f13.net

I'm sure its all over sports 'news' but:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=EVb_Sx5d2j0

Michael Sam is gay.

Smart move by him. It was going to take a player that wasn't already a projected first rounder to do this. I hope it works out in his favor, and the NFL doesn't do something really stupid.

What is his projected draft position.  Will be really interesting to see where he lands.

They are saying he was somewhere between a 3rd and a 5th rounder. My guess is he will drop.

I think the reverse. I think he's guaranteed to be a 4th rounder minimum now. That's why it's a smart move. The NFL shield will go out of it's way to prove they aren't homophobic in the public eye.

It's going to change the equation a bit; he's generally seen as undersized for an NFL DE, but he could transition well to OLB. So it will require a team that has both a need at OLB, and a willingness to absorb some of the inevitable drama for him to be drafted. That aside, teams would seem stupid to pass up on him, by all accounts he's a phenomenal talent with a great work ethic, and it is notable that he came out to his teammates back in August, and there was no visible effect on his performance, or the performance of the team. I think that was a smart move, because he can point to the fact that his college locker room didn't give two shits, and went on to have a great season, so why should an NFL locker room be any different?

I guess some GMs and owners will balk at the idea of a black gay man but it will never come out, since there's a million reasons why any given team wouldn't draft a given player.

I think he's done this well, and the reaction from around the league seems pretty damn positive; so here's hoping he goes somewhere in the 3rd or 4th.

I think he would be a great pickup in the late 4th round for a team on the West Coast like SF or Seattle to provide some depth and give them some outs when it comes to FA contract deals in the next 2 years. Plus culturally I think the fanbases would support the kid.

San Diego might be in the market for an OLB, and that'd be a pretty safe place to land. Pats would seem like another team where the culture could easily absorb this sort of thing.

Probably wouldn't push him towards Miami though...

Drew Magary continues to make me  :why_so_serious:

I think this pick would be a bit riskier.  All it takes is one superstar demanding a separate locker room and the whole thing explodes. 

Sadly, homophobia is alive and well in sports just as in the military. 

No superstar is going to risk that right now. The risks to your endorsements for being outed as a homophobic asshole are worse than being outed as a homosexual.

Can you really say that with the amount of stupid fucking bullshit that athletes do?

Sadly, he could be a big distraction for a team with the media hounding him about how the team is treating his sexuality.

Who cares if he sucks a dick, can he football.

Call it wishful thinking that these guys are mercenaries first, and bigots second.

I think the hype from the media about the possibile confrontations will far eclipse the number of players who care at all.

From looking at him and the way he plays I would assume that most players would be afraid that he would stick their head up their ass if they gave him much shit.  That guy is pretty much a badass.

I think there will be more coaches, GM's and owners who will give a shit than players.

And then if that team ends up on Hard Knocks...

I think the fans are the group that will be the biggest problem, myself.

Scouts, too.  I think most people under 40 don't really care about this anymore but most of the people in positions of power in the NFL are over 50 and come from a different generation.  I think, and hope, 10-20 years from now something like this won't even be worth a mention.

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/10435830/cleveland-browns-overhaul-front-office-name-ray-farmer-new-gm


Because the Browns couldn't stop at just the coach.  :why_so_serious:

But in all seriousness, this is a fairly good sign that things may turn around, new HC, new GM, 3 picks in the first 35... ok fine, they are still the Browns - so they'll trade their picks for Johnny Football who won't last through the preseason. :cry:

The Browns have had 3 head coaches and 3 GMs in 470 days.

Burning everything to the ground and starting over isn't a bad choice for them.  But they need to actually let the new team do their job for a few seasons before cleaning house again.

Again, it's Cleveland. They will give them like 12 games to perform a miracle.

No. Because each team can say "someone else will draft him". Additionally teams who are actually professional about the matter might have a reasonable expectation that other teams will pass. By the same logic, even if all the teams are actually professional about the matter, each team might have the belief that the other teams are not and thus delay their drafting.

I still think that its a good move by him. If he wants to go to an organization which doesn't have those types of issues (and its clear some organizations do) then he wants to make it as clear as possible, even if it lowers his draft position, that he is gay.

How can they possibly know what the latest casualties could do? They didn't have anything resembling a chance to remake the roster before they got shitcanned. That is terrible management/ownership. Give them 3 or 4 years minimum.  Even a coach should get 2 or 3 years minimum.

That's just how we roll in Cleveburg. We are the farm city for every major sport save hockey. Come get some resume filler and then go win stuff elsewhere.

Well to be fair we canned Mora after a single Season. But we did give Carrol a two losing seasons in a row to get his shit together.

I thought that was a really shitty deal Mora got. Basically it was because Carroll was getting out of town before all the sanctions came down at USC and he was available immediately. Mora deserved better.


So, Haslam is just a fucking moron (http://deadspin.com/did-the-browns-front-office-break-up-over-greg-schiano-1521310143/+barryap). Banner and Lombardi are probably secretly relieved to not be working for him any longer. Owners need to shut the fuck up and let their football people do football things. Sign the checks, make the public appearances, and let the experts do what they do. If they fail to produce after a reasonable period, then make a change. If you are going to interfere, don't bother hiring GMs and CEOS- install yourself so even the plebes will know who to blame.

Well Banner was kind of a shitweasel whose only real accomplishment was dumping Richardson on Indy and stealing their 1st rounder...  and Lombardi was and always will be a joke in Cleveland after the Belichick episode.

I like the Farmer move now. No idea if I'll like it again in May. At least Ray relies on scouting players rather than some napkin math ah la Lombardi.

Haslam sounds like a wannabe Jerry Jones dickbag. Anybody that might in any way think Schiano is an acceptable candidate as a NFL head coach should be slapped.

As a ...fan... of the Browns, we'll take anything at this point. Banner was kinda thrown on Haslam before he knew better, so I'll let him slide on that. Only thing I am really leery about is Pettine. Hoping for a diamond in the rough thing here, but see above ..Browns..fan... we do stupid shit, like hope.

At least you can say the GM and HC look like they can go down on Sunday and suit up if need be.  :awesome_for_real:

I disagree because I don't put it past Goodell to rig the system with a nice under the table kickback of some kind to the team that takes the plunge.

Will he also supply the lube?

I'm sure that will be under the table too.

I think sports conspiracies may be even more amazing than moon landing conspiracies.

Anyway, thankfully the following is just a prototype "FAN prototype", but YE GODS.


Edit: Thankfully it appears to not be an actual Nike prototype.

Here's another prototype.

(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-dGFQjnwKZM4/UJfhY7x--9I/AAAAAAAACuQ/yvwmoWobmwg/s640/Rainbow%2BDash%2BCostume%2B.jpg)

That's fucking awesome

No.

Hahahaha, oh man I'd love to see that play those horrible Steelers bumblebee unis.

It would be the epilepsy bowl.

Those 'prison stripe' uniforms look pretty natural on Rothlesberger.  :why_so_serious:

Dolphin details (http://deadspin.com/the-worst-stuff-from-the-dolphins-investigation-updati-1522846626/+barryap)

God what a fucking cesspool. It was patently obvious years ago that Richie Incognito was a subhuman piece of shit, but this is just appalling.

I blame everyone involved in that whole deal. I blame Ritchie, the coaches, Martin, the other line guys, all the teammates, the training staff, everyone.

Incognito is a complete dickbag who should never play again. The other line guys are just as big of dickbags for putting up with him.

The coaching staff was completely hands-off and when they were hands-on it was to cover their asses. Terrible.

The entire checks and balances system completely collapsed, and even when it did Martin still didn't try to go through the proper channels to report it. He needed to at least go to the coaches and say something. He needed to then go to the league office and say something. He went to his parents instead. At some point you have to at least try to get it to stop instead of just freaking out and walking away. Would anything have come of it? Maybe not, but you could go on record saying you did it. That might have saved his job for another team or at the least given him a lawsuit case.

Did you not read the part where his position coach participated in some of that shit, such as the "Judas fine" comments and the whole concept of the kangaroo court and fine structures? This kid clearly felt that showing that sort of "weakness" would only make the shit WORSE, not better. The whole goddamn culture was focused on NOT letting authority settle anything - it was all about keeping it within the structure of the people who were piling on the fucking abuse. Shit, his O-line coach begged him to make a statement saying that Incognito wasn't to blame so the press would stop dogging on Incognito.

The fucking coaching staff, at least his immediate position coaches, not only didn't give a fuck about him, they supported the subhuman fuckball who was the main instigator.

I feel a lot more sympathy for Martin now than I ever did. Incognito should never play in the NFL again, and those O-Line coaches should never be allowed to coach again. FUCK THEM.

Did I just see someone victim blame Martin?  :drill:

Unfrozen caveman sports blogger is confused and frightened by your empathy and understanding for others.

Everyone gets blamed here. I've been bullied and a lot of you have too. We've all tried to go with the flow and hope it gets better. We've all been afraid to ask for help. But if you're willing to tell your parents what's going on, you should be willing to tell somebody in authority.

The coaches were wrong, the players were wrong, everyone was wrong. I'm not saying the dude should have been a macho asshole and put a stop to it by slugging somebody. That's insane. What I am saying is that he was willing to talk about it, and he did it to the wrong people.

What's happened now is it's cost him a job forever. He can't go to another team. He can't even get compensated for the abuse.

There's a fuckload of difference between talking to his parents and talking to authority figures who are AIDING the fucking bullying.

He was obviously too much of a pussy to ask for help. Duh.

For fucks sake, because someone did not seek help from whatever arbitrary person (though he did seek help from the coaching staff) does not put him at fucking blame for harassment. Plain and simple. That is pure victim blaming.

So this is better? To just take it and take it and take it, doing nothing, telling only your parents, never talking to anyone in charge, never talking to your agent, never talking to the league, and then just quitting?

That's the solution? That's the message?

I don't blame him for getting bullied. Nobody does anything to deserve that, or should be subjected to that. What the people did in that situation to Martin shouldn't be forgiven by the league, from the coaches on down to the players involved.

That doesn't mean I don't blame him for his reaction to it. We tell young kids all the time to stop bullying by speaking up. That's the national message, and in fact it's the #1 thing we try to encourage. I don't think just exploding and quitting was the right thing to do here at all. Saying something was. And from what I've seen he didn't do that.

Dude.

Paelos, I know you're impervious to reason, logic, math, and all facets of human emotion, but just stop.  

There's this guiding light in your mind that tells you what should have happened, but then there's actually what happened, where it happened, and why it happened.   If you're unwilling to take that into consideration, then perhaps you should debate less weighty considerations like clutching hitting or the slurve.

edit:
Alternatively: you're killing me, Smalls.

What happened was the kid was terrified to tell anyone because he was afraid it would get worse. He felt like the entire system was working against him. He didn't know where to go, or what to do. He told his parents in the hopes he could find some comfort to stand up, but he hated himself in the meantime. He hated what they made him, and hated going there. Finally, he just quit, dejected and angry. The bullies ended up winning in this scenario.

That doesn't mean it had to be that way. It doesn't mean that parents shouldn't point to this and say, this is why you have to tell somebody if you see something.

Mental illness, HOW DOES IT WORK

We're never going to see eye to eye on things like this. Lucky it doesn't matter.

Seriously? That's what you took away from my comments? Just.. stop.

Paelos would normally be right in his summations, but in this case we're dealing with a particularly disturbed individual (Martin) with a history of depression (suicidal) and drug use, not to mention equally sordid behavior at times;  all of which of course was left off the report.  His demotion to RT after shitting the bed all season didn't help either.  Incog. of course took an entirely boneheaded approach to trying to get his line to function and of course failed, culminating in the phins missing the playoffs for no reason really.  The guy's an ass, but he was doing as he was told by the coaching staff since the the FO sent the REAL leadership council (dansby, reggie bush, marshall, etc.) packing the year before.

None of them deserve to be in the NFL.  Not Martin or Incog.  Not the coaches or FO either.  Hence why you see everyone but Philbin (who is now a lame duck under the new GM) shitcanned.  End of story.

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/82533/farrel.gif)

(http://supafly.areavoices.com/files/2010/11/prince6.gif)

(http://i.imgur.com/fKlHLMq.gif)

Ingmar wins.

Is Ghambit writing for The Onion? Because that's the only way any of that post makes any god damn sense.

Dude, have you ever read his posts? Guy is certifiable.

PSA: When you blame the victim, this is how you sound

(some of you have your head fairly far up your own arse)

I never blamed the victim.  Look, if a guy is mentally unstable and has issues with controlled substances, how can you in your right mind say he should be on an NFL team?  Let him get right in his head and so forth, then maybe think about making a comeback (like BMarsh did after he was cut).  Fire people that mistreated him, etc.  they can all rot.  But dont kid yourself in thinking that the world somehow owes Jmart.  Fuck's sake, his mother is a Harvard (friend of the guy who did the investigation) employment lawyer.


I'm a Dolphins fan.  We're all like this.

Don't bother. He's a victim so we can't question any decisions he made. That's the ridiculous notion here. Even though we could basically agree that telling someone is the right thing to do in a bullying situation and he didn't do that.

Him not telling anyone wasn't the crux of the problem.  He never got the appropriate help to work through his issues (by his own fault or others).  Philbin WAS aware of his instability btw, but was supposedly unaware of the way his O-line was handling it (which I find complete BS; he should be fired too).

Realize also, after his rookie year Martin largely skipped OTAs/workouts (and the extra effort needed) when he was implored to bulk up so he could anchor the left side of that line.  Jim Turner and Incog. were part of that; as their style of "motivation" was obviously the wrong approach, but the crux of it is the kid shrank and underperformed in the NFL.  Did that cause his mental issues?  Likely.  He came from a well-to-do family, sent through a lot of expensive schools and winning programs; ultimately Stanford.  Then he's thrust onto a losing team in dumbfuck USA wherein he gets steamrolled.

That's a tough pill to swallow for anyone.  I felt for him.  But, he handled it a lot worse then Ricky Williams or B'Marsh did; and that part I'm not forgiving.  He walked out on his team, slandered his 'friends,' (deservedly though some would say) and then hid behind his worker's comp lawyer mommy; hoping to salvage a payday.  The guy's a snake.  Had he not gone down the legal road he did he could've salvaged his career.  No one will sign him now, you can bet on that.

No one should walk away from this with a job in the NFL.

OK, bullshit like that is the biggest problem, Paelos. The victim was not 100% perfect in his victimhood, therefore he should be punished alongside the people actually responsible? That's insane.

Here's the thing about victim blaming. In the first place, you are not revealing some unknown, un-thought-of truth to the victim. They're not going to slap their forehead and say, "Of course! Why didn't I think of that?" The victim has almost certainly said all these things to themselves already. They don't need some asshole who didn't live through what they've been through, who is not them, giving them totally unique insights like, "Man, you should've told someone!"

You know why they don't tell someone? Because fuckheads like you will find something they did wrong and harp on that instead of putting the blame where it actually belongs. Not a single victim in the world has acted perfectly in their victimization, so there is always something for a victim-blamer to latch onto and be all "You did it wrong" and "You sort of asked for it" and when you're already in a terrible place because of shit that happened to you, that is the last fucking thing you need to hear. Better to just not tell anyone (ESPECIALLY if one of the people you should be able to tell is 100% on board with what's going on), get yourself away from the situation if you can, and bury that shit deep, because then at least the only person blaming you for the shit you've been through is you, instead of random dipshits acting like they're entitled to judge you.

Honestly, for the amount of inane shit people judge on this board, I don't really care if you think it's right to judge him in this case.

He's not going to get another job in the NFL. It doesn't matter if you think he deserves a shot or not, or if I think he doesn't.

Oh and just for random stuff that's being said by Martin, he blames the schools:

Clearly, you have never been bullied. You don't feel like there is anyone to talk to. You tell someone in authority but unless that person has the ability to watch you 24/7 OR remove the bully from your sphere, you know that will only make the bulllying worse - and that's in a situation where the authority figure might be neutral at worse. In this situation, he couldn't tell other players because they all SAW it happening (and many aided it), he couldn't tell his position coach or assistant position coach - they were helping the bullying AND possibly encouraging the bullies by turning a blind eye to the "fine book." So if your immediate boss in the organization is heaping on that shit and you go above his head, you figure that not only will nothing happen to the bullies, but your O-Line coach will probably shit all over you MORE after that. And if you go above their heads (GM or NFL), then you have even more potential for the shit to rain on your head from multiple levels of douche because really, you aren't sure any authority will care and if they do, you don't figure they'll remove the bully from the situation anyway so it'll get worse if they get in trouble.

When you are bullied, all you want is to lay low, to not draw more attention than you are already getting. Yes, we all know that feeds the bullies and gives them more power but you'd rather just NOT take a chance that shit will get worse.

Paelos you are blaming the victim, which absolves the bully of some guilt - you do realize most bullies don't stop just because they got in trouble, right? No, they find a way to make it worse.

And Ghambit... you are just fucking nuts. Stay in Florida.

I'm blaming everyone. That sticks in people's craw, so be it. Nobody should get out of this with a job, but I guarantee you that the coaches and other players will get one over Martin.

The NFL isn't pretty about it's biases, yet we watch it in record numbers. We can be horrified by this, and then dismiss it as isolated and just move on and get all jacked up about the draft. Because we're all whores for this stuff. I'm not so sure it's as isolated as we need it to be to mentally enjoy the game. What I am sure of is that the leadership on other teams is better than Miami.

People do this because they enjoy being the bully. They've been it someplace before and continuing to allow victim blaming means they get to continue being the bully elsewhere.   Because it's the fault of THEIR victim, too.

The NFL had another bad PR weekend with these stories:

http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/14/justice/california-nfl-darren-sharper-case/

http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2014-02-16/sports/bal-ravens-running-back-ray-rice-arrested-after-incident-in-atlantic-city-20140216_1_ray-rice-chad-steele-ravens

Sharper's being charged with drugging and raping victims, and Ray Rice is supposedly on camera in a casino knocking his lady around.

But she had it coming, right?

Predictable.

Yes you are.

I mean shit, you're using the results of the bullying (he skipped practices) to justify the bullying! How could you ever know if he was capable of playing professional football if you don't ever treat him like a professional?

I didn't say that at all, but that hadn't stopped anyone from trying to put words in my mouth.

Face it. You're not going to change my mind on this. And no, i don't equate an NFL players mental abuse with a rape victim.

You have to wonder, what with all of the gay slurs directed at Martin and the resultant actions by Martin, if he really is gay.  If so, coming out may actually help to resolve things for him.  I can't imagine what that would be like, having 50 plus roided up assholes fucking with you because you were gay. 

It's been speculated, but if he was actually gay, and they could prove that was the reason for his bullying? His lawsuit would be worth so much the NFL would pay him 10s of millions to go away.

Can't you imagine that such torment would be so debilitating that it would make any amount of money irrelevant?  I know you're a CPA, but have a soul man.... :why_so_serious:

Honestly, no I couldn't comprehend it. I'm not part of any minority group that's ever been discriminated against, and I wouldn't presume to understand their struggles.

I do understand punishing those that are guilty, and the team is guilty of ruining this kid's professional career. They should have to pay up for that, and if the reason was because of his sexual preference, the damages should be so high the NFL should choke on them.

Sports used to be about breaking barriers before the rest of society. Baseball broke the color barrier. Title IX broke the gender barrier. And now the NFL is on the cusp of breaking the homosexual barrier on professional sports. But they've lagged on this one way behind regular society, and they aren't the only league to do that. It's frankly shameful that what used to be a progressive part of our society is now the most backward.

The NFL is a "manly" sport.  And a lot of these guys are largely uneducated, roided up jerks that are just looking to pick on someone.  Incognito seems to me to sport some serious narcissistic personality disorder type symptoms.   He can be very charming to the people he wants to charm and has charisma, but is, in the end, a selfish dick that cares only about himself.  That guy can be quite disarming to a locker room.

Something I find rather odd about this situation is that nobody from the Dolphins has stuck up for Martin.  Maybe there is some sort of gag order from up top, but you'd think the team would tell them to keep their mouths shut about Incognito as well. 

They've in fact gone far the other way and defended Incognito. Which is disturbing in and of itself. Plus you add in the coaches and everything, it's just a complete fuckup. The entire organization should be purged. The leadership there is non-existent.

Richie Incognito is the very definition of asshole.  Generally those guys make good football players though because they have no problem trying to kill someone. 

Football is, at its heart, a very flawed sport.  It encourages gladiatorial type behavior and that is a bit disturbing, and often makes me rethink my love of college football.  I could give a shit about pro football, although I will watch it from time to time. Throw in unfettered roid use on top of the already aggressive and jerky personality types and I bet it is a real shithole to work in.

Intermission:

(https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/82533/platypus.gif)

OK, carry on.

That should go in cute pictures!

I'm going to keep watching football until they give me reason to stop on the field. The off the field stuff will never resonate with fans as much as the on the field stuff. That's just the way it goes with entertainment at pretty much any level. We're forgiving of, or even glorify, awful decisions by celebrities who are complete assholes because they can sing, or dance, or kick a ball.

