DCOrange

I don’t know if Cinci has the biggest gripe, but the coin toss thing just doesn’t make much sense. It doesn’t really make sense that they’d flip a coin for a wild card matchup between Cinci and Baltimore, but not for an AFC Title game between Cinci and Baltimore. It doesn’t make sense that they’d flip a coin for that matchup but not for a Buffalo/Cinci matchup. It doesn’t make sense that Baltimore could win the coin toss and essentially be the 3 seed for one week and then return to being the 6 seed and have to play the best remaining playoff team every step of the way. The coin toss is just total nonsense and it looks even dumber when you consider the other rule change the NFL is making for KC/Buffalo/Cinci.

That would make a lot more sense though it still seems odd to me that Baltimore could be treated as the 3 seed for the first round and then the 6 seed the rest of the way.

Yes. They need 9 votes to reject this proposal. If they vote purely out of selfishness, there’s a pretty easy case to be made for KC and Cinci voting against it. They’ll need to find 7 other teams that aren’t really impacted by this but don’t want it to happen anyways (maybe because they simply don’t believe in changing the rules midseason). So if I’m reading the Baltimore-Cinci part of this correctly, Cinci has clinched the division due to the cancelled game. But a coin flip will determine who hosts a playoff game if these two teams meet. So I’m the unlikely scenario where Cinci is the 3 seed and Baltimore is the 6 seed and both teams advance to the AFC Title game, Baltimore could theoretically host that game at home after winning on the road to get there. Weird stuff.

If we're grading strictly based on their contributions/performance to this point, they're all pretty low grades IMO. There's certainly been a decent number of flashes from Cook, and a few flashes from Elam and Shakir to think they can be solid in the future but there's a chance this is just a straight up bad draft from Beane.

Titans are a weird team. Robinson has made a lot of poor decisions with trades, the draft, free agency, etc. but the team has been consistently successful in spite of that and in spite of not really being the most talented team. Still, this feels very odd. Maybe just wanted a new guy to have more time to prepare for the draft? I don't know.

Teams shouldn’t be scared of them but: 1. I remember the 7-9 Seahawks beating the Saints that one year 2. It’s still a very talented team with Playoff Brady at the helm. But no doubt they have to overcome some horrendous coaching to succeed in the playoffs.

Rare game where both teams’ coaches should be fired after.

I can’t believe Tampa hasn’t fired any of their coaches yet this year. Unless they’re trying to tank while continuing to play Brady and being in an insanely winnable division, it makes no sense that they haven’t fired Bowles and Leftwich yet.

It's kinda funny to read through this thread after all the discussion in the offseason about how people were disrespecting our offensive weapons when placing them around #10 or slightly lower in the league. Rolling with McKenzie/Crowder as our #3 WR was a mistake, plain and simple and we seemed to take Gabe's development for granted.

I had said Mintz would have some ugly games when he isn’t getting the foul calls he tries for…that was one of them lol. It’s going to be a long year. Just have to hope the young guys are interesting enough to be somewhat fun to watch and hope that Boeheim retires at the end of the year. I tend to think this program will never be what it once was but I know for sure Boeheim isn’t the guy to save it.

I've been waiting for Taylor to get a real shot. Glad to see him step up in a major way. That and Bell continuing to hit mid-range jumpers are pretty much the only positives after that game. I guess if we're really trying to be optimistic, Jesse dealt with foul trouble all game, Judah was ejected early, and Joe would have been more helpful if he had been ejected and we still managed to nearly beat Bryant... Realistically, this just isn't a tournament team; certainly not an NCAA Tournament team but likely not making the other tournaments either if I had to guess. I'm just going to try to continue enjoying the young guys as long as they remain at Syracuse.

That was a brutal game from Joe. Might not have made a difference but would have liked to see some of the subs play more. Our starters were dead by the end of the game. Judah once again looked very impressive but he kinda fell apart by the end too. Really struggled handling the ball against the pressure St. John’s was giving him. I watched a bunch of Bell’s high school games and feel confident saying this is the best two game stretch he’s had. Not really sure what to make of it but if he continues to shoot like he has the last two games, that’ll be big for this team. Jesse continues to be a relative disappointment, though he did make a few tough shots to keep our hopes alive. Pretty nice showing from Benny. He’s had a couple games now that have shown why we continue to play him so much more than the alternatives; he’s capable of doing things nobody else on this team can.

