y2zipper

Did Josh think he had an offside there?

Giving up 3 is a win there. I don't like the defensive holding call on White.

Allen's got to hold the ball there, but it's a 3rd and 13 so the line has to give him a place to step up to.

Too much holding happening. The quicker passes will work here, but it doesn't help when you're first and 20 off a hold.

I hope they pick another DE. just pick 7 of them please.

They clearly think the only serious need is lass rush DE, and I don't particularly disagree with the strategy. I also don't think anyone is a lock to stay. I think Love, Cox and Johnson may all be out though.

Yeah I like Buffalo for 12 or 13. They'll win more than that if the defense can get to where it was the previous 2 seasons and gets better health breaks. If I'm conservative, there's 4 division wins, 5 wins in games against non-competitive teams (NOLA, CAROLINA, JACKSONVILLE, HOUSTON and Atlanta), and then the other 6 are WFT, Pittsburgh, Tennessee, KC, Tampa and Indy. Buffalo could go 2-4 there and still hit this over.

Offensive linemen can usually play a little longer. It's not like he's a skill position guy who is old at 30.

Everybody has to get under the cap by tomorrow, so all of the cuts haven't rolled in yet. Cornerback and wide receiver look deep even before the cuts, so I think Buffalo is going to look there for The replacements of John Brown and Levi Wallace.

Patriots have a tendency to go opposite of League trends. This offseason they are clearly a team with the cap situation to take advantage of teams having to release and not being able to sign players because they took their hit last year when Brady left. The plan looks like them becoming a bigger, more power oriented team with an excellent defense. They're going to be a tough out as long as belichick is coaching them and their strategy looks like something along the lines of add talent and let belichick coach it. Obviously they have not really dipped their toes into the quarterback market yet, and what they do there will make a huge difference.

My take on Watt is that at this point the name is a little bigger than the game and I'd be cautious on signing him for a ton of money. He's on the wrong side of 30 and the last 2 seasons haven't had sack production. I'd consider it more of a part time signing where if Watt was really good in the postseason I wouldn't care. Arizona is a fringe contender and there's a wide range of outcomes there. It wouldn't surprise me if they won the West and it wouldn't surprise me if they finished in last either because the 4 teams aren't far apart at all.

I think roethlisberger was tremendous last year given the serious deficiencies that Pittsburgh had as an offense. With any given team that's really good, there's a period where they're playing at their best and there's a period where they look like they stink and there's a lot of in between as a season goes. the similarity here in Buffalo is that we knew all year that the team was a one-dimensional offense with Josh Allen throwing to the receivers and that train was going to be ridden until the wheels fell off. Buffalo stunk against Kansas City and Tennessee early in the season, looked like the best team in the league for the month of December, then caught some bad injury breaks at the wide receiver position going into the playoffs and won two games anyway. Pittsburgh kind of went through the same thing, but caught their slump at exactly the wrong time at the end of the year. the only thing they really had offensively was been roethlisberger throwing quick passes to wide receivers who weren't very good because their personnel is limited. Then roethlisberger was 3rd and attempts and completed 66% of his passes and through pics less than 2% of the time on a team that couldn't really pass block and couldn't really run the ball. the Big Ben is way closer to the end than he is to the beginning and nobody's going to dispute that, but we know that the answer in Pittsburgh isn't on the roster right now and there isn't really a market otherwise unless they want to trade for Sam darnold or something.

I would say during the regular season that OT shouldn't be played. Call it a tie and move on. In the postseason, 1 possession each then sudden death is fine.

The whole point of DirecTV buying the license was using it to make people subscribe to DirecTV. It's the same thing that cable companies do when they purchase a local baseball or local basketball contract. When my family had DirecTV, the company would basically give Sunday ticket away every year when it was time to renew because Sunday ticket is DirecTV's loss leader. Whoever the NFL decides to sell their streaming license to is going to want to make money off of whatever they pay for the license. that means the price of the consumer probably goes up if say Amazon gets it, but at least up until this point the other streaming services have decided that they can't afford what the NFL wants. The NFL discovered a long time ago that the real cash cow is it's licensing rights. The league doesn't have to pay all of the expenses of running the production or facilitating the broadcast if they just sell their license to a network or to a cable company or somebody else.

the whole point of the halftime show is to get people who don't usually watch the game to tune in. That's why the NFL usually chooses contemporary talent. The average NFL fan is along the lines of 50 year old male, so wouldn't surprise me if they didn't know who weeknd is. But again the halftime show it's not for you if you're going to watch the game anyway. With this game the rating is pretty simple. The game just wasn't that good. Both teams started a little slow in the Chiefs never got anything going. If that game were close, that game would have held an audience and will probably end up being the most watched thing on television when the year is all said and done.

The counterpoint to this is that Wilson stylistically is the quarterback that is responsible for many of his own sacks because of his tendency to deep drop to find receivers down the field and his inability to throw over the middle. Seattle's offensive line was bad in 2016 and 2017, but has gotten better since Dwayne Brown got there. This season they were top 10 in pass block win rate and 16th and pass protection according to pro football focus.

Especially considering that Fisher got hurt in the 4th quarter in the AFC Title game. The KC line becomes like a new line that has never played together when the second tackle goes down and it turned out to be the whole game.

