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The Giants have had to squeeze out some close wins over the course of the season, but Sunday’s game against the Texans played out differently.
A Daniel Jones touchdown pass put them up early and they never game up the lead on their way to a 24-16 home victory. The win lifted the Giants’ record to 7-2 and they’ll try for their eighth win at home against the Lions next Sunday.
Jones threw another touchdown pass in the third quarter and Saquon Barkley ran for his sixth touchdown after the Texans were able to cut the Giants’ lead back down to four points. The Giants were not able to add any points in the fourth quarter, but their defense forced a fumble by running back Dameon Pierce with Houston in scoring position and picked off Davis Mills in the end zone a bit later.
The Texans also hurt themselves with penalties on those would-be scoring drives and the mistakes were ultimately too much for the 1-7-1 team to overcome. Pierce had 17 carries for 94 yards to go with the fumble and continue a strong rookie season, but they need to be much sharper when they host the Commanders in Week 11.
Barkley’s strong season also continued as he posted 33 carries for 142 yards on the day. He and the Giants have reportedly tabled contract extension talks, but more of the same over the rest of the season will set Barkley up well for contract talks once the season is out.
Jones has his own contract issues to sort out and he posted a very efficient line of 13-of-17 for 197 yards in the win. Darius Slayton led the team with 95 receiving yards and a score, tight end Lawrence Cager had his first NFL touchdown, and Isaiah Hodgins also had a couple of big plays for a receiving corps that welcomed Kenny Golladay back in the first half. He had a bad drop, however, and he didn’t see much of the field after that point.
Those aren’t names that anyone expected to be leading the way for the passing game of a 7-2 team, but the Giants have defied expectations all year and they continue to put themselves in great shape for a playoff run.
1 responses to “Giants handle Texans 24-16 to move to 7-2”
Nice win coming out of the bye. Don’t know what to say about Golladay, though… he just doesn’t have his head in it. | 2022-11-13T21:46:59Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Giants handle Texans 24-16 to move to 7-2 - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/13/giants-handle-texans-24-16-to-move-to-7-2/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/13/giants-handle-texans-24-16-to-move-to-7-2/ |
The Texans gave up a touchdown early in the third quarter, but their offense was able to answer with a score of its own.
Quarterback Davis Mills hit wide receiver Nico Collins for a 12-yard touchdown with just over eight minutes left in the third quarter. The score cut the Giants’ lead to 14-10.
Mills was 6-of-13 in the first half, but went 4-of-4 for 61 yards on the 75-yard scoring drive. That was a big step in the right direction for the Texans after they managed just 86 yards in the first half of the game.
If their defense can hold the Giants, Mills and company will have a chance to take their first lead of the day. | 2022-11-13T21:48:09Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Texans find the end zone, trail 14-10 - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/13/texans-find-the-end-zone-trail-14-10/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/13/texans-find-the-end-zone-trail-14-10/ |
The Giants got wide receiver Kenny Golladay back in the lineup on Sunday after he missed four games with a knee injury, but he spent most of the day on the bench.
Golladay dropped a pass just before halftime of the 24-16 Giants win and he spent the second half watching from the bench. After the game, head coach Brian Daboll said that wide receivers coach Mike Groh let Golladay know that the Giants would be going with Isaiah Hodgins for the second half of the game.
Hodgins was claimed off of waivers on November 2, so this was his first game with the team and Daboll was asked if choosing him over Golladay meant that the veteran has blown his chance of getting back into the mix.
“I mean it’s after one game,” Daboll said at his postgame press conference. “You never know what can happen week to week. Go out there, try to have a good week of practice, and take it day by day.
Golladay said, via Dan Duggan of TheAthletic.com, that he’ll keep any comments about the benching to himself and that he’ll keep working because he doesn’t know why this season has gone so wrong for him. Given how well the Giants have done without getting much from Golladay, it’s fair to wonder if he’ll keep getting chances to show he can turn things around.
3 responses to “Brian Daboll on benching Kenny Golladay: We wanted to go with Isaiah Hodgins”
Shouldve traded him to the Rams, they need help and Matt seemed to know how to make him a millionaire.
It’s the story of this Giants’ season with how all these unsung players are stepping up. Daboll just plays guys who produce, regardless. Good job. Again.
Let’s be honest, unless he flips out, he’ll get more opportunities. They’re getting virtually nothing from Wandale Robinson. With the exception of Slayton, the other WR’s wouldn’t make most NFL rosters. Sills, Marcus Johnson and Richie James are not taking anyone’s reps. | 2022-11-14T00:06:27Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Brian Daboll on benching Kenny Golladay: We wanted to go with Isaiah Hodgins - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/13/brian-daboll-on-benching-kenny-golladay-we-wanted-to-go-with-isaiah-hodgins/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/13/brian-daboll-on-benching-kenny-golladay-we-wanted-to-go-with-isaiah-hodgins/ |
The Cowboys traded Amari Cooper to the Browns in the offseason, crowning CeeDee Lamb as their No. 1 receiver. Lamb, who had the most catches and most yards for the team last season, has not necessarily played like a No. 1 receiver this season.
His 556 yards entering Sunday ranked only 17 in the league.
But Lamb has shredded the Packers for 10 catches, 135 yards and two touchdowns in three quarters today. His latest touchdown, a 35-yarder from Dak Prescott, has padded the Cowboys’ lead to 28-14 at the end of the third quarter.
Lamb’s last 100-yard day came on Halloween 2021 when he had six catches for 112 yards.
He had 97 yards against the Commanders in Week 4 this season, his previous season high.
Prescott now is 21-of-32 for 207 yards with three touchdowns and two interceptions. | 2022-11-14T00:06:45Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | CeeDee Lamb catches second TD today and has first 100-yard game this season - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/13/ceedee-lamb-catches-second-td-has-first-100-yard-game-this-season/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/13/ceedee-lamb-catches-second-td-has-first-100-yard-game-this-season/ |
The Rams narrowed the Cardinals’ lead to 17-10 in the second half. But things are going from bad to worse for Los Angeles’ offense.
Receiver Cooper Kupp has left the game and headed into the locker room with an ankle injury. He’s officially doubtful to return.
Kupp suffered the injury with 14:24 left in the fourth quarter. Backup quarterback John Wolford sent a pass high to Kupp on the left side. Kupp went up to try and catch it and when he landed, an Arizona defender rolled up on his leg. Kupp was already on the Rams sideline and was able to be examined there before heading back into the locker room.
With starter Matthew Stafford in concussion protocol, Kupp had just three catches on five targets for -1 yard.
Kupp suffered an ankle injury in the loss to San Francisco a couple of weeks ago at the end of the game but did not miss any playing time. | 2022-11-14T00:06:58Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Cooper Kupp doubtful to return with ankle injury - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/13/cooper-kupp-doubtful-to-return-with-ankle-injury/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/13/cooper-kupp-doubtful-to-return-with-ankle-injury/ |
Christian Watson has dropped some passes today, and he slowed down on a bomb from Aaron Rodgers that should have a touchdown instead of an incompletion.
But the Packers receiver also has his first two career touchdown passes.
His first covered 58 yards in the first half. His second, a 39-yarder, came on fourth down early in the fourth quarter and has kept the Packers’ hopes alive.
The rookie’s jaunt to the end zone, and subsequent Lambeau Leap, has the Packers within 28-21 of the Cowboys with 13:23 remaining.
Watson, who has played through a couple of injuries today after an injury-plagued season, has two catches for 97 yards and two touchdowns. He entered the day with 10 catches for 88 yards.
Rodgers has completed 9 of 14 passes for 160 yards and two touchdowns. | 2022-11-14T00:19:27Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Christian Watson's second touchdown has Packers back in the game - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/13/christian-watsons-second-touchdown-has-packers-back-in-the-game/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/13/christian-watsons-second-touchdown-has-packers-back-in-the-game/ |
Chiefs receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster took a vicious hit on Sunday from Jaguars safety Andre Cisco. A flag initially was thrown. Then, “after discussion,” it was picked up.
After the game, multiple Chiefs players spoke out about the failure to rule that Smith-Schuster had taken a hit to the helmet while defenseless.
Receiver Marquez Valdes-Scantling (photographed speaking to an official after the play) asked a very pointed question. Via P.J. Green of Fox 4 in Kansas City, Valdes-Scantling said, “Are they really protecting us?”
They claim to be. They also want the officials to throw the flag in close cases involving hits to the head of defenseless players. At best, this one was close. At worst, it was just a bad call.
It would be interesting to know whether the officials on the field received input from those with eyes on video. That’s not supposed to happen. But from time to time it seems to occur. Or, at a minimum, suspicion arises that it has.
I’m fine with it, as long as they turn a mistake into not a mistake. If technology is used to create a mistake, it’s better to not use it at all.
1 responses to “Marquez Valdes-Scantling on non-call after JuJu Smith-Schuster hit: “Are they really protecting us?””
Are you playing football? This generation is weak | 2022-11-14T02:25:53Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Marquez Valdes-Scantling on non-call after JuJu Smith-Schuster hit: "Are they really protecting us?" - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/13/marquez-valdes-scantling-on-non-call-after-juju-smith-schuster-hit-are-they-really-protecting-us/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/13/marquez-valdes-scantling-on-non-call-after-juju-smith-schuster-hit-are-they-really-protecting-us/ |
Cardinals tight end Zach Ertz injured his knee in the first quarter Sunday and appeared emotional as he was carted to the training room. The news appears better than what everyone was thinking.
After an initial examination, the team believes Ertz’s anterior cruciate ligament is intact, Adam Schefter of ESPN reports. Ertz, who was wearing a brace after the Cardinals’ win, is expected to miss multiple weeks.
An MRI on Monday will determine the full extent of the injury.
Ertz made one catch for 12 yards before his injury, giving him 47 receptions for 406 yards and four touchdowns. | 2022-11-14T02:25:59Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Report: Zach Ertz's ACL is intact, but he is expected to miss multiple weeks - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/13/report-zach-ertzs-acl-is-intact-but-he-is-expected-to-miss-multiple-weeks/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/13/report-zach-ertzs-acl-is-intact-but-he-is-expected-to-miss-multiple-weeks/ |
The Bills were trying to play a Jedi mind trick on the Vikings regarding the identity of their starting quarterback on Sunday. The Vikings ultimately got the droid they were looking for.
After the crazy, insane, insane, crazy showdown in Buffalo, which resulted in a 33-30 overtime win for Minnesota, I asked cornerback Patrick Peterson if the Vikings expected to see quarterback Josh Allen, given the mystery the Bills tried to construct.
“We knew he was playing,” Peterson said. “That’s who we wanted to play. We wanted to play this team at their full strength because we’ve been hearing enough about we haven’t played good teams, we haven’t played good quarterbacks. Well, we just did it today and we won from coming back, you know, so what you gonna say now?”
There’s no much left to say. The Vikings keep finding ways to win. They hadn’t beaten a great team on the road — in years.
They did it on Monday. It was perhaps their biggest regular-season win as the visiting team since 1998, when they beat the Packers on a Monday night at Lambeau Field, it what was the national coming-out party for rookie Randy Moss.
For third-year receiver Justin Jefferson, it was a day to make a stream of clutch catches — and for quarterback Kirk Cousins to make one clutch throw after another. And for someone else to step up when the team needs someone else to step up.
There’s still a long way to go this season. But the Vikings are altering perceptions and realities by doing what they haven’t done in a long time. They took the show on the road and stuck it to an elite team. And they wanted that elite team to be at its most elite.
