dave mcbride

They are not a bad team, but if I had to predict now, I see them as a last place team next year. My rough prediction: LA: 12-4 SF: 11-5/12-4 Seattle: 10-6/11-5 AZ: 8-8/7-9

He was the most double-teamed player in the league.

He played over 90 percent of Houston's defensive snaps last season, which I think was the highest rate for any d-lineman in the league.

Yup. It’s pretty clear he’s trying to force a departure.

As I have been saying for years, you want your back up to be a guy who can get you 2-2 over a four game stretch. If Allen is out for the year, it’s basically over.

It’s getting even worse: https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2021/02/27/report-russell-wilson-thinks-pete-carroll-and-his-sons-answer-to-no-one/.

This is a GREAT interview. I strongly recommend watching it, especially regarding what he says about Dawson Knox. He basically said that he didn’t play much before coming to the NFL and just needs time. He also said that he is an athletic freak with an *extremely* bright future. Smith actually says “etch it in stone” with regard to his prediction that Knox will become elite. He says he’s uncoverable and that DBs hate tackling him.

As a Nets fan (It’s a 20 minute walk for me to their arena), I’m not ... all that angry about this!

The Bills were 6th in rushing attempts and 8th in rushing yards in 2019. How soon we forget.

The offensive lineup in 2018 was arguably the worst assembly of talent since the 1985 Bills (when Ferragamo and Mathison combined for 9 TD passes and 31 picks).

I thought Daboll did a good job in 2019. The numbers didn't show it, but the schemes were well designed and the play calling was good. They had some talent issues that year and a still-developing qb. But as opposed to Dennison, who was awful, I generally always felt that the calls weren't the issue. They just needed horses and more development from Allen, and they got that this season.

Did you look at the adjusted stats? Or just the raw counting stats? The latter don't mean much to me. Bear in the mind that Chicago led the league in rushing three straight years (1984-86) and were always run-heavy, that they passed far less than average teams, and that McMahon played in 2 strike-shortened seasons (1982 and 1987). From 1983-86, they never finished worst than 7th in offensive yardage, and in 1987 and 1988 they finished 11th and 12th.

??? - McMahon was objectively above average in 6 of the 7 seasons he played for Chicago. Always look at adjusted passing, which compares like to like--and not McMahon circa 1985 to Patrick Mahomes circa 2019. A rating in the low 80s in that era was pretty darn good. https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/M/McMaJi00.htm He had only one season where he wasn't at least league average or better in the completion percentage category.

This PFT piece includes some of the key details: https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2021/02/25/report-russell-wilson-stormed-out-after-his-ideas-for-fixing-seattles-offense-were-dismissed/

I don't subscribe. What are the key quotes/passages?

He's not a dime a dozen; he's probably the best RB in the league when healthy given that he's as good a receiver as Cole Beasley. He would make the Bills offense/passing game almost impossible to defend. He had over 100 receptions for over 1000 yards in 2019. That is what I'd call "premium," and it would make the Bills' offense devastating.

"Cash Still Rules/Scary Hours" is a song by Wu-Tang Clan. Maybe the Jets/Giants are involved.

Did you mock Stefon Diggs last year? 😉

I think LB is basically the equivalent of RB on defense—some are obviously better than others, but there’s a dime-a-dozen quality to LBs and they can be found up and down the draft. The three first team all-pro LBs this year were drafted after the first round: Warner (3rd), Leonard (2nd), and Wagner (2nd). On the second team, Demario Davis was a mid-3rd rounder and Lavonte David was a late second rounder. Devin White and Roquan Smith were first rounders, but looking at all pro teams over the years, there are lots of mid-round guys.

Olivier Vernon tore his achilles at the end of the 2020 season. Short is basically done. He is 32 and has played 5 games in the past two seasons.

Remember Bryant McKinney dominating Dwight Freeney in a Canes-Syracuse game their final years? People here were opposed to drafting Freeney because of that, and Freeney ended up being 10 times the player that McKinney was in the pros. People seem to not recall that the most disruptive pass rusher McDermott ever coached was Greg Hardy. But maybe he learned a lesson from that ... PS: Update on Hardy — https://catcrave.com/2020/11/01/carolina-panthers-greg-hardy-path-ufc-superstardom-continues/

I was not impressed by Hurts this year. I also could care less about 300 yard games; Gardner Minshew had two in his first season, as did Nick Freakin' Mullens. Christ, Mullens threw for over 400 yards in 1 game in his rookie season. Yet both of those guys are career backups who were also clearly inferior players to the Josh Allen of 2019. Anyway, I really question Hurts's accuracy. I doubt the Eagles see him as the answer either, but they're kinda stuck because they're not going to get a qb they want at the #6 slot.

