agilen

I expected Samuel to be a huge part of the offense when we signed him - he played on some really bad teams and produced, with JA he should be really good. But the turf toe has me not expecting much in the first month or so - hopefully it’s not a lingering thing. Shakir and Kincaid are gonna eat tomorrow; Samuel will have a couple of big 3rd down conversions but that’s about it.

This seems to come up every time there is an exclusive streaming game…. but TBH it’s cheaper in 2024 to watch all NFL games than it was 20 years ago. Somehow cable companies/ESPN have tricked people into thinking MNF was “free”…. Yes they now simulcast some games on ABC, but MNF has been on ESPN for over 20 years. I paid ~$120/month for cable the last time I had it (2006). There was usually some lock-in contract plus a ~$10/mo “rental” for a set-top-box (that cost the cable co about $30 total). DTV was similar with a much higher equipment cost; you might get a Sunday Ticket discount but the ASP was probably $200 for the season (so $50/mo), so for the 4 core months of NFL you are paying ~$170/month to see all NFL games. Today you need: 1) An antenna for 4 Sunday games 2) Sunday ticket $87.25/mo ($349 was the payment in May) 3) A service with ESPN - Sling has 4 months for $50/mo prepaid 4) Peacock for $7.99/mo (the Brazil game and maybe a playoff game like last year?) 5) Prime Video for $8.99/mo for Thursday Night Football 6) one month of Netflix for the Christmas games at $6.99 (so call it ~$2/mo) Thats a total of $161.25/mo over 4 months for every NFL game in 2024. (Somewhat ignorning playoffs, because they are mostly broadcast). So it’s cheaper than the $170/month 20 years ago. The picture gets even better if you are local to your team; you can drop Sunday Ticket, and if you are willing to take your chances on an ABC simulcast, you’ll see all games for $19/month (streaming exclusives are also shown OTA to local markets). Back then you needed guaranteed sellouts to see all your teams games on TV. Now, it’s certainly not easier tracking all these subscriptions and apps, and I am assuming your internet connection _is_ a utility, which is true for most households. But there is less money coming out of your pocket today than there has ever been since all games have been available. The NFL is getting more money by 1) cutting out the middle-man cable/satellite company, and 2) getting way higher rights deals fueled by higher advertising rates on national broadcasts. It won’t last forever as the broadcasters are still riding the fumes of the cable industry, but that will dry up and streaming will get more expensive; enjoy it while you can!

Mods, please shut this thread down or move to PPP.

I'm not sure "flaw" is the right term. The cap is a percentage of league revenue that is paid to the players; everything works backwards from that. So as long as they pay the player on IR, it needs to count. Now maybe there could be a mechanism to spread the cap hit out for an IR'ed player to not ruin a season, but it all needs to balance out to the CBA's specific percentage of revenue.

Here's the direct link: https://www.nbcsports.com/nfl/profootballtalk/rumor-mill/news/cheat-motion-is-now-officially-cheating

Do you really though….

So you don't watch Monday Night Football?

The product you bought is called “Sunday Ticket”, and the poster you are responding to is complaining about Thursday night games. It’s literally right there in the title; the subscription is for games on Sunday. You may think of that title as some sort of marketing term, but the NFL absolutely does not think that entitles subscribers to games on Thursday, or Monday, or even Wednesday (when Christmas falls this year…)

This is a weird thread. We are running back most of the same team who won 6 of their last 7 games, with the only L by 3 points against the repeat SB champs. We lose an aging C and a WR who was ineffective in those games; everyone else on offense moves one year closer to their prime. On defense, we lose 3 DBs who were too slow to compete; Douglass and Benford are the best starting CBs we’ve had over the past 2 years. We get Milano back. Floyd is the only loss, and he wasn’t a game-changer. Why would anyone expect a different performance than the back third of last season?

Only a handful though. But the NFL has been on paid channels for 17 years, and the customer terms are _way_ worse (cable costing >$100/mo, 2-year contracts, etc). Cable companies are just way better than broadcasters at tricking consumers into thinking pay TV is a utility.