The thing that will make me stop watching the NFL is if they continue to ignore the defensive side of the game. Luckily Seattle won this year and put another notch on my side of defense being more important than the offensive ridiculousness we saw this year, rules be damned.

Just because you're a mod you think you can drop a platypus gif anywhere you'd like....

 :oh_i_see:


This is super important sports talk. 

(https://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/7939487744/h615AF66A/)

(http://i.imgur.com/TyHM5ve.png)

The FUCK.

Browns nearly traded with 49ers for Jim Harbaugh
 (http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/02/21/sources-browns-nearly-traded-for-jim-harbaugh/)

:headscratch:

Dammit, I wish that would have happened. The gnashing of teeth. The factory of sadness. The Temper Tantrum Totality!

I wouldn't wish that whiny fuck on poor Cleveland. They have been through enough. If it meant the 49ers would bring back Mike Singletary I would be all over it though  :awesome_for_real:

Wut?

I dunno if I'd be slinging "that guy is an ass" stones if my head coach was fuckin' Pete Carroll.

I am on record as hating Pete Carroll. His used care salesman personality rubs me exactly the wrong way, and the way he left USC just ahead of the NCAA posse (and then taking Jim Mora's job) was disgusting. I will give him credit for having a vision for his player type and building a team around it. I can respect the job he did while still thinking he is a douche. Winning a Super Bowl buys him a little leeway too  :grin:

Yeah as far as we know Harbaugh isn't a 9/11 truther. Although I would certainly hate him if he coached for another team. And have in the past.  :why_so_serious:

But Harbaugh HAS pre-ordered five copies of The Elder Scrolls Online.

Being able to grief him somehow would be the only way I would ever buy that steaming pile  :awesome_for_real:

Decided to put this in the NFL thread rather than the Religion thread, because I am thinking that everyone will agree that this guy is a moron, regardless of his beliefs

https://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaaf-dr-saturday/former-san-diego-state-rb-adam-muema-left-015201705--ncaaf.html (https://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/ncaaf-dr-saturday/former-san-diego-state-rb-adam-muema-left-015201705--ncaaf.html)

TL;DR version is this: dude skips the NFL combine because God told him to go home and relax and that the Seahawks are definitely going to draft him.  I am thinking that he pretty much just guaranteed that the Seahawks most definitely will NOT draft him now.  Even if they were in the market for a Running Back, which probably isn't too high on their list.

The guy claims that god speaks to him through numbers, and he's facebook friends with someone claiming to be the second coming of Christ. There are so many red flag all over this I can't see any team rushing to touch him.

Also, the kid may be schizophrenic.

His instagram account contains some pretty eccentric stuff... (http://instagram.com/amog4)

 :oh_i_see:

Looks like every instagram account ever to me. A little bit more jesus and less Arianna Grande I guess than usual.

That's some good Old Testament crazy there.  :why_so_serious:

While most players are into getting stoned, he's more interested in players getting stoned.

(http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/epkqp3otqysxynqh6k9m.jpg)

So, The Bucs have a new uniform... (http://deadspin.com/tampa-bay-buccaneers-unveil-new-uniform-1535123193?utm_campaign=socialflow_deadspin_facebook&utm_source=deadspin_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow)  :uhrr:

Well when you can't compete on the field, you might as well dazzle then with ... whatever the hell that is.

I enjoyed this riff on it.

(http://i.imgur.com/Xp6qeAX.gif)

That is fuckawful.  :ye_gods:

I really don't see anything wrong with the jersey besides the font choice, which is more amusing than awful.

That's about 5 billion times worse than the uniforms we had.  :oh_i_see:

(https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSm9NnkQvkjY83QhLPpx-Shx-SWUJUtD_BFfTL6hYgYid0HFxyPOw)

Even that is better than the disaster of the new uniforms.

The new uniform isn't even on the map of awful uniforms.

I'm trying to think of an uglier non-'throwback' NFL uniform and I'm coming up short.

It would be fine if it had normal numbers on it.

Those are better than any uniform ever.

The orange buccaneer unis from the '70's are fantastic! You motherfuckers are crazy.

Don't you mean FABULOUS!  ? :drillf:

Orange is the new WOOOO-HOOOO!

Hell yes they were.  Tampa never should have changed them. 

Looks like Peyton is healthy enough to play next year.

Fuck yes!  Love the old jerseys.

UGH. Welcome back to the XFL.

Go back and look at the jerseys. Honestly, the thing that was "ugh" about the XFL were the sideshow shit and the names. The jerseys were rather basic.

The font is silly but the important part (to me) is always the helmet, and the helmet looks just fine. I'd rather they went back to Mr. Saucy Pirate, but I have to learn to let go on that front.

I don't hate the uniforms, I just hate the fact that every NFL team is trying to move more merchandise by doing this gimmick every few years. I want to find the people buying this shit and club them over the head, because they are the problem.

I don't think it's as dire as you make it out to be. The main reason we had a change the last two years now is because of a new clothing sponsor, Nike. Otherwise, most teams haven't changed much at all over the last decade or so.

The helmet is actually one of the things I dislike the most.  The size of the old flag was fine.  Bigger is not always better.  :oh_i_see:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3W2Q8XAfZx4&feature=youtu.be

The nice thing is that the blood will blend right into the uniform...  :grin:

The only problem I have with a uniform like that is that it is a bit too...generic.  Hey, what color are those Bucs uniforms?  Uh...brown.  And white.  And orange and orangey-red.  It doesn't even match itself, if you know what I mean.

When your team name and mascot are based on a pirate theme, you should be able to do better.  Shit, they did it better themselves with the creamsicles and the swash-buckley pirate guy.  You can adjust the specifics, but I think the better uniforms keep a certain consistency about them.  They keep the flag, but the rest of it doesn't fit well with it.

Well the digital numbers reference the modern day Somali pirates. 

what.

You know, Buccaneers.

I'll show myself out.

http://nfl.si.com/2014/03/05/cleveland-browns-new-uniforms/

We go next. At least they are sticking with the helmet... though I am not sure what logo you could possibly slap on it to make it different. I guess different striping, but either way - no change there. Since they play in northeast Ohio, I am sure they'll have some kind of traffic barrel orange jersey at some point.  :oh_i_see:

A UPS box?  :why_so_serious:

(http://content.sportslogos.net/logos/7/155/full/quatt6iqgd7dc8dhkdug.gif)

Why do you want to hurt me like that? I mean really... what kinda monster are you?

We all have some skeletons in our closet.

(http://content.sportslogos.net/logos/99/3069/full/fc7e8abjgdgdy8u6ffai9pedn.gif)

Not surprising, but still sucks... Broncos releasing Bailey.

From the Broncos to the AARP. He has been done for 2 seasons at least.

Could be worse.  Could be a photo of Art Modell's mug.

You mean that isn't?  :rimshot:

Looks like Chicago are going to release Hester; this isn't a surprising move, but it's a bit of a sad one. He's only one return TD away from the record, and it would have been nice to see him set it as a Bear. But really he's far too expensive for a return specialist, and he's not viable in other positions.

Oh cowboys. Released Demarcus Ware.

We're run by a wildcatting madman. I don't know what to do other than just expect 8-8 at best.

31, starting to get injured more often, due to make a ton of money. It's not the most surprising cut I've ever seen, but I think I'd probably have given him another year to see if the injuries were a fluke.

He was counting a good bit against the salary cap and the Cowboys are already bumping up against it. Still, he was offering to take less money.

And yeah, 8-8... that's probably accurate.

I will say it seems like the salary cap is really biting team's in the ass all across the league but more than that, it's biting veterans. If you're a guy that is even close to 30 and cost your team a lot against the cap... you are fucking gone come March. You got 1 player on every team (the QB) who, if he isn't a rookie in his original rookie contract, is likely taking up almost 1/5 of your salary cap space every year. Almost every team is just dumping vets, signing 2-3 big contract guys and relying on the draft to fill any holes. I think the players may have fucked themselves on the last CBA.

So the Browns get rid of Jackson and Ward and pick up Dansby and Whitner. Dansby I can see as a minor upgrade but he's 33. Whitner is probably even with Ward so I have no idea why they didn't keep Ward. Unless of course he was asking more than what he'll eventually get.

At this point of the salary cap we can ask ourselves these questions:

Is your QB relatively cheap against the cap?
Is your QB top half of the league in passer rating?
Do you have a solid defense?

If the answer to any of those questions is no, I'm not sure how you can win a Super Bowl going forward.

I'm not sure most teams can make the playoffs with those conditions a no.

#1 seems fairly subjective. 

Bears picked up Lamarr Houston from the Raiders. More combined tackles than anyone on the Bears D Line last year. In some cases, more than two of them had combined. I'm happy.

Jonathan Martin got a new job after all, with the 49ers.  Interesting.

Did he play under Harbaugh at Stanford or Shaw?

To be fair, part of the reason that he got so many tackles was because the Oakland D was on the field A LOT.  :why_so_serious:

Harbaugh.

Falcons are trying to make a bunch of line moves to shore up their gigantic trench problems.

Yeah, Harbaugh.  I don't like Harbaugh (I mean who does!), but I bet he runs a tight ship, might be just the place for him.  Of course, Harbaugh may not be around for long.

I believe the loser of the NFC championship game has missed the playoffs 7 times in the last 12 seasons.

Ware to Broncos.

Really stacking the deck for the next 2 years.  Still going to get spanked in every Superbowl.

The Niners have gone to the NFC Championship 3 times in a row now under Harbaugh, losing twice. So they've already bucked the odds twice.

How are the Broncos affording all these players?  :headscratch:

On paper their defense looks pretty scary, but I guess we'll see.

In other completely unsurprising news, the Browns cut Brandon Weeden, and the Bucs cut Revis. Revis will land somewhere quick, but he's going to have to take a fairly hefty paycut I'm guessing.

Also Josh McCown to the Bucs; I'm happy the guy got paid, and a little sad to see him leave Chicago. I'm not sure he'll see the same success without Marshall and Jeffrey, and with Lovie as his HC rather than Trestman. Hopefully he can have a solid couple of years and retire to take care of his family, like he said he always wanted to.

Golden Tate to the Lions, where Seattle WRs seem to go to die (or crash their cars when eating pizza).

McCown to the Bucs is HILARIOUS. The only reason McCown did so well with the Bears is Trestman's offense. Also, the Bears had weapons. The Bucs... do not. And the Bucs are in Lovie Smith's offense which is marginally better than... no, let's face it, it's pretty goddamn terrible. Trestman added like 10-15 points per game over Smith's offense with mostly the same skill players AND McCown instead of Cutler for almost half the season. That is a failboat waiting to happen.

Sounds like Peanut will be following him

$5 million a year for just 2 years doesn't seem like a big investment for McCown if he doesn't work out.  Jeff Tedford will be running the offense in Tampa, not Lovie.  How good Tedford's offense is at the professional level remains to be seen, of course.  The Bucs do have more weapons than you think, though.  Vincent Jackson is an excellent receiver and by all accounts they have one of the better offensive lines in the league.  With Doug Martin, Mike James and Bobby Rainey they should have plenty of running game.  What Tampa really needs is an upgrade at #2 receiver and TE so there's more than just Vincent Jackson to throw to.  Mike Williams has some size but I've never been a fan of his.  He tends to disappear for long stretches too often.

Tedford's offense is fine as long as you aren't inside the 20.  :why_so_serious:

I think they've bucked them once. We'll see if they can buck them twice. I think it's hard to stay at that high of a level that long.

Once they went to the Super Bowl. The other two times they lost.

Revis cut. Interesting to see where he'll end up.

Right what I'm saying is that the loser of the NFC Champ game didn't make the playoffs next year 7 of 12 times. SF lost the first time, and they made the playoffs next year thus bucking the trend. SF won the second time and went to Super Bowl. SF lost this time which is the 3rd time. So if they make it back to the playoffs in 2014, they will have bucked the trend a second time.

Right, sorry.

<insert pic of Bill B slying grinning>

So the Patriots let Talib go and pick up Revis for one year.  Is this that big of an upgrade, or did they not want to give Talib a longterm deal?

I'm not sure it is an upgrade at all.  Revis is a totally different kind of player, and considering his recent injuries it is fair to speculate that he might be on the wane.  Still, that might a bit nit-picky...they are both impact players, regardless.  I would have kept the known quantity, were it me.  Besides, their competition in the AFC is the Broncos.  Revis doesn't change the equation against the Broncos much, because he just takes out one guy.  With all those weapons, I would rather have Talib roaming the secondary.

Oh, and Sprole to the Eagles?  If it was the Sproles of a year or two ago, that would be pants-shitting news.  Now I'm not too sure.

Eric Decker to the Jets.  Way to turn yourself from a star into a nobody, dumbshit.

Tate to the Lions.  Fuck, I don't like that at all as a Seattle fan.  He's a poor man's Percy Harvin, and was still improving.  Nice upgrade for the Lions, I think.

Decker is seeing the writing on the wall. The NFL is making moves towards younger and cheaper, and they are willing to sacrifice talent in the middle to hit their cap. Stars are always going to get paid, but if you aren't a number one receiver? Absolutely go to whatever team will cut you the big guaranteed deal.

EDIT: Also Tate is a shithead. The Seahawks were probably tired of his brand of assholery. I hope he busts out of the league.

Suddenly Talib is as good as Revis? Oh boy.

Talib wanted a lot of money, the Broncos were willing to give him a lot, a contract most agree is fairly insane (maybe not for 1-2 years but for the length and the money, its insane). He has injury problems and potential off-field issues (though he did fine in NE). Revis is still one of the best if not the best CB in the league. Plus he will be playing for a contract while Talib won't be.

So in answer to my question, Revis is a big upgrade and Talib wanted a longterm deal that the Patriots weren't interested in giving him?

The Pats don't give anybody already on their roster not named Brady a big-time deal. See both Edelman and Welker getting run out of town. It's a good deal for them but if they don't sort out their receiver issues, it won't fucking matter. Signing Revis at least keeps their defense on par with last year's especially with some of the injuries they had last year returning.

Decker to the Jets makes sense for both parties. I think he's very much a Welker type of talent - maybe not as good, but he's certainly going to be the best receiver on that team by FAR. He may be the best they've had since Holmes first got there. Will he make that team a winner? Only if Geno Smith can remember to throw to him and that's still an unsettled question.

Sproles to Philly ought to make ANYBODY shit their pants. He's still an impact player and the idea of he and Shady McCoy being in the same backfield on an offensive unit that blew people away last year is scary. If that defense even becomes remotely competent (which they showed signs of towards the end of the year), they will absolutely destroy that weak ass NFC East.

I don't at all mean that Talib is as good as Revis, though I could see where I may have given that impression.  What I am saying is that NE's only real competition in the AFC is Denver, and what they need against Denver is a really dangerous safety that can play centerfield against all those weapons.  All Revis gives them against Denver is one weapon taken out of the game, which will not even change the course of a game against Peyton Manning and all those other weapons he has.  The Seahawks didn't beat Denver like red-headed step children because of what Sherman did...they beat them by what was happening in the middle of the field.

So to summarize, Revis is better than Talib.  But I think they would be better off with a Talib-like talent. 

Having Sherman basically eliminate whoever he is covering gives the safeties the freedom to raise hell in the middle of the field.

Sproles to the Eagles for a 5th-round pick.  :facepalm:

A nothing pick for a guy that is going to make a really good offensive team that much better. The Saints get worse on both offense and special teams, even though he was only on 33% of their snaps last year.

Also, the Panthers cut Steve Smith, which should surprise no one.

I really think in about 2-3 years, you are going to see the teams with $20+ million QB's made up of over 50% of guys with less than 3 years of NFL experience because they won't be able to afford to keep vets.

See also: the NBA. This is what salary caps do. The NBA mitigates it by capping individual player deals (which means that guys like LeBron actually end up underpaid) but it still squeezes the guys in the middle skill-wise.

The problem is the QB market is completely inflated, and nobody has the balls to let a QB hit the market.

The Jags seem to be quietly building up a really solid team while everyone else is frothing over pretty much everything else.

No one will take them seriously until they finish painting those dumbass helmets.   :why_so_serious:

Says the Browns fan.

Browns have 1001 problems, but their helmet ain't one of them.  :awesome_for_real:

I am rooting for them and Gus Bradley (even if he is stealing anyone who played for him in Seattle that he can get his hands on, the bastard).

Sproles to Philly! I like it. Imagine a Sproles/McCoy split in the backfield?

http://nfl.si.com/2014/03/15/julius-peppers-signs-green-bay-packers/

Peppers to the Packers.  :ye_gods:

That has to be false, the Packers don't sign free agent defensive linemen. Free agency is where they let their defensive linemen go somewhere else.

They're keeping Raji too; it's not like the Pack. I think they got Peppers at a decent price, the guy can still make plays, he just wasn't worth the $17M or whatever the Bears were going to owe him.

The Pack had like $30 million or more in cap space. There was no way they were going to rebuild that defense with the draft alone. Peppers is a good signing, even if he's only a 20% of the snaps kind of guy. He still managed 7.5 sacks last season on a REALLY shitty Bears defensive unit, which is more than anyone else on the Packers' d-line managed. Adding Raji back to that unit is a good thing, they just need to let him do a bit more pass rushing like he did during their Super Bowl run.

Now if they could just have signed a decent fucking safety because their safety play last year sucked all kinds of balls.

(http://i.imgur.com/hmpf4Lc.jpg)

Good night sweet prince; may you find greener pastures elsewhere.

There will never be another play that will so aptly sum up a guy's career.

Honestly, it probably is the greatest NFL play ever.

Wonder how soon we'll see Vick taking live snaps, or if he's simply done as a starter.

I forgot it was against the Patriots.  Just puts the gravy on top.

Vick will probably get a few starts this season, and you know he will get some action on a day when Geno Smith tosses 3 pick sixes or some shit. He won't be able to do shit with it, but I'm sure he'll get a start or two.

All he needs to do is show a few flashes of brilliance, which he probably still has left in the tank, to fuel that sweet sweet New York QB controversy.

There's talk this morning on sports radio about bringing the buttfumble to Atlanta as a backup. That will never happen and if it did, the GM should be flogged.

I still cannot comprehend how any capable human being - let alone a professional athlete - could have been starred in that play.  There was no reason for the collision.

So Ralph Wilson died. Creating some stir on Toronto sports radio, as the family has already said they would sell the Bills when he died.

Ray Rice  :awesome_for_real: (http://nfl.si.com/2014/03/27/ray-rice-indicted-assault-charges/)

Philadelphia Eagles . . .  (http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/10667053/quarterback-mark-sanchez-signs-philadelphia-eagles)  :why_so_serious:  :why_so_serious:

Good luck Mark Sanchez....

Eagles fans better pray to whatever gods they believe in that Foles doesn't get hurt. I'm not even Chip Kelly can get big numbers out of the Sanchize, but who the fuck knows?

Also, love how the Ravens are sticking with Ray Rice after he beat the shit out of his woman. Of course, she's stayed with him, but her stupidity isn't at issue here. I hope the NFL at least suspends his ass.

How can the NFL suspend him if the victim is pulling complaints? I believe she's unwilling to let the case move forward, which means all they have is a video.

He's a dirtbag, and if that video of him actually hitting her ever sees the light of day, he's getting suspended. I doubt the lawyers will ever let that happen.

The law doesn't matter. The NFL can suspend or fine any player for violating the league's personal-conduct policy. Did that with Rapistberger... can't see why they can't here. Here, we can go to the video evidence, regardless of legal proceedings.

Also, the prosecutor still indicting Ray Rice even though the fiancee doesn't want to go forth with the legal action. So yes, the league absolutely should be ON HIS ASS.

It comes down to burden of proof.  US criminal law (usually) requires you to prove a case beyond a reasonable doubt.  Prosecutors will often not proceed with a case against someone that clearly did it, but where there is some flimsy theoretical excuse that cannot be disproved.  The NFL, however, can punish someone when they decide they're pretty darn sure enough they know what went down... even if there is some odd-ball yet reasonable explanation out there that theoretically could explain the situation away.  That is the burden of proof negotiated into their agreements between players and management.

The Ravens stand by the guy that knocks his fiancee unconscious while the Eagles cut DeSean Jackson, supposedly because he's been associating with a gang member who's accused of murder.

I'm aware of the personal conduct suspensions. My point is that unless they have more than the video of him dealing with her knocked out, it's barely enough to even warrant that since she's not filing a charge. In the Rapistburger case, charges were filed, police statements were taken, and there was evidence tampering galore. It was eventually settled later.

Point of fact, I think he's a complete shithead who should be lambasted if he hit her. I'm also shocked she's staying with him if the assault took place that knocked her unconcious. I just wonder what really happened.

And Rhianna stayed with Chris Brown for a while after he beat her black and blue. It happens.

And somehow Riley Cooper is still on the team.

49ers were allegedly looking at trading for Jackson before this happened, but it's anybody's guess if they still see this as a fixable problem or not.