That looked short

The situation is crazy because Wentz is largely a guy with franchise type upside who's been pretty excellent for three out of the four years he was starting in Philadelphia, but we're seeing more and more signs at the organization is actually quite a mess. The offensive line is bad, the skill position players are bad, and it became obvious that the type of offensive play calling that Doug Peterson is comfortable with was very limited. Carson had a down year, but it is very much a statistical anomaly by any measure and Philadelphia's roster decline is a very big contributor to that. He got sacked on 10% of his dropbacks. That isn't just holding on to the ball too long, even if his career rating that category is a little high. We've seen plenty of franchise quarterbacks have those. Eli Manning and Philip Rivers are the best two examples of quarterbacks having down here sometimes, but smart organizations are stable and stick it out because player progression is not 100% linear all the time. I thinks it's likely that Philadelphia likes hurts that much, but from what I've seen just eye testing it he struggled in drop back to pass situations as much as Wentz did because of poor protection, bad receivers and learning reads. From a trade perspective, Chicago and Indianapolis are the two teams that obviously make sense. The argument I make for Chicago is that if I'm the GM there and I'm on the hot seat, getting something in between 2018 and 2019 Wentz which is where I would project, can make the team competitive and prevent me from getting fired. if it doesn't work I'm fired anyway so they aren't my draft picks. Chicago has a really good defense and the Packers look a little vulnerable if you get some quarterback play. Indianapolis and Chicago are both very good candidates for teams that should look at something like moving for Wentz or garoppolo or carr if they become seriously available because they need quarterback upgrades and have a lot of other stuff in place already.

There's a lot that goes these discussions. I think the value of a first round pick is that it's a hedge against the parity engine that is the NFL and the more towards the future we look, the more it is true. Like if you have a year like San Francisco where a lot of unlikely things happen and you miss the postseason, you get access to more of those premium picks. My general take is that it's a sure sign that your front office is bad if management can't hit 50 percent on first rounders. Getting a contributor every 2 years isn't hard for competent teams. The success rate in the first is 50-53 percent by most measures and goes down as the draft goes on. Teams are not going to get all pros all the time, but you can get a five year starter at reduced cost a little more than half the time. It's the only access to cost controlled premium talent and the chances of picking a success go down as the draft goes on. Even the Patriots have gotten contributors with 2 of their last 3. The argument I would make is that they just haven't used enough of them. Excluding QB, we have seen teams successfully trade 1 immediate first round pick for a premium talent. Kansas City did it for Clark, Buffalo did for Diggs, Indianapolis did it for Buckner, etc... Making a well timed move when you can reasonably predict a season works sometimes. Where it gets dicey is when we start talking more than one. We've seen Kahlil Mack, Jamal Adams, and Marcus Peters go for more than one first rounder the past few years and it's hard to argue that any of these deals worked. Trading multiple firsts to acquire franchise quarterback is more acceptable. With the Rams specifically, my issue with this trade is that I just don't subscribe to their view of where their team is. When the Rams played in the Super Bowl in 2018, they had the healthiest and best offensive line in the league, a downfield vertical threatened Cooks in addition to their other good receivers, and they had a dynamic running back in Gurley. Over the past two seasons we've seen the interior of the line decline, and we haven't seen the same downfield passing production because Robert woods and Cooper kupp aren't vertical threats and because they haven't grabbed a running back that can make up Gurleys production. Goff's play has gone up and down as the surrounding talent has gone up and down and while I think Stafford is a little better, he is the type of quarterback that's going to take what's closer to a low level playoff team and turn it into a Super Bowl team.

I would like whatever the Mariota is better than car crowd is smoking because that take is objectively terrible. I think it's going to take five or six first to get Watson and the reason why Carr doesn't just get moved for him is because Houston wants draft picks as opposed to players. Stafford just moved for two first round picks and Carr is better than Stafford and 3 years younger. Two first round picks for Carris a deal that makes sense if your Chicago or if your San Francisco and you are currently looking to upgrade that position. That deal is in realistic for the Broncos because they're in the same division.

I forgot about Chip Kelly, but I think that's fair. As far as McDermott goes, he's 46 and I think he will be here as long as he wants. I Iake to the Steelers philosophy that you don't fire people who are good.

This looks like fun so I'll give it a try. Obviously the most likely to start a new quarterback is going to be Jacksonville starting Trevor Lawrence after they pick him first. The most likely one and done is in Philadelphia, because their organization manages its team like fans and their last two head coaches have played in the Super Bowl and they fired both. Say what you will about Detroit and Atlanta, but we know ownership there is going to give their guys plenty of time. I will choose Urban Meyer for the most likely to make the playoffs, mostly because the AFC South is not a great division. Houston is a mess, Indianapolis does not have a quarterback and Tennessee has tannehill. Trevor Lawrence coming in as a rookie is a better situation than the other two. None of these guys are going to coach the bills because McDermott's going to be here for quite a while. The most likely to win coach of the year is the Chargers, simply because they should improve with health given the talent base. I'd say the same thing about most likely Super Bowl win.

I do think that the Rams operate with this type of interest grab in mind, but the Chargers basically don't have a fan base here and are a destination city for road teams and play in division with Mahomes.

It's a lot of risk for the Rams because with Seattle and SF, you could still be a 3rd place type operation in the NFC West. It looks like either a misguided attempt at going for it in a short window or a splash trade more than something well thought out or a significant increase in talent. Statistically over the past 5 years I'm not even sure that Stafford and Goff are even that far apart aside from volume, but Stafford has never played in a big enough game to be put under that microscope like Goff. The situation around Goff in LA has been declining quite a bit since 2018 and that team and coach have been living on the perception of the 2018 team for the past couple seasons. Goff hasn't really gotten better or worse than he was, but the rushing offense from 2018 is way down and the Rams don't have receivers that scare anyone vertically. You can trace the decline in their offense to losing Gurley, their line aging a little and the lack of resources they've put into their skill position players. The short version of what's happening here is that it's like Chip Kelly: the Rams put their offensive eggs in the basket that McVay could make a lot out of less talent at WR and RB, and it hasn't proven as true as everyone thinks. They're scapegoating Goff here because they've put so many resources into the defensive side of the ball that there's nothing left for the offense.