NFL 2021

[The Buscher]

Cincy only barely beat KC by the skin of their teeth last time.  I could see KC blowing the doors off of them next week.

Wonder at what point the average NFL fan turns on the Chiefs because “ugh, Chiefs again???”

[Mick]

Well, IIRC Brady didn't do three in a row. 

 

Neither did Rodgers, for that matter  . 

 

EDIT: Oh yeah, Jim Kelly. Forgot about him. 

[gunnar hendershow]

4 straight NFC Conference Championship Games and 4 straight AFC Conference Championship Games by Andy Reid is an astounding accomplishment.

[The Buscher]

Still can’t believe how bad the defense was with 13 seconds left.

Put Belichick in that spot and I guarantee he’s telling his secondary to commit holding and concede the 10 yards in exchange for 6 seconds.

[Maxx]

I was thinking the Bills really need another receiver, but then Gabriel Davis put up 200 yards and 4 TDs.  So I’m not sure what else they need to add besides a healthy Tre’Davious White.

[gunnar hendershow]

49 minutes ago, CM Busch said:

Still can’t believe how bad the defense was with 13 seconds left.

Put Belichick in that spot and I guarantee he’s telling his secondary to commit holding and concede the 10 yards in exchange for 6 seconds.

It was just an overwhelmingly weird sequence. 4-5 seconds shaved off on a squib kick. 4-5 more on the first throw, and then the Hail Mary. They tricked themselves into being afraid of the TD and it cost them dearly.

Buffalo has another year on this window but the brain drain might hit them hard. Daboll will get a HC job and there's a good chance Dorsey gets snapped up as OC somewhere before they can promote him.

[Maxx]

1 hour ago, CM Busch said:

Cincy only barely beat KC by the skin of their teeth last time.  I could see KC blowing the doors off of them next week.

Wonder at what point the average NFL fan turns on the Chiefs because “ugh, Chiefs again???”

I think the Chiefs have a bit longer of a shelf life because Mahomes and Andy Reid are more likeable than Brady and Belichick and the Chiefs offense is way way way more exciting than any Pats offense outside of the 18-1 season.

[The Buscher]

17 minutes ago, damshow said:

Buffalo has another year on this window but the brain drain might hit them hard. Daboll will get a HC job and there's a good chance Dorsey gets snapped up as OC somewhere before they can promote him.

Yeah, Daboll is gone.  Even though I don't like the idea of the Giants rushing their HC hire and possibly not doing their due diligence, Schoen's relationship with Daboll makes it hard to not think he's got his mind made up already.  At bare minimum, someone else would need to blow him away to make him back off of wanting Daboll.  I could see that hire happening before the end of the week which would then allow the Bills to swiftly promote Dorsey.

As a Giants fan, I have a level of skepticism around Daboll because obviously he's benefiting from elite level QB play.  But he's been there the entire time Allen was there and helped build the right scheme for him so who knows.

17 minutes ago, Maxx said:

I think the Chiefs have a bit longer of a shelf life because Mahomes and Andy Reid are more likeable than Brady and Belichick and the Chiefs offense is way way way more exciting than any Pats offense outside of the 18-1 season.

Yeah, Reid, Mahomes, and also Kelce all seem super likable.  Hill is a piece of shit but there is probably at least one piece of shit on every team in the league.  Had the Bills won, it would've been Cole Beasley etc.

[Lineker]

Dear sweet Buffalo. It will be so sweet when they finally do win the big one under Allen! 

 

And the play-off OT rules are 100% going to get looked at. They have to.

[The Buscher]

4 hours ago, Lineker said:

And the play-off OT rules are 100% going to get looked at. They have to.

I'm sure they'll look at the OT rules, but the owners had to be dragged to the current rules kicking and screaming.  They'll probably go back to "well, defense is part of the team, make a stop" which is rich coming from a league that goes out of its way to favor offense.

I think their real concern is not wanting games to go on endlessly.  Which is why I'd probably say if the first team scores 7, the second team is required to score 8 so the game ends either way.  You could take it further and say if the first team scores 3, the second team needs a TD.  Basically the only way there's ever a third drive is if nobody scores, in which case back to sudden death.

[gunnar hendershow]

Yeah you want to find the middle ground between the college OT rules and the current NFL rules. It's a tough ask all told. I don't think each team should be required to have the ball but at least once makes sense. Coin toss can still dictate a lot since a defense that was just out there at the end of 4th quarter can go back out there right away and be totally gassed, as we basically saw last night.

[DFF]

Pfft, just have the kickers do 50+ yard FGs until one scores and the other misses.