1 responses to “Patrick Peterson: Vikings expected, and wanted, to face Josh Allen”
Kirk Cousins is a GOLDEN GOD!!!!! | 2022-11-14T04:28:04Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Patrick Peterson: Vikings expected, and wanted, to face Josh Allen - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/13/patrick-peterson-vikings-expected-and-wanted-to-face-josh-allen/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/13/patrick-peterson-vikings-expected-and-wanted-to-face-josh-allen/ |
FMIA Week 10: Football Morning in Germany, and Justin Jefferson on the Wildest Game of the Year So Far
So I missed most of Minnesota-Buffalo, but I caught up in time, back at my hotel in Munich, to hear the German voice-over announcer on the FOX telecast scream on my TV, “HOLY MOLEY” when the Bills forced overtime after a thousand momentous things happened before then. So a few things I’ll account for in Football Morning in Germany:
Justin Jefferson, after the greatest catch of his life (and probably any other receiver’s life), tells me what Kirk Cousins told him leaving the huddle. It’s important.
The Bills are the AFC’s sixth seed after 10 weeks. That’s surprising enough, but Miami and the New York Jets are both ahead of them in playoff seeding now. Can you imagine this table-smashing horror, that the Bills would sneak into the playoffs as the six seed?
Looks pretty solid that, in some order, Philadelphia (8-0 with Washington at home tonight) and Minnesota (8-1) will be the top two NFC seeds.
The Bucs, suddenly, are who we thought they were.
Last year’s Super Bowl teams, Cincinnati and the Rams, are 8-10 this morning. Colt McCoy beat the Rams at SoFi Sunday, and by the way, after 10 weeks of the season in which they’re trying to repeat as world champions, the Rams are in last place in the NFC West.
Tennessee, 29-13 in the regular season since opening day 2020, is going to win the AFC South again. This despite the fact that Derrick Henry is the only offensive player who scares any defensive coordinator in football, and the fact that the Titans have scored 19, 17, 17 and 17 in the last four weeks. Titans eked out a win over the toothless Broncos and mysterious Russell Wilson.
Jeff Saturday has the best winning percentage in Colts’ history. He’s had a week to tell the grandchildren about. I gave him every chance to fire back at his detractors, and not only would he not do it, but he understands why they are firing. “I love coaches,” he told me after the 25-20 win over the Raiders in the first NFL head-coaching game of his life. “I get why people question this. But for the last week, I’m watching all the coaches on our staff, and these super-smart people with very defined roles are doing things so well, and I’m so impressed. It was like watching an orchestra.”
A note from me: This is an unusual week. I know the other 12 games deserve more than I’ll give them here. I hope the words I give you on what happened in Munich make it slightly tolerable that I missed a lot of good stuff stateside Sunday.
This note is why you should value the contribution of NFL Next Gen Stats to the discussion of the intricacies and appreciation of how difficult football really is. (Hat tip here to Conor McQuiston of Next Gen for his work on the numbers in this season.)
The crazy thing is, this could have—should have, probably—been an interception. Safety Cam Lewis was breathing down Jefferson’s neck, behind him around the Buffalo 40-yard line. When the ball was in the air, Next Gen calculated the probability of Jefferson making the catch at 28.8 percent. Honestly, watch the play as Lewis and Jefferson each go up for it. Lewis has two hands on and appears to be coming down with the interception, ending the game. Then, as the two men come to earth, Jefferson’s brute strength takes the ball one-handed out of the grasp of Lewis, and as Jefferson falls, he cradles the ball and completes the catch.
It wasn’t just that catch that Next Gen found unlikely. Nine of Jefferson’s 10 receptions had less than a 50 percent chance of being caught by him. No player in the seven-year history of Next Gen analyzing every catch in the NFL has had nine catches with less than a 50-50 chance of being caught.
Saturday's Debut
Saturday: “I was leaving Monday morning for ESPN, and so I was actually at home. I told Jimmy (Colts owner Jim Irsay) he was late. He has different hours than I do. He called me and just said, ‘Hey, will you talk to Karen about this? See if you’d be willing to do it?’ He was gonna talk to [GM] Chris Ballard and have the conversation with him. Anyway, I talked to my wife that night.”
Munich, Munich
By noon Sunday, one estimate had 40,000 people tailgating—another thing that isn’t done as enthusiastically in soccer—in the parking lots around Allianz. A Jacksonville-Houston game would have packed in a crowd here, but it was huge that Seattle, appealing because the Legion of Boom at the height of its popularity got lots of these fans into the game, and Tampa Bay, with the great Brady, were the competitors.
Lots of TV Stuff
If you’ve read me in the last few years, you know I have a fascination with how the schedule gets made, and then the mechanics of how it works during the season when flex-scheduling comes into play. Like: I am interested in Kansas City playing on national TV—Thursday, Sunday or Monday night, or the Sunday national double-header window—in 11 out of its first 13 games. The NFL’s in love with Patrick Mahomes and why wouldn’t the league be, but 11 of 13 is a wow to me.
Anyway, here are a few interesting media things:
The Miami-Buffalo rematch was supposed to be an anchor game for NFL Network on the Saturday of Week 15, but I won’t be surprised if it moves to Sunday night. Remember how the NFL decided to give NFL Network a triple-header on a mid-December Saturday, after all the college football weekends? When the schedule is announced in May, the league designates five games for the “Saturday pool” in Week 15, with the understanding that three would be played that Saturday (at 1 p.m., 4:30 p.m. and 8:15 p.m. ET) on NFL Network and the other two Sunday on CBS or Fox. This year, one of those five slated games is Miami at Buffalo. NFL Network would be thrilled for that huge AFC East game to be played in prime time on the league’s channel. But the Sunday night game that week is New England at Las Vegas. We’re still a month out, but Pats-Raiders looks like a ratings clunker. NBC likely would want to swap out Pats-Raiders for Fins-Bills. This is the advantage of the NFL owning NFL Network—if it wants, it can take a huge game from a league-owned outlet and move it to a network paying millions to do the games. If the NFL keeps Miami-Buffalo on NFL Net, it’s a sign they want to fortify the value of NFL Network. If it’s moved to Sunday, it’s a sign of how realistic the NFL is in satiating the networks that pay the NFL billions.
ESPN paid for flex scheduling in 2023. I bet ESPN wishes it had it now. Among the inventory for ESPN’s last six Monday night games: Pittsburgh at Indianapolis Nov. 28, New England at Arizona Dec. 12, Rams at Green Bay Dec. 19, Chargers at Indianapolis Dec. 26. Last year, when Disney/ESPN negotiated a long-term contract with the NFL, it got three perks beginning in 2023: a Saturday double-header on ESPN in Week 18, the ability to simulcast a few games each year on ABC, and a limited ability to flex-schedule games after Thanksgiving. ESPN has never been able to replace Monday night stinkers with decent games. The league will have the option to change some beginning next year. I don’t think it will be nirvana for fans, though. Moving a Sunday afternoon game to Sunday night is an inconvenience for fans and teams, to be sure. But moving a Sunday afternoon game to Monday night is a huge ask. The NFL likely would be okay moving a game with two woebegone teams out of the Monday night slot. But it will be judicious—I’d be surprised if it happened more than once a year. If the league had the flex this year for ESPN, maybe Steelers-Colts would move to Sunday at 1 p.m. ET, with Cincinnati-Tennessee flipping to Monday night. I think the bar will be higher for ESPN to flex than it will be for NBC.
So what happens to Patriots-Raiders in Week 15 if it’s moved out of Sunday night? The easy fix would be to move it to Saturday if Miami-Buffalo moves to Sunday. Two problems: New England plays at Arizona on Monday night in Week 14, so making the Pats come back on very short rest wouldn’t be good. Plus, Allegiant Stadium is in use on the Saturday of Week 15 for the Las Vegas Bowl. So Pats-Raiders, if moved, would switch to a Sunday afternoon game.
Dec. 4 is shaping up as a tough flex decision for the league. On the SNF schedule is Indianapolis at Dallas. The league would be loath to move Dallas out of a prime-time slot, because Cowboys ratings are always good—and ratings for a playoff-bound Cowboys team would be better, theoretically. But there are two complicating factors. One: No one on Sunday night is hanging in if it’s 28-3 at the half and with the Colts being awful, that’s possible. Two: Look at the NFL’s alternatives to flex: Jets-Minnesota, Kansas City-Cincinnati, Tennessee-Philadelphia. That is one competitive slate if the NFL wants to move a game.
Game 272. In my preseason predictions, I picked Baltimore-Cincinnati to be the Sunday night game in Week 18 (game 272). The NFL picks the game that would either be a division championship game, or a game that would have major playoff implications. This morning, there are a few options. Ravens-Bengals is a strong one—both could be in play for the division then. But Jets-Dolphins has good playoff win-and-in potential. And though this is a long shot, what if Philly’s 16-0 going into the final game, hosting the Giants? That would be a great candidate, particularly if Eagles coach Nick Sirianni says he’s going for all the marbles there.
By the way, Howard Katz and the NFL scheduling team usually are good at projecting in April and May which teams would be late-season attractions. Good, but not flawless, as shown by the league slating the Colts in prime time in three of the five weeks after Thanksgiving.
Justin Jefferson, wide receiver, Minnesota. Catch of the year. Beckham-like. Pickens-like. And because he was covered tightly, I’d say even better. What makes Jefferson great—so, so great—is that he makes that catch and you say, What a great day he had, and you look up at the end of the day and realize he had 10 catches for 193 yards and a 22-yard touchdown catch also.
Tua Tagovailoa, quarterback, Miami. Ho-hum: 25 of 32 for 285 yards and three touchdowns. Two reasons he’s here: Tua’s not using Waddle-Tyreek as a crutch; on Sunday against the Browns, he threw TD passes to Alec Ingold, a fullback, and Trent Sherfield, a wideout. Also, per Football Perspective, Tagovailoa is the seventh QB in the last 56 years to have three TD passes and a passer rating over 135 in three straight games.
Rachaad White, running back, Tampa Bay. White, a rookie from Arizona State, picked a great time for his first 100-yard game in the NFL (22 carries, 105 yards). Tampa had its best rushing day of the season—44 carries, 161 yards—at a time it was desperately needed. White also showed his football brain at the two-minute warning by gaining 18 yards for a first down deep in Seattle territory up five, and going down voluntarily inbounds so the clock would keep running, knowing that Seattle could not get the ball back after that. Nice day for the rook.
Christian Watson, wide receiver, Green Bay. The gamble that Packers GM Brian Gutekunst made to trade two prime picks to move up to pick Watson in the second round last April bore fruit Sunday in the Pack’s upset win over the Cowboys. Watson caught three touchdown passes–from 58, 39 and seven yards–from Aaron Rodgers. The last two brought Green Bay back from a 28-14 fourth-quarter deficit and forced overtime in a game the Pack desperately had to have.
Patrick Peterson, cornerback, Minnesota. Great players make clutch plays when said plays are required. Peterson did it twice in the last 20 minutes of a season-changing 33-30 win over Buffalo. He picked off Josh Allen in the end zone with 10:25 left in the fourth quarter, then picked off Allen two yards deep in the end zone to end the game in overtime. Want him back, Cards? Can’t have him.
