dave mcbride

Yup. Look at the trade for Goff too. I suggest everyone read this piece, which is a classic example of "you're foolish to trade a lot of picks for the chance to draft a franchise qb because he might not be any good!" http://draftwire.usatoday.com/2017/05/03/the-tennessee-titans-won-the-jared-goff-trade-and-its-not-even-close/ Goff appears to be a LOT better than Mariota.

Emtman was AWESOME before he had a very bad knee injury in his rookie season. He looked like the defensive player of the year after the first few games. He was never the same afterward. He was a good pick, but there's no accounting for catastrophic injury in the NFL. I'll be shocked if they take Rosen over Darnold if the latter comes out. I've yet to see one report in which an actual NFL person said they'd take Rosen if given the choice between the two. Rosen is a legit top ten pick, but Darnold's upside is simply higher. Better athlete, better arm, and just a big-game player. Not to say that Rosen isn't good too, but he just isn't the prospect that Darnold is.

?? -- They have gone from 1st in YPA in both 2015 and 2016 to 13th in YPA. That's a huge decline (granted, they're not terrible). YPA for both passing and rushing is in my view the best measure of offensive success.

I think he's still good; he's just having a down season and a bunch of it stems from the team. Amari Cooper has been a black hole (no pun intended) this season too. So many drops. This is a guy who is supposed to be a Julio Jones-type player.

My favorite: Marlon McCree making what should have been the game ending INT in the 2006 SD-NE playoff game and instead of going down and taking a knee, actually tries to return it. Troy Brown of course strips it, NE gets it back, Brady hits on a bomb, and NE wins a game in which they were thoroughly dominated. That INT was a fourth down play too! http://www.footballinsiders.com/four-plays-that-changed-nfl-history/

New to this thread. Are people really arguing that that was a catch? By the rule (which is the right rule, in my opinion - otherwise we'd have a spate of stupid fumble calls on plays in which the receiver possessed the ball for one second), it was as clear as day that he didn't possess it all the way to the ground. If you're looking for someone to blame, focus on Todd Haley, who called a trick fake spike play with only one receiever running a route. If the others had run routes, Harmon would have had to cover one of them and wouldn't have been in perfect position to get the deflection. Did Haley think he could trick a Belichick team with a fake spike near the end zone in the final seconds? If he did, he's pretty foolish.

The defense was terrible last season. Look at these numbers. We beat a NE team starting a third string QB playing with a broken finger on his throwing hand, a terrible Rams offense (32nd in offensive DVOA), a bad SF offense (23rd in offensive DVOA), a bad Jags offense (27th in offensive DVOA) the freaking Browns minus their starting QB (29th in DVOA), and a Cincy team that lost their best player by far (AJ Green) on the first play from scrimmage. They played a fair number of bad offenses last year, but when they played competent offenses, they were destroyed. And they gave up 37 and 30 points to a Jets team that was 31st in offensive DVOA. Make no bones about it: they were HORRIBLE on defense last season.

Williams has played extremely well the past two games.

I'm not sure folks have seen this yet, but Andy Benoit's very controversial column on Russell Wilson is the talk of the town in certain corners of the internet: https://www.si.com/nfl/2017/12/13/russell-wilson-seattle-seahawks-mvp-darrell-bevell The reason I bring this up is that it's the same sort of criticism Taylor gets (some of it fair, to be sure). (**NOTE BEFORE I GO ON: I AM NOT SAYING TAYLOR IS ANYWHERE NEAR AS GOOD AS RUSSELL WILSON!!). I'm not a huge fan of Benoit, who seems to have spent so much time talking to coordinators that he has the NFL-Robot equivalent of Stockholm Syndrome. Dennison strikes me as one of "those" guys who hate players like Taylor/Wilson/etc. because their grandly designed plans mean nothing when schemed plays degenerate into schoolyard plays so often. The thing is, Dennison fits a classic type of coordinator -- the type who is frustrated when he has a player like Wilson running his offense via freestyling. Such coordinators don't like the lack of consistency that a player like Wilson brings on a play-by-play basis, and I think this stems in part from the fact that it sorta obviates their jobs. (Incidentally, I can see Kirk Cousins, who is really good at operating the sort of system that Dennison likes, being very high on the Bills' shopping list for these reasons.) Anyway, I thought this was an interesting piece, less for its insight than as a window into the type of standard-issue robo-playcalling mindset that Benoit is channeling here. Anyone who thinks Matt Stafford is a better player than Russell Wilson needs to have his head examined. And I like Stafford. Saying that is just a dumb take by Benoit. (Peter King's take: "I think if you want me to excoriate Andy Benoit for his Russell Wilson-isn’t-that-good take, you’ll be waiting for a long time. When I started The MMQB, I focused on young writers who were good and who didn’t think the way I did. I think Andy’s nuts, rating Matthew Stafford over Wilson, but so what? He can defend his point and feels strongly about it. And if he takes some shrapnel over it, so be it. He gets that if you want to write strong opinions on the big stage, you’re going to get grief.") Finally, Deadspin's reaction to the piece is pretty epic: https://deadspin.com/this-andy-benoit-take-about-russell-wilson-is-so-!@#$in-1821290666.