I think the Jets were talking about trading for DeSean Jackson too. Guess they didn't want to give up a pick for a guy they might be able to get anyway or they thought the off-field stuff was going to get worse.

Either way, that's one helluva talent out there as a free agent.

Everyone is terrified that DeSean Jackson will be the next Aaron Hernandez. Or maybe Sean Taylor. Or even Darrent Williams.

If you live in that world, the odds that something will prevent you from fulfilling your end of an NFL contract probably skyrocket. Someone might take a flyer on him, but it will be cheap. I just hope Pete Carroll doesn't think he can rehab him. I don't want that asshole here.

Or Mike Vick, or Nate Newton, or Rae Carruth, or the other idiots that surrounded themselves with shitheads before they pulled a stint in the joint. There's very solid precedent on why NFL clubs should be extremely interested in who their players associate with.

New England should take a look. Yeah, Hernandez was a black mark, but they have done well with other twisted seeds.

I don't understand this.  It is certainly easy to put language in a contract that protects the team from having to pay money to a potential criminal.  Still, if a team decides they just don't want the drama, then good for them.  I just hope DeSean stays out of the NFC East.

I don't want to root for him. I don't want his particular brand of asshattery distracting from the team. I don't want his inevitable arrest or murder blowing a big hole in the WR position midseason. Too many negatives for what he brings. Do not want.

Put him on the Cowboys. Maybe he'll off Jerry in a fit of rage.

Too bad the Cowboys have like no cap space.  :why_so_serious:

DeSean could have his boys bust a cap in our cap space problem.

Looks like he signed a 3 year deal with the Redskins.  I'm a little surprised he didn't try to whore himself out for single year with a contender - maybe there really was no market for him for those teams.  Oh well, I'm personally glad to see him stay in the NFC East, and the Skins in particular, so as to pose a threat to nobody.  Except perhaps his girlfriend.

Dan Snyder deserves DeSean.

I don't want to deal with this shit in my city, dammit.

http://deadspin.com/arizona-police-sketch-looks-exactly-like-dan-snyder-1554471526

Dan Snyder might be a rapist too.

Well fuck me...

As to his contract, $16MM guaranteed is a nice payday. 

That made me chuckle.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/nfl/niners/2014/04/10/colin-kaepernick-investigation/7550297/

I'll just leave this here for you SF fans. Maybe Colin is following in Big Ben's footsteps.

It's okay we still have Blaine Gabbert :awesome_for_real: :ye_gods:

Suddenly, "Kaepernicking" is more and less hilarious all at once.

The reported facts in the case are a bit strange.  Oh well, and as much as I want the guy to fail as a football player (by virtue of him being a Niner plus possibly also being douche), I tend to be very skeptical of these sorts of cases.  Not because I don't think they are not capable of it, but because I am also pretty certain there are plenty of people out there more than willing to lie and take advantage of them. 

Anyway, it is early.  I don't even think the woman is yet claiming that she was sexually assaulted.


I have wanted to say this for a long, long time:  It is not possible or reasonable to expect a guy with a name like Blaine Gabbert to become a successful professional football player.  Successful at piloting a yacht?  Check.  Successful at having a trust fund?  Check.  Successful at blow drying his hair?  CHECK.

(http://cdn.nextimpulsesports.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/hhh1.gif)

What. A. Dumbass. (http://nfl.si.com/2014/04/13/san-francisco-49ers-aldon-smith-bomb-los-angeles-international-airport) 

 :facepalm:

That's a jailin'.

Actually, maybe he won't go to jail, but seriously, what the hell.

He's reached the point where I don't see how they can keep him.

Maybe they can move Jonathan Martin to linebacker.

Football season can't come soon enough.

I hate that they moved the draft. It's stupid.

It really is. I listen to a lot of local sports radio and the endless talk of the draft is driving me insane.

The NFL won't move it back, either. They love that sports talk knows that baseball isn't important yet, and nobody gives a shit about 80% of the NBA playoffs. So, they get more and more airtime on a usual dead period.

I think they are pulling a Blizzard. They know they are the big badass, and they are overexposing the product. It's going to create animosity when they try to put shit games on every night just to spread it out.

Eh, them moving the draft was better for the kids both in college and high school.  Committal/Deposit day is May 1st (for normal students, holdouts, transfers, walk-ons), finals are this week, graduations, etc.  Having the draft after all that makes more sense.  Let the kids get drafted, give them the playbook, and have their arses on a plane the next day.

What a whirlwind for some of them though, wow.   Finals, graduation, draft.   :uhrr:
I dont even see how all that's possible without an agent, assistant, some play money, etc. 

That's funny.

Yeah the NFL doesn't do this for the kids. They do it to stretch the produce across 12 months.

I get why they do it, but I don't think it will increase the fervor. If anything, I'm noticing myself tuning it out because I'm so sick of mock drafts. The only thing dumber than a mock draft is preseason rankings in college football.

It was rather entertaining to watch all these sports writers twist in the wind as they ran out of original material and had to result in rehashing the same shit over and over again for the last 4 weeks. There is nothing new which really sours reading anything related to the NFL until draft day.

That's the part I don't understand. I don't think this is going to dramatically increase interest in the draft. I think the interest was already there.

The interest will be higher in this draft anyway because so many big-named college players joined at the same time. Clowney, Manziel, McCarron, Murray, Watkins, Bortles, Bridgewater, etc.

Even the middle tier first-second round guys like Marquis Lee, Derek Carr, CJ Mosely, Haha Clinton-Dix, and Mike Evans have name recognition.

I definitely have been tuning out all draft discussion lately.  At least the NBA playoffs have been exciting this year.

(http://espngrantland.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/cowboysmeme.jpg?w=510)

If only.

Bring on the dancing ponies and the grim faces of those left in the green room after tonight's pomp and circumstance.

The only time we Browns' fans are optimistic the whole season. This year we get squashed at 4 and 26 unless they fuck that up too and trade away those picks (which I don't put past them). I am hoping receiver then QB this round... but would be ok with OL and QB.

I can't wait for Jerrah to draft Jonny Footbal

My money's on him failing in Cleveland.

Well, let's not forget the last time you had two first round picks  :why_so_serious:

(http://i.imgur.com/R32QGPD.jpg)

NFL network's coverage is terrible, but I can't stand Berman, so I have no choice.

It is the 5min before the draft that is fine. Once picking starts, that's when the Browns fans go back to sulking.

Well, the Browns got a ton of value out of that trade, so perhaps things are turning up. Next three picks (Bucs, Vikes, Browns) should be interesting. Could see JFF and Teddy go here.

Trade up one spot for Gilbert, was he likely to go the the vikes? A solid pick, just not the one I would have expected.

Really happy with the Evans pick for the Bucs.  Two 6' 5" starting wideouts? Yes, please.  McCown has at least shown he can be decent throwing jump balls to really tall receivers.  :awesome_for_real:

None of the picks so far seem notably bad, some seem to have a lot of upside. No QB needs in the next few teams, so... JFF to Dallas?

The Gilbert pick was out of left field, but a great pick. After that, my draft thinking just went off the rails. Lions picking up a TE is not bad, but not expected either...and Barr to the Vikings was a little odd as well.

If that actually happens, I may give up.

Most of the mocks I saw had Lions taking Ebron. Gilbert was a surprise, but I think they get a great player there.

Here we go....  :awesome_for_real:

COME ON JERRAH, BELIEVE!

Johnny Football has a sad.

aaaand Cowboy fans breathe again

I almost threw up.

Will he fall below the "Rodgers Line"?

The NFL isn't dumb. The kid is small, the league is much faster, and every QB with legs has been destroyed if he doesn't cut that shit out. Manziel's greatest weapon is a liability in the league.

That and the best A&M offensive player went first. Evans bailed Johnny's ass out so many times it wasn't funny. Manziel gets half the hype without Evans heroics.

Please no.

Chip Kelly will probably pick him up because Chip Kelly is stupid.

As a Dallas fan, I support that.

Good god Gruden is insufferable. Between him, Kiper and Boomer that team is a cornucopia of crap.

LOL @ Cleveland.

Fuck.

Whew. Well, I'm sure AZ will draft Carr now. He'll be awful here.

His mom has quite the rack.

Factory of Sadness has it's spokes model!

The one thing he'll have going for him in Cleveland is Josh Gordon.  On the other hand he'll have Kyle Shanahan so he'll be murdered before they make it to the halfway point of the season.

I'm just glad all those rumors of the Bucs being interested in him turned out to be the typical pre-draft BS.

I already don't like Manziel.

Half the problem is just the shameless pimping that ESPN does for such players. He is the "it player" so all you get is coverage of them ad nauseum. He is probably no less of a jackhole than 90 percent of the guys drafted in the first round its just we don't get overexposed to those guys.

I TOLD YE

I feel like we need to mention Blake Bortles going to the Jaguars at number three.  You already have a failed QB named Blaine Gabbert.  And now you pick a dude named Blake Bortles.  It isn't possible to be a successful QB with a name like that.  Financial Advisor?  Probably.  Car Salesman?  Sure.

I am mostly kidding.  Only not really.

It's freaking Jacksonville.  Anyone not named Cletus is pretty much in the same boat.

Watched about 5 minutes of the draft. I just didn't care this year. I think I am still in my refractory period from the Super Bowl  :grin:

I'm amazed at the psyche of the "draft party" attendee. I mean, the way they have now stretched this fucking thing out you go to a some big event for something that, relative to your team, lasts all of 3 minutes.  Do you just hope to get on TV with your fucked up wig and facepaint or something? An opportunity to get shitfaced with a bunch of other dumb fucks dressed in the same color?  It baffles me.

It's the same kind of thing as Gabbert, too. He's a big white guy who's shaped right, draft him!

People like football a lot. This is their football fix.

I used to think this was going to be an awesome year for QBs.. and then Bortles goes third. Project "giant oaf in Hicksville" gets round 3. Manziel will get murdered.  And I liked Bridgewater until his pro-day where he threw ducks while being rushed by nobody.  I hope that was like stomach flu or something, because it looked like Peyton Manning with hand tremor.  Carr is a Carr and will suck.  

Arizona drafts some guy I never heard of from WSU, and I watch just about every PAC 12 game.  His highlight reel seems jam packed with him blowing up guys that just turned around after catching a pass.  At least we didn't get Carr.. yet.

Supposedly Bridgewater decided to not wear a glove and he always wears a glove and blah blah blah. Not sure I buy that as an excuse really.

Lions don't draft defense in 1st round, these guys are a broken record.

After passing out after Dallas' pick, I woke up at 1:30a and noticed I missed the fun.

I am OK with the Johnny pick. I hope Shanny learned his lesson from RGIII and actually coaches Manziel to become more pocket friendly. I think a pocket passer with the Browns O-line would get killed a lot quicker than an escape artist. That is not to say Manziel will last 16 games if he gets squirrelly on every down, but I liked him more than Teddy or Carr or Garapolololol... and really, the 22nd pick? For the Browns, that pick is a throwaway pick anyway. No risk there since that slot never turns out right anyway. Now they need to grab Lee and a guard and they might actually get 6 wins - next year (considering that murderous schedule this year).

Well that sure was a positive spin on it.  Another way to look at it is to say that the Browns have drafted another QB who is going to suck, and that they don't understand the opportunity costs of making bad picks.  Just like the Raiders.

Really, though, there is not quarterback in this draft that would be good enough to save Cleveland from themselves.  There are probably only two or three current pro QBs that could make that team into something close to a winner.  Might as well try Manziel.  At least we'll be talking about them for a while, if nothing else.

The best part is that Manziel, a guy who probably needed to be in a division without solid defenses, is going to a division with Baltimore, Pittsburgh, and Cincy. It's a defensive meatgrinder.

<-- Browns fan. We are the essential spindoctors for our team. I bolded the important part of this whole thing.  :awesome_for_real:

More spin though: If they pick up a guard and another key receiver that can actually catch the ball, the offense is not a disaster. Assuming Gordon doesn't do something stupid this summer, he is a number 1 receiver, Cameron is pretty good, Benjamin is a burner but small so pretty decent slot guy and returner, Tate, if he can hold up is serviceable RB, and we still have Thomas and Mack on the line. The defense is also not as bad as everyone seems to think and now that they have more than one corner who can play, the loss of Ward was kinda dumb but salvaged with Whitner. Hopefully with the head coach, they can get the line and linebackers working properly.

Over/Under to the first time Manziel misses a game? I'm going to say 8.5

I wouldn't at all mind seeing Manziel succeed a bit.  God knows the fans in Cleveland deserve a little bit of hope.

Also, he has a better name for a QB than Blake Borkles.  Bortholes.  Bordherds.  Whatever.

I actually think Bortles is going to be a big success in JAX. They are building a functional team down there while nobody notices.

I completely fucking forgot the draft was last night, so didn't watch any of it. I blame the NFL for moving it into the middle of May, which is the nut-cutting time in all the European football leagues, as well as the only time I watch the Cubs before they are mathematically eliminated.

Manziel to Cleveland... really? The 29-year old pocket passer didn't work, let's draft the partying hype machine that ESPN loves to talk about despite the probability he will be a complete fucking disaster instead. Good 'un. The Browns hierarchy is the Herman Fucking Cain of the NFL - one long performance art joke on their fan base.

The Laughter Dick from Alabama goes to the Packers. I'm happy with that. They needed a defensive playmaker and he was the second best safety available. Maybe they'll be able to give up less than 30 points a game this year.

The Browns really can't get out of their own way:

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-shutdown-corner/johnny-manziel-drafted-after-browns-owner-consulted-homeless-man--espn-reports-032005838.html

My brain had blotted out the name Ha Ha Clinton-Dix so I was once again boggled that someone with that name exists.

I only watched some of the draft since I'm out of sleep medicine.  I assume JAX is picking a Central Florida QB so that they can sell tickets while slowly building a team.

If its not the NFC west, its not a defensive meatgrinder.

I just think its fitting that after 21 picks followed by 21 pictures of Manziel being sad for not being picked he goes to the factory of sadness.

This is true. Pittsburgh defense is old now. Dick LeBeau can only do so much. Ravens are good, but not as good as when Suggs and Lewis were there. As for the Bengals... well, fuck Cincinnati.

The Rams DL looks a bit daunting now. Glad Donald went there - nice guy actually.

If he played for the Cougars on defense he definitely got plenty of reps at least  :grin:

JFF should be a plus for the Browns, since that team is stacked with talent, and seems to be hamstrung more by mad coaching and management than actual player skill, unlike Oakland where there's a lack of player skill and bad coaching/management. That division should be fun to watch this year with an energised Browns, and the Ravens and Bengals who have a lot of youth talent and seem set to get even better this year.

In other Miami Dolphins related news, Mike 'Free Hernandez' Pouncey jokes about hazing the new OL recruit on twitter (http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/05/09/mike-pouncey-just-had-to-go-there-didnt-he/)...  :uhrr:

Also: Stevie Johnson to the 49ers for a conditional 4th round pick in 2014 (http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap2000000348691/article/stevie-johnson-traded-to-san-francisco-49ers)

I have literally no idea what the Bills are doing, and if I was a fan I'd be pissed. They seem to be pinning an awful lot on Sammy Watkins being great straight out of the box (which he could be, although most wideouts take a year or two to adjust to the NFL).

Well Buffalo was not hurting for receiving - the OL killed what could have been a productive receiving corp. Still not sure why they got Sammy and didn't go with Matthews. But with Watkins, Johnson became expendable.

I'm not entirely sure he was expendable. No matter how good the potential on a 1st rounder is, I wouldn't trust a wideout in his first year to do better than a proven talent like Johnson. This is a big pickup for the Niners though. They really needed a big play guy and he is it. He'll also likely have less injury issues in Frisco. He should certainly make Crabtree and Vernon Davis better.

Drafting WR's high in the first roud, or frankly in the first round at all is probably a waste.

Stevie Johnson wasn't the most dynamic wideout, but he was very reliable. Buffalo's WR corps now looks like Watkins, Marquise Goodwin, and Mike Williams. All have some upside, but the first two are still very raw, and with a second-year quarterback, having more experienced wideouts would seem to be a plus; especially in a division that features Revis. 49ers got a steal there I think.

Keep in mind that Johnson has a pretty huge cap number.

I dunno. Andre Johnson, Julio Jones, Calvin Johnson, Larry Fitzgerald, all top 10 picks, and I didn't go back very far looking. Sure, there are plenty of bad ones too, but waste is juuuuust a bit strong.

I was sure Buffalo was trading up to get Matthews. Then they took a WR, and had to spent a first round pick to get him.  :why_so_serious:

That's yet to work out well. Ask the Atlanta Falcons, or the Detroit Lions.

http://espn.go.com/espn/otl/story/_/id/10908822/josh-gordon-cleveland-browns-faces-season-long-suspension

I am laughing and crying at the same time.  :uhrr:

 :oh_i_see:

By far the worst move of the first round was spending 2 first rounders on a wideout. So the Bills are currently beating the Raiders/Browns for the being dumb and sad sweepstakes.

Then the Bills get fleeced by the 49ers. I honestly don't understand how as a GM you ever make a trade with the truly elite successful orgs in the NFL. Like if the Pats, Ravens, 49ers etc. come knocking to make a trade shouldn't you assume they are about to out maneuver you?

The trade is far from the worst, but its so inconsistent with the crazy trade up they did in round one. It was a total win now move and now they are trading proven assets for something next year? You know what would be awesome next year? A first round pick.

If I had to play my career in Cleveland, I'd probably be high all the time, too.

So the draft is over and the Packers end up drafting S, 3 WR, another DB, TE, C, DT and OLB. Three wideouts? The fuck? Including a second rounder? I realize they lost James Jones but with Boykin coming on late when Nelson, Cobb and Jones were all out, I'm not sure they needed 3 new wideouts in addition to the guys they have on the practice squad. Especially when they have such huge defensive needs. And they only got the one TE when they really don't know what they have in that position.

But at least we ain't Cleveland or Buffalo.  :why_so_serious:

And Cleveland knowing Gordon screwed the pooch drafted 0 WRs. I guess they just said fuck it and ran with the draft planning board rather than adjust - which is mostly how the offense was run the last three years.

Well, apparently Green Bay has lots of wideouts to spare now.  :why_so_serious:

Michael Sam goes to the Rams.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/nfl/news/20140510/michael-sam-st-louis-rams-2014-nfl-draft/

Good on them... I don't see him getting off the practice squad though given their defensive line and that division. But who knows.

Raiders had a darn good draft.  It is my pick as the best draft, even if it was not flashy. 

Mack would have been a #1 overall in many drafts - and Raiders took him at 5.  Carr is a very solid QB prospect... there was a reason he kept creeping up boards.  Jackson was the best guard in the draft in my books and they took him in the mid-third.  I'm not too excited about DT Ellis, but it wasn't a bad pick... just nowhere as good as their other 4th round pick, CB McGill - who needs to learn a bit, but has all the physical traits you want to see these days.  They did not fill all their holes (which would have required about 20 picks in the first 4 rounds), but they did an excellent job. 

Yeah and?

Its the Raiders. They will fuck this up somehow. Also the last place I want someone like Mack to go is a place with awful locker and organization culture. The knock on him from everyone is that he took off plays/games in the MAC when he could have dominated with ease every out. You could argue if you like Manziel that the Browns draft was great. So what? Those two franchises are the benchmarks for fuckery and will be until someone takes the crown away or they actually start looking like nfl football teams for entire 16 game seasons multiple years in a row.

Lions picks

Elbron-Who needs another TE?  Pettigrew really improved last year.  First pick wasted.
Van Noy-OK finally the defense is being helped.  Need a standout LB.  Approved.
Swanson-Another offensive guy.  Big woop.  Draft Raiola's replacement next year or further down.  Mistake.
Lawson-OK another defensive guy, a CB.  But he's 'small and scrappy'.  Great.
Webster-Might be a steal of a pick of a DE.  Approved.
Jones-Well it just wouldn't be a draft if the Lions didn't pick a fucking WR. 
Freese-LOL troll pick.  The Lions now have three kickers.

Grade C+
The Lions seem to think no one is going to pass on them.

Dallas picks: bear in mind our defense was the worst in the league.

Zach Martin - OT
Demarcus Lawrence - DE
Anthony Hitchens - LB
Devin Street - WR
Ben Gardener - DE
Will Smith - LB
Ahmad Dixon - SS
Ken Bishop - DT
Terrence Mitchell - CB

I would be very on board with this draft if it weren't for Zach Martin. Why we decided to spend the first rounder on an OT, I'm not sure. I was extremely happy they didn't take Manziel, but it's not a help to the defense. CJ Mosely would be a huge help to the defense. It's a risky move to trade up for Lawrence, but they had to after taking Martin. They wouldn't have had to take Hitchens if they'd taken Mosely. The draft seems odd in my mind, but it's Jerry.