Devin White, linebacker, Tampa Bay. Dramatic week for the nerve center of the Tampa defense. White was still getting over former Bucs DT Warren Sapp saying the team should strip him of his captaincy for loafing two weeks ago against the Ravens. Then, while on the team bus on the way to Tampa International Airport Thursday for the flight to Germany, he got a call from a family member telling him his father died. To make the trip or to not make the trip? He decided to go, saying being with his mates on the trip would be good for him. Then he went out Sunday and played one of his best games—nine tackles, two sacks, a forced fumble, three total QB pressures. White’s 10-yard sack put the Seahawks in a huge hole on their last fruitless series of the first half. His second sack changed the game. Late in the third quarter, Seattle was still down 21-3 but threatening to score at the Tampa nine-yard line. White burst through the line and strip-sacked Geno Smith. The Bucs recovered, and a crucial Seattle chance was snuffed out. Great day for White. “It was very hard to play,” White said. “But I tried to turn it into good emotion and tried to keep a good spirit.”
Jake Camarda, punter, Tampa Bay. The Bucs used a fourth-round pick on the four-year Georgia punter, and it paid off Sunday in Munich. In the first quarter of a scoreless game, with the Bucs pinned at their 16-yard line, Camarda boomed a 59-yard punt to stick Seattle at its 25-. Just inside the two-minute warning of the half, with the ball at the Tampa seven-, Camarda punted a rainmaker at Allianz Stadium, a 63-yard bomb fair-caught at the Seattle 30-. This field-position football left Seattle with long fields at big moments of the half. For the game, Camarda just had those two punts, but they were huge in a one-score game.
Kevin O’Connell, head coach, Minnesota. The Minnesota team that went into Buffalo and trailed 27-10 with 16:30 left in the game looked absolutely cooked. But the Vikings scored 23 points in the final 25 minutes of the game, and there was a doggedness to their performance that was admirable. When O’Connell took over, he emphasized teaching over hard discipline. Maybe that’s how Minnesota has won seven in a row and beaten 7-3 Miami and 6-3 Buffalo. Whatever, the O’Connell way is working for one of the hottest teams in football.
Goats of the week
Josh Allen, quarterback, Buffalo. A brutal end-of-game sequence for Allen, throwing two picks to Patrick Peterson in the final 20 minutes—both in the end zone with the Bills having a great chance TWICE to win the game—and also a botched snap with the center in the final minute of regulation. This is the second straight week to forget for the great Buffalo quarterback.
Mitch Morse, center, Buffalo. We may never know how Morse botched the snap to Allen in the end zone with 49 seconds left as the Bills held a 27-23 lead. But whatever the reason, that can’t happen. The Bills might lose home field in the AFC playoffs (and truly might lose an increasingly strong division and need to play the entirety of the postseason away from home) because two veteran players who have worked together for four years could not execute the simplest play in football—the center-to-QB snap.
Kevin Stine, replay official, Minnesota-Buffalo. What happened Sunday in Buffalo doesn’t bode well for Stine. His faux pas didn’t determine the winner in the game, but it very well could have. Buffalo was down 30-27 with 24 seconds left in the fourth quarter, and Josh Allen threw deep down the left sideline for Gabe Davis, who dove and, officials ruled, caught it while falling out of bounds. It was close, but it should have been incomplete—Davis was lightly juggling the ball as he fell to earth. And senior VP of officiating Walt Anderson agreed in a pool report: “Even though it happens fast, Buffalo hurries to the line of scrimmage for the next play,” Anderson said. “If the replay official can’t confirm it was a catch on that long of a completed pass, we should stop play to ensure it is a catch. I’ll have to find out from the replay official exactly what he didn’t feel like he saw to stop the game.” Uh-oh. Gonna be a bad week for Kevin Stine.
Lamar Jackson, quarterback, Baltimore. A young Ravens fan had a heart problem. Jackson agreed to meet him. Here is what happened:
Von [Miller] always says don’t blink, and I feel like we might be blinking a bit.
–Buffalo receiver Stefon Diggs, after a nightmarish loss by the Bills to Minnesota.
I know I can lead men. I know I know the game of football, and I’m passionate about it. I have no fear about, ‘Are you as qualified as somebody else?’ Bro, I spent 14 years in a locker room. I went to the playoffs 12 times. I’ve got five dudes in the Hall of Fame that played with me. You don’t think I’ve seen greatness? You don’t think I’ve seen how people prepare? How they coach? How they GM? How they work? I dang sure won’t back down.
–The inexperienced Jeff Saturday, after taking the Colts’ interim coaching job.
It’s a disgrace to the coaching profession.
–Hall of Fame coach Bill Cowher, on CBS’ “The NFL Today” Sunday.
When you hire your drinking buddy to be the head coach of an NFL football team, it is one of the most disrespectful things I’ve seen in my entire life … It’s the most egregious thing I can ever remember happening in the NFL, and I went 1-31 my last two years in the NFL.
–Former Cleveland tackle Joe Thomas, on “Good Morning Football,” on Indianapolis owner Jim Irsay hiring Jeff Saturday, who has never coached above high school football, to be the Colts interim coach.
Pretty rough comment there, about the “drinking buddy.”
The Baltimore Ravens are the best team in the league, and it’s not even close. This may be the best Baltimore Ravens team we’ve ever seen.
—Brandon Marshall on Inside the NFL.
Well then. Ray Lewis, a partner on Inside the NFL, would like a word.
Career NFL head-coaching records of coaches with deep tentacles in Buffalo:
Reich led a comatose offense this year; that’s for sure. Throw the darts and arrows at him for that. But he coached the Colts for 4.5 seasons, during which he had five different opening-day starting quarterbacks, and he finished his Indy career seven games over .500 (40-33-1).
Put another way: The great Bill Belichick, over the last four full seasons (2018-’21), with Tom Brady as his quarterback for two of those four full seasons, went 40-25. In Frank Reich’s four full seasons, with four different starters not named Tom Brady, Reich went 37-28.
Lest you think the badness of the NFC South is unprecedented, I bring you the 10-week standings of another division, recently:
Washington won the East two years ago at 7-9. My best guess is that the NFC South winner this year will be no better than 9-8.
Sunday was the 240th game (regular- and post-season) of Matt Ryan’s NFL career. He had never rushed for 39 yards in a game.
In Las Vegas Sunday, he rushed for 39 yards on one scramble.
Six observations about Munich, and Germany:
1. Smoking is out of control here. My bet is, comparing Munich versus New York City, is that five times as many people smoke in Munich compared to New York. At least. On Friday morning, I was having a coffee and people-watching outside in a city plaza, Marienplatz. Nursing a macchiato. In a five-minute span, two smokers sat down with coffees to enjoy and lit up. Time to go.
2. People are polite, in so many ways. In crowded city intersections, even when there’s not a car in sight, no one walks across the street when the WALK sign is red. Other than one ugly American from Brooklyn who shall remain anonymous. I must say these people are lovely, polite and friendly, and the vast majority I encountered can speak English. This was a great trip to take, both for the football and humanity parts.
3. Dogs. My scientific poll of citizens in Munich shows that one in 50 citizens owns a dog. Amazing how few there are here. Where I live, it’s like one in two. Did find a lovely German Shepherd on some strasse Friday and remarked: “Good dog!” Owner, beaming, said, “Danke!”
4. What a great walking city. On Friday I walked through three great green spaces (including a cemetery) and put 19,795 steps on the pedometer, and it was great. Walking through the neighborhoods of Munich, passing by one grade school at what appeared to be recess, getting coffee in Marienplatz with the commuters walking/bike-riding to work, stopping to pick up the Munich morning paper, TZ, with FOOTBALL-FIEBER! on the cover, with a 32-page special section on the game.
5. This is not a poll, but these people like football. Ran into two Patriots fans from Switzerland, Fabio Buchler and Roman Aeschbach, who drove five hours to see the scene and go to the game. “We’ve been four times to games in London,” Aeschbach, 36 and in an NFL hoodie, said. “The difference is this city is smaller and more packed with fans. So many fans.” On Friday night, one overserved Seahawks fan in a D.K. Metcalf jersey puked into a planter outside the Seahawks-designated bar, and he got trolled by a passerby: “It’s only 9 o’clock! Come on!”
6. I took one cab, and the driver was into our politics. Had a four-mile ride to take, so I got in a cab Saturday afternoon, and the driver, a 70-year-old guy with perfect English, asked me, “So you had your midterms, right?” Wow, I said—you know about the midterm elections in the U.S.?” He said yes, and he was hoping they would provide some of the sensibility the world wants to see out of America. “It’s terrible over there. The guns, everybody so divided. You need to do something about that.” He said the world looks to the U.S. for leadership. I couldn’t believe this 70-ish man was so focused on that, and realized the importance of the midterm elections. One other thing: “This DeSanteese—has he overtaken Trump?” I told him he was asking a question a lot of people in America were asking.
When they are designing the statue of Justin Jefferson in downtown Minneapolis, I suggest having him catch Mary Tyler Moore's hat.
Sam Farmer, who was born with a mature clever gene, of the Los Angeles Times.
Justin Jefferson is the best receiver in football
— Lance Moore (@LanceMoore16) November 13, 2022
Moore is a former NFL wideout.
Mike Tomlin has now beaten all 31 teams not named the Steelers.
Siciliano is a clever RedZone host.
2-7. Wow.
Tafur covers the Raiders for The Athletic.
How many games had Leonard Fournette started this season? Nine.
Did Leonard Fournette start today in Germany? Nein.
Michael David Smith is managing editor of Pro Football Talk.
The story of Wilma Rudolph is such an inspiration to me. We may face challenges, many times we are think they are insurmountable–our dreams unachievable, but with a community, with fierce determination, we can fly. pic.twitter.com/A84cTEruxU
— Cory Booker (@CoryBooker) November 5, 2022
Booker is a U.S. senator from New Jersey.
Wenn @peter_king begeistert ist, haben „wir“ alles richtig gemacht 🤩
Was für ein epischer Tag 👌
.#rannfl #nflmunich #nflmunichgame https://t.co/2qjQ4yUZvG
— meine-NFL.de 🏈 (@meine_NFL) November 13, 2022
Carsten Keller is the voice behind Meine-NFL (“My NFL”), a German football blog and podcast. This tweet, a response to my report on my time in Munich, reads (as translated by Twitter): “If Peter King is enthusiastic, we have done everything right. What an epic day.” Epic indeed, Carsten.
I am overrun with Irsay-Saturday emails, but I thought this one was smart. From Rich Haley: “This comes down to a question of trust. By going outside the building for an interim coach, Irsay is saying loud and clear: I don’t trust anyone in the organization right now and I need to bring someone in who will give it to me straight. I think Jeff Saturday is there to evaluate the organization, at least on the coaching side, in order see how deep the cuts need to be. Also, Jim Irsay is telling [GM] Chris Ballard: I don’t trust you either.”
Thanks, Rich. Not so sure about the trust aspect, because Irsay is a total bottom-line guy. This team wasn’t winning, and so his high regard for Frank Reich went out the window—even though he just gave him a huge contract extension last year. As for keeping Ballard, my gut feeling is Irsay doesn’t want to have a debit of $50 million (or whatever the figure he would owe his coach and GM with 4.5 years left on contracts), but I do know he has high regard for Ballard. So we’ll see what the off-season brings. Thanks again.
I think John is right about the mailbag. From John Allen: “I’ve been reading your column since I was in high school back in the early 00’s. I think the mailbag in its current iteration brings down your column. It feels like, at least to this admittedly amateur psychologist, that you’ve turned it into a place to almost make yourself feel better about stupid opinions or takes that people have and you want to shine a light on because you’re fed up with them. I certainly don’t need the column spoiled with some stupid take most of us know is dumb before we even read your response. It is my opinion that you should use the mailbag as an opportunity to spotlight something interesting someone came up with, something good/positive, or just get rid of it. I really enjoy your insight, and that section just bums me out.”