We've had issues getting Edwards involved in the past but last night wasn't it. He just flat out sucked at everything. We tried to get him the ball in the post; he was no match for Colgate's physicality and it resulted in him throwing up ugly shots, trying to dunk from too far away, etc. He got exploited defensively all game too. It was a rare game where we probably would have been better off if he had gotten into foul trouble. A lot of ugly stuff last night. Seems like communication defensively is a gigantic problem. In man-to-man, we had no idea how to handle a simple ball screen. Guys were switching when they shouldn't, fighting through when they shouldn't, hedging when they shouldn't, and double-teaming when they shouldn't. The 1-3-1 zone is just a non-starter; it's asking for Girard and Edwards to cover the most space on the floor and that's the worst position we can possibly put the two of them in. The communication issues were there constantly in the 2-3 as well and the 3 guard lineup so many wanted to see appears unworkable in the 2-3. The team had no awareness of who Colgate's shooters were and couldn't execute the simplest of rotations on a consistent basis; often leaving shooters open while the defense was defending empty space. The offense is what it is. If Edwards plays like he did last night and Girard's shot is off, this team will lose that game 100 times out of 100. I think the offense mostly did a good job of getting Girard open looks on the move and did a nice job getting the ball to Jesse until it became apparent that we shouldn't. We got a sneak peak of what happens to Mintz when the shot isn't falling and he isn't drawing fouls in the first half but he rebounded beautifully in the 2nd half and overall had a nice game. Benny was as promising as ever; I definitely don't want to see him taking jumpers with regularity, but his free throws looked good, and he was mostly active and confident. I would really like to see him take advantage of teams playing off of him more. Colgate rightfully helped off of him constantly and mostly abandoned him on the 3 point line; Boeheim and Benny need to recognize this as an opportunity to set screens or dribble-handoffs to get easy looks for Girard and Mintz. It's a super simple tweak that just isn't happening for whatever reason; I'd like to think Boeheim recognizes it but maybe not.

Great start to the year for our main three guards. They all looked good tonight. I was very happy to see Mintz look more like the player he was in high school after his struggles in the two exhibition games. Tonight was pretty much the best case scenario of how I hoped he would look; drawing fouls, keeping the defense off balance, and knocking down mid-range shots. Jesse was awesome as well; didn't really expect us to be a team that looks for alley oops a lot but that was a really nice surprise to see. The forwards unsurprisingly looked to be our main weakness. Benny's athleticism popped a little more than last year's play but he still looks like a kid that just began playing basketball. Bell didn't really do anything but at least he knocked down one of his 3's and had the nice steal and finish. Brown did his thing, but his relatively poor leaping ability stood out to me and I remain a bit skeptical of how his game will translate against real competition. Taylor looked the part but shot like crap. Based on how our forwards looked in high school, I think we had to sort of pin our hopes of being a tournament team on the idea that things would click for Benny this season, and unfortunately, that doesn't appear to have happened. Overall though, obviously a very young team and they all showed at least flashes of promising stuff. I think this team was more fun to watch than last year's team. We'll see if that remains the case as competition gets stiffer.

The part before that where he posted the happy tears emoji and then someone asked if it was about his elbow or rotator cuff. I don’t understand the use of that emoji if it’s bad news…there’s like 5 sad crying emojis and he happened to pick the one happy one for bad news? Maybe he just doesn’t understand emojis lol.

Have I been doing it wrong all this time…isn’t that emoji supposed to be happy tears?

They’re my local team and it’s annoying that my local team is not only an embarrassment on the field but an embarrassment off the field as well. Not to mention I like seeing people happy and him being gone will make this entire city happy.

Headline should probably mention Snyder might remain the majority owner but fingers crossed we can just get rid of him entirely.

Seems like a great deal for the Jags.

He had good stats the one year but it was mostly manufactured stuff that any WR could do with an occasional highlight play mixed in. If you've watched his film, he's a huge WR that plays like he's 5'8" and just doesn't really know how to do the things that make WRs successful. He routinely turns what should be 80/20 balls into 50/50 or worse. With his tools and unrefined play, he's the type that teams should be surrendering a Day 3 pick for to take a flier and see if they can teach him. Instead, Chicago is giving up a likely top 40 pick to take him off the hands of an organization that's routinely considered the best in the league at developing WRs (and they couldn't develop him themselves). Maturity issues on top of the on-field issues too. It's not that he's a bust; he just hasn't played up to the level that teams should be surrendering valuable picks for him.

I liked the other two trades Chicago made but this is a hilarious overpay to pray Claypool learns how big of a human he is.

I would probably rank the teams something like: Buffalo Kansas City Philly Baltimore Dallas Miami San Fran Minnesota (or maybe still hold out hope for Tampa to figure things out) AFC remains better at the top IMO but it's certainly not as deep as a lot of people expected it to be (and the NFC is just as weak if not weaker than it was expected to be).

I think they’re probably right to try to go for it before they’re paying Lamar big money. NFC is obviously extremely wide open and Baltimore likely thinks they’re the #3 team in the AFC right now and one or two lucky breaks away from being #1. Doubt it results in a Super Bowl but they might never have a better chance in the near future than this year.

Yeah, I don’t really think it was deserved. Much like Devin White (and previously our boy Edmunds), his reputation has far outweighed his actual play IMO. Having said that, LB was a major need for Baltimore and he’s skilled enough to be a major upgrade for them. As the secondary gets healthier, maybe their defense will start to transform into what people expected them to be this year.