I wouldn't confuse action with a lot of what happens in a basketball, hockey, or soccer game. A lot of what you see is time-serving while gearing up for a run of some sort and which is usually a set-piece design. It's not so different from players running back to the huddle and doing motion before a play, diagnosing a defense, or faking blitzes. Anyway, football is a short-burst sport in which players pretty much max out for the duration of any given play. It's also a set-piece sport; it just doesn't have a lot of free-floating, nebulous play between the bursts (i.e., soccer). That's not a criticism of these sports, really, and I respect anyone who prefers other sports to the NFL. As for your point that a higher percentage of NFL fans aren't fans of the sport, well, maybe it's because there are so goddamn many of them--largely because it's so entertaining. Non-fans of baseball/basketball/hockey simply don't watch because they find it boring for whatever reason. As you know, the NFL isn't just bigger than other sports in terms of popularity; it utterly dwarfs them.

@GunnerBill, Daniel Jeremiah has Newsome going the Colts with the #21 pick. Corners always seem to go higher than expected, I think in part because there are metrics out there showing that elite CBs are more valuable than elite edge rushers. https://www.nfl.com/news/daniel-jeremiah-2021-nfl-mock-draft-2-0-saints-select-drew-brees-heir-apparent Note that he says that "teams" (as in multiple) are very high on Newsome.

I think the NFL is uniquely watchable and tailored for spectatorship. It has a strategy system that is at once more complex--with a lot of variation too--than other sports yet ironically more immediately decipherable to the average television-watching fan. It is also visually more compelling in that speed really does matter a lot given the size of the field (compare it to a basketball court). Like baseball, the scoring in the goldilocks zone too - a 28-24 game is effectively a 4-3.5 game. Hockey is mostly unwatchable to me despite the fact that I watched a lot of it growing up. I simply can't follow the puck well on television, and have to always rely on the replay. That's always been the sport's problem despite the fact that the scoring is close to ideal (soccer is the opposite; a 2-score lead is basically insurmountable). I am a huge baseball fan, but I find it hard to watch teams that I don't have a rooting interest in. It's not that it's boring (although I understand why some feel that way); it's that the games are far, far too long, and the league has refused to do anything about it until recently. The parade of relievers was the equivalent of the free-throw fest in the NBA. The NBA has so many problems I don't know where to begin. Let's start with home court advantage though -- the home team has the greatest advantage in all of the four major sports, yet given that the court dimensions and weather are the same everywhere, you'd think it'd be the opposite. The reason? NBA reffing. Everyone complains about refs/umps in every sport, but in the NBA it is absolutely merited. Also, the star system that the refs enforce is a joke--it is FAR worse than it is in any other sport. Secondly, and this is just me, but goals are WAY too cheap. A typical NBA game is essentially something like 51-46. That is, each side is basically scoring close to 50 goals. That's why people say that you really only need to watch the last five minutes of a game; it's not as if you're missing a bunch of great-but-rare scoring plays. Finally, the foul shot marathons at the ends of every game plus the seemingly countless number of timeouts that coaches have really ruin it as entertainment. Compare it to football, where the final two minutes are either awesome entertainment or a thankfully quick euthanization of the opponent via a clock rundown. My favorite sport to play growing up was basketball, and it's not like I hate the sport. I just think it's lousy entertainment. I don't know what they can do to fix it. One option is going back to the old 3-to-make-2 foul shot rule they had in the late 70s but only putting it into effect for the final two minutes. Ultimately, penalties in the NBA result in a lot of plays that aren't actually basketball plays: open set shots from the free throw line. Committing penalties in other sports like hockey or football is never intended to shift the game from an action-oriented sports activity to something that is akin to playing darts. The incessant shifting from sports to non-sports activities in what are supposed to be a basketball game's climactic moments is just bad game design.