Such good points, John. Thank you. I have always felt that if someone writes me an email challenging me or semi-attacking me that I didn’t want to censor anyone’s opinion. But in the case of clearly stupid things, I really should exercise the edit button and move on to something else. You’ve brought me to my senses. I’ll still use the critical emails, but I’ll edit out the ones that don’t make much sense.
Who knows, but I’d be surprised to see Brady coach. From Guy Grant: “Do you think when Tom Brady retires, he will [ever] coach? I could see that he would like the competitive aspect of it. Or perhaps he would become a GM.”
Well, Guy, Brady will have every option in the future, even seeing that he has signed a 10-year contract with Fox to go into the booth after he retires. I do think he’d find a path to ownership tempting, if he can find one. Immediately after retiring, whenever that is, Fox will pay him something like $37 million a year to be a broadcaster/speechmaker/whatever. That’s a five-month-a-year job, four days a week max. He’ll want to find something else to do with his life. Coaching? I’ve never pictured him doing that.
Great topic, Jim. From Jim Susbauer: “As a voting member for the Hall of Fame, I wonder how you feel about broadcasters and analysts referring to players as ‘Hall of Famers.’ I hear them talk about Travis Kelce as a Hall of Famer or other current players (Brady, Mahomes, Rodgers, etc.) as shoo-ins to the Hall. I realize Brady and Kelce will be voted into the Hall, but until they are eligible and voted into the Hall, they aren’t ‘Hall of Famers.’ I think it’s an insult to the members of the Hall.”
Jim, my problem is a slightly different one. Announcers are quick to label top current players as “future Hall of Famers.” It’s fine to call Brady or Rob Gronkowski or Aaron Rodgers future Hall of Famers. But it’s thrown around so often, without regard to the reality of how difficult it is to make the Hall of Fame. In the last few years, I’ve heard Kam Chancellor, Earl Thomas, Zach Ertz, Michael Thomas, Khalil Mack, Philip Rivers, Marshal Yanda and so many others described as “future Hall of Famers.” Now, all of them may make the Hall one day—surely at least some will. But I sit in those Hall meetings, and five (at most) modern-era players get in each year, and the queue is long. It leads to false expectations from fan bases and the players themselves to call every guy who makes three or four Pro Bowls a future Hall of Famer. Because they all are not.
1. I think as the weeks go on, there can be no doubt that the Bears have themselves a quarterback for the long term. I am sure offensive coordinator Luke Getsy doesn’t like endangering Justin Fields by running him so much, but he is so darn good at it, that I think the Bears simply have to play to his strengths.
2. I think, maybe, Christian Watson wasn’t a bad draft pick.
3. I think I’m going to start a new section in the column next week for the last eight weeks of the season. It’s going to be called MVP Watch, and I’ll have a top five each week. Let’s just say we do a preview this week. Here’s my top five after Week 10, and comments to peterkingfmia@gmail.com are welcome:
Jalen Hurts, QB, Philadelphia.
Patrick Mahomes, QB, Kansas City.
Tua Tagovailoa, QB, Miami.
Justin Jefferson, WR, Minnesota.
Saquon Barkley, RB, NY Giants.
4. I think I know Mark Davis has inherited one trait from his father—impatience—and that doesn’t bode well for Josh McDaniels, who is 2-7 with wins over two of the worst teams in football, Denver and Houston.
5. I think you can count Kadarius Toney as another in the line of Patrick Mahomes Reclamation Projects by KC GM Brett Veach. The Jacksonville game was not going to be a tough one to win, but you could make a case for Toney being the most important runner/receiver in the Mahomes stable on Sunday in Kansas City’s 27-17 win over the Jaguars.
6. I think this column by union president JC Tretter about artificial-turf fields is important to consider, because it makes the point that not all turf fields are created equal. Before the last few days, I never heard of “slit film turf.” But when I see respected players like Calais Campbell, the former NFL Man of the Year, take it to task, it’s time to do a deep dive into the stuff.
7. I think this is something you should take a few minutes to watch. It happened 41 years ago today, and it’s a gigantic reason why a figure in the current history of pro football got to where he got. Man, it’s a touching, and important, piece. Attaway, Scott Pioli.
8. I think I don’t mind admitting I was wrong about something. And I was wrong about Tony Pollard, and how he should be the Cowboys’ top back over Ezekiel Elliott.
9. I think a smart Cowboys beat writer, Jon Machota, proved me wrong—with the help of Dallas running backs coach Skip Peete—about Pollard. Peete told Machota that, when Pollard started for an injured Elliott against Chicago two weeks ago, Pollard ran for a 54-yard TD in the fourth quarter and came to the sideline and told the coach: “Coach, I’m done. Done for the game.” As Peete said: “Some guys are race cars, some guys are high-quality, expensive sedans. Those sedans can go forever and for a long distance, at a very high rate, where race cars go very fast and quick and then they run out of gas.” Good work by Machota, answering a question that a lot of people surely had about Cowboys’ running-back playing time.
a. The best thing about the aftermath of the elections last week: Ohio senatorial candidate Tim Ryan, who lost to J.D. Vance, said what all losing candidates should say when he met the media after Vance was declared the winner. This from Ryan:
“I have a privilege right now, a privilege, as someone who was the Democratic nominee. I have the privilege to concede this race to J.D. Vance because the way this country operates is that when you lose an election, you concede. And you respect the will of the people. Right? We can’t have a system where if you win, it’s a legitimate election, and if you lose, someone stole it. That is not how we can move forward in the United States.”
b. That is the act of a good person. And it’s important today.
c. Former Football Player Story of the Week: Dave Itzkoff of The New York Times on the former running back for Morehouse College, the St. Louis Rams, Rhein Fire and Sacramento Mountain Lions—John David Washington, one of the best actors in the land.
d. John David Washington is making his Broadway debut in a play called “The Piano Lesson,” starring alongside Samuel L. Jackson. And the lessons he is learning, and the adversity he is experiencing is, quite frankly, inspiring to anyone, in any walk of life.
e. The thing that’s so transferable about John David Washington is he is the son of a very famous actor, Denzel Washington, yet he has put in the work, in football and in acting, of a person with zero connections. There’s a lot to like about John David Washington.
f. Writes Itzkoff:
To navigate a text and a discipline that are unfamiliar to him, Washington is approaching the task like a humble rookie, ready to receive the education that it might provide — along with any bumps or bruises that might come with it.
Asked why he wanted to perform in “The Piano Lesson,” Washington said: “I did it for selfish reasons. This was like going back to school. This is a master class. I want to learn. I want to get beat up.”
He added, “If I can survive, I’m going to be such a better actor than I was before I started this.”
… When Denzel Washington learned that John David was getting ready for the eight-shows-a-week rigor of Broadway, he heartily encouraged the proposition. “He said, ‘It’s a full-contact sport, John David,’” the younger Washington recalled.
But when John David decided that he wanted to pursue acting, after a torn Achilles’ tendon halted his sports career, it was impressed upon him that he’d achieve success only through hard work and not by trading on his last name.
Jackson, a longtime friend of the Washington family, said that he was one of several people who talked to the young man about the challenging path that awaited him. “We all told him, you can’t just step up in there and think it’s going to happen,” Jackson recalled. “You’ve got to go to class, you’ve got to put in the work. Being the dedicated athlete that he was, he attacked it in the same way that he attacked that, and he got all he could out of it.”
g. Seems like football lessons were important for the star of “The Piano Lesson.”
h. Memory of the Week: Bob Greene, writing in The Wall Street Journal, reminding us of what is possible in this country.
i. Writes Greene:
That front-page headline was from the Cleveland Press, once among the nation’s most prosperous papers, now long out of business. The edition was from Nov. 23, 1963, and the words across the top of the page were about the new president of the United States:
ALL OF NATION RALLIES TO JOHNSON’S SUPPORT.
…The headline writer was endeavoring to sum up what felt like a unanimity of spirit that day. Sitting at the copy desk, was he willfully naive, unschooled in political realities? I doubt it. Those were hardly innocent or Pollyannaish times; a murdered president was awaiting burial. The nation was in trouble, and such a headline was not controversial. It felt almost like a prayer.
j. Football Story of the Week: Kalyn Kahler of The Athletic on the NFL player that got so seriously ill with Covid that it wrecked his career.
k. The Ryquell Armstead story is crazy. He developed Multi-Inflammatory Syndrome, a Covid offshoot which is so rare that the CDC during the pandemic said only 27 cases were reported in the United States and England. Armstead went days without it being diagnosed, and his temperature stayed so high that, per Kahler, Armstead was afraid he would die, even with the Jags’ doctor for internal medicine working overtime on his case.
l. Armstead’s journey is incredible. In some ways, it’s surprising he’s alive. Good story by Kahler.
m. Surprising iPhone Story of the Week: Julie Jargon of The Wall Street Journal, with one about “This School Took Away Smartphones. The Kids Don’t Mind.”
n. There is so much that is so smart about what the Buxton School in Williamstown, Mass., did.
o. Wrote Jargon:
Students often looked down at screens during meals and even in class, where phones were prohibited. Teachers grew tired of being gadget police. Kids retreated to their rooms after class to scroll and text rather than gathering in student lounges. When the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020 and the school closed for a few months, class went virtual and things got worse.
“We found our students had disengaged more and more from real life as their phones became their world,” says John Kalapos, Buxton’s associate head of school, who graduated from the school in 2013. The trend continued after students returned to campus, he says.
p. Kalapos said at first, “Everyone was crying.” But here is what Jargon found in one senior, Yamalia Marks, who is 17:
“I’m a lot happier being on social media less. I think I’ve been a lot more self-aware,” she says, adding that she expects the benefit to carry into her first year of college. “Will I ever go back to having a phone with me all the time?” she wonders. “I don’t know, but I hope not.”
q. Sometimes the hardest things—and a teen without a smartphone is a very hard thing for that person—can be the most rewarding things.
r. The Astros won the World Series, the GM (James Click) had an expiring contract, and he got offered a one-year contract after the team won the World Series? Why didn’t they just fire him, which is clearly what they wanted to do?
s. I think I featured this video once, but the Dave Grohl-and-friends version of “Times Like These” from the pandemic is just fabulous, even after 2.5 years. Ellie Goulding, Dua Lipa, Chris Martin, Grohl. So good.
t. Want one more?
u. George Harrison and Paul Simon with “Here Comes the Sun.”
v. UConn 36, previously 8-1 Liberty 33, leading to the most surprising sentence in college football: The UConn Huskies are bowl-eligible.
w. Congrats to Seton Hall (N.J.) Prep for a big comeback win in the state football playoffs over rival St. Joseph’s, 34-30, coming back from 16 points down in the third quarter to win on a TD pass with seven seconds left. That’s what you call a big win over a big rival.
x. Speaking of my Jersey roots, how about the Devils winning nine in a row? They’re 12-3. I wonder if they ever started that fast with Martin Brodeur in net.
y. Beernerdness: Of course there has to be Beernerdness after four days in Germany. I tried five of the German beers. The best, I thought, was Furstenberg Premium Pilsener (Furstenberg Brewery, Donaueschingen, Germany), which I had on tap at a hotel in Munich. It’s brewed in eastern Germany near France, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. (No charge for the geography lesson.) A little bitter, and I say that in a positive way, with a great frothy head, and a little hoppier than a regular pilsner. Excellent. I had two.
z. RIP, Fred Hickman. I used to work with Fred at CNN. Delightful person, extremely professional, with one of the great broadcast voices I’ve ever heard.