The crown was on Al's head when he died.  There are new people in town that handled the salary cap hell well and had a good draft.  They have a few years of rebuilding to do to get good, but I think they took good steps.  We'll see what those steps look like in 2 years...

I'm not so sure the Derek Carr pick was a good fit for the Raiders. If he's like his brother, he will fold under the pressure his shitty offensive line will allow, and his mentor will be... Matt Schaub, a QB whose confidence is just fucking shattered. Of course, I'm not sure any QB could be helped in their situation but... LOLRAIDERS.

I read a quote the day before the draft describing the Raiders in 'win now' mode, and I think that's probably the barmy truth. The raiders need to swallow their pride, take a leaf out of Jacksonville's book, and accept the shitty years the team needs to rebuild. The Patriots and Broncos are allowed to be in 'win now' mode since they're on the clock with future hall of fame QBs on the brink of retirement; I really can't think of many other teams where they have a window that would justify mortgaging away the future for short term success, in fact I don't see 'win now' as a trait of successful franchises, and as long as the raiders keep chasing wins without doing any actual team building they're just going to keep failing. You can't compare them to the Browns, the browns actually have a roster stacked with talent that has been acquired somehow that has been badly mismanaged and just lacks a franchise QB. The raiders seem to have needs everywhere, even after the draft.

Want to guess which position is the safest to draft if you're a team with a conservative drafting style?  Yep... the WR.  If they suck, you can always add them to special teams.

Green Bay is also the unofficial WR factory for the rest of the NFL for the last like 20 years. Guys no one has heard of go to Green Bay, get a spot on the roster and have a break out season due to someone else's injury or playing in a second or third WR spot and they are snatched up in free agency.

There was a really nice article on ESPN a week or two ago about how Carr was being mentored by his brother with an eye on avoiding the kind of mistakes that his brother made the first time around.

But is his hair as sexy? This is important.

Unless he has a "all defensive players miss you" enchantment he can cast on his brother, Derek is likely to suffer the same case of "defensiveuslineus upus his assus." Because he's going to get hit... a lot. Not as much as Manziel mind you, but that just means he'll get more concussions and less shredded ACL's.

Hey now... if Manziel attempts to use the pocket, it should be there for him with Thomas, Mack, and now this mauler Bitonio. But yeah, if he gets happy feet every drop back, he'll have problems. I don't see it given that line and Shanny's previous experience with RGIII. It is Cleveland though, so it is probably best to err on the side of Manziel dying early.

(http://www.thebuckeyebattlecry.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/magicmanziel.gif)

 :oh_i_see:

Brandon Marshall signs a $30m extension, immediately donates $1m of it to promote mental health awareness (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ys6rA5F5Xo)

I'm so glad this guy is a Bear. Not only is he one of the best WRs in the league, he seems to have found a genuine purpose that will help others. Looking at the numbers it seems that he wasn't kidding when he valued being in Chicago, in the stable environment they have provided for him, with people he likes, over going for the big money. Looks like he's set on retiring a Bear at the end of his contract too. He's definitely a different guy from the one who came to us from Miami.

Some players grow up. Glad he did.

He also got help for his BPD.

That would be a big part of it then.

I think that's the crux of it, and it's why he's become such a vocal spokesman for mental health issues.

Well this is interesting:

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/11102096/us-patent-office-cancels-washington-redskins-trademark

I don't think I had ever heard about the prior case in 1999.

Sounds like it will get tossed again on appeal.

Did you read the judge's remarks (I did not see them in the ESPN article, the one I read this morning from a facebook link had it)? They were about as clear about the reasoning behind the strikedown as you could possibly be. I don't think Snyder is going to win the appeals.

I disagree. They failed once to get this done in a prior case, and I see no difference in the two cases except time.

And frankly, I don't want them to throw out the name. In the case of the football team, if you're offended by the name, you have every right as an American to boycott their merchandize, games, etc. Similarly if you're offended by music that uses racial slurs, you have the right to not buy that music. At its core, the Redskins are an entertainment organization. Nothing more.

The last one was supposedly some weird technicality based on the age of the people bringing the suit. I don't think that will fly today.

Yes, they said the complaint filers waited too long after they turned 18 to file, thus they threw out the case. This was the first time that they actually reviewed it on the merits of the arguments.

That prior case was also 15 years ago and just about every landscape legal or otherwise has changed since then.

I don't think this one will fly either. It was a divided ruling even with the judges, in which the dissenting judge noted that the case arguments were the same as the prior case. Technicalities aside, I think the precedent of forcing trademarks due to pressure like this is a bad thing. You can get a private company to make changes based on boycotts, contacting advertisers, and going about it by making a change to their wallet. This is a workaround by people who don't have enough support to actually do those things. Also, even the Native American community is divided on this issue.

But even if the case gets upheld, the Redskins don't have to change the name. They could fight the merchandizing issues in other ways.

EDIT: Also from the ruling itself, the reason the last case was thrown out was two-fold "The TTAB’s finding of disparagement is not supported by substantial evidence and must be reversed. The decision should also be reversed because the doctrine of laches precludes consideration of the case."

Even if the case isn't supported due to the minority laches issue, which the case document today addresses, they didn't address the issue of substantial evidence which created the first issue. I don't think it's as easy to prove that the term, the logo, the usage, the history of the word, the etymology of the word falls under the bounds of the law.

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2014/06/19/heres-why-an-intellectual-property-lawyer-says-the-redskins-losing-trademark-registration-might-only-matter-a-little-or-not-at-all/

Here's a helpful article with references from a trademark lawyer on the case, with some analysis.

So by that logic if there was a team named the N Words, you'd be fine with that, because after all, people can boycott the team.

No, I think Dan Synder is being even more of a cockknob than he normally is with this one. There's literally no good reason NOT to change the name. Branding? Please, the NFL is the second most publicized sport in the fucking world, and the most publicized sport in the US. Within one month of a name change, the only people who wouldn't know about the name change would be the fucking OJ Simpson Jury. The amount of good, free publicity behind a name change would be a BOON for that team, and if his marketers did it right, the merch sales alone would make up for any loss they might have had because of the change. There is no reason to keep the name since all that accomplishes now is pissing people off and getting lots of bad press - all to keep the name of a team that the owner didn't name. It's obstinate and stupid.

Yes, actually. NWA the rap group is trademarked. Should we toss that out as well?

Bad press is still press. The longer he keeps them in the news, the more eyes he has the attention of - because that team of his certainly doesn't elicit any looks, at least not after last year's exposure of RGIII as pedestrian. So ride it out as long as you can then change it to something else and ride that out a little longer before we get back to having the team being nothing more than the opponent of another fan's team.

Surely you can see the difference between an oppressed minority group grabbing hold of their derogatory name as a means of wrenching power from the system that oppressed them and a rich ass white oligarch holding onto the oppressive name his race has used to denigrate another race? I mean, I know you're not that fucking dense so you surely are just trying to make a really bad argument about two completely different types of fruit.

Of course I see the difference, but the people behind this kind of lawsuit don't. You're also forgetting that this kind of thing leads to other groups trying similar things. If a private trademark like this can be found offensive well after the fact, and a prior case, you're opening a lot of doors you don't want opened.

Don't misinterpret my intent here. I don't care if Dan Snyder decides to change the name on his own, or from pressure inside the NFL or sponsors. I do care about the courts forcing him to do it almost what, 60 years after the fact? You can handwave branding all you want, but those brands are gigantic dollars in goodwill on company books. Those merchandizing rights are a major part of the business. I don't like the idea of the courts deciding the issue, because I don't like the precedent in other forms of entertainment.

You are talking about lawyers arguing a case. There is no morality to be found here, just the semantics of the case. This will set precedent in the courts and may have unintended consequences down the road is all I am getting from the monkey... not support for keeping the name.

And you know there are people who take great offense to the name NWA.  :awesome_for_real:

The problem with that argument is that the NFL is so insanely well-marketed that those merchandising rights don't lose one fucking dime of value by the change of a mascot name. In some cases, that value goes UP by a change in name (see the Tampa Bay Devil Rays switch to the Rays).

They ruled similarly in 1999, but it was overturned. I don't have anything to cite, but I have heard they have done this sort of thing in the past.

I would think a successful sports team could make quite a bit of money from a rebrand through the sale of new merchandise, at least in the short term.  The constant uniform changes and 'throwback' uniforms and whatnot in football are purely to sell more merchandise.  Plus, Washington should be able to come up with a new Native American themed name that's not offensive so they can keep their current logo and colors if they so choose.  Snyder is basically just being a dick because he likes the name and doesn't want to change it despite it being a racial slur.

And despite the fact he's being a dick, I believe that's well within his rights as the owner.

Times change, dude. I have absolutely no problem with the courts going "wait a second, that is bullshit." You know, like they do relatively often about other shit we're marginally more enlightened about.

When it's about a public issue? Absolutely. Times do change and people rely on courts to protect their public rights in the current environment.

But see, here's the thing. This is a private entertainment industry. This isn't about regulation, or employee discrimination, or whatever. It's about a naming trademark issue. When an issue is obvious, companies bow under pressure. They don't want to upset customers, they don't want to alienate vendors, etc. In this case, none of that has happened. You need to allow society to follow that model and make the change.

The courts are NOT the venue for this kind of thing. And effectively the trademark courts can't actually make him change anything. They don't have that power.

Everyone who has had the power to make this right has shown they can't have nice things. Fuck 'em.

Sorry but that's not how this country works. Freedoms cut a lot of ways, but you would hate life if they didn't.

bawwwww why won't you tolerate the intolerance that also makes a fuckload of money waaaaaah

More seriously, this IS a public issue. The NFL does not operate in a vaccuum. Businesses are not little kingdoms that can do whatever the fuck they want because of magical capitalism fairies. I do not at all mind courts deciding "you had plenty of time to not be assholes, but you're still assholes, so fuck you." Your handwringing about FREEEEEEDOM is not going to change that.

Unfortunately, the NFL is a goddamn billionaires club with a monopoly exemption that lets them do this about a lot of things. Which is why Snyder can do this shit without real consequence. Also, he can do it because Native Americans have so little actual voice in government or society that the same kind of racial insult as the N Word can get used casually by a cockbag team owner and normally rational people defend his right to do so as "freedom."

It's a public issue in the sense you can stop supporting it. Other than that, you're dead wrong.

The NFL has special tax-exempt status -- it's explicitly written into our tax code. This is a public issue.

You're arguing for US Courts changing something over the emotional response to a word (which they don't really have the power to do anyway, they can only revoke a trademark if at all), then in the same sentence accusing people for suggesting that it's not within the purview of the courts to decide the issue are irrational.

Just pointing that out.

The NFL has it. The team doesn't. The issue is with the team, not the NFL.

It's a trademark case, not a free speech case. Our "freedoms" don't really enter into the discussion.

And in fact, nobody on the anti-Redskin-name side is arguing for the courts to change something in this case. The Patent Office has made a ruling based on their own rules. It's the Redskins who are asking the courts to change something.

The team did ask for $250 million from VA for building a stadium.

The patent office is made up of official judges in this case to revoke an existed trademark. It's a court, whether you call it one or not. The appeal would be to another court to deny the ruling of the petition as valid. If nothing changed, the trademark would still be valid.

But even if that's the case, you're right it's a trademark case. At best this just makes the Redskins fall back on other laws to enforce their rights, complicating the use. It does nothing to change the name of the team.

Which the community had a perfect opportunity to deny due to the usage of the name. That would have been an outstanding way to put pressure on Snyder for the change.

In this I agree with you.

Which is part of the reason I am like "fuck yeah, use the shit out of the courts as much as you can!"

No they don't. The only tax exempt portion is the pass through revenue portion, which is standard to many organizations.

There is also no monopoly exemption (See the XFL trying and also the NCAA exists right now as competition to the NFL)

This article would seem to disagree:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/10/how-the-nfl-fleeces-taxpayers/309448/

The dues are tax-exempt too:

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/9342479/examining-nfl-tax-exempt-status-challenged-us-senator-tom-coburn

Yeah the NFL is tax exempt, the teams aren't. It's a weird situation, and one that abuses our current NFP rules (which I hope to see revised in my lifetime).

When you want to trademark or copyright anything you are asking the government to protect your intellectual property.  Nowhere does it say that they must do this.  It can't be said enough but you can't just trademark something because you want to, you have to go and ask the nice government person and they can and often do, say no.  You can be denied trademark for a lot of reasons, having a racial slur in the name is one of them.  I would bet you that NWA did not trademark what we know the full name of the band, they likely only trademarked "NWA"

This stupid argument that it's somehow freedom of speech has to stop. 

Trolly reply:

So?

Longer reply, since you probably remember my tax background and realize that the trolly reply is massive bait to bury you under a tax policy wall_of_text:

The dues are tax-exempt because they are for a suitable tax-exempt purpose under IRC.  It doesn't matter if they were taxable, as of 2013 the non-profit NFL corporation had a Net Asset (same thing as retained earnings/retained deficit in a for-profit) balance of -304 million dollars. (Useful information for all:  Non-profit tax filings are a matter of public record.  You can go to guidestar.org, set up a free account in under a minute, and then look up any Charity or non-profit tax return you desire.)

That is, to use GAAP for-profit terminology they had accumulated losses of $304 million.  They would have never, ever paid corporate income taxes even if they were a for-profit entity.  The only real taxes the government (federal, state or local) is missing out on is sales tax on certain purchases and some other minor taxes and fees on goods/services purchased for the tax-exempt purpose.

In actuality, forcing the league to be a for-profit would probably generate tax savings for the franchises as the franchises would act to utilize the $304 million in loss carryforwards to generate tax advantages, assuming a 35% Federal rate and using a guesstimate of 5% for the blended State corporate tax rate, that size loss would generate $100-120 million in tax offsets.

Summary:

- Stupid Congressman using silly rhetoric about corporate welfare/handouts to millionaires to establish bona fides as man of the people, since Tax Is Hard, and no one will actually check to see if the League is actually deriving tax benefits from the arrangement.

I only made it a page into that article because what I saw was nonsensical.  The author made an apples to oranges comparison in like the first paragraph.  If you are going to compare subsidies to stadium construction you should compare them to expected return from increased tax receipts due to tourism/boosts to the local economy from additional spending, and not to the Franchises charitable donations.

Are their plenty of municipalities that probably overpaid stadium subsidies based on the expected benefits to tourism/etc. dollars?  Yes, undoubtedly.  You then get into, though, the fact that many taxpayers are more than willing to throw money at a franchise to keep it in return for the status of having a professional sports franchise.  Personally, I say fuck pro sports, let them foot the bill...  but I'm probably in the vast minority and I live in New York, so those franchises are going to stay in one of the biggest media markets in the country.

I have no idea if the author tried to make that point because the shrill tone and manipulation of data in the first page indicated to me that the article wasn't worth reading.

The part about taxes was in the middle, roughly.

I skim read some more.  It's basically the same bullshit I responded to above, with the "it's a non-profit so they hide from taxxxxxeeeeesss!"  The League (as in the non-profit organization) operates at a loss so it wouldn't have paid taxes even if it was a for-profit.

What makes that article worse?  The author goes out of his way to mention that the Form 990s are public information, so he looked at the salaries....  but somehow the author didn't look at the earnings or the Net Assets (Deficit) that would show explicitly that the League doesn't make a profit.

Put it another way, the NBA recently dissolved their League so as to get out of the non-profit reporting requirements.  If the NBA really generated that much tax benefit from a non-profit organization running the League-wide administrative overhead, why the fuck would they do that?  The obvious answer is they wouldn't.  Honestly, it's really really easy to set up and run the same model with an LP (Limited partnership) or a for-profit corporation in the same role and not generate any tax disadvantage.  There would be some increased accounting and finance fees because you would have to better tax plan to around a zero taxable income, but I wouldn't complain.  :grin:


Also, the author harps on the salaries.  Yah, Goddell's is high.... but that is all Ordinary Income for his tax reporting purposes so he is paying the max Federal rate plus Medicare on it.  And it isn't outrageous compared to CEO salaries of comparably sized business in other industries.  Yah, CEO compensation is too high but that is a different topic.  Finally, that size salary might actually be necessary to assure impartiality considering the sizes of the Franchises he's dealing with.  Pay the Commissioner $100,000 and there would definitely be a concern that some of the bigger franchises could buy him off with a cushy post-retirement position.


The monopoly discussion is also  :uhrr:.  For Federal anti-trust purposes, it almost certainly isn't a monopoly.  Both college football and other professional sports would more than likely qualify as direct competition...  and since the bulk of the League's money comes from broadcasting rights, they could probably argue they compete against televised entertainment in general. 

Also, there doesn't seem to be any mechanism for the League to exercise monopolistic power to control prices beyond what a normal supply/demand curve would generate, ie I don't see how they could generate monopolistic rents. 


Again, the stadium subsidies and tax breaks for new stadiums?  I think those are legitimate complaints, and I'm all for paring that down to "normal" levels of economic development type of assistance any other new/expanding business usually gets (ie, government backed bonds at a slightly better than market rate, or some temporary property tax relief.)  But again, the issue is that voters in marginal cities for a franchise are willing to let their elected officials keep throwing money at a franchise to stick around as a status symbol rather than try to hardball the franchise and potentially lose it.  As pointed out in the article, the teams receiving the fewest benefits (NY, NY, NE) are also the teams in the biggest media markets for football so they could have the screws put to them and probably stay.

The author severely hurts his article by lacing it with lies, bad research, ignorance, and shrill whining.

Kiko Alonso out for the season with a torn ACL.

I'm not a Bills fan, but damn... that team can't catch a break.

NFL Direct Ticket without a DirecTv sub! YES!

http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/07/16/nfl-sunday-ticket-coming-to-ios-mac-for-2014-season-with-no-satellite-subscription-needed

I got this last year buy purchasing a special Madden edition.  I am going to pay a lot more this year for it, but, goddamn I am so close to ditching cable TV now.

Is there a legitimate reason left to still have that team in Buffalo?

It's a close jumping off point to move a franchise into Canada?

Just an opinion piece  but I have a feeling he's on the right track  (http://www.boston.com/sports/columnists/wilbur/2014/07/hitting_the_ignore_button_on_the_nfls_call_to_lond.html?p1=Topopage:Carousel_sub_headline)

The quest for continual growth will get them in trouble.

I think the London thing is just the tip of the iceburg. They are already cramming Thursday night games down our throats this year. Those were getting garbage ratings on the NFL network. That's why they sold them to CBS. I have no idea why the hell, AFTER it's already been proven that MNF is a low-end product, that anybody would want Thursdays. I certainly don't give a shit about Jacksonville playing the Giants if there's a remotely interesting college game on Thursdays right now.

Having an NFL team wouldn't work in Toronto, either.  They can barely get anyone in for the Toronto Argonaut CFL games.  The Argos won the Grey Cup in 2012 and yet in 2013 no one was showing up for their games.  Toronto is not a sports town, its not even a hockey town.  Its a Leaf town.  If its not the Maple Leafs, Toronto doesn't care.

The NFL in London would be a fucking disaster and that article is completely spot on. Five years and the novelty that gets Londoners out to see those games now would be gone, especially since NOBODY is going to want to play there. Why would a #1 pick franchise QB want to play in London? Travel times would be fucking awful. Free agents would have to be paid above the market to come there. That's not even to mention the whole kerfluffle about having different labor laws to deal with that might make the CBA null and void for the London team.

The NFL has gotten seriously greedy. 18 games? More playoff games? The draft in May? More Thursday night games? Fuck all that noise. It's too much.

The CFL plays an 18 game season but with only 2 pre-season games (this season it was only 1 due to a delayed CBA between the league and player's union).  If the NFL drops 2 of their 4 pre-season games, an 18 game season is doable.  I doubt that will happen, though, because they make a shit load of money off the pre-season so prepare for more injuries and shorter careers.

I hope they do it all. 18 game seasons. Team in London. Games on every night of the week. Then watch them blow the fuck up.

It's going to happen though, there's too much potential money for the NFL to ignore. I don't get y'all american's stance that London is some sort of third-world purgatory either, it's bigger than every US city bar New York and has more professional sports franchises than any other city in the world (I think). It's a far nicer place to live than Cleveland, or Detroit, or Kansas City, or most of the places with NFL franchises and it has better weather too. It's got more entertainment and services for rich sports players than most cities with an NFL franchise. Why would a #1 pick want to come to London? Because they want to play fucking football that's why. As far as support goes, I think y'all underestimate the scale of interest in the NFL that goes beyond mere novelty. There are tens of thousands of dedicated football fans here in the UK, and many more in countries across Europe, many who would happily fly to London to watch a game or two. Football is played as a sport here - not well admittedly - but there are thousands of university students and amateurs playing football every year here in Europe, and they'd love to see the real thing.

The other argument I hear a lot is 'people in London already support a team, they wouldn't want to switch allegiances' but this is true of anywhere the NFL might expand that's not Lesotho or Bhutan. If you're interested in the NFL but live in LA, or Toronto, or Mexico City, or Austin, or San Antonio, or wherever, you probably already support a team, but odds are you'd swing behind the local team in time. This isn't an issue unique to London or anywhere.

