Koufax

The one in February? Or the one in December?

I had the pleasure of talking with his dad for about an hour last year before the Chargers game, and I’m so happy for the kid. His opportunity took a while but he rose to the occasion. Also check out his effort on the big touchdown. Excellent one on one blocking on the one guy who had a chance to stop Josh for a loss, one play after jumping to left tackle for a play.

Two loss Steelers lead the North, Ravens are top wild card. Need to beat the Chiefs to think about 1, but otherwise 2 plays 7 (Bills Broncos) 3 plays 6 (Steelers Chargers) 4 plays 5 (Texans Ravens) Then Ravens/Texans play Chiefs and Bills host Steelers. This is the perfect setup, and the idea that we know a lot of stuff by week 16 much less week 17 is pretty silly. And even if it was, 20 days without football is not the path to playing great football. Texans and Ravens are both good matchups for the Chiefs and to get the AFC championship game in Buffalo, and not just marching to a Bill trip to KC, but there is a ton of football left, and beating the Colts on the road is by far the most important piece right now.

Cap complexities aside, we traded an unhappy Diggs and #96 for Cooper and #50. Probably a trade I would have made in the offseason. Cooper is bigger and taller and a little younger. Like Diggs over the last 6 years he has played and produced. How bad Cleveland has been offensively, I expect this to be much more than a neutral change of scenery and am excited to have him. No need to focus on our Ex. But I'm really excited to have Amari, and see what he can do with the best QB he has ever played with in a WR room craving him.

Excuse me. Sandy’s curveball was a true 12-6 without any lateral movement. Meaning he could get it through the uprights and hit the ground behind without needing a net. I believe you meant to say a Blake Treinen slider and just got your Dodgers confused. Apology accepted.

Any chance we can bump Hollins down on the progression list, and keep feeding Cook? Cook is going to be good enough that we don't need homeruns early when we throw and can just get completions and move chains.

Disappointing that these players are out, but the ebb and flow of injuries is part of the season. I don't think any injury here backs us up too far, and interferes with a next man up plan, but definitely see Oliver as the biggest short term blow, as his disruption helps the edge guys so much, and his absence might hurt the impact the edge players make more than the direct impact of defending runs up the middle. I think our Everybody Eats / Open Receiver plan will work fine without Shakir and will help cover for him while he gets healthy. I think Bishop is better than Rapp, and if this week is where we deal with the first start mistakes as he gets up to speed, I expect the net impact to be minimal and the long term benefit as he becomes our future difference maker gets accelerated.

Can you believe we traded Diggs for the #64 overall pick? Just kidding, but this is not what I expected from a Darnold led Vikings.

Isn't Michigan's big house the place to Sweet Caroline this into a sports tradition?

Yeah. Not a lot of forearm injuries to choose from. He was looking at it like something was wrong right away. Could be elbow or wrist mislabeled as a forearm, but I don’t see a forearm injury that has him ruled out that isn’t a minor fracture.

It was great to score 34 and spread the ball around, but I’m really disappointed that they didn’t have a few more plays for Kincaid who is one of the best football players on our team. We also have enough tape by now to know Josh is at his best with pass to scramble and I don’t love the designed runs inside the tackles. Thinking of the 3rd and 2 particularly, but as a trend I wish we would have some plays where run is a quick second choice and he rolls out and runs if his main options are covered.

That is definitely my guess. Small non-displaced fracture of his ulna will take about four weeks and depending on location and severity he probably can play with a splint of some sort, but I expect him to miss a few games.

Week 2 at Miami...I know they aren't gameplanning in detail yet, so no Lawyer Milloy impact, but likely some level of advantage in addition to improving our QB2 position. However with other cuts coming up there might be even better options at QB2 if we are looking just at the player, and not the insider info.

Definitely sucks on a lot of levels, but as others have mentioned, everything we want to do that is special happens after Christmas. Obviously before that our playoff seeding, etc is up for grabs, but having him at full game strength for the playoffs is our silver lining. That was my hope last year too, and we know how that turned out, but this is a new thing and unrelated to past heart break. Will also accelerate Dorian's development and I think he is ready for a big year 2. Still a devastating injury and heart breaker.

Such a good example about how imprecise the draft is, and not just when the Patriots took Antwan Harris in the 6th round of the 2000 draft. For Mitch to be QB1 over Mahomes and Watson, or Darnold over Allen. What we can see pretty surely looking back is obviously the importance of QB is so high, and the certainty of any given prospect relatively low, that rolling the dice is always part of the process. There are drafts where there are multiple superstars, and there are drafts where there are zero valuable players, but if you have a top 10 pick and you don't have a franchise quarterback, you have to assess. But scouting misses I think fall into three main areas: 1) Overvaluing less important traits because "Scout". Accuracy, decision making, leadership are the real three traits, and now we are adding a game speed mobility element as the game evolves. Size/strength/hand size and all the lesser things that are more measurable ones often have people imagine what could be. 2) Player development. USC Darnold was better than Wyoming Josh as a moment in time QB for a number of reasons. But Josh's stunning improvements in accuracy and decision making and Darnold's inability to process the differences between college and NFL defenses (think the Patriots ghosts game) changed that all pretty quickly. Is there a way to know that / predict that ahead of time with more accuracy than these draft rooms do? I think probably, but the teams that do so don't usually need to try again for 15 years, so it is a small sample skill hard to really know. 3) System advantages. Plugging a specific player into two different team settings can certainly change the equation. Would Andy Reid have done a better job with Watson or Trubisky? If Brady went in the 4th round to Jags? For the record I wanted Watson at #10 and was mad when we traded down. I would have passed on Mahomes, and I stayed mad until Josh became Josh.