Philadelphia 27, Washington 16. The Eagles are 8-0, with Washington home, at Indy, Green Bay home over the next 14 days. Gotta like their chances to be 11-0 as December dawns.
N.Y. Jets at New England, Sunday, 1 p.m., CBS. Zach Wilson handed the first meeting to the Patriots three weeks ago. Robert Saleh told me the coaches have been pretty educationally firm with Wilson, stressing that some of the best throws a quarterback can make are throwing the ball away. Has he learned? Tune in Sunday.
Dallas at Minnesota, Sunday, 4:25 p.m., CBS. Nice little cross-flex bone thrown to CBS, and it should get a huge number. A Dallas loss here, and the Cowboys can probably kiss any chance of catching Philly in East goodbye.
Kansas City at L.A. Chargers, Sunday, 8:20 p.m., NBC. I am convinced the next time Patrick Mahomes won’t play a nationally televised football game will be in week three, 2033.
The league should not play
Once a year in Germany.
Try four, maybe five.
Hello, Next Gen! Justin Jefferson's historic day Saturday's Debut Q&A with Colts' interim coach Jeff Saturday 10 Munich, Munich Football Morning in Germany Lots of TV Stuff Flex-scheduling and big TV games coming up 20 The Award Section Minnesota has the best day in Week 10 Quotes of the Week On a certain interim head coach, mostly 30 Numbers Game Not-bad coaching and definitely-bad divisions Factoidness A milestone for Matt Ryan 40 King of the Road More from my weekend in Munich Tweets of the Week The Justin Jefferson effect and some German lessons 50 Newman! Readers on the mailbag and "future Hall of Famers" 10 Things I Think I Think A preview of my new section and stories of the week 40 Monday, Monday An MNF prediction for Commanders-Eagles Games of Week 11 Jets out for redemption in New England; more Mahomes 30 The Adieu Haiku 5-7-5 forever | 2022-11-14T10:56:24Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | FMIA Week 10: Football Morning in Germany, and Justin Jefferson on the Wildest Game of the Year So Far - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/14/tom-brady-germany-peter-king-fmia-week-10/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/14/tom-brady-germany-peter-king-fmia-week-10/ |
Baker Mayfield is back in the starting lineup.
The Panthers have started P.J. Walker in their last five games, but head coach Steve Wilks announced on Monday that Walker has a high ankle sprain and that will force the team to change their plans at quarterback for their Week 11 road game against the Ravens.
Mayfield will get the start and Sam Darnold will be the backup. It will be the first time that Darnold is active for a game this season as he missed the first nine weeks while on injured reserve and got activated ahead of last Thursday’s win over the Falcons.
Mayfield started the first five games of the season before injuring his ankle and opening the door for Walker. He replaced Walker for the second half of the team’s Week Nine loss to the Bengals, but Wilks turned back to Walker as the starter against Atlanta. | 2022-11-14T15:35:31Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Baker Mayfield to start this week, P.J. Walker out with high ankle sprain - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/14/baker-mayfield-to-start-this-week-p-j-walker-out-with-high-ankle-sprain/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/14/baker-mayfield-to-start-this-week-p-j-walker-out-with-high-ankle-sprain/ |
The Giants rolled to their seventh win of the season on Sunday and running back Saquon Barkley did a lot of the heavy lifting in the 24-16 win over the Texans.
Barkley ran the ball 35 times for 152 yards and a touchdown while Daniel Jones threw just 17 passes over the course of the victory. When the game was over, head coach Brian Daboll was asked what it is like to come up with a “conservative game plan” for his offense.
“I wouldn’t use that word,” Daboll said in his postgame press conference. “I would just use we try to do what we think we can do, which was run the ball for 46 times. I think [someone] asked me, ‘Is it as simple as just running the ball with Saquon Barkley?’ The answer’s no because they do a good job. They made some runs. But each week, we just do what we think we need to do for that particular game. If it’s 60 passes, it’s 60 passes. That’s what we do as a coaching staff. That’s what we’ll always do. I wouldn’t give it a label. I would just say we try to do the best job we can to formulate a plan and make sure the players execute it.”
When a team can’t stop you from running the ball up and down the field, it would be foolish do stop yourself. Daboll and the Giants haven’t made many foolish choices this season and their 7-2 record reflects the benefits of that approach.
2 responses to “Brian Daboll: I wouldn’t say we’re conservative, we do what we need to win”
tapper0510 says:
It’s the Texans, everyone should be running the ball 60 times a game
The Giants are having a great season and it’s amazing to see what a coaching change can do. | 2022-11-14T15:35:33Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Brian Daboll: I wouldn't say we're conservative, we do what we need to win - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/14/brian-daboll-i-wouldnt-say-were-conservative-we-do-what-we-need-to-win/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/14/brian-daboll-i-wouldnt-say-were-conservative-we-do-what-we-need-to-win/ |
Davante Adams: We don’t have enough guys that are fully bought in
The Raiders lost their sixth one-score game of the season against the Colts on Sunday and an emotional Derek Carr said after the game “for that to be the result of all that effort pisses me off.”
Carr said that he doesn’t think that’s a sign of a disconnect between players and head coach Josh McDaniels, but added that he wishes “everybody in that room felt the same way about this place” that he does. Wide receiver Davante Adams had a similar take about the level of commitment to the one shared by his quarterback.
“Just don’t have enough guys that are fully bought in,” Adams said, via Vic Tafur of TheAthletic.com. “I don’t think people are like, you know, ‘F what [McDaniels] is talking about’ or ‘I’m going against the grain.’ It’s just a matter of executing when it’s time. . . . It means playing a complete game, every minute of the game, giving it everything you’ve got. . . . It’s doing your job and making the plays when you’re called on and get the opportunities, and we just don’t do that at a high enough level right now.”
Adams has aired grievances with the team after other losses and the repetitive nature of falling short late in games led McDaniels to say it feels like a “broken record” when he spoke to reporters. As long as there continue to be more problems than solutions in Vegas, McDaniels, Adams and others won’t be able to play a different tune. | 2022-11-14T15:35:45Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Davante Adams: We don't have enough guys that are fully bought in - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/14/davante-adams-we-dont-have-enough-guys-that-are-fully-bought-in/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/14/davante-adams-we-dont-have-enough-guys-that-are-fully-bought-in/ |
Chase Young‘s 2022 debut will have to wait until at least Week 11.
According to Ian Rapoport of NFL Media, the Commanders will not activate Young off the physically unable to perform list to play in Monday’s game against the Eagles.
Young was designated to return to practice at the beginning of November. But head coach Ron Rivera gave off the sense that Young wasn’t quite ready to play when speaking to the media on Saturday. He told reporters that there were still things Young wasn’t comfortable doing as he returns from a torn ACL.
Rapoport noted the Commanders practiced indoors over the course of the week, which meant they backed off of Young a bit. But Young is not in danger of not being activated.
Young suffered the injury a year ago on Monday.
The 2020 AP defensive rookie of the year, Young recorded 1.5 sacks, three tackles for loss, two forced fumbles, and four QB hits in nine games last season. | 2022-11-14T15:36:27Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Report: Commanders won't activate Chase Young for Monday's game - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/14/report-commanders-wont-activate-chase-young-for-mondays-game/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/14/report-commanders-wont-activate-chase-young-for-mondays-game/ |
The Texans fell to 1-7-1 with Sunday’s 24-16 loss to the Giants and the prospect of changing quarterbacks came up during head coach Lovie Smith’s postgame press conference.
Davis Mills struggled in the first half and went into halftime 6-of-13 for 35 yards while the Texans posted just 86 yards as a team. Mills would play better in the second half and finished the day 22-of-37 for 319 yards, a touchdown, and an interception, but, as their record makes clear, the Houston offense has not put up enough points this year.
Smith was asked if he would consider a change at quarterback in an attempt to spark better production.
“Just don’t think it’s time, as simple as that,” Smith said. “Quarterback position is a little bit different. We rotate pretty much at most positions, we play more than one guy. Quarterback position is a little bit different. We can’t turn the ball over. Acknowledging what we did today is not good enough and anytime we’re turning the ball over especially in the red zone it’s not good enough. But that’s where we are right now.”
Kyle Allen is Mills’ backup and Jeff Driskel is on the practice squad, so the other options aren’t terribly appealing ones for Smith to consider. With two first round picks and an inside track to the first overall selection, that seems likely to change come the offseason.
7 responses to “Lovie Smith: I just don’t think it’s time to change quarterbacks”
Lovie Smith is a great guy but he shouldn’t be an NFL head coach. He’s hesitant to make changes. He has too much personal loyalty to his players to park them and insert a different player. Kyle Allen has shown flashes of real good play in the past. What’s to lose ? The first draft pick ?
Mills has struggled but the team is wanting to draft high again anyway.
He is not a long-term answer but better weapons would help.
If you are going to change quarterbacks maybe it would good to have a 5 year veteran on the roster?
We were specifically told that Davis Mills is a future All Pro QB.
Going into the season with those QBs in your QB room is tantamount to football malpractice. If you don’t clean house in the front office, it won’t matter how many number ones you have in this next draft..
As for Davis Mills, given the coaching I don’t think this season is indicative of how he can play.
I was very surprised and disappointed when I heard that Caserio signed Lovie Smith to coach…,(“if you don’t learn from History…)”.
Unless GM was pressured to do so by the “Preacher” or ownership at the time?
Likely LS is a nice man but, in my opinion, he’s a horrible choice for HC.
Kyle allen is a good qb given a chance he will win games | 2022-11-14T17:42:23Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Lovie Smith: I just don't think it's time to change quarterbacks - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/14/lovie-smith-i-just-dont-think-its-time-to-change-quarterbacks/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/14/lovie-smith-i-just-dont-think-its-time-to-change-quarterbacks/ |
Buccaneers running back Leonard Fournette suffered a hip injury during Sunday’s victory over the Seahawks in Germany.
But with a bye coming in Week 11, Fournette is currently not expected to miss any playing time.
That’s according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter, who reports Fournette is likely to play in Week 12 when the Bucs travel to Cleveland to play the Browns.
Fournette sustained a hip pointer on Sunday. he didn’t start in Week 10, but did take 14 carries for 57 yards and scored a touchdown in the contest.
It’s been tough sledding for Fournette and the Bucs’ run game throughout 2022. He’s totaled 462 yards with three touchdowns in 10 games. He’s averaged just 3.4 yards per carry.
Rookie Rachaad White got the start on Sunday and recorded 105 yards on 22 carries.
2 responses to “Report: Leonard Fournette is likely to play in Week 12 after bye”
If the Bucs are smart he’ll be back standing on the sideline when kickoff starts because Rachaad white clearly has a lot more juice, and hits the hole way more aggressively at this point. Lenny’s tap dancing, and plodding nature seems like a huge liability. And yes, he still looks fat and complained big time the week before when he got pulled. Tiger never changes his stripes
beej says:
I haven’t seen any statement as to why he wasn’t starting, up until he got hurt the two split it 50/50 | 2022-11-14T19:44:49Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Report: Leonard Fournette is likely to play in Week 12 after bye - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/14/report-leonard-fournette-is-likely-to-play-in-week-12-after-bye/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/14/report-leonard-fournette-is-likely-to-play-in-week-12-after-bye/ |
Running back Eno Benjamin only played one offensive snap for the Cardinals in Week 10 and he won’t be playing any in Week 11.