Not disagreeing! I was just posting this as a "for the record" sort of thing. To be fair, Dareus's going down early in that Raiders game (a game he was dominating in early on) was huge. He was arguably the best player on a great defense that season. I didn't like the result, but the absence of top players matters. The Raiders ran the ball far more effectively after he went out.

The full entry from the OED (which I have access to): irreˈgardless, adj. and adv. Frequency (in current use): Etymology: Probably blend of irrespective and regardless. Chiefly N. Amer. In nonstandard or humorous use: regardless. 1912 in H. Wentworth Amer. Dial. Dict. 1923 Lit. Digest 17 Feb. 76 Is there such a word as irregardless in the English language? 1934 in Webster's New Internat. Dict. Eng. Lang. (labelled Erron. or Humorous, U.S.). 1938 I. Kuhn Assigned to Adventure xxx. 310 I made a grand entrance and suffered immediate and complete obliteration, except on the pay-roll, which functioned automatically to present me with a three-figure cheque every week, ‘irregardless’, as Hollywood says. 1939 C. Morley Kitty Foyle xxvii. 267 But she can take things in her stride, irregardless what's happened. 1955 Publ. Amer. Dial. Soc. No. 24. 19 I don't think like other people do and irregardless of how much or how little dope would cost me [etc.]. 1970 Current Trends in Linguistics X. 590 She tells the pastor that he should please quit using the word ‘irregardless’ in his sermons as there is no such word. 1971 M. McShane Man who left Well Enough iv. 96 The sun poured down on Purity irregardless of the fact that it received no welcome.

The deep throw out of the end zone looked intentional to me. Taylor motioned the wr to come back to him, but the receiver (holmes?) didn't come back and just ran himself into blanket coverage at the back of the end zone instead. Feely mentioned it in the replay and it looked pretty clear to me. Throwing it away (presuming it was intentional) was the right move there.

The play calling in the second half was beyond terrible. I felt bad for shady - so many no-chance plays for him. Dennison has to go.

Agreed - so many chippy late hits. Bush league.

This isn't true. From a month ago: http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000877512/article/ask-5-whos-better-nfl-prospect-sam-darnold-or-josh-rosen .

Oh. I like Rosen too. I prefer Darnold, but I can see why others prefer Rosen.

Because the player was clearly injured, that's why - he had a screw in his foot, after all. Lal's pressuring him to play only made things worse for the player too. Wow.

WOW. Lots to chew on here, but suffice it to say that the situation in Buffalo was toxic. He contributed to it, but so did the team. Lal does not come off well here.

You are absolutely correct. I don't know where people are reading that his stock has dropped. The only place I see it is when a reporter offers a hot take after he throws a pick. If he comes out, my strong hunch is that he'll be the #1 pick. Why?

I agree with this, but it is my personal opinion that Darnold will be the #1 overall pick and that Cleveland is not trading out. The last theing Cleveland needs at this point is more picks anyway.

And a couple of those were flat out vulture sacks.

Watch the games. He has looked really good *as a QB* since growing into the role with the Vikings, and he was good in 2013 for the Rams (a bad organization). His career has been so punctuated by injury that it's been hard to progress, but there is a reason why he was the consensus #1 overall pick when he came out. Flat out, he is a better talent than you think he is. He is a far more talented thrower and player than Fitzpatrick, who consistently labors to throw it and is an interception machine.

To repeat, Bradford played very well for Minnesota by practically any available measure. That's not really in dispute. I was in error about the Philly trade; they gave up a second rounder and Foles for Bradford and a fifth rounder (and then immediately guaranteed him $26 million). We are going to continue to disagree, which I am fine with. Regardless, I think that comparing him with Fitzpatrick's career trajectory is fair. When healthy, Bradford has been a better player at every stage of his career. This is not to deny Fitzpatrick's good 2015 season (although he of course choked in the final game). The one area they do compare in is the teams they've played for. All have been pretty deeply flawed until the 2017 Vikings. (The Fisher-era Rams were an especially flawed team. Who trades up (with the Bills, no less) to spend a high first on Tavon Austin??) Unfortunately for Bradford, he got hurt again. He's a better QB than Keenum, though, and if he had stayed healthy my guess is that the Vikings would be even better than 10-3 right now.

Regardless of what one thinks of the original post, there are some good discussions going on here. When we're at page 38, you can pretty much say that a thread has taken on a life of its own independent of the OP (to an extent).

He's not offended; he's annoyed. I do agree with him that it's a pain in the neck to scroll through troll-like commentary in an otherwise good thread.