I'm not going to argue that it'd be a resounding success, because there are a shit ton of logistical complexities - like you say, stuff like contract legalities and finances are going to be tricky to figure out - but I really don't buy into the whole "no player will ever want to move there, it's all doomed" mystique. Unless NFL players are uniquely precious, they'll go where they need to for work. Players in EVERY other sport already do this, and do it fine. Often moving to countries where they don't even speak the local language or whatever. To imply that players won't want to play, won't want to get paid, and won't want a shot at championships simply because they're based in London is daft.

In more pertinent football related news, let's all take a moment to look at the Bill's offseason so far and pity them:

• Jairus Byrd leaves to go to the Saints
• Much loved and respected team owner dies
• Team gets sold
• Half the coaching staff leaves to go to Cleveland
• Team trades away a ton of first round picks for a rookie WR
• Team trades away one of the best value #1 receivers in the league for below-value
• Jim Kelly gets cancer
• Kiko Alonso tears ACL, out for the season
• Marcel Dareus arrested for possession of synthetic pot
• Marcel Dareus arrested for drag racing after he crashes his car into a tree
• Starting Left Tackle out of camp due to illness
• Replacement left tackle out of camp on day one with a hip injury

so... *pours one out*

The big issue with London is the travel times and timezone shift, a minimum 8-10 hour flight each way is almost 3 times as long as the longest current possible flight (Miami to Seattle) and the 5-8 hour shift in clock are going to hamper the performance of both the team in London, and the teams that travel to play there.

I'll grant that, absolutely, although you're a bit high on some of the flight times. Most of the flights between London and East Coast locations (NY, DC, Pittsburgh, Buffalo, Baltimore) are between 6-7.5 hours.

It'll need a lot of planning to make it work, but it's far from impossible.

How would playing there work in relation to needing a Visa? I assume players playing for the London team would need work Visas while they are over there and those are not easy nor quick to get. How would a player who gets traded to the London team clear that issue in a timely manner to be able to play immediately after being traded?

Lets also not forget cost of living. The fact that a 22 year old kid from Texas may have troubles living in a FOREIGN country.
And the whole 'London is full of NFL fans!' . please for the love of god just stop, its not. And yes it does matter who they are fans of. An interesting fact, when the Raiders and Rams left LA , TV ratings for the NFL in LA went UP.

You know maybe the EPL should put a team in NY! Excellent idea! Lots of soccer fans there!

But again, please go ahead, put a team there, water down your product more.

In the instance you are talking about though, players moving to foreign countries aren't playing games where the travel involves international travel for half of their games. They are playing within local leagues. 8 games out of 16 would involve the London team making a seriously draining cross-continental flight then play a game and come back the very next day. Footballers who play for their international teams already take extra time after things like the World Cup for this reason alone.

I'd be all for the NFL doing another NFL Europe/World League experiment, so long as the travel times weren't stupid.

If a player is getting a $14M a year contract in Dallas, or a $15M a year offer in London, I don't know why their agent would take the extra million for the hassle and cost of living, taxes, etc.

Because the agent gets paid a percent of gross?

Yeah, but the key word there was "hassle".

I expect there would be grounds for calling these players in London formal expatriates, thereby getting around much of the tax issue and the increased burdend on the player.  Other companies do this all the time, no reason the NFL can't do it as well.

K9 - it is a well-known fact in American sports that players who are elite, or who want to be elite, very much tend to want to play in the Big Markets.  NY, Chicago, LA, East Coast in general, etc.  While you are correct that London would qualify as a big market by most definitions of the word, they would not be within the American market, and that makes all the difference.  Being in NY, for example, means you are in the market that the entire country watches.  Because all fucking eyes are on New York (and it is nauseating as fuck for the rest of the country).  So the player in question is exposed to 300 million people, and all that that entails (read: endorsements).  The same would not be true playing in London.  While the lifestyle for the player would be better than many American cities, the exposure to the national American media would be about as low as it gets.  I actually think being in Jacksonville might be better.

And yeah, travel.  The London team would be in constant jet lag mode.  And God help the players involved in trips to and from the West Coast.  10 hours minimum, and likely more for some.

While that's true of other sports, I don't think the NFL positions itself that way at all. If anything the NFL has tried to go out of its way to decrease the provincial NY-LA-Boston crap and put the best teams on TV in the biggest markets.

Example, look at last year's Sunday night Football lineup when they had options to flex later in the year. Starting in Week 10 you had NOLA v. Dallas, Denver v. KC, Denver v. NE, NYG v. Washington, NOLA v. Carolina, Cincy v. Pitt, Philly v. Chicago, Philly v. Dallas.

When you look at those games, you see how the NFL was trying to position the best matchups with the biggest consequences on playoff standing, regardless of location. They don't do what ESPN does with baseball, and only put on LA-NY-BOS-STL in a rotation on their national broadcasts.

The London thing is a bad idea because of TV, frankly. You can't put them on Sunday Night or Monday Night or Thursday Night Football for a home game. It doesn't work.

As far as I recall sports players are a special category for work visas in the UK. Certainly visa issues haven't been particularly prevalent with all the importing of African and South American players we have done for football (soccer).


I'm not trying to handwave the travel issue away, it's certainly a major hurdle in implementation, if not THE major hurdle. All the legal and tax issues can be dealt with with the infusion of sufficient money I'm sure.

I'm not really old enough to remember NFL Europe in it's prime, although I have been fortunate to get to know a few people who played for or worked in the league back in the day. My impression is that the main issue with NFLE is that it was a genuine B league and failed to capture people's imagination. I guess the NFL could try and make the leap and drop a whole four team division in Europe, although outside of London I'm not sure where you'd put teams. Germany would work well too, so either Frankfurt or Berlin, and then possibly Rome, but after that I suspect your city/market size starts to dry up rapidly.

Anyhow, I'm happy to watch the league creep up the number of International Series games each year, since I get to watch some football.

The travel thing is not much worse than flying between the West and East coasts (the extra time zone differences are a bitch, though). And I would suspect they'll do something akin to what the Niners do now when they have back-to-back East coast games which is to stay in the US for back-to-back US games so they'll only have 4 - 5 trips to the US rather than 8.

An 8 hour time difference and 11 hour flight time between London and the US west coast would seem to make the whole idea of a team in London pretty ridiculous.

Sammy Watkins catches a ball (https://vine.co/v/M2x62ilE9Up)

Still Buffalo.  :grin:

That's not fair to the Raptors and the TFC, which both have very good attendance and fan followings... and just like the Leafs, God only knows why.  :why_so_serious:

The Jays attendance is abysmal I'm sure, those seats are almost never full when I catch a game on TV. Those only fill up when they win, which they haven't since the 90s. It's a pure bandwagon.

The Argo's haven't had big fan followings since the days of Flutie and Pinball. The majority of football fans in the city would rather just pick a horse in the NFL for whatever reason. I'm almost certain more fans make the day trip to Buffalo then go to Argo games. Hell I'm half as certain that more fans make the day trip to buffalo then actually go to the 'home' games in Toronto for the Bills too. Most of the fun is in the journey.  :why_so_serious:



It wouldn't be about attendance though, it would be about how good of a TV deal the NFL could get from Rogers or Bell.

Roddy White just signed a large extension. The Falcons are stupid.

I can't think of many teams that have a Top 10 WR contract that didn't get bit in the ass by the cap. Seattle jumps to mind with the Percy Harvey deal, but it's backloaded. Their 2013 number was miniscule to the cap.

Nothing like signing a 33 year old wideout to a 4-year extension.  :why_so_serious:

I can't believe Ray Rice only got 2 games. Smoke some pot and you get 1 year +, but knock your girlfriend unconscious on video and you get 2 games. Unfuckingreal.

In better news, Sidney Rice retired. Good riddance.

I sorta feel bad for Sidney Rice, because he seemed to have potential for a lot more than what he showed in his career.  He was probably never as good as that one Favre year he had, but still.

From a pure team POV, however, yeah, not sad to see him leave.  Not sure how he would have fit it anyway, because Kearse and Baldwin were already going to be better options than him.

2 games? Fuck me. What did Brandon Marshall get for choking a bitch? Shit, they might as well not even have bothered.

In other dumbass news, Justin Blackmon arrested FUCKING AGAIN (http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/11257934/justin-blackmon-jacksonville-jaguars-arrested-marijuana-possession). Of course, it's for possession of pot (which shouldn't be illegal but it is so STOP PUTTING IT IN YOUR CAR!). Money don't buy you sense.

"Here's 50 million dollars.  All you have to do is play football and not do get caught doing or carrying drugs.  Deal?" "WHERE DO I SIGN?!?!?!?!?!"

Fuck the NFL. I hope Roger Goodell chokes on a chip next time he is in England.

Does chip mean 'owner's cock'? Because I am pretty sure that is happening as we speak.

Does anyone believe he might be just taking a year off to get healthy? I imagine if he threw his name in free agency next spring, there would be interested teams aplenty.  It is hard to get healthy and stay during the season.

Maybe?  It doesn't seem like a particularly smart strategy.  If it were me, I'd probably just claim to still be hurt and stay on the defending champ's payroll instead of taking some kind of sabbatical.  Plenty of NFL guys somehow find themselves completely out of work, despite themselves believing to have a value. 

His knees are shot. He went to Europe last summer to get treatment, then played and got another concussion and another knee injury. I would be amazed if he tried to make a comeback.

First preseason game is this Sunday. Giants v. Bills. More games start on Thursday thru Saturday after that weekend.

It's almost here. Now is the time I get excited about football.

It's not football season until I see Shannon Sharpe, mouth full of marbles, on camera.  :grin:

Do we have to suffer through another season of Phil Simms? Someone tell me no please...

Didn't CBS let him go?

Get rid of Simms and take Ron Jaworski with you as well. 

Jaworski used to be great.  Then ESPN got their hooks into him.  He should bring pom-poms with him where ever he goes.

Not really an analyst, but I hate Chris Berman more than I've ever hated another human being. BACK BACK BACK BACK BACK

No, this, this can't be happening.  IT CAN'T!  Dan Marino too?  And we get Tony frickin' Gonzalez?  And they kept Boomer (Can't pick worth a shit) Esiason?

Am I going to have to go to Fox with Terry Bradshaw?  I can't.  I WON'T. 

Jesus it's like Game of Thrones where my favorite characters die and the shitheels thrive.

I usually give Berman a pass because he's the only guy associated with the NFL that can actually name a CFL player. I get that the CFL gets zero interest in the States, why should it, but I always appreciated when he'd mention who won the Grey Cup, or make note of something like Anthony Calvillo setting the all-time Football passing record.

And before anyone says it, yes the CFL is a different game that is more pass friendly, but 79,816 yards is still a hell of a feat.
While I'm on this topic, this page is pretty fascinating if you like stats: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gridiron_football_quarterbacks_passing_statistics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_gridiron_football_quarterbacks_passing_statistics)

Calvillo would be fourth on that list in TD vs INT ration, behind Brady, Brees, and Payton.

If you want justice, you've come to the wrong place.

I'm a little worried about what Levi Stadium might do to my ability to move around where I live on Sundays. Apparently they're shutting down the farmer's market right next to where I live because it happens in a light rail parking area and they're expecting people to park there for the game and take the train over to the game. I thought I was going to be outside the blast radius.  :oh_i_see:

Surprised no one commented on Andy Dalton being handed a $115 million contract. It would be funny if it was any team that gave a guy who has choked so hard in 3 straight playoffs 3 straight years this kind of money. What makes it MORE funny than Sanchize's big ass contract was that it was the Bengals who gave it to him, a team notorious for being run by a cheapskate asshole.

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Dalton is not even Joe Flacco level of quality. Since he's come in the league, he's had a really good defense, a really good offensive line, a good run game and one of the top 5 or 6 wideout threats in the game. Flacco has never had the kind of offensive weapon that A.J. Green is and he's won playoff games and a Super Bowl, aided of course by a great running game and good defense.

The contract isn't that bad. He may not amount to much but you can't just let him walk and the market is what it is so that was probably a good/smart contract from the front office perspective. The $115 report from Scheffter was just typical espn headline grabbing.


Only Kaepernick is getting less guaranteed per year than Dalton and only Kap, Alex Smith and Carson Palmer are getting less total guaranteed money from their contracts than Dalton and everybody knows that Kap signed a rediculously team-friendly deal that probably impacted the Dalton deal and will impact everyone below the 100%-elite QB level for the next few years.

His average per year is being quoted as being under Romo, Cutler and Stafford who are all similar seeming good enough or close to it guys who haven't done shit in huge games, I fail to see how this was an awful job by the Bengal's front office.

He is being paid more than Tom Brady, who took a retardedly sweet heart deal for New England to try to get more rings and some other big name guys who will be signing new contracts in the next year or two (big ben, Rivers, Alex Smith, Bradford). But you can't blame the Bengals for that.

More data on the actual contract (fuck espn):
http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/eye-on-football/24649195/look-andy-daltons-new-contract-rightly-pays-him-like-2nd-tier-qb
http://overthecap.com/top-player-salaries.php?Position=QB
http://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/qb

fucking first time I've done that, quoted instead of edited.

Also re: AJ Green, the kid is amazing but reality is he has had some very very bad drops especially in the San Diego game that could have changed things. Dalton's deep balls are atrocious at times and you wonder what kind of ridiculous numbers AJ could put up with a QB who could consistently hit his marks deep but...

Playoff game 1: Dalton throws a pick-6 INT as the first half expires that basically breaks their back but it was JJ Watt making an insane play that not many people could have made. That just crushed them and from there the team didn't do much as a whole and it all went downhill fast in the second half. 60% you put this on the qb.

Playoff game 2: This is the huge "fucking Dalton" game. The defense did its job but Dalton and the offense were just putrid. Awful game. 100% you put this on the qb.

Playoff game 3: Dalton finally gets a td. He throws a great deep strike. The bengals are going to go up 14-7 and on the goalline Gio Bernard fumbles it and here we go again. But no, this one was at home and then Dalton has a really goofy, really stupid fumble while scrambling and going down untouched which of course flies right to a defender. Then he throws a bad pick. Then he throws a pick. Then AJ drops what probably is a td or at least is a first and goal on a good enough bomb from Dalton. 75% you put this on the qb.

There will come a day when a smart GM realizes you can just let a guy go. You CAN just let mediocre QBs walk and replace them with a 2nd or 3rd round draft pick, especially if you have the ability to spend good money on proven line players, better secondary, runningbacks in their prime, and good receivers.

There's nothing about Andy Dalton that I think is any different than an AJ McCarron or an Aaron Murray, other than more reps in the NFL. He's a 2nd round pick out of a second-tier school, and he's done nothing to deserve a hefty contract except play well in the first 8 games of the season, then steadily crap out as things get tougher.

You can't just let a starting QB from a playoff team go and replace him with a rookie. You have a limited window with the team built as it is, and replacing a QB sets you back a year or two. If your window is closing, team is aging/getting too expensive, etc and there will be significant roster turnover, then it is a different story. If you replace Dalton with a top quality veteran (like Denver did bringing in Manning), then you can probably get away with it too. But starting over with a rookie is going to piss off your team, your fan base, and your owner, and will get you fired more often than not.

That depends on two things: Leadership and the system the team plays under.  If your team recognizes that the QB isn't doing his job, a fresh start will be a huge morale boost.  I'm all for replacing tired old veterans with fresh faces in the need arises.  Players want to win and this often transcends loyalty.  They, more than anyone, know when a player is on the downward decline of their career. 

Cincy's window is closed after this year in my mind with Dalton on the roster. They just don't know it yet, and what makes the deal stupid is that Dalton still had a year left on the deal. They limped into the playoffs twice in the wild card, then finally won when the Ravens completely shit the bed, and the Steelers realized they were old as fuck. Those two teams are going to get better by 2015, while Cincy will only get worse with this hack at the QB slot, average as grits RB help, and defensive players controlling the big money on their cap.

I don't see the point in signing him now at all. Worst case scenario you win a Super Bowl and have to make the Flacco deal. OH NOES! First world problems for a Bengals franchise that's never won a Super Bowl in the history of the franchise.

EDIT: http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap2000000374305/article/andy-dalton-contract-cincinnati-bengals-should-have-waited This sums up some of my feelings.

I can sort of agree with this, only I think they could have drafted a QB that might make a good starter and given him a lot of practice reps for this year as a hedge against Dalton completely shitting the bed. Especially since Dalton had another year on his contract. Get a rookie in there to push him, hell get a mid-tier veteran guy to push him (a Josh McCown or somebody who has just come off a good year).

Yes, ESPN really jumped all over that $115 million number - but I don't see a problem with that. Flacco's deal was $120 million and that's the only number most folks know, so the fan base isn't really that concerned about the details. All they know is this guy has a contract number that may be untradeable or kill us on cap in a year or two unless he actually plays up to the contract.

Dalton's contract has a bunch of shit in it.  It doesn't have the guaranteed money that other people got and it has playoff incentives.



It's a very team friendly contract and they can cut if he doesn't pan out.

Odds of that happening are high by year 3.

I find my interest in the NFL at an all-time low this pre-season. Not sure why.

Because you know this season is going to be a shit show of unclear, inconsistent officiating trying to enforce idiotic pass interference rules that favor high-powered offenses, something they will drop completely for the playoffs so teams like the Seahawks can play actual defense and win the Super Bowl again?  :why_so_serious:

Works for me!

Deadspin is doing the "Why Your Team Sucks" articles again.

http://deadspin.com/tag/why-your-team-sucks

I think some of them are hilarious. Only 3 out so far, but I think the Texans one is the best.

The Bill O'Brien cleft chin hiding Narnia joke has me rolling.

Also surprised no one commented on the Deadspin story on Jerry Jones getting his freak on with two chicks in a restroom pictures. Of course, just thinking about it makes my Little Mr. Happy shrink back into my body like a frightened turtle so...

The Titans one wasn't funny at all.  It was terrifyingly accurate.

Yeah I wrote Drew for my take on the Cowboys. We'll see if he wants to print any of it. If not I'll just post it here after he does the Cowboys article.

"The Texans are the Juggalos of the NFL. We all like each other but everyone else wonders what the fuck we're doing with our lives dedicating it to something so stupid." :awesome_for_real:

Me too.  I find it kind of funny that a lot of people actually level complaints that Seahawks get away with a lot of shit (which I think is misleading...they actually get called for a lot of shit too), when we should all be lamenting the fact that the league is even trying to shut down good defensive play in the first place.  The rules are already stacked against the defense as it is.  A better strategy would be for us to complain about the offensively biased rules.

I don't think the Seahawks get away with a ton. They've just done something the NFL hates, win with defense and a great running game. That's the exact opposite of what the NFL is trying to cram down our throats. Which really tells you a lot about the NFL. They are trying to control the way the game is played, rather than let the teams decide how to play the game. That's one of the things that will hurt the NFL long term, because manipulating your own product for selfish reasons eventually hits a breaking point with fans. It's already starting.

Ten years ago the idea of 14 point spreads in the NFL was laughable. Now? It's a regular occurrence. Look at last year's scoring. The highest scoring team put up 600 points, the entire league scored just shy of 12,000 points total. The gap between high and low 359 points. That's the spread from best to worst.

Go back just 5 years to 2009. They scored 1,000 less total points just 5 years ago. That's almost a 9% increase in scoring in just 5 years across the board. Not to mention the gap was only 335 back then, almost 25 points closer. The average is 31 points per team higher in 2013 than it was in 2009.

Basically every single team in the league is scoring an extra 4 touchdowns and a field goal every season. That's not just scheme. That's all because of rule changes. Because wait, it gets even better.

The year before the illegal contact rule came into place was 2003. Total points scored was 10666, average of 333 a team which is ten points lower than 2009. But here's the kicker: Everyone was a lot closer. The high-low gap in 2003 was only 259 points. That's 100 points less than last year. One hundred points.

The medians for each year? 312 points in 2003, 351 points in 2009, and a whopping 379 points in 2013. It's absurd.

Let's be clear.  The NFL doesn't hate defensive teams, the fans do.  For being the most popular sport in America, it's surprising just how little fans know about the game.  They want high scores and lots of offense.  I guess it's no different from baseball.  I took a date to a game once and the pitcher threw a no hitter.  My date claimed it was the most boring game she had ever been to. 

See, I was one of those who advocated for more pass interference after the Colts got mauled in that playoff snow game up in New England years back (2003?). It really was fucking ridiculous what was done in that game that wasn't called. I wasn't advocating for a whole new class of penalty (illegal contact), I just wanted the fucking refs to actually call pass interference as it was written in the rules. Had they done that, we wouldn't be here now. Good defenses should be able to be good without fucking mugging a receiver on the field. The NFL has gone so completely the other way though. Breathe on a receiver and it's a penalty... unless it's the playoffs, because apparently the NFL is taking cues from the NHL when it comes to "let them play when everyone is watching." That Super Bowl mauling by the Seahawks? If that's week 8, it's a lot closer of a game, because the Hawks get called for more penalties. And I'm not saying they played dirty or too rough at all. I'm saying the officials just let shit go that in the regular season with a smaller audience, they'd have been calling.