Adam Schefter of ESPN reports that the Cardinals told Benjamin they are releasing him on Monday. The move comes a couple of weeks after Benjamin’s three-week run in the starting lineup came to an end.
Benjamin was elevated to first string with James Conner and Darrel Williams sidelined by injuries. He ran 36 times for 151 yards and a touchdown in those games and has 70 carries for 299 yards and two touchdowns overall this season. He also caught 24 passes for 184 yards.
Williams is on injured reserve, but Conner has been back the last two weeks. He ran 21 times for 69 yards and two touchdowns in Sunday’s win over the Rams. | 2022-11-14T21:37:47Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Cardinals release Eno Benjamin - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/14/cardinals-release-eno-benjamin/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/14/cardinals-release-eno-benjamin/ |
The Eagles looked set to get the ball back with over 90 seconds left to play on Monday night when Commanders quarterback Taylor Heinicke gave himself up for a sack, but Eagles defensive end Brandon Graham was flagged for hitting Heinicke late.
The penalty allowed the Commanders to drain all but five seconds off the clock before the Eagles’ final, ill-fated play and Washington wound up with a 32-21 win after Casey Toohill recovered a fumble for a touchdown. After the game, referee Alex Kemp said in a pool report that Heinicke had clearly given himself up and Graham’s hit “was not only late but also to the head and neck area.”
Graham said “it just looked like he was going to get up” when discussing the play after the game and that it is on him to get it right.
“We can’t put the game in the refs’ hands,” Graham said, via a transcript from the team. “In that position, I just have to know if he goes down, it’s okay. For me, I was just hustling to the play trying to make sure he was down and just trying to get off the field.”
Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni said he did not have a chance to talk with officials about the call, but that it was “not what lost us the football game.” On a night when the offense had three turnovers and the defense allowed 152 rushing yards, it would be hard to argue that the penalty, painful as it way, was a leading reason for the Eagles’ loss. | 2022-11-15T12:22:52Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Brandon Graham: We can't put the game in the refs' hands - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/15/brandon-graham-we-cant-put-the-game-in-the-refs-hands/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/15/brandon-graham-we-cant-put-the-game-in-the-refs-hands/ |
Saints head coach Dennis Allen didn’t say that the team would stick with Andy Dalton as their quarterback in the immediate aftermath of Sunday’s loss to the Steelers and called the position one of the areas they’d evaluate heading into Week 11.
Monday didn’t bring a definitive answer, but it does sound like there’s a chance Jameis Winston returns to the starting lineup against the Rams. Winston has been active as Dalton’s backup for the last few games and Allen stuck with Dalton because the offense had some good outings. On Monday, though, Allen said we “haven’t been doing as well the last couple weeks” and that means the team has to consider a change.
“I think we’ve gotta look at everything,” Allen said at his press conference. “Yeah, I think we’ve gotta look at everything. And that will be a process we go through the rest of today and tomorrow as we get ready for the Rams.”
Allen was asked if the state of the offensive line that’s missing starters would factor into his decision. Allen said everything comes into play, including the fact that Winston’s back injury isn’t going to totally heal before the end of the season.
“I feel like I think we probably have to visit with him a little bit in terms of that or visit with the medical staff in terms of that,” Allen said. “And I think Jameis said this the other day, I don’t know that he’s ever gonna be 100 percent healthy this season. But he’s in here every day, he’s in here every morning working with the trainers, getting himself ready. And I feel like he’s closer to being there.”
Wednesday’s practice will likely shed some light about what direction Allen plans to go at quarterback. | 2022-11-15T12:22:58Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Dennis Allen: We're going through process of deciding on a quarterback - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/15/dennis-allen-were-going-through-process-of-deciding-on-a-quarterback/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/15/dennis-allen-were-going-through-process-of-deciding-on-a-quarterback/ |
At one point during the short-lived spring football experiment that was the Alliance of American Football, billionaire and Carolina Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon bought the operation. Not long after that, he pulled the plug on it.
Via Daniel Kaplan of TheAthletic.com, the trustee overseeing the AAF’s bankruptcy has sued Dundon for at least $184 million. Dundon allegedly took the league into bankruptcy when alternatives to ending the business existed.
In turn, Dundon has sued AAF founder Charlie Ebersol for $70 million. That’s the amount of Dundon’s cash investment in the league.
“Dundon and his associates dealt on their reputation and the league’s trust, which they induced, luring the league into ceding ownership and control, believing Dundon, as Dundon repeatedly told the league and the press, was committed to the League for ‘years to come,’” the lawsuit against Dundon contends. “Dundon’s ‘years to come’ lasted only 46 days. Instead of the $250 million financing commitment Dundon had promised, Dundon and his entities used the control they garnered to force the league to liquidate after investing less than $70 million and shut down with just two weeks remaining in the regular season.”
The full story of the AAF has never been told. It appears that the league lacked the proper funding to be a viable operation, and that it essentially tried to will that funding into existence.
Along the way, debts were incurred that will likely never be fully paid. If the new lawsuit manages to secure a nine-figure payment from Dundon, some of the people who lost money in reliance on the belief that the AAF actually had money will perhaps get some more of their money back.
3 responses to “AAF collapse sparks $184 million lawsuit against Tom Dundon”
*Legion* says:
Dundon Teldar Paper’d the league right when it was on the verge of establishing a relationship with the NFL.
2 for the price of 1 says no additional money is going to change hands. Kaput.
It’s called “Risk” and the vast majority of new businesses don’t survive because they underestimate the various risks involved in going from startup to paying the bills from the income to generating return on investment for the owners to long term success.
Smart people regulate their risk by investing what they can afford to lose. If after some time and a professional analysis, if they see potential they invest more that they can risk. If not they pull the plug and limit their losses.
People forget that it was decades (and putting a TV in almost every home) before the NFL went from at best America’s 5th most popular sport (baseball, boxing, horse racing and college football were all bigger) to becoming highly profitable. And it is only thru the intervention of TV that it is the mega-empire it is today.
The REASON the AFL managed to compete was that they had the resources (with network backing) to draw top talent away from the NFL. There was a demand for more quality professional football that the NFL wasn’t meeting and they managed to be competitive (see: Super Bowl and SB III).
To compete in the football market today you are up against a NFL league minimum salary of $700k plus for guys no one has ever heard of and MAYBE sees the field on special teams. Never mind having to pay for a Allen or Mahomes.
While Dundon may be less than ‘ethical’ (and the vast majority of super wealthy are) they aren’t fools. I’m pretty sure once they got all the inside financial information (having been involved in a number of mergers I KNOW there are always financial surprises that come to light after the contract is signed) and ran a cost\benefit analysis they realized they had just bought a donkey to try and run in the Kentucky Derby. | 2022-11-15T18:16:11Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | AAF collapse sparks $184 million lawsuit against Tom Dundon - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/15/aaf-collapse-sparks-184-million-lawsuit-against-tom-dundon/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/15/aaf-collapse-sparks-184-million-lawsuit-against-tom-dundon/ |
The Jaguars are 3-7 as they hit their bye week, a disappointing record after their 2-1 start.
While quarterback Trevor Lawrence has been up and down during his second season, he’s going into the bye playing well over his last two games.
In Week Nine’s 27-20 victory over Las Vegas, Lawrence completed 25-of-31 passes for 235 yards with a touchdown. He also rushed for 53 yards on six carries.
Then the Jags lost to the Chiefs 27-17 in Week 10, despite finishing the game with no turnovers. Lawrence was 29-of-40 for 259 yards with a pair of TDs.
Head coach Doug Pederson said on Monday that he hasn’t seen a shift in Lawrence over the past couple of weeks, at least in terms of the way he goes about his business in the building. But Pederson acknowledged Lawrence has put together “really good” performances for two consecutive games.
“I think what you’re seeing is just him learning from mistakes that were made previously in the season, opportunities that we’ve missed, and he’s just capitalizing that,” Pederson said. “That’s a good player that’s just taking correction and coaching and understanding what we’re asking him to do. Just being better as a player.”
“I think he’s understanding our system better. We’re recycling plays a little bit more, so the verbiage and everything is sort of easier to spit out in the huddle than Week One or even in training camp. All of that really helps him in his growth and really his development, and it’s all starting to come together for him.”
Overall in 2022, Lawrence has completed 65.2 percent of his passes for 2,334 yards with 13 touchdowns and six interceptions.
4 responses to “Doug Pederson: It’s all starting to come together for Trevor Lawrence”
It is? He sucks! Cut bait. Big whiff.
Finishing his contract and going to another team would probably help his career.
If that is the definition of getting it together, than everyone is where he is. He has no leadership qualities and is very average. There is nothing about him that is inspirational.
Josh Allen made the leap to excellence in year 3. They need to give him through the end of next year, before they make any decisions. Too many teams bail out too early. | 2022-11-15T21:50:00Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Doug Pederson: It’s all starting to come together for Trevor Lawrence - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/15/doug-pederson-its-all-starting-to-come-together-for-trevor-lawrence/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/15/doug-pederson-its-all-starting-to-come-together-for-trevor-lawrence/ |
A report earlier Tuesday indicated the Commanders would activate edge rusher Chase Young back to the 53-player roster this week. Coach Ron Rivera was non-committal but acknowledged the clock is ticking on Young’s 21-day window.
The Commanders have until Nov. 23 to make the move.
Rivera said he needs to see Young with more confidence in his knee, adding, “we’re not going to expose him.”
Young returned to practice Nov. 2, only 12 days short of a full year since tearing his right anterior cruciate ligament. He required a graft from the tendon in his left knee to repair his right knee, which made his recovery longer.
“I think we still have a little over a week to make that decision, but he is trending in the right direction,” Rivera said, via Nicki Jhabvala of the Washington Post. “Again, we’ll have to see how things unfold this week as well. But it is coming.” | 2022-11-15T21:50:24Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Ron Rivera: Chase Young is "trending in the right direction" - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/15/ron-rivera-chase-young-is-trending-in-the-right-direction/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/15/ron-rivera-chase-young-is-trending-in-the-right-direction/ |
Running back Eno Benjamin has found a new home.
Agent Drew Rosenhaus announced that the Texans used their top spot in the waiver order to add Benjamin to their 53-man roster on Tuesday. Benjamin was waived by the Cardinals on Monday.
The move was something of a surprise as Benjamin started three games earlier this season when James Conner and Darrel Williams were injured, but the Cardinals opted to go with Keaontay Ingram as the No. 2 back behind Conner. Williams is on injured reserve.
Benjamin had 70 carries for 299 yards and two touchdowns to go with 24 catches for 184 yards.
Dameon Pierce is the starting running back for the Texans. Rex Burkhead and Dare Ogunbowale are the other backs on the active roster.
1 responses to “Texans claim Eno Benjamin off waivers”
My condolences to the young man. | 2022-11-15T21:50:30Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Texans claim Eno Benjamin off waivers - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/15/texans-claim-eno-benjamin-off-waivers/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/15/texans-claim-eno-benjamin-off-waivers/ |
Former Buccaneers coach Bruce Arians has fought his way through a series of health issues over the years. He recently shared with Ira Kaufman of JoeBucsFan.com that a problem last month resulted in a four-day hospitalization.
Arians told Kaufman that, on October 8, Arians experienced severe chest pains.
“On the night before the Atlanta game, we had a house full of people,” Arians said. “We ate and I got these pains way up here, like two knives going in. The more I tried to take a breath, the worse it got.
