this. Not to mention they have Lebron, the Indians are good and OSU football, Cleveland sports fans are doing ok these days.

Brady wouldn't look like Brady if he wasn't surrounded by his weapons and Alex Smith certainly looks a lot better now than he did a few years ago. Even Rodgers looked borderline pedestrian when he lost Nelson and only had Cobb / James Jones in 2015. If we added guys like Tyreek Hill and Travis Kelce to this offense A LOT more national people would be recognizing Tyrod's caliber of play.

He's a great athlete but a terrible WR, doesn't know how to play the position and just racked up a bunch of garbage time stats last year.