What's been worse than how much they call fouls against the defense is how LITTLE they call offensive pass interference. I mean, the wideouts of today can just about get away with fucking murder and not get called, especially if the pass is incomplete anyway. That's what's really killing defenses - cornerbacks can't even glance at the wideout without a flag while getting the shit beat out of them in return.

I don't know why anyone would want more pass interference calls.  I'm sorry, but offense already has a HUGE fucking advantage on the field.  Giving them an even greater advantage makes it nearly impossible for DB's to do their job.  The game is incredibly fast.  The difference between an open receiver and a covered receiver is often determined by a 0.1 s decision.

The only reason I can see value in this change is to protect the health of high dollar players.  That's a business decision. 

Here's the thing, fans think they want more offense until they get the arena league. Then all of a sudden they stop watching regular season games.

Do you remember how many garbage games there were last season? How huge the gap was between the functional the the non-functional teams? Allow me to remind you.

6 Teams in 2013 had 4 wins or less. That's up from 5 in 2012, 2011, 2009. Then 4 in 2010. In fact we haven't had 6 teams go 4 wins or less since 2008 when Detroit pulled the magical 0-16 season.

Week to week the schedule had terrible national matchups. I picked on at random, Week 10. Washington played Minnesota on Thursday. Those teams were 2-7 and 3-6. The Monday night game was Tampa and Miami, a 4-5 and 1-8 epic matchup. Probably the most interesting games were the Eagles and the Packers who were 5-5 and 5-4 at the time, and Carolina and SF who were both playoff teams. NOLA played Dallas as the Sunday night game, and it was an asswhomping of epic proportions that everyone saw coming.

It just seems to me that we have less interesting matchups with the new rules and the way the cap works now. A few teams run away with it, a lot of teams are absolute trash, and there are a handful of really good games each week. Before, like in the early 2000s, you had division and playoff battles that lasted. Last year you had a lot of divisions/playoffs so dominated they were sewn up by Week 12, mostly in the AFC.

Oh and just to add, I'm not a "The Sky is Falling" person about the NFL. It's the WoW of sports. It dominates the entire landscape in a way that even TV has never been dominated.

But it's made them greedy and stupid too. Actions now have longer term effects than they are thinking. In the next 30 years, I'm not sure that it's still the most popular sport in the USA, simply because it tripped up too many times and made too many money-first changes.

This feels like cherry picking of the highest order, and I'm not even sure what you can say about schedules. Schedules by necessity have to be fixed months in advance, and the system the NFL uses is pretty agnostic. I'm not sure that if you were manually crafting an exciting schedule you could do any worse.

Look at Week One of the forthcoming season, there's some really good looking games there GB @ SEA, CIN @ BAL, IND @ DEN, and SD @ ARI all look to be awesome games on paper, but I'm willing to be a couple will be complete dick, and a couple more of the unmentioned games will prove to be close, exciting, and fun to watch.

I don't think it's cherry picking when there's really only five functioning teams in each conference. The odds that those 10 teams are going to match up week to week isn't great.

Granted there were some tallest midget contests last year for the remaining playoff spots. Like in the NFC North and East.

My point with looking at the scoring, the cap, and the rules, the NFL is creating this wide gulf of haves and have nots in the league. They aren't consistent each year either, which adds to all the confusion in scheduling parity. But still, you can see a trend where scoring is up, the gap is wider in scoring, and the gap in teams winning is bigger than we've had in the last 5 years.

I'm just saying, when I look at the data I'm not seeing any trends, and I think you're being a bit subjective. Now granted, I haven't followed football for as long as you, but looking at the records since the divisional restructure, last year hardly seems like an outlier. I'm not sure how you could quantify a year to be more or less competitive, but if it is the number of teams with exactly 8 wins, then 2006 and 2011 would be best, and 2005 would be the worst. If we widen this to be all teams with 7-9 wins, then 2002 and 2006 look good, with 15 teams each having 7-9 wins, but even by comparison, last season still had 12 teams in that range. There's no win-loss metric which makes last year stand out. If last year resembles any other season in this regard i's 2005.

Scoring wise there may be a trend, I haven't looked at those data. I'm just not convinced that there's some hypothetical season where all matchups matter every week. I think out of 15-16 games per week, getting 4-5 good ones is normal. But this is true of most sports I think.

It probably is me being subjective, I have no doubt about that. I just don't remember as many weeks in the past where I watched really runaway freight train teams manhandle crap. Or crap just playing crap with very little good matchups in between to my eye. It's more I think that the national broadcasts have just predicted things dead wrong on Monday and Thursdays.

The scoring thing is far from subjective. Scoring is WAY up, and that's across the board.

Ryan Mallet looked really bad.

Blaine Gabbert looked really really bad.

Jason Campbell is one of my least favorite QB's ever. I'll never forget that game he played for Chicago on national tv after Cutler went down where he was so obviously phoning it in.

Cowboys defense still looks shitty. We'll see if that continues as they insert more starters.

Can you really judge anything based on the first preseason game?  A quick look at the box score shows that most teams featured their backup QBs and second-third string RBs and receivers.  Bet the same could be said for offensive and defensive lines.

Also, I find it really funny that Matt Hasselbeck has become a random backup QB.  How many other guys that made it to the superbowl are now serving as understudies?

I had the Ravens/Niners game on in the background while I was cooking dinner last night. I heard the announcers say words one should never hear. "The 49ers are real high on Blaine Gabbert right now. They are really liking what they are seeing out of him."

Check the box score this morning - 3/11 for 20 yards and a pick.

Somebody's fucking high all right. I'm betting Harbaugh is on his knees night and day praying Kap doesn't get hurt.

Damn that is just a SHOT.

lolwut


I don't know much about football, but based on what I saw last year: I agree.


CDC based here.  Come on guys. :oh_i_see:

I can judge defensive backups, who will likely get time because injuries on the defense were fucking rampant last year for the Cowboys.

He's been massively outperforming McCoy in practice, supposedly, I still expect McCoy to be cut shortly.

I was mainly basing my assessment on the number of balls Ryan Mallet drilled directly into the ground.

HE HATES THE GROUND

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tcwz8-EfFYE

 :awesome_for_real:

He probably had this as his pregame music (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAYL5H46QnQ)

Oh I know. but it is still among the rarest of rare diseases (and a current headline, making the joke timely as well as accurate). I have been well aware of the CDC from even before The Hot Zone came out and scared everyone about Ebola the first time  :grin:

Watched a couple of games this weekend. I saw Johnny Football's debut. Goddamn, that kid has a cannon for an arm. He looks hurried, like he's trying to hyper speed himself up because of how much faster everything around him is going on. Both the Browns and the Lions seemed suspect though - the Lions secondary is still terrible and Cleveland looked like they weren't sure how to score TD's.

Also caught the Packers and the Titans playing in a goddamn monsoon. Not really many conclusions I can make because of the conditions and the fact that the Packers didn't really play many of their offensive stars. The Pack does have a plethora of good running backs to choose from.

I forgot about the one really important conclusion I drew from both these games and the pre-season press about how refs will be calling pass interference on both sides harder.

Offensive pass interference may actually be called more. This is a good thing. OTOH, the regular season is going to be a fucking dumpster fire full of shitty, ticky-tac penalties called on defenses every fourth or fifth play. It is going to be fucking HORRIBLE to watch because defense won't know how to play, nobody will be able to cover anyone who is halfway decent and scoring is going to go up again. YAY FOR ARENA LEAGUE FOOTBALL.

Fucking idiots.

Also, I'm fine with them making the extra point be a 33-yard field goal. Give me some reason not to fast forward over that play.

It will last until about game 3 and then they will go back to situation normal (all fucked up).

I never put much stock in preseason, but Manziel looked surprisingly good for his first showing at the NFL level. Was not happy with a couple of his head first dives, but he did have a slide which gives me hope he won't be dead by week 6. He has a gunslinger way about him and has really good zip on the ball. He is just raw with his decision making. As a Browns fan, it gives me some hope... the receiving corps however, does not.

And holy shit how does their defense get torched by the run every single time they kicked it outside? Tackling was also suspect. For the side of the ball that is supposed to be their strength... I am fearful.

Manziel's playing second teamers though. If he runs around like that against top line guys, he's dead.

The question for me isn't if he's talented. Nor was the the question for guys like Vick or RG3. It's whether they will live through the season.

You know what a new NFL season means?  A new music video from the Manning brothers. :awesome_for_real: 

Double  :awesome_for_real: :awesome_for_real: for Joe Namath.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qMor6dL0LfI

Somehow they managed to make Namath even creepier.

Song's terrible, video's funny, Namath super creepy.

I love these two white bread guys rapping.  Mannings are awesome. Also great to see Chris Johnson before his NFL exit.

The Mannings really are a couple of goobers, but they are likeable goobers. Namath macking on somebody's mom though... yeah, that was creepy.

WR runs into a DB, that'll be a penalty on the defense for illegal contact.  :oh_i_see:

You were watching the Bears game too huh?

There were what? 47 flags thrown.
I'm sure it will die down after preseason, because receivers will abuse the shit out of that if all the have to do is run straight in to the db at 7 yards.

Yeah that flag on the DB was ridiculous. He's standing there and a guy makes contact with him. That's a flag now.

The fucking NFL is basically turning into the arena league. It's not going to be fun to watch unless they fix that.

Yeah, I watched the first half. There were some pretty uninspiring penalties called on both sides.

On the plus side, the Bears o-line in pass protection looked unreal, and I'm liking what I see fro Jared Allen and Lamarr Houston.

There was a third down sack where they gave the Jags a first down on illegal contact on the other side of the field for the guy running into the DB.

That was when I realized, if they do that in real games, people are going to fucking flip. There will be calls for changes. The NFL doesn't know how bad this is yet because they haven't really been paying attention.

I don't think it's that they aren't paying attention. I think it's actually that they really truly believe audiences love high-scoring passing attacks so much, they won't mind all the Mickey Mouse penalties they are going to be seeing. They are wrong. The first 4-6 games of the season are likely to be a fucking horror show.

Nothing says fun like seeing a big play and then getting to see a penalty take it back. Over and over and over again. If I wanted to watch mostly white old men make speeches to the camera all day I would be tuning in to C-SPAN instead of an NFL game.

There were 86 penalties for 702 yards in four preseason games league-wide Friday. That included a total of 32 penalties for 295 yards in the Titans-Saints game and 21 penalties for 169 yards in the Eagles-Patriots game.  Shockingly, WAP, the Seahawks-Chargers game had the fewest of the night, "only" 15 penalties. 

Rest easy Eric Dickerson, no one will ever break 2000 yards rushing in the new NFL.

Anyone not drafting Megatron #1 overall in their PPR FFL this year is wrong.

I think my tweet Friday night summed it up pretty well-


It is borderline unwatchable right now.

I agree, I've been telling this to my friends who haven't seen it.

There's no way this can go live. It's like a bad beta test.

The replacement refs were better than flag football

Early-onset 49ers panic is starting to set in locally as the team's 3rd stringers continue to underperform in preseason games against other teams' 3rd stringers.  :why_so_serious:

I'm picking yall to miss the playoffs this year, but that's unrelated to the preseason stuff.

It is in my DNA to want the Niners to fail, so that probably colors my opinion on the matter.  That said, preseason games don't matter.

Except sometimes they do as a full body of work.  Losing the games probably means nothing.  Getting annihilated means something if it happens 3 or 4 times.  Not time to panic yet, probably, but if it happens again in game 3, then it might be pants shitting time. 


 

RG3 is not going to last the season.  He has no idea how to run and not get himself murdered.

That game was a shitshow. The best QB play came from the third stringers.

Connor Shaw for week 1 Browns QB!

Oh Johnny Football. Did ESPN pay you to flip off the Skins bench, just so they'd have more fucking reason to talk endlessly about you?

Christ, I hope the kid gets benched simply so the only shit they can talk about all goddamn year is when is it Johnny Football's time?

(http://i.imgur.com/02kDzQX.gif) (http://imgur.com/02kDzQX)

 :why_so_serious:

Apt. They will both be unemployed in sports in the next four years.

Tebow is a horrible announcer btw. Awful. He needs to focus full time on that if he wants to keep his job there.

No. Emphatically. That story is so tired it is now more unwelcomed than the 40 required illegal contact penalties a game trend. Every fucking year I have to hear about stupid QB issues with the Browns benching a player everyone in the nation wants to see. Just play him and let him fall on his face. If he picks himself up, great. If not then at least we'll know early. The QB carousel is maddening already, as is the coaching one. I don't want to put up with every sports news outlet reporting how he is NOT starting this week and why... Just get it over with early and fall back on the age old excuse, he just didn't work out.

Really wonder how the Browns can employ scouts anymore... they obviously don't do their job so why spend the coin?

They should start Connor Shaw. That would really get the meter moving.

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2168370-nfl-reportedly-asking-potential-super-bowl-halftime-acts-to-pay-to-perform


Guess the NFL is hurting for $$$ these days.  :oh_i_see:

Oh browns, never change.  :heart:

EDIT: By that I mean they named Hoyer the starter, apparently Johnny doesn't want to stay late or show up early, and Connor Shaw is in the background actually making throws.

PIKA? THE FUCK?

The NFL is quickly rising up my list of "too greedy to be allowed the privilege of my patronage" outfits. That's just a fucking idiotic thing to do if true.

I just love that they want people to bid for the opportunity to play in the background while everyone is taking a piss/getting more beer/checking their pools.

PUPPY BOWL!!!!

Apparently more people watched (tuned into) this year's halftime show (Bruno Mars and Red Hot Chili Peppers) than watched the game itself. 115.3 million viewers compared to 112.2 million.

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/nfl-super-bowl-rihanna-coldplay-katy-perry-20140819

Honestly this is the final straw for me probably. The NFL takes greedy sports ownership to a transcendent level compared to even the other major sports. Continuing to try to find ever-more egregious ways to line their pockets at the cost of the people providing the actual entertainment - I'm out.

The NFL hubris case just keeps building. They are going to be in ruins in 30 years. There's just no way this doesn't turn into a decline and fall of the Roman Empire type story.

EDIT - I can honestly say this is starting to affect whether or not I ever bother watching anymore. There's more than enough college football for me to watch that I enjoy. I'm not enough of an NFL fan to put up with this, and the fact the Cowboys are horrendous, anymore.

The NCAA is likely to not exist in its current form relatively soon in the future, and there are all sorts of social and familial bonds for me around college football that don't exist for the NFL. I could no sooner walk away from Cal football than I could walk away from, say, going to Thanksgiving dinner at my aunt's.

Team performance makes it a bit easier to walk away from Arizona football.  :awesome_for_real:

How many 1 win seasons have YOU lived through?

2008. 0-12. Fuck Ty Willingham forever.

I remember the year for sure because I was watching the UCLA game in the delivery room while my wife was in labor with my son. Did I mention I have a really cool wife?  :grin:

Legal cases are already making sure the NCAA is going the right direction. Hell the Big Conferences are about to make sure the NCAA for football is a thing of the past. The playoff is the right direction. As far as I'm concerned, the NCAA football is trending up from what it was.

The NFL is going far far far the wrong way. From the field stuff, to the penalties, to the greed over deals, to the obscene expansion plans, etc.

I cannot find this information.  Probably about as many we have Rose Bowl appearances.

edit: Actually, we went 1-8-1 in 1957.   :awesome_for_real:

My father was born in October of 1938. The last time Cal won a Rose Bowl, was on January 1st of that year. So, we haven't won a Rose Bowl in his lifetime.

The last time we went to a Rose Bowl, was in 1959, when he was a student (lost to Ohio State).

My own stint at Cal was 3 losing seasons and one trip to the Alamo Bowl, where we beat an Iowa team that had gone 6-5 and didn't really deserve to be in a bowl game in the first place. I witnessed, in person, a game at USC where we lost 61-0. Also, some asshole in the USC band stepped on my hat.

I'm now 40 years old, and in my lifetime, the only sustained period of success we've had was under Jeff Tedford, who had two losing seasons, so we fired him and replaced him with a guy who went 1-11. I currently expect to die without ever seeing us make it to a Rose Bowl.

If that all can't kill our traditions, nothing can.

You should root for Stanford! They have been pretty good recently  :drill:

Heh, the rage.

:why_so_serious:

Speaking of things I witnessed in person:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNMhCVjU6Fg

We went nuts when Oski had the presence to do his mascot walk as he was being escorted out.  :drill:

Man I don't actually care much about Stanford vs. Cal (much to Ingmar's sorrow) but fuck that tree. And fuck their marching band while I'm at it, they are terrible.

My friend hates that tree. She's from no school that would care, but she thinks it's the spawn of children's nightmares.

Oh Pittsburgh.

Both RBs charged with pot possession and Bell with a DUI.

Here's millions of dollars to not smoke pot.

20 grams is a lot of pot to be driving around with.  That's not far away from a much more serious charge.

Every year the NFL and its players make me more of a soccer fan.   

The NFL fined Johnny Manziel $12k for his middle finger. Seems a bit excessive but I guess I'm not sure what similar things have been fined before.

He'll appeal and it'll get knocked down to a manageable 25% of his base salary (~$6k). At least, that is the rumor.

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/11402476/sam-bradford-st-louis-rams-season-torn-acl


Call him, Mr. Glass.  :ye_gods:

That really sucks. Also, Wes Welker gets another concussion.

I drafted him, didn't see it.

How long before Welker just has to retire?  I feel bad for the guy.

As far as Sam Bradford goes...yeah, I feel bad for him, too, but the main thing I can't stop thinking is that the Rams just got instantly better.

The Deadspin articles on "Why Your Team Sucks" are essential reading.  Hilarious and pretty accurate for the most part, though of course it is all focused on the negative.

In that vein:

I have been a Seahawks fan pretty much ever since I can remember.  All Seahawk fans will tell you the same thing, but most of them are sorta exaggerating.  Not completely lying - despite so many years of mediocrity, it would be fair to say that Seattle fans have been extraordinarily loyal.  But their loyalties were mostly superficial.  They did not know the game very well, they didn't know the players either.  They still don't - but they have always been loud, and for the most part they have been showing up and supporting the team.  My own family just annoys the shit out of me lately.  I mean, they have always annoyed me with their superficial support of the team, but now it is just in overdrive mode.  My mom sends me pictures of the Seahawks shrine that they set up in her office (yep, basically a little altar with Seahawks stuff all over it).  Each of these last three weeks she sends me text messages like "playing Chicago tonight GO HAWKS!!" as if it isn't pre-season.  I get pics of the tattoo my nephew got of a big ugly Seahawk (they make awful looking tatoos, the colors are just not good).  And then the one my sister got.  And then the one my mother herself got, some gaudy looking monstrosity on her wrist or something.  I know she wants me to tell her how amazing her tattoo looks, but it doesn't.  At all.  Hate to tell you, mom, but tattooing Richard Sherman's number on your body is both creepy and foolish.  Also, you are 66 years old, you dumb lady.  What are you going to do when he becomes a Niner in a few years?  It could happen.

I have been asked repeatedly why I haven't purchased a jersey.  You know, so that I can wear it in my basement while I watch games all by myself at 2AM on the complete opposite side of the planet.  I rarely get to even watch the Seattle games, so what fucking sense would that make?  Oh right, I have to support the team.  It has also been suggested that I could get my own tattoo.  Maybe I'll get Golden Tate's face tattooed on my ass.  OH WAIT.  Golden Tate is not a Seahawk anymore?  How...how could he?  And what are we going to do with the Tate jerseys that each one of us bought!?  My 15 year-old niece literally loves (or loved, I am sure it has moved to hate now) Golden Tate.  She found out where he lived, possibly, and maybe his mother, too.  No word yet on whether she has her tattoo.

These are not isolated behaviors or anything peculiar to my family.  When I was over to visit last October, it was goddamn everywhere.  I can only imagine the Superbowl made it 10 times worse.  So I can confirm that Seattle fans are extremely annoying.  And despite following their team as closely as they do, they know nothing about football.  It's all ridiculous superlatives with no actual understanding of why Sherman is good, or Earl Thomas, Kam Chancellor or the defense in general.  They can tell Russel is good, but they probably don't get why (most of you don't either, but probably more due to lack of exposure).  They get why Marshawn Lynch is good, but that's because anyone can see that the guy does not fall down when he probably should.  And so on.

That said, Seattle is going to melt all your faces again and FUCK THE NINERS GO HAWKS!!

My favorite so far:


Yeah, bitches, it's like that.  :grin:

Pats trade Logan Mankins to the Bucs  :headscratch:

I'm guessing this is more of Belichek's dark wizardry; perhaps Mephistopheles told him that Mankins was going to regress hard this year. They get a semi-decent pass-catching TE and a 4th round pick in return, which doesn't seem awful. Just a bit surprising.