Doctor feared that Arians had suffered a mild heart attack. He was diagnosed with myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle.
Arians spent four days in the hospital. He hasn’t traveled with the team since then. He has attended a pair of home games.
Arians will be added to the Tampa Bay Ring of Honor on January 1. | 2022-11-16T14:54:39Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Bruce Arians was hospitalized last month with severe chest pains - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/16/bruce-arians-was-hospitalized-last-month-with-severe-chest-pains/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/16/bruce-arians-was-hospitalized-last-month-with-severe-chest-pains/ |
Defensive end Romeo Okwara has been out for a long time with a torn Achilles, but he took a big step toward returning to the lineup on Wednesday.
Okwara practiced with the team for the first time this season. The return opens a 21-day window for Okwara to practice with the team and he can be activated at any point in that period. If he isn’t activated before that time is up, he won’t be able to return this season.
Okwara was injured in Week Four last season. He had six tackles and a sack before his injury and he posted 10 sacks while healthy during the 2020 season.
The Lions also opened the return window for wide receiver DJ Chark on Wednesday, so they could be getting reinforcements on both sides of the ball in the near future.
1 responses to “Romeo Okwara returned to practice with Lions Wednesday”
Our 5% playoff chances just went up! 5.1% now! | 2022-11-16T19:51:51Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Romeo Okwara returned to practice with Lions Wednesday - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/16/romeo-okwara-returned-to-practice-with-lions-wednesday/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/16/romeo-okwara-returned-to-practice-with-lions-wednesday/ |
Jacoby Brissett focused on himself, not Deshaun Watson’s return to practice
Deshaun Watson returned to practice Wednesday, but Jacoby Brissett remains the Browns’ starter for two more games as Watson completes his 11-game suspension.
So, Brissett was asked, how do you (yes, the word “you” was used) balance the first-team reps for the quarterbacks?
“How do I? That’s not my job to balance it,” Brissett said Wednesday, via Chris Easterling of the Akron Beacon Journal. “It’s coach’s job to balance how he splits things up and stuff like that. I just have to go out there and prepare like I always prepare. Do my job and then control what I can control. That’s something I can’t control, and I’m honestly not trying to.”
Watson was on the field for the first time since Aug. 30, and he has not played a regular-season game since Jan. 3, 2021, when he was still with the Texans.
Coach Kevin Stefanski declined to reveal the plan for Watson and whether he would get work with the first team.
Brissett, for his part, said he will get enough to work to be ready for Sunday.
1 responses to “Jacoby Brissett focused on himself, not Deshaun Watson’s return to practice”
I forgot Watson existed. Out of sight, out of mind. | 2022-11-16T21:36:10Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Jacoby Brissett focused on himself, not Deshaun Watson's return to practice - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/16/jacoby-brissett-focused-on-himself-not-deshaun-watsons-return-to-practice/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/16/jacoby-brissett-focused-on-himself-not-deshaun-watsons-return-to-practice/ |
After the Raiders fell to 2-7 with a 25-20 loss to the Colts on Sunday, team owner Mark Davis spoke to multiple media outlets on Monday to support his new football regime of head coach Josh McDaniels and G.M. Dave Ziegler.
Among the notable quotes was Davis telling Ed Graney of the Las Vegas Review-Journal that he thinks McDaniels is “doing a fantastic job.”
In his Wednesday press conference, McDaniels said no one is happy with the results of the games and everyone wants to do better. But the team is embarking on a process of trying to develop sustainable success.
“I appreciate Mark’s support — I’ve always appreciated it. I’ve said that number of times,” McDaniels said. “We’re all here because of him and we all want to do right by him. I think we knew when we came here that this is a longer-term view of, how do we get this thing to repeat? And that hasn’t happened here in a little while. Again, the immediate results that we’ve gotten so far, they aren’t what everybody’s hoping for or wanting. But I think we’re also trying to keep an eye on a lot of things that would go into, how do you sustain it once you get it? It’s not easy to get, but once you get it, how do you sustain it? And that’s not easy either.
“He’s been great to us and I appreciate his support. He’s continued to try and give us anything we need or ask for to try to help us be successful. I appreciate his long-term view on it, too. I really do.”
McDaniels noted that a lot of times when a new regime comes in, it can take time to form different habits and get everyone on the same page in terms of philosophy and culture.
“We’re going to try to do it the best way for us, here. We’re not trying to copy everything that Dave and I have been a part of. We’re trying to do some of it, but also taking a lot of input from other people and figure out what works best for us,” McDaniels said. ” We want to win every time we step on the field. That’s what we’re trying to do. But I do have some understanding of, the type of patience we may need in order to ultimately get to where we’re trying to go.”
The problem is, the Raiders didn’t operate in the offseason like a team that needed to figure itself out and build itself up. There are plenty of examples to point to, but the best is the trade for receiver Davante Adams. Las Vegas sent first- and second-round picks to the Green Bay and signed Adams to a five-year, $141.25 million contract. That’s the move of a team that is expecting to contend.
Plus, teams like the Giants, Vikings, and Dolphins have illustrated that things can turn around quickly with a new head coach.
The Raiders still have time to turn the 2022 season around, and that could begin this weekend with a win over the Broncos. Denver is one of the two teams Las Vegas has defeated this year.
3 responses to “Josh McDaniels: I appreciate Mark Davis’ support”
Okay, but does he appreciate Mark Davis’ haircut too?
Josh is a terrific coach. We’ll see how long the owner ignores the noise before succumbing to his own uncertainty.
I think Davis is stuck with him. He can’t afford to pay yet another coach to not be there. | 2022-11-16T21:36:29Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Josh McDaniels: I appreciate Mark Davis' support - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/16/josh-mcdaniels-i-appreciate-mark-davis-support/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/16/josh-mcdaniels-i-appreciate-mark-davis-support/ |
Kyler Murray and Colt McCoy are both on the injury report for the Cardinals this week.
Head coach Kliff Kingsbury said on Wednesday that both quarterbacks are considered day-to-day as the Cardinals move toward a game against the 49ers in Mexico City on Monday night. Murray is dealing with the hamstring injury that kept him out against the Rams last Sunday and McCoy is bothered by a knee injury he suffered while playing in place of Murray in that game.
Kingsbury said that he hopes to have at least one of the quarterbacks available for the game against the Niners.
The coach also confirmed that tight end Zach Ertz is out for the year and he said that wide receiver Hollywood Brown could play this week after being designated for return from injured reserve on Wednesday. | 2022-11-16T21:36:35Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Kyler Murray, Colt McCoy both day-to-day - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/16/kyler-murray-colt-mccoy-both-day-to-day/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/16/kyler-murray-colt-mccoy-both-day-to-day/ |
Because it wasn’t a standalone game, the Broncos’ latest loss to the Titans in Week 10 wasn’t as high-profile as some of their others this year.
But the 17-10 featured another ineffective offensive performance.
Nine games in, the Broncos have scored at least 20 points just twice this season. Their season high is 23, and that came in the Week Four loss to the Raiders. Last Sunday was the third time Denver has scored 10 points or fewer.
Quarterback Russell Wilson said on Wednesday that improvement has to start with him.
“First of all, I have to play better,” Wilson said in his press conference. “I’ve got to find ways to make some more plays for us, more touchdowns. And it’s something that you continue to work for every day. You focus on the little things, the fundamentals, the little things of the game.
Wilson mentioned that there’s “a lot of football left” — repeating the phrase two more times to stress the point.
“We’ve got to play at the highest level and we’ve got to play at the highest level each day in practice,” Wilson said.
The Broncos simply haven’t been doing that. Wilson took a season-high six sacks in last week’s loss, completing 21-of-42 passes for 286 yards with a touchdown and an interception. He also fumbled three times, though the Broncos didn’t lose any of them.
Denver has a chance to start turning things around this week against Las Vegas — a team that could also use some positive energy after falling to Indianapolis in Week 10. | 2022-11-16T22:32:43Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Russell Wilson: First of all, I have to play better - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/16/russell-wilson-first-of-all-i-have-to-play-better/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/16/russell-wilson-first-of-all-i-have-to-play-better/ |
Chargers edge rusher Joey Bosa underwent surgery to repair a torn groin on Sept. 30. The prognosis was 8-10 weeks, and Friday will mark seven weeks since his surgery.
So, it comes as no surprise that Bosa’s return to practice is not imminent.
“It’s going to be some time. I don’t know for sure,” Chargers coach Brandon Staley said, via the team website. “I’m not going to put a timeline on that one because I think that is more uncertain. He’s back in our building. He’s making progress.”
Bosa has seven tackles, 1.5 sacks, four quarterback hits and a forced fumble this season, and the Chargers have felt his absence.
“He’s feeling better, but I think we’ll be able to sort of give you the news of when he’s going to be back,” Staley said. “I’ll try to be the first one to report that to you guys so that you guys can be ready for it, but I think he is still a couple of weeks away.”
1 responses to “Brandon Staley on Joey Bosa’s return: It’s going to be some time”
Ya don’t say!
But he has a lot of “sacks”! | 2022-11-17T00:43:36Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Brandon Staley on Joey Bosa's return: It's going to be some time - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/16/brandon-staley-on-joey-bosas-return-its-going-to-be-some-time/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/16/brandon-staley-on-joey-bosas-return-its-going-to-be-some-time/ |
Cardinals quarterback Kyler Murray missed Week 10 with a hamstring injury. As it turns out, he initially suffered the injury in Week Eight, not Week Nine.
Via John Weinfuss of ESPN.com, Murray told reporters on Wednesday that he initially injured the hamstring at Minnesota in Week Eight. He then “tweaked” it against the Seahawks in Week Nine.
Murray was not listed on the Week Nine injury report.
“I feel good,” Murray told reporters. “I kind of knew it was probably best for me to let it rest. Once it happens, it’s unfortunate, but it happens. It’s a part of the game. We all go through it. You never want it to be yourself, but you try to get back as quick as possible.”
Hamstrings require rest. The question is whether Murray has had enough of it. Anyone who has had a hamstring injury knows that, even if you think it’s fully healed, you’re likely to learn when trying to go full speed that it isn’t.
For Murray, his mobility is a critical aspect of his game. When he can’t run, he’s not nearly as effective.
The problem for the Cardinals is that backup quarterback Colt McCoy has a knee injury. So will it be Murray or McCoy on Monday night against the 49ers in Mexico City? Or will the Cardinals turn to Trace McSorley? | 2022-11-17T00:44:00Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Kyler Murray initially injured his hamstring in Week Eight at Minnesota - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/16/kyler-murray-initially-injured-his-hamstring-in-week-eight-at-minnesota/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/16/kyler-murray-initially-injured-his-hamstring-in-week-eight-at-minnesota/ |
With the Republicans officially reclaiming control of the House of Representatives, they’ll also control all committees. Including the House Oversight Committee.
Thus, and as expected, the development means that the investigation of the Commanders will end.
Via Mark Maske of the Washington Post, the leading Republican on the Committee said in a statement on Wednesday of the Commanders probe, “It’s over.”
The new Congress won’t convene until January. As noted by Maske, it’s expected that a report will be issued regarding the investigation before then, by the Democratic representatives who continue to control the Committee.
In many respects, the Oversight Committee’s probe has become moot. Commanders owner Daniel Snyder has put the team on the market. And other entities are investigating and/or litigating the same subject matter that Congress was exploring.
2 responses to “With Republicans taking control of the House, the investigation of the Commanders will be “over””
So now it’s harder to force him to sell?? Or is he actually really looking to do it.