So you haven’t watched Monday Night Football since 2005? (It switched to ESPN in 2006)

I’ll give you tackle numbers not being the important thing, but what I’m trying to say is the “dominant” part of his career is not long enough for HoF. It’s why we don’t talk about JA and HoF yet - everyone knows he has a long, long way to go to prove that. In 20 years, people will still talk about Ray Lewis and LT. Nobody outside SF is going to remember Willis - he is Hall of Very Good material.

Willis played 7.5 seasons and only had >100 tackles in 4 of them. How on earth is he a definite HoF other than “I’ve heard of him”?

Until tonight I was on team “keep McD”. He’s toast, what a terrible coach.

Streaming delay is not related to your home internet in any meaningful way. It comes down to the streaming tech the provider uses, how delayed their initial feed is, and how they configure their streams. See https://thestreamable.com/news/fox-sports-app-removed-nearly-entire-streaming-delay-vs-ota-for-super-bowl-lvii for some good comparisons. Fox Sports puts a ton of engineering into this; the aggregators (Fubo, YouTubeTV, etc) just let it play on their regular (read: lowest cost) linear streaming system, just like cable and OTA do.

During the Chiefs game, Romo announced he is playing in the Pebble Beach Pro-Am this weekend, so no surprise he’s skipping the pro bowl.

I think the Bills knew that the Pats WR/QB suck, and told Elam to watch from the booth to help learn the game. It’s a common tactic in hockey for a rook, but in the NFL you don’t normally get these slam-dunk wins.

Thursday Night games will have start-over (ie start from beginning, FF/RW) this year. This isn't really a technology problem with streaming; rights are generally either sold with or without start-over. Hopefully Sunday Ticket comes with those rights as well.

Poloncarz’s statement about building for soccer as well pretty much confirms that the field will be grass - any “big” international games require it.

ESPN has never broadcast an NFL game in 4K: https://www.sportsvideo.org/2021/10/11/espns-monday-night-football-crew-tests-rare-s35-pl-mount-fujinon-lens-on-near-sideline-cart-camera/ I’m sure there are a lot of unhappy anecdotes about streaming and it can suffer from poor ISPs, badly configured WiFi, internet weather, etc. Latency is totally up to the provider and what technology choices they make; it’s easy to beat over-the-air latency, but a lot of providers use a large buffer to drive down rebuffer rates (which most of them track as the KPI). Fact is, for mid-90% of viewing sessions there are no rebuffers on a responsible streaming provider (Prime Video is way up near the top). You are definitely right about this, which is a bummer. But there are 0 broadcast channels that distribute 1080p; Fox and ABC/ESPN distribute 720p, NBC and CBS distribute 1080i. DirecTV picks up all their primary distribution feeds in these formats to send to your set-top-box. Most (not all) of these broadcasts are now shot in 1080p60 and those are handed off to the broadcaster’s streaming app, which will stream their top rendition at 1080p60. So if you want the best quality - streaming is your only option.

This is not correct, unless you have circa-2005 internet access. DirecTV uses fairly dated technology for its satellite feeds; Prime Video gives you way more bits and better codecs, long as your connection is ~100mbps (pretty standard for a cable modem). Also, you can’t compare DTV’s Sunday ticket streaming with Prime Video; DTV has known for years they weren’t going to renew, so they haven’t spent any money on the streaming tech while the rest of the providers have been moving forward on quality. No networks today produce NFL in 4K BTW - anything you see called that is upscaled from their HD cameras.

I don’t know if there are VOD rights here, but scrub-back rights are part of the contract. So you’ll be able to start the game and scroll back to the beginning.

Interesting take on parity from WaPo.... https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/wonk/wp/2018/07/06/championship-inequality-in-major-league-sports-looks-a-lot-like-income-inequality-in-the-u-s-economy/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.5ebcca25685d&__twitter_impression=true

The Jays in 92-93 - and I was too young to understand how spoiled we were then. Portland Timbers 2 weeks ago winning the MLS Cup. What was amazing was they took an early 2-0 lead, and I never had that feeling they'd find a way to lose the way I'm conditioned with the Bills. Still, I've only been a soccer fan for the ~7 years I've lived in PDX, and the Timbers won it all after only 5 years in MLS. I don't think the feeling comes close to what a SB win or a Sabres stanley cup would mean. The folks here don't understand how spoiled they are right now...