Mankins was 32. Belicheat probably just saw an injury in his future.

The only problem i had with the Deadspin article is that is misunderstands the Seattle sports culture (because seriously if there is any group of people more pessimistic about sports I wouldn't buy it) and that it thinks that Starbucks is some kind of insult. As if Starbucks doesn't have a greater density in your town (your town being any town except maybe New York) than it ever had in Seattle. If Starbucks is so bad maybe you should stop drinking it. God knows we have.

The Deadspin articles aren't for the fans of those teams. They are for everyone else who hates them.

Yes. But those point's dont make sense to me even for people who hate them.

The point is for laughs, not historical accuracy.

I thought all of them were hilarious. Except for the Packers one. Not funny. Because it's true

Drew's a Minnesota fan for some god-awful reason, so all the NFC North ones are especially funny to me. The Packers one is a riot. Here's my favorite parts:

Niners? Tundra? :headscratch:

Now the field at Candlestick when it was raining was a different story...

http://www.mercurynews.com/southbayfootball/ci_26403287/49ers-rip-out-levis-stadium-field-again-larger

Oh, I read it wrong. It was referring to the Packers being beaten at home by the Niners.

Cleveland's Josh Gordon's year long suspension is upheld. 

http://bleacherreport.com/articles/2058086-josh-gordons-season-long-suspension-upheld-following-appeal

So, in the NFL, smoke pot=banned a full season.  Beat your wife and then grab her limp body by the hair and drag it around=3 games. :oh_i_see:

I don't know all the details of the Josh Gordon case, but wasn't that strike 3?  He deserves the suspension for being a repeat-idiot if nothing else, regardless of what we think about the policy itself.  And if you were a Cleveland Brown, you'd be getting high all the time too. 

But yeah, Rice getting only 3 games (I thought it was two) is mind-blowing.  We really do live in bizarro world.  At least we have the consolation of knowing that he is pretty much fucking done as a worthwhile RB.  Which coincides nicely with the fact that he's on my fantasy team.   :oh_i_see:

Not to sound like I am defending Josh (yes I know I am a Browns fan so it will come off like that), but I still don't understand the 2 samples test. If you test the first one and it comes up positive but barely, and then you test the 2nd one and it comes back under the threshold... and you then take the first sample's results instead of the second, then why the hell do you even take 2 samples? That kind bothers me. That said, this is a chronic (puns!) problem with Josh ever since college, so there is precedent.

Well, what was the time lapse between sample 1 and sample 2?  One way to look at it would be to say "yep, sample one shows that he had it in his system.  And now sample two shows that he definitely had it in his system, but it is lower than the threshhold because x amount of time has passed."

Just an idea.  I don't know what their actual testing protocol is supposed to prove.  Also, he's totally guilty anyway.

The irony will be that the Browns will improve their record this year.  You just watch.

I'm not so convinced. I don't think he's the smartest kid, but from what I've read about the NFL's drug testing system Josh Gordon was in Tier 3 and was being tested so frequently that it would be pretty much impossible for him to actually smoke weed and have the traces out of his system before the next test, which fits with his assertion that the result came from second hand smoke. He'd had 70 clean tests before this, and the one positive one was barely over the minimum testing threshold.

But what do you mean by "minimum testing threshhold"?  Minimum to be detectable, or minimum to be considered guity of smoking it directly?

From what I've read, it was the minimum to be counted as a true positive. He had THC in his system, in the barest possible extent to which the test can verifiably detect; in one test out of 71. The claim is that if he'd actually smoked pot directly, the result would have been far stronger, and would have been seen over more than one test, given the frequency with which he was being tested.

Caveat: I'm not a drug-testing expert, this is just going of what I've read  :grin:

Sounds reasonable.  Of course, I always hear that the NFL rarely or never discloses the specifics of the violations, so who is this detailed information coming from?

The NFL has its standard threshold of 15-nanograms. Smoking directly or second-hand is a moot point. His first sample was checked in at slightly over at 15.-something. Second sample from the same urine provided was 13.-something. Either way, it calls into question why the second sample is even tested if the first convicts regardless of the second result being below. They obviously tested the second for a reason based on the first, but that 2nd sample was dismissed for some reason - probably because Josh is a repeat offender but who has been cleaning up from the codeine incident. Like K9 pointed out, he has been tested pretty frequently given his past offense. I hope Gordon at least challenges it in court, even though it will go nowhere because the NFL seems to own the system and that CBA hanging out there.

It's pretty easy to not fail these tests. Don't hang out with people smoking weed. Don't smoke weed.

Wow, amazing!

I dunno. I wouldn't shun my childhood friends because of their decision to smoke weed. I might excuse myself if they were doing it near me, or ask them to wait till I was not around them before they light up - but then you get into the culture arguments about what that means. I get what you are saying, but I don't think it is as simple as you'd like it to be.

And it is easy to not fail these tests... just test sample B first and this is not a topic of conversation.

Let's not also forget that Gordon had a DUI AFTER the failed tests. This dude has not cleaned up his shit and was likely going to be suspended again anyway. See the words "Serial dumbass."

The question isn't whether Gordon is a dumbass...I think we can all agree on that one. The question is whether his dumbassery is actually less dumb than the terrible NFL policy.

The words "terrible NFL policy" not only has an extra modifier in there, it is also in the dictionary as one of the examples for the definition of "dumbass."

In a rare bit of common sense, the NFL actually makes a policy about domestic abuse suspensions (http://espn.go.com/espnw/news-commentary/article/11425377/nfl-implements-domestic-violence-penalties). Goodell even admitted he got the Ray Rice suspension wrong.

So its a 2 strikes and your out policy?  Not bad. 

This is not surprising given that the NFL is trying to appeal to women more.  But it is still a good decision and I am just happy to hear them say they were wrong for once.

If they are trying to appeal to women, their bag policy was a shitty choice.

Looks like Michael Sam was released by the Rams.  Not a real surprise and I doubt it was because he was gay.  He was a "tweener", not big enough to play D line but too slow to play LB.  I hope he can catch on somewhere, maybe on special teams or maybe he might want to try the CFL.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/08/30/us/michael-sam-nfl/index.html?hpt=hp_c2

Ryan Mallett to the Texans for a conditional 7th round pick in 2016

Unsurprising since Jimmy G looked a lot more poised and talented throughout preseason. This also means that there are three of Brady's former backups starting week one this season (Mallett, Cassel, Hoyer)

(http://giant.gfycat.com/SandySolidBudgie.gif)

I doubt Mallet will be starting week 1.

You're probably right, aye

Yeah, because the Texans have that other quarterb.....wait, who the fuck do they have?

They got Harvard, the Human Interception Machine.

Lol, oh yeah.  Might as well give Mallett a go.

It has nothing to do with talent.  Mallet could very well be the most talented QB they have, but a week is an awfully short time for a QB to learn an entire offense even if it's similar to the one he just came from.

What, you don't think he's capable of throwing just as many picks as Fitzpatrick?

My Welker draft pick is just getting better and better!

That was a brain fart. I usually check IR stuff but it happened the same day. GRRRRR!

Wes Welker banned 4 games for amphetamine use (http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/11455813/wes-welker-denver-broncos-suspended-four-games-use-amphetamines).

Normally, I'd have drafted him but thanks to the concussion he suffered like the day before the drafts, I stayed away.  :grin:

The first game of the year hasn't even started and I am already sick of hearing about the 12th man and how loud the stadium is.

Seattle looks great.

Reffing seems fine.

When he manages to stay on his feet, Percy Harvin is stupid fast

Packer D looks terrible. Again. Time to get rid of Capers. I didn't necessarily expect them to win the game, but when you aren't competitive and you have Super Bowl aspirations? Yeah, time for a change.

I would put that much more on Lacy and their O-Line play in general. Also this has been far from Rogers' best game.

Agreed, but you are going up against probably the best defense in the league. While Seattle's offense is good, it isn't that good.

Also injuries. The Deadspin article was dead on. Lambeau was built on an Indian burial ground and is cursed. Can you tell I am an angry Packer fan?

Packers still aren't ready for primetime, no matter how many analysts keep insisting they are. They have problems on both lines, and only Rodgers keeps them remotely in games.

Saettle has six new starters on defense and they all played well.  Seattle has a really nice schedule this season too since they are playing NFC East teams and most of them will offer the defense I saw tonight a feast.

What a terrible fucking game. First off, the biggest problem with the Packers D is that they cannot tackle for SHIT. Just utterly clueless about how to hit and wrap up a guy. Watch the Seattle defense. Not only do they tackle in numbers, but they bring a bitch down first time on at least 50-60% of the plays. The Packers aren't even close to that. It's mostly one tackler going at ankles or taking a bad angle and swatting a dude. Brad Jones looked utterly inept at both tackling and covering across the middle. He missed tons of tackles and his "holding" call (a Mickey Mouse call if I've ever seen one but WELCOME TO THE NEW ARENA LEAGUE!) that turned a 3 and out into a long, time-wasting drive is what sealed that game for the Hawks. And the Hawks ran the same "Jet Sweep" repeatedly with both Harvin and Lynch and the Packers never recognized it. Not that they could have tackled the runner had they spotted the play anyway but still. There were positives in the D. They do appear to have a better pass rush and their coverage is good. But not having Raji to stuff the middle, having Brad Jones behind that and then not being able to tackle as a team is going to kill them against any team with a good running game.

Their O line is good when it's healthy, but that's the Packers' problem since the year they won the Super Bowl. They can't keep anybody fucking healthy. I love that Lacy was wearing the helmet that's supposed to prevent concussions when he got his concussion. ACE DESIGN THERE, BOYS. Once Bulaga went down, Rodgers was running for his fucking life because Derek Sherrod apparently thinks he's in a goddamn tickle fight with the defensive end. They didn't look bad with Bulaga in there but since Barclay went down, Sherrod is our right tackle backup and he's terrible against good defenses. The fact they didn't even bother trying to challenge Richard Sherman's side of the field pisses me off. One of the best QB's in the league with one of the better wideouts who just got paid big bucks and you don't even bother to see if he can beat their best guy? Way to cede the advantage to the defense.

They got outcoached, outtoughed and outplayed. The Packers will tear lesser teams a new one, but they aren't contenders for the Super Bowl this year unless they figure out a way to stop the run, because the NFC Championship is going through either San Fran or Seattle, and it's likely the latter.

Falcons media is getting itself in a frenzy that this team is going to go 10-6, beat the Saints this weekend, and make it back to the playoffs. (I remember this happening last year in the SUPER BOWL OR BUST nonsense, it was bust all the way)

I think they are completely high. This looks like a 6-10 team with rookies and busted FAs on the offensive line, and absolutely no pass rush on the defense, let alone second year secondary players.

Just so we're clear, here are my picks to win things:

NFC East - Philly
NFC North - Detroit
NFC West - Seattle
NFC South - NOLA

AFC East - New England
AFC North - Cincy
AFC West - Denver
AFC South - Indy

I would actually pick the Packers or the Bears over the Lions, but I can't argue with your other picks.

There is no helmet that can keep your brain from colliding with the inside of your skull.
The only way for an NFL caliber player to avoid the risk of concussion is to not play football.

Agree with Haem, NFC North seems like the most volatile division this year. It could ultimately come down to shit things such as injuries to determine who comes out on top. All the others feel like safe picks.

I agree but it is so consensus it has to be eventually wrong.

Chances are the Seahawks don't repeat, but it won't be because they aren't the best team in the NFL. They are quite clearly the best team, IMO, until someone proves otherwise.

It will likely be wrong, but my point is that so many teams in the NFL look like complete garbage I don't see how they can function this season. If I'm rating most to least confident how it looks I'd go like this:

AFC South - It's the worst division in football. Indy literally has to trip over it's own dick to lose. Jags-Titans-Texans is a gigantic bucket of fail.
AFC East - Second worst division in football. New England has won this how many times in a row now? Six? It blows.
AFC West - Could KC get interesting? Yes. Will they now? Meh if Peyton is healthy I don't see it.
NFC South - The Saints basically have to beat Carolina. The Falcons will be garbage still and Tampa will be better but rebuilding.
AFC North - Cincy seems obvious because Baltimore imploded and Pitt is still old. However, either can surprise. Cleveland is always Cleveland.
NFC West - Seattle should win, but the 49ers are not going to allow that easily. Also the Rams might be better without Bradford. Less turnovers. Arizona spoils fun all the time too.
NFC North - I'm taking Detroit because if not now, when? Packers have trench problems on both sides but won't go quietly, Chicago is always trouble. Minnesota is fat purple laughing stock.
NFC East - Philly is the obvious choice, but this division is such a cockup that literally any team that goes 9-7 has a shot.

I doubt Detroit very much. I doubt the whole NFC North but the Lions have historical precedent of being utter shit at getting anything right. Its the Bears who should be saying if "not now when".

Denver, Indy and NE should cakewalk to their division titles but you never know with injuries. I am not buying a Texans revival but anything is possible. Either the Chargers or KC will mount some kind of threat but its Peyton and the regular season.

I could definitely see the Eagles being brought back to earth but I have no idea if any of those other 3 shit teams out east will be able to put together a 9-7 season. Someone has to but who knows.

Seattle is a lock. New stadium and injuries and suspensions should be enough to doom the 49ers to a wildcard spot at best.

The NFC south could be interesting, I don't care about any of those teams so who knows. I assume the Panthers are out of it with the Newton injury and LOL WR plan. The real question is what will the Bucs do this season in their division games and which Falcons team shows up?

I won't touch the AFC North, thinking about it gives me a stomach ulcer. Cleveland is a 90% nonfactor but with the other 3 anything could happen. Presumably Ray Rice is rested after taking a season plus two games off. Steve Smith is one hell of a player and perfect for the Ravens.

The scary part is it's quite likely that the Jags aren't the worst team in that division even if Chad Henne sprains his vage and Bortles has to start. I wouldn't call the AFC East the second worst division in football - you still have the NFC East to beat in that regard. I expect Philly to stroll to the NFC East title with 10 wins.

The NFL is really getting bad. They may have parity, but it feels like there are 3-6 teams that are good, 1 team that is probably great and the rest is just "de basura en el fuego" - i.e. garbage on fire.

The NFC East is terrible but it's competitively terrible in how shitty it is.

Do you really think anyone in the NFC East will be competitive with the Eagles?

Absolutely. I think that division comes down to the final week with one of the other three teams needing a win and a Philly loss

The thing about the NFC North is that the Packers, Bears, and Lions are all strikingly similar teams. All have offenses with a very high ceiling, and defenses which have a lot of question marks; none of them are balanced teams in the way the Seahawks, 49ers, or Pats are. None of them are bad teams per se, and they should all be easily capable of getting winning records this year. None seem set to stand out above the rest though.

That said, the teams I'm looking at to regress hardest this year are 1) Carolina 2) KC 3) SF.

How good the Bears are will depend on how many games Cutler misses (I guess a minimum of 6) and how well that new and improved defense actually improves. Chicago should have run away with that division last year once Rodgers went down, but they couldn't stop anybody. The Lions quality will be based on how much actual discipline Caldwell brings to that team, because their defensive backfield is still shit.

I agree about your regressions though. Carolina and SF both have injury/suspension issues in key areas, not to mention gutting Carolina's receiving corps. I'm iffy on KC - Andy Reid has a tendency to get more out of teams than you might think so we'll likely see how many of those KC wins last year were because of an easy schedule.

A new drug testing policy is incoming, but it won't be in place for week one. (http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/09/06/no-new-drug-testing-policy-until-next-week-at-the-earliest/)

From what I can gather it seems that the NFL really wants HGH testing, and is willing to downgrade a bunch of recreational drugs (marijuana and amphetamines have been mentioned) to get HGH testing past the NFLPA. One consequence of this is that it could result in Josh Gordon, Wes Welker, and Orlando Scandrick having their bans significantly reduced or eliminated completely. But nothing is set yet, so a lot of this is just speculation and scuttlebutt. The changes won't affect things like DUIs or PEDs.

As a follow on, another reminder why Josh Gordon's suspension is pretty weaksauce (http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/07/29/gordons-appeal-focuses-on-disparity-between-a-and-b-bottle-tests/)

Philly, lulz.

Nick Foles turnovers all of 2013: 4
Nick Foles turnovers in one half vs the Jaguars: 3

 :awesome_for_real:

(http://i.imgur.com/PW9PvRn.jpg)

annnnd this just about sums up the Browns season this year. This is why I watch college football, because the alternative would lead me to be on depression meds and alcoholism.

God that was brutal.

And yet, Jags are the Jags lol

I just want to point out to all SF fans, the Cowboys are spectacularly shitty this year. I mean we may go 0-16. The defense is basically guys bagging groceries.

Lol at Romo.

That team is a dumpster fire. JJ deserves nothing less.

That's going to leave a mark.

They aren't watchable. I knew the Cowboys would be a total disaster. This isn't even ironic performance art.

Tony Romo's Interception Palace.

Yet the offensive stats alone, outside of the INTs actually look on-par with what the 49ers are doing. Up until now at least.

                    SF      DAL
First Downs   15      14
Total Yards   232      200
Passing Yards   169      90
Rushing Yards   63      110

(http://cdn2.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/688416/karatesteeler.0.gif)

Week 1 is brought to you by the color yellow and the letters I-N-T.

Double ROOFLES for the Pats who spent the first half pushing Miami's shit in, only to forget how to block, pass or play defense in the second half. Seriously, first half Brady can do no wrong, just 3/5-step drops, get the ball out of his hands, move down the field. Targets the shit out of Edelman (thank you!) and they can't be stopped. Combined with Ryan Tannehill's impression of Mark Sanchez and the game should be over. NOPE. Knowshon Moreno just flat out runs the fuck over the Pats in the second half, and suddenly the Pats only play-calling is drop back and throw downfield to Brandon Lafell and suddenly we see why Carolina has 4 new wideouts. How you feeling about that Mankins trade now Belichud? Also, eat a dick, Brady - you and your beard.

Dallas - oh, Dallas. You truly are a shit team if ever there was one. DeMarco Murray does not deserve being stuck with this failboat. To be fair, their defensive line looked a lot better than they had any right to be. Too bad they only had 7 defensive players on the field. What's that? They had a defensive backfield? No, no they didn't and there was no visual evidence that such a thing existed either. Holy shit, they couldn't cover my dead grandmother if they were given a tarp. And Romo? Those three picks in the first half? They were ALL his fault. I can't blame bad route running or pressure or anything. He just made absolutely insane, idiotic decisions with the football, the kind he usually makes in the 4th quarter when the game is on the line and he's scrambling for his life. He can't even blame the pressure, because his O line didn't suck. He just made really bad throws. And he can't even say it was against a good 49ers defense because between suspensions and injuries, they really aren't anymore. Niners fans shouldn't take too much solace in this game though. Against a team that isn't a floating garbage scow on fire in the middle of the Hudson, they will struggle. Also, fuck you Carlos Hyde for taking all of Frank Gore's carries.

Special mention ROOFLES: Kansas City losing to a shitty Titans team, Pittsburgh blowing a 24-point lead to the Browns, the Browns losing that lead anyway, the Saints self-destructing in OT, the Bears self-destructing in OT, and the Jags being the Jags.

Also, fuck you, NFL officiating committee, or whoever thought it'd be a good idea to have MORE FLAGS in games. It really is about as bad as I thought it was going to be, especially in the Cowboys game.

That could take over butt fumble as the most embarrassing thing to ever have happen to someone on a football field.

Atlanta fans are celebrating their OT victory against the Saints.

What they won't tell you is that Brees had a completely ordinary day, and it took a Saints fumble in OT to give them the ball in order to get that win.

That defense will still hang them. Also the Saints defense has been completely exposed. People have tape on them now and it's going to get ugly. They will need to score 40.

He straight up Mortal Kombat'd him. I assume a fine/suspension is incoming.

Bills. Bears. Home. OT. Loss. LOL.

Locals are anointing the Vikes 2014 Super Bowl Champions.

I lost all three of my bets today in fucking hilarious fashion.

The Broncos were up by 21 in the 4th quarter, and managed to blow it by the hook on a 7.5

The Jags had a 17 point lead on a +10.5, and tipped that over with a fumble in the last two minutes in their own half.

And the Falcons managed to come back and beat the Saints after the Saints had a three point lead by kicking a FG to take it to OT, then the Saints fumbling the ball in OT in their own end.

And that's why I'm not betting the NFL for a few weeks, because lulz.

So apparently the Colts really are just Andrew Luck and a bunch of fucking scrubs. T.Y. Hilton was completely underwhelming, Reggie Wayne is still playing better than his age should indicate but how long can that last? Without Robert Mathis their defense is just terrible. And yet somehow, the Broncos let them get 24 points in the second half without any sort of running game. Just on the evidence of week 1, I can totally see a repeat of last year's Super Bowl. The Broncos may be better than they were, but they ain't better than the Seahawks. Also, fuck you Andrew Luck. You throwing to Reggie Wayne AND scoring that last TD cost me my fantasy game in the f13 league.