 

[The Buscher]

 

Baker Mayfield liked this tweet.

Truthfully I think after a game like that, over half the fanbases in the league are sitting there wondering if they have a QB in place they have a prayer of winning a title with.  I mean you could list all the starting QBs around football in September and break them into three tiers:  elite, serviceable, and bad.  And I bet you'd see a near direct correlation in the fanbases expectations for the season.  Elite QBs = "we can win a SB".  Serviceable QBs = "we can compete for a playoff spot and then hopefully peak at the right time".  Bad QBs = "When is the draft?"

In some ways I think the huge rosters and 11 men on the field obfuscates the fact that as far as the regular season goes, the modern NFL might be the least team-oriented sport of them all.  Elite-level QB play is your surest ticket to making the playoffs and getting one of those lotto playoff tickets every year, and it usually takes extenuating circumstances (specifically injuries) to keep those guys out of January. 

[gunnar hendershow]

You can only win with the serviceable tier when they're on rookie deals, which is a clear front office strategy nowadays. That's basically where the Browns, perhaps more than any other team, are right now. Is it worth putting a ton onto Mayfield and hope that as he inches closer to 30 he figures more out? Lots of QBs throughout history don't hit their stride until then. The league is not designed to let teams build up around a QB, so you instead have to build your team and play the lottery. If you hit the jackpot you get an immediate title window of 4-5 years and then have to hope you draft well at all other positions, if you don't you waste 4-5 years of a potentially great team.

[GhostMachine]

I have no interest at all in another Super Bowl with the Chiefs, and was going to pull for the Bills if they had made it. So I hope the Bengals somehow beat KC.

That said, I'd love to see the NFL adopt college's overtime rules, and the CFL's no touch backs rule, where if you don't get the ball out of the end zone and the other team recovers or catches a player with the ball still in it its 1 point for them. I see the former or something similar likely to happen, but not the latter.

 

Edited January 24, 2022 by GhostMachine

[Maxx]

23 minutes ago, damshow said:

You can only win with the serviceable tier when they're on rookie deals, which is a clear front office strategy nowadays. That's basically where the Browns, perhaps more than any other team, are right now. Is it worth putting a ton onto Mayfield and hope that as he inches closer to 30 he figures more out? Lots of QBs throughout history don't hit their stride until then. The league is not designed to let teams build up around a QB, so you instead have to build your team and play the lottery. If you hit the jackpot you get an immediate title window of 4-5 years and then have to hope you draft well at all other positions, if you don't you waste 4-5 years of a potentially great team.

Thank the Vikings for kicking this into overdrive by giving Kirk Cousins a stupid contract and raising the pay scale for slightly above average QBs to absurd levels.

[DFF]

They should give 1 pt for kick-offs that go through the uprights. 

[gunnar hendershow]

3 minutes ago, Maxx said:

Thank the Vikings for kicking this into overdrive by giving Kirk Cousins a stupid contract and raising the pay scale for slightly above average QBs to absurd levels.

WFT kicked it into gear by franchising him twice meaning he could force any team signing him to basically give him a fully guaranteed deal. Like everything it'll settle somewhat, and if the Wentz and Goff contracts are any indication teams will always be willing to roll the dice on one season to see if they can get something out of a guy so no team will be truly trapped in a bad contract.

Teams do more damage to themselves with paying huge sums of money to free agents to make up for not being able to draft well than they do with QB extensions for what it's worth. But typically the bad QB contracts go hand-in-hand with a team that also can't draft well and has to make panic moves by overpaying for an above average OLB.

[The Buscher]

As much as people want to dunk on the Panthers for picking up Darnold's 5th year option...it really does make sense if you have even the slightest hope he could be serviceable (and if they didn't feel that way, they wouldn't have traded for him).

I imagine there will be a similar discussion about Daniel Jones' 5th year option this year.  Conventional wisdom would be to pass...but there are probably people in the building who feel he was in a system which gave him zero chance to succeed, especially with the worst offensive line in football his whole career.  $21 million is a relative drop in the hat for a QB given the going rate on the market, especially since the Giants can clear a lot of other money in 2023 besides Jones, and the cap figures to have another big increase too.  If they pick it up and Jones is ass in 2022, it's not going to preclude them from drafting a QB in 2023.

[gunnar hendershow]

You basically get 6 years since you can tag them after the 5th year as well if it comes to it. The worst place to be is no QB, the second worst place is serviceable QB we committed way too many years to, and then you finally wind up in the situation the Panthers and Giants are finding themselves in. Find the next QB and give him time to develop in practice as opposed to throwing him out there to the fire immediately.