Jesus christ, have people seen the Ray Rice video?

http://www.tmz.com/2014/09/08/ray-rice-elevator-knockout-fiancee-takes-crushing-punch-video/

Never bet against Luck.  The fucking Colts will beat all the good teams this year and still end up 8-8.  Broncos also looked like they weren't really happy to be playing.  I hope its just off season cob webs, but no one blocked for Ball and Demaryius was the Drop King.

Also, fuck the NFL, fuck the Ravens, and fuck Ray Rice.

Two games. The NFL is a bunch of hypocrites. How you can look at that as the commish and still give him a two-game suspension? I hope that rots in Goodell's money-grubbing soul.

I watched it. Fuck Ray Rice. What a piece of shit. It wasn't his slap that knocked her out, it was the force of that slap driving her goddamn head into the elevator wall and railing. Lucky she didn't get hurt worse. Fuck the Ravens, and fuck any of the Ravens fans that gave him a cheer when he played in the pre-season. That shit is beyond the pale.

I like the "we never saw the video" line coming out of the NFL and the Ravens.  Well, what the fuck do you think happened?  Did she knock herself out?

NFLs hands might be tied in suspending him additional games, but at the very least the Ravens should sit him another 4 if not straight up release him. 

The Ravens saw the video now. They have the information and are well within their rights to release him.

They won't, because they are shitbags. Bear in mind they have zero shot of making the playoffs even with Ray Rice because Flacco stuffed his face with the salary cap. Shitbags.

They have the chance to do the right thing. But as usual they will let money get in the way, and they'll make excuses.

They are shitbags for making Janay Palmer apologize.

Ugh, so true. That makes it all so much worse.

EDIT: Here's a take from Adam Schefter, which he gets pretty angry about that Ravens handling of the situation.

http://ftw.usatoday.com/2014/09/adam-schefter-ray-rice-espn-sportscenter-roger-goodell-suspension

When the .gif showed up on reddit's front page one of the first comments was something like, "the refs had to stop the game to figure out if there was even a penalty here."

So probably no fine, no.  It's not as completely blatant as it looks at first glance.  It seems the runner was going to try and jump but the punter didn't go as low as the runner thought he was going to. As brutal as it looks, the runner appears to be trying to high step/ hop over the punter, not full on facekick him. And I say that as someone who'd be happy if the Steelers went the way of the Oilers.

Hey for once I'm happy to be wrong.

Ian Rappaport is reporting the Ravens just cut Ray Rice.

https://twitter.com/Ravens/status/509043216977371136

Not a bad football choice either.  He's already well into his decline. 

The flag came into the screen as soon as the punter's back hit the ground, so they didn't stop the game to decide if there was a penalty but if it was for unnecessary roughness or unsportsman like conduct and where to spot the ball.

And I agree... he tried to hurdle him and wasn't going to get the elevation needed as the punter didn't go low for the tackle (which I can't say is surprising...it's the punter ffs). Just unfortunate the foot connected with the helmet rather than the shoulder pad. Of course, the entire scenario is just a fuckstupid mistake on Brown given he had the touchdown if he would have cut to his left instead of trying to make the highlight reel by hurdling or blowing up the punter. Steelers should fine him for being dumb... NFL shouldn't fine him for the result.

According to Mike & Mike this morning, the Ravens can't SUSPEND him because the NFL already handed down a punishment. They can make him inactive, but he still gets a check for those games. I don't know if that's true or not, but either way, not shit is going to happen to that son of a bitch.

EDIT: Oh holy shit, I didn't read a few steps down in the thread. They released him? GOOD FOR THEM.

His wife better leave him. Or she's in real danger now.

I haven't really been paying real close attention to this story until today and I kept hearing this morning various people say "his then fiancee" and naturally assumed that she left him after having been punched in the face.  Ugh.

Also suspended indefinitely by Goodell:

http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/eye-on-football/24701282/ray-rice-suspended-indefinitely-by-roger-goodell

Edit: tweet by Greg Aiello, head of NFL PR:

https://twitter.com/gregaiello/status/509048887617654785

God he is such a twat. You fucking know good and well he saw that video months ago.

And when that comes out...  :eat:

NFL is claiming that they hadn't seen the video. I guess I'm not sure why they even had to. He knocked her out and dragged her out of an elevator unconscious. What kind of punch do you think he threw to accomplish that? Suddenly now there is video evidence and now they realize how bad it was? This is another PR move. Fuck the NFL.

I'm boycotting this week. It's a small thing, but fuck them. I have better things to do with my time on Sundays, Thursdays, and Mondays than watch this product for a week.

According to this, the Ravens cut Rice entirely.

http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nfl-shutdown-corner/after-domestic-violence-video-is-released--ravens-cut-running-back-ray-rice-183053516.html

We've known that for like 10 posts now.  Try to keep up, Phil.

Oh I had never seen this quote.


You know, I've drank too much in public a lot in my younger life. I mean, a shitload. I've been drunk enough to be yakking in the bushes. I never once hit a woman. The worst I ever had happen was getting a guy in a full nelson before the bouncers threw that guy out with me on his back.

For me its not the actual slap, its the fact that he never shows a single ounce of concern when she is out cold. There's no "oh shit what have I done" moment in the entire thing. Its hard to watch.

I could forgive the slap. Its reprehensible and dangerous (her head bapped into a metal handrail in the elevator) but drinking + fighting + hot head = some people do some reprehensible shit. But he doesn't seem like he gives a flying fuck about it. The way he drags her limp body around like she's such an inconvenience or even worse how he's nudging at her with the tip of his shoe while she's still totally out is just ugly ugly business.

I have seen people posting links and images that claim even if the NFL didn't see the video, what happened on it was described to them in detail long ago.

Sorry, I was trying to troubleshoot a fax machine.  It's been a weird day.

I don't see anyone raising a stink about the few  people in the NFL the have killed people while drunk.

Where is your outrage then and now?

Let me know when they have a video of said incidents. And yes, the video does bring this shit home just a little bit more than the vague notion that some kind did something somewhere.

Actually his wife didn't leave him, she married him. This story was like 7 months ago and your only seeing a gif (most of the video is him not trying to hit her apparently). Hell he didn't even get arrested. Normally I'd be pissed at ray rice for hitting a girl but I'm registering a giant meh at a combination of A. whatever he did to her still didn't convince the victim in question that picking drunken fights with a 300 pound guy isn't a good idea and/or said guy is willing to punch her in the face (hence a very logical reason not to marry the man) and B. the cops didn't put him in jail (which considering video evidence and the victims swollen face probably would have guaranteed a very public court date).

Uh, he was arrested.  He went into an intervention program which is something courts have set up for domestic violence prevention. It's basically pleading guilty.  Completely separate from your idiotic victim-blaming, you are just factually way off-base.

And this surprises you why?  :grin:

I am late to this thread but that is all the fault of the kicking dummy.  It looks like he went down on his knees to give Brown a BJ or something.  Who goes down on their knees in front of a NFL WR with the ball?

Aren't punters taught to just go for the legs if they have to try to make a tackle?

Honestly, it starts out looking like text book high school tackling...  break down and go low for the legs.  The punter then tries to straighten back up when the receiver is jumping, but he's slow and just fucks up his center of balance.

He still slowed the runner enough for his team to get the tackle a few yards later.  It looks embarrassing but he probably saved his team another 10+ yards, as he was the last Brown there and the runner had blockers ahead. 

He's a punter. They will never be adept tacklers. Unless you are this guy:

(http://twitpic.com/show/thumb/di5wf7.gif)

He didn't save 10 yards, he saved a sure touchdown.  His nearest pursuit was 3 yards off or so.

Also, I am glad that the Ravens finally noticed that his YPC were way way down decided that Ray Rice should be cut due to the fact that he could no longer break tackles or move laterally enjoys hitting women.

One. Never said he was in the right or it was "explainable". Two if I cold clocked my wife and dragged her off I wouldn't get processed for "domestic violence prevention". Not even Chris Brown got away scott free (well he practically did) with monkey stomping whats her names face. Third this is several months after the fact, no western court system would have let a wife beater walk around you know potentially beating his wife if thats what the evidence suggested. So my reaction is, "Whatever they had on him didn't merit any significant legal consequences so kicking him out the ravens barely hits what probably should have happened for anyone who isn't ray rice."

From Deadspin

Whose Idiotic Ray Rice Comments Look Especially Awful Today? (http://deadspin.com/whose-idiotic-ray-rice-comments-look-especially-awful-t-1632033541)

Wut.

Whatever they had on him didn't merit any signifi....wut?

They have and always have had video tape evidence of him knocking out his wife.  There was never a lack of evidence, it was a lack of desire to prosecute.

Wow did the Giants ever look inept last night.

Gooddell has to go. There's no way the NFL can make me believe they didn't see that tape, and then subsequently tried to squash the investigation by any means they could while burying the evidence.

The NFL is claiming they asked the New Jersey State Police for all evidence, and the NJSP is claiming they didn't have the tape because Atlantic City Police had it. Somebody's probably lying but it really doesn't matter. The video is fucking disturbing and should disgust anyone who sees it. But what did people think happened in that elevator? That he tapped her and she swooned? HE KNOCKED HER OUT, THEN DRAGGED HER BODY OUT OF THE ELEVATOR LIKE A SACK OF RICE. The problem the NFL is having is both their reactions and that of the Ravens in this whole thing have taken the stance of "what happened in that elevator was bad, but it wasn't THAT bad." Which is fucking bonkers because HE KNOCKED HER OUT. Their reaction has been all along one of apologizing for his behavior as a way of diminishing the disgusting nature of it. The only time they've really acted is when the public has castigated them for it. And that's wrong. I believe Goodell should be gone for no other reason than if none of the videos had been released, Rice's two game suspension would have been it, and they'd have been reluctant to do that. Most of the ESPN pundits last night were trying to soft sell or backpedal on how bad this has been for the NFL (got to give Schefter credit - he and Olberman are the only two I've seen who appear really fucking pissed off about this thing).

In actual football talk, though... HOLY FUCK THE GIANTS ARE GODDAMN TERRIBLE. The pundits need to calm down on how good the Lions are because they are not. They are sloppy as shit, and still can't control themselves worth a fuck. They had 8 penalties before the first half was over. The Lions beat the shit out of a crippled, really bad, really inept team. Ben Mcadoo got a job based on Aaron Rodgers' good performances but that doesn't mean he knows how to teach a system to a team. The wide receivers for the Giants looks utterly lost, when they weren't dropping balls that hit them right on the hands. Manning looked lost as well. They can't run the ball for shit, their O line is a turnstile at Grand Central and their DB's don't know how to cover. The only positive for the Giants was their D line actually pressured the QB and stopped the run. Once the ball got past the line of scrimmage, game over.

Arizona and San Diego both look like what we probably expected. These will be the 2 best 8-10 win teams that probably won't make the playoffs without luck because of the division they play in. Arizona sure as shit likes to bring 5 and 6 man pass rushes. Both sides had good line play on the defense.

I have to keep complaining about the flags though. San Diego almost won that game based on 1 penalty - the defensive holding call that wiped out the interception in the 4th. That was yet another Mickey Mouse nothing call that shouldn't even be in the rule book and it almost caused Arizona to lose the game. I realize that, by the letter of the law, that was a holding penalty. That's the problem - a good play like that shouldn't be wiped out by a penalty. They might as well just make rules that say "You must let the receiver catch the ball." Make it like catching a punt. The receiver can't be interfered with it any way until they secure a catch. That may not be the intent of the rules, but that's what is happening in practice.

It's not worth putting up with all this atm, I think. The lying, the money grubbing, the flags, the scandals, I've just got better things to spend my time on when it comes to Sundays.

 Article on Grantland, you know Ray Rice isn't the only guy who beat up his wife/gf/fiance who played on Sunday (http://grantland.com/the-triangle/what-does-it-take-to-get-roger-goodell-fired-2/). Seriously fuck the NFL.

Yeah I think I'm done this year unless Gooddell leaves. I love this sport, but I'm done with what it's becoming. He needs to step down or be forced out, and I'm not watching this year while he's still in charge.

I was boycotting the NFL before it was cool.  :why_so_serious:

Seriously though, I'm not even sure firing Gooddell is going to be enough for me. The entire league is so laden with issues of all kinds, all stemming from overwhelming greed, that I can't get lost in just watching a game for what it is anymore.

The Ray McDonald thing is disappointing. Steve Young called them out for letting him play.

http://espn.go.com/blog/san-francisco-49ers/post/_/id/9258/steve-young-playing-mcdonald-a-poor-call

You've strung some words together here but they make absolutely no sense.

1. He was arrested and charged with simple assault based upon the initial police report.
2. Video of the incident was later viewed by investigators.
3. The DA upgraded the charge to Aggravated Assault.
4. He entered into what is known as a "diversionary program" which is something courts set up for first time offenders. It's similar to a plea in abeyance but with strings attached. You basically plead guilty, go do some stuff (usually anger management/domestic violence prevention classes, etc.) and if you don't get in trouble after a certain amount of time the charge is expunged.
5. All of this completely undermines your bizarre assertion that he "wasn't even arrested."
6. You are a clueless nitwit.

No no, I enjoy watching a moron tell a lawyer he's wrong about the legal process. This is a nice diversion from me bitching about boycotts.

You must be single.  I am married with kids.  Football on Sundays is a godsend.

Source is coming out that the NFL had the tape 3 months ago, and that a law enforcement official sent it to an NFL exec.

I mean holy shit, don't people realize the coverup is worse than the truth? I hope they bury Gooddell for this.

I knew that was coming eventually. I assume Goodell is out after all this?

The NFL sent a letter to the owners saying that they'd requested the tape and were told no by all parties involved, and that the casino legally couldn't give it to them.

The NFL apologists and defenders are out in force on this one.

Fuck the NFL. Seriously. Fuck them.

They are arrogant dickbags and they need to clean house on the front office. Starting with Gooddell. You can't fire the owners, but you sure as shit can get rid of the people that fucked this up.

At the risk of stirring up an unintentional shitstorm, I am simultaneously amused and frustrated by the fervor the Ray Rice video is causing.  I know I am not the only one, but it seems like there is this strange bandwagon that everyone is jumping on an manufacturing faux outrage.

Before I go on, let me be clear, and please don't forget this when you respond:  I think Ray Rice is a worthless fuck of a human being and am totally behind his suspension and wouldn't mind a permanent ban either.  So this post is not about what he did, exactly. 

The part I cannot wrap my head around is how this video made anything worse an anybody's mind.  We already know he knocked her senseless.  That was a fact on record.  We even saw him drag her out of the elevator like a sack of grain or something (to me, somehow the more disturbing part as it just showed a total disregard).  We also know that there are a handful of other current cases on record in the NFL of domestic violence, and it is fair to assume that some kind of punching is involved in those as well.  Yet we somehow went from thinking that Ray's 2 week suspension was not harsh enough, and our anger was somewhere around a 6 or 7 on the Outrage Scale.  Then we heard the NFL was going to crack down harder on stuff like this, and issued a harsher policy.  Although there was no reason to think at the time that Ray Rice was going to get a stiffer punishment as a result, our Outrage Scale number dropped down to a 5, collectively.  I mean, future lady sluggers were going to get their just desserts, so that was progress at least.  Then just days later, the video drops and somehow we go straight up to 10.  The shitstorm around this video is really quite epic.

So why did it change?  I saw the video, and to be honest, despite the dire warnings of ridiculously graphic violence...it was actually the very bare minimum of what I expected to see.  My mind actually pictured something far more graphic and I fully expected to see a more thorough beating, maybe him holding her down and delivering repeated blows.  In fact, the reaction to this whole thing is so utterly huge and without precedent, you'd think that's exactly what he did.  Does it make him more or less guilty either way?  Absolutely, 100% not at all.  Good riddance to the piece of shit.

But I still cannot figure out how the general public (and honestly, several of you here) has become orders of magnitude more outraged than you already were.  And you are, no reason to deny it.  Is it just because seeing the video makes it more real to you?  Is it more violent than you expected (how can it possibly be?)?  It feels like Faux anger.

And I will say it a third time for those of you who will try to ignore it:  I am totally fine with the punishment meted out.  I would have been fine with it before the video, and I am equally fine with it now.  I'd be fine if the Niners do the same to Ray McDonald right now.  But I suppose we don't have a video of that one, so I guess we aren't mad enough yet.

Last but not least, what the fuck is it with people named Ray?

I think a lot of it is this one.

But I also think, and I don't necessarily think anyone in this thread thought this, that a lot of people bought into the idea that she somehow provoked him and/or had struck him and that she was somehow at fault or partially at fault. The video clearly shows that there was no physical provocation at all.

Now. The problem is it doesn't matter whether she did or not, but to a lot of people think it does matter. 

I am no more or less outraged at Ray Rice. Everybody knew he knocked her out cold. The thing that really pisses me off is that the NFL totally botched this and then on top of it tried to cover it up. The NFL/Goodell think they are above reproach. There are a lot of decisions the NFL has made in recent years that have made a lot of fans (or former fans) really angry. It is just a culmination of that.

Agreed, for me it's not about what's on the tape. It's how the NFL has used every opportunity to ignore it, and then cover it up. I think Ray should be in jail, but that's a legal problem and something the NFL may have influenced as well with their overreach.

It's this. The video made it more real. It shouldn't have but that's the absolute truth. I mean, this isn't the first domestic violence case in the NFL. There have been over 50 since Goddell took over in 2006 according to ESPN First Take this morning. That's over 50 before we even saw the first video. Yet that first video was the only one that really caused any sort of public shitstorm. The first out of 50 in 8 years to cause any sort of public reaction. Why? Because the other 50 didn't have any video evidence. And some of them I'd wager were a lot worse. There wasn't any sort of outrage over the other 50 when those punishments were meted out. None at all.

Having the video DOES make it more real for most people. ABSOLUTELY. And as bad as that first video was, the second made it worse because you didn't know what happened in the elevator after the first. You thought that "well maybe she was beating the shit out of him, since she stuck with him and there was talk of her giving it to him." The elevator video made it pretty crystal clear that there wasn't none of that. It removed all doubt.

It's one thing to hear about domestic violence (since we could have heard about 50 other cases). It's another thing entirely to see it and that's where the outrage is coming. Because you can't deny it, you can't excuse it, you can't hedge your bets on it. If you start saying shit like "maybe she egged it on" you look like a fucking asshole.

I think partially the NFL really stepped on a landmine here because of the timing.

Both sides of the political spectrum can be seen throwing the "war on women" shit around relating to pretty much any news story if you read the comments. Which means all the partisans in America (~54% of us?) have been thinking more about how women get screwed over than usual. Not for good reasons but still its been on their minds. I like to think that deep down just about everyone feels a little personal guilt or bleeding heart guilt or both about women's issues that's been building for awhile now thanks to all sorts of events.

So along comes Ray Rice. Yes lots of domestic violence before but without a video they were just words on a page with zero detail. We've never had an NFL player attack chronicled the way Chris Brown's was for instance that I can recall. And my outrage was at a solid 10 when I read that police report. No video required. I still wouldn't piss on Chris Brown if he was on fire. Also Chris Brown did way way way way fucking worse. For the record. Nobody in his industry did a goddamn thing. So hats off to the nfl.

Additionally this time around, despite the evidence which made us all 100% sure this was really bad even when we had only seen the aftermath the punishment from every outlet was super lenient. At the time you had most of ESPN and most commentators believing that if the legal system was just putting him in diversion then it must mean she started it, she was attacking him, sptting on him, etc. and in the moment he knocked her out but he's really sorry.

The league, his team, his coach, other players and sports media all stood up for him and reminded us how much we love Ray Rice. Many people inferred that what he did must not be all bad from that overwhelmingly supportive response.

Then the video drops and the obvious thing from it is he didn't give a fuck how bad she was hurt. Her limp body was just an inconvenience to be dealt with with the minimal amount of effort. So now on top of that guilt from just the way things have been trending you have A TON of people feeling guilty for believing that Rice must not have done anything too bad or he'd be facing trial, or the nfl would give him a real suspension, or else the Ravens wouldn't tweet his wife's apology, or this girl wouldn't marry him, etc. etc. etc.

If the outrage is partially fake its mainly that people feel they need to make up for being so quick to let Rice off the hook back when this first came out.

Hearing about a women getting beat on by a man is one thing. We hear it all the time. It really isn't real to us, I think, unless it's someone in our immediate circle. Seeing it, even something as innocuous as Rice's hit (compared to most domestic violence which can get WAY WAY WORSE), makes it real in a way that words just couldn't. It's the same reason the Chris Brown/Rhianna thing stirred up so much because we saw the effects. WE SAW IT. The visual evidence removed the wiggle room our brains have for processing shit we just don't want to think about. And while it's really sad that it takes seeing it to actually give a real shit about it (because we've been hearing about domestic violence for decades), at least now maybe something can be done about it.

I get the point you are trying to make, Haemish, but man, innocuous was not the right word to use.