Our govt.doesnt need to investigate any football team. Bigger fish to fry. Fix our country. | 2022-11-17T02:32:52Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | With Republicans taking control of the House, the investigation of the Commanders will be "over" - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/16/with-republicans-taking-control-of-the-house-the-investigation-of-the-commanders-will-be-over/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/16/with-republicans-taking-control-of-the-house-the-investigation-of-the-commanders-will-be-over/ |
Josh Allen’s teammates have made clear this week they still trust him, but the Bills quarterback concedes he has to trust them more.
Allen acknowledges some of his turnovers were the result of pressing.
“Decision-making is No. 1, trusting the game plan, trusting the guys around me and trying not to do too much,” Allen said Wednesday, via John Wawrow of the Associated Press. “It’s not hard to try to tweak that mindset of trusting the other guys around me, taking the check-down when it’s there and just making the smart play.”
The Bills have lost two in a row, with Allen throwing four red zone interceptions in the two losses as well as losing the fumble in the end zone at the end of regulation Sunday. He has six interceptions the past three weeks and now leads the league with 10. Allen threw a career-high 15 in 17 games last season.
“Now maybe there’s a play here or there that maybe I did cross the line,” Allen said.
But Allen calls it an easy fix.
“It’s that constant. I can make a play or I can trust somebody else to make a play that I’ve battled with my entire football career, and trying to do too much sometimes,” Allen said. “It’ll hurt you.” | 2022-11-17T04:04:26Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Josh Allen acknowledges recent rash of turnovers stem from trying to do too much - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/16/josh-allen-acknowledges-recent-rash-of-turnovers-stem-from-trying-to-do-too-much/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/16/josh-allen-acknowledges-recent-rash-of-turnovers-stem-from-trying-to-do-too-much/ |
PJ Walker has started the past five games. He won’t start this week, and he won’t back up Baker Mayfield either.
Walker has a high-ankle sprain that will keep him out of Sunday’s game against the Ravens.
Mayfield will return to the starting lineup for the first time since Week 5, and Sam Darnold will dress for the first time this season.
Darnold’s high-ankle sprain in the preseason kept him out most of the season, but he is not on the injury report anymore.
“I feel really good right now. Obviously still have to do the right things to make sure it stays healthy, but feel really good right now,” Darnold said, via Darin Gantt of the team website. “I ran around a little bit on Thursday night before the game. Felt really good then. I think that was when I was like, OK, I should be good by this next week. Sure enough, today, it felt really good.”
Panthers interim coach Steve Wilks said he would like to get Darnold “some opportunities” since he hasn’t played in a regular-season game since January.
“Well, I think it’s just trying to pick and choose the flow of the game,” Wilks said. “Something that I mentioned to those guys the other day with Baker, if it happens, just giving him warning that I’m not pulling you. I just want to be able to get Sam some opportunities. Because the first time that he goes in there [potentially to start], I don’t want it to be the first time [he’s played this season]. I want to be able to get him acclimated a little bit to the speed of the game.”
But Wilks won’t play Darnold just to play him.
“I’m interested in winning the game,” Wilks said. “Whatever it takes to win the game. It’s not pay $250, and you get to play. We’ll see exactly how it goes this week.” | 2022-11-17T04:04:32Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Panthers would like to get Sam Darnold "some opportunities" - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/16/panthers-would-like-to-get-sam-darnold-some-opportunities/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/16/panthers-would-like-to-get-sam-darnold-some-opportunities/ |
When the Panthers opted to go with P.J. Walker at quarterback after Baker Mayfield recovered from an ankle injury, it was hard not to wonder what that meant for Mayfield’s NFL future.
The first overall pick of the 2018 draft is in the final year of his contract and neither the Panthers’ decision to go with Walker nor Mayfield’s play early in the season created much confidence in Mayfield’s long-term future as a starter in the league. Walker is now out with an ankle injury, however, and Mayfield has another chance to run the offense in Carolina.
On Wednesday, Mayfield said that his focus is only on the 2022 Panthers and not on what will come after this season is over.
“It’s pretty important to win, since we’re still in the division race,” Mayfield said, via Darin Gantt of the team’s website. “That’s where I’m at. Not worried about anything else, it’ll take care of itself as long as I do my job, and we’ll see where it goes.”
The nice thing for Mayfield is that if he plays well enough for the Panthers to win against the Ravens this weekend and in future games, it will help his chances of staying in the mix for starting jobs beyond this season. That’s a big if based on how things played out earlier, but it’s about all Mayfield’s got at this point in the year. | 2022-11-17T13:08:57Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Baker Mayfield: I'm focused on winning and nothing else - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/17/baker-mayfield-im-focused-on-winning-and-nothing-else/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/17/baker-mayfield-im-focused-on-winning-and-nothing-else/ |
Mac Jones went through “full audit” of his play during bye week
The Patriots had their bye in Week 10, which allowed quarterback Mac Jones the time to do some self-scouting.
At 5-4, New England is in the thick of the postseason chase — currently the No. 7 seed in the AFC. But the team’s offense has left something to be desired. The Patriots are 14th in points scored but just 26th in yards gained.
Jones’ touchdown rate is down from 4.2 percent as a rookie in 2021 to 2.4 percent. His interception rate has gone up from 2.5 percent to 4.2 percent. So, the bye came at a good time to evaluate everything and make some adjustments
“I think a lot of us are working on different things every day, and the bye week’s a great time to do that,” Jones said Wednesday, via Zack Cox of NESN.com. “So for me, just making sure my feet and eyes are in the right place and continue to go through my reads and continue to improve in the weight room, nutrition, all that stuff. It’s a full audit of yourself, I guess you could call it. Kind of look at yourself and see what you can do better.”
Jones didn’t go into specifics about changes he hoped to implement, though he did say the week off “definitely helped” his ankle. And he feels good about the progress New England has made.
7 responses to “Mac Jones went through “full audit” of his play during bye week”
skaffen says:
When is the audit of the two “offensive coordinators” and the guy who created this ridiculous situation
I hope that the Patriots also did a “full audit” of Matt Patricia’s play-calling. It’s totally predictable. Stop calling run plays when the other team is stacking the box, for example. They KNOW it’s coming! How can Belichick allow this to go on? Patricia has got to go.
Sadly the audit revealed Mac’s quarterbacking and decision making skills are bankrupt.
What I take from Mac Jones’ comments are, (A) the extent of his ankle injury and its effect on his game. He mentions working on his eyes and feet, going through his reads and improving through the weight room, food etc. But (B) there was no mention of working with coaches and learning aspects of the game a young player needs to in order to develop. It can’t be done simply on natural ability. One doesn’t usually get better in school on their own. The process requires knowledgeable and effective teachers not ones that are effectively brand new and trying to learn on the go themselves. What can a teacher like that teach a student? In football as in other areas of life we need credible guidance in order to grow and improve. Without it we can easily flounder.
Fat Matt was a mediocre defensive coordinator and has no business running an offense.
Maybe he should go back to rocket science.. although I dont think that industry needs him.
If you have a beard. It’s because you are too lazy to shave.
What a weird thing to say. This guy was a starting QB in college right? He’s talking like he isn’t familiar at all with the position.
I’ve been harsh on him but I don’t really give him all the blame. More of the blame should go to the coaching staff for creating this mess. Hopefully it’s not too late for Jones.
Orlovsky had a great breakdown about how completely out of sync the offense is between Jones and his receivers. Jones throws and the receivers are still mid route not even looking in his direction.
Maybe the Patriots should replace the two bozos coaching the offense with Orlovsky. Upgrade. | 2022-11-17T16:16:30Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Mac Jones went through "full audit" of his play during bye week - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/17/mac-jones-went-through-full-audit-of-his-play-during-bye-week/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/17/mac-jones-went-through-full-audit-of-his-play-during-bye-week/ |
On Thursday, D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine filed a lawsuit against the Commanders for allegedly withholding security deposits from season-ticket holders. The team has responded.
And, like virtually anyone who is ever sued for anything, the Commanders are not saying, “Yep, we did it.”
“The team has not accepted security deposits for over 20 years in the case of premium tickets and over a decade in the case of suites, and we began returning them to season ticket holders as early as 2004,” a team spokesperson said. “In 2014, as part of a comprehensive review, team management was instructed to send notices to over 1,400 customers with deposits and return all security deposits requested.
“Further, the team engaged an outside law firm and forensic auditors to conduct an extensive review of the team’s accounts, which found no evidence that the team intentionally withheld security deposits that should have been returned to customers or that the team improperly converted any unclaimed deposits to revenue.”
Something doesn’t add up. If this was all taken care of in 2014, why were letters recently sent in an effort to distribute refunds? Also, the use of the term “requested” implies that the team only provided refunds when refunds affirmatively were requested.
Also, the issue isn’t intentional withholding. It’s whether the team intentionally (or perhaps negligently) failed to take appropriate steps to pay the money back.
Finally, we don’t put much stock in the opinion of an “outside law firm and forensic auditors” hired by the team. Those folks tend to find a way to tell their client whatever they think their client wants to hear.
We have a feeling this one is just getting started. Civil lawsuits are possible. Other attorneys general possibly will take action. Federal prosecutors could poke around, too.
Regardless, it just feels like there’s an issue here. People pay money. They forget they paid it. The party that received it nonchalantly takes no action. It’s tempting, and it’s easy.
Whether or not that actually happened remains to be seen. | 2022-11-18T01:34:32Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Commanders: "No evidence" security deposits were intentionally withheld - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/17/commanders-no-evidence-security-deposits-were-intentionally-withheld/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/17/commanders-no-evidence-security-deposits-were-intentionally-withheld/ |
Ravens tight end Mark Andrews missed all of Week Nine and most of Week Eight with shoulder and knee injuries, but it looks like he’ll have a chance to get back on the field this week.
Andrews used the bye week to continue healing and has practiced the last two days on a limited basis. He said he’s “feeling good,” but stopped short of saying that he will play this week because he’s “seen the big picture” when it comes to making sure you’re healthy.
Rookie Isaiah Likely‘s presence has made it easier for the Ravens to go without Andrews. Likely has seven catches for 101 yards and two touchdowns the last two weeks and Andrews thinks they’ll make a potent duo once he’s given the green light to return.
“When I’m good to go, I’m good to go,” Andrews said, via the team’s website. “It’s awesome that we’re able to win regardless. The main thing is us winning and nothing else matters. He’s playing really good ball. I think it’s been good for him getting even more reps. Him and I on the field at the same time is going to be dangerous.”
Friday will bring more word about Andrews’ status for Sunday’s game against the Panthers. | 2022-11-18T13:03:36Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Mark Andrews thinks he and Isaiah Likely will be "dangerous" duo - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/18/mark-andrews-thinks-he-and-isaiah-likely-will-be-dangerous-duo/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/18/mark-andrews-thinks-he-and-isaiah-likely-will-be-dangerous-duo/ |
When the Chiefs acquired receiver Kadarius Toney from the Giants, it seemed like a move with an eye toward the future.
Maybe Toney would provide some lift in 2022. But there was no pressure for the Chiefs to heavily rely on the young receiver.
After last week, though, it looks like the Chiefs can plan on Toney continuing to expand his role in Kansas City. He caught four passes for 57 yards with a touchdown. He had a pair of carries for 33 yards. And he served as a punt returner, averaging 5.5 yards per return.
Quarterback Patrick Mahomes said this week that he wasn’t surprised by Toney making the plays, despite his late-October arrival date.
“But just us being able to move him around as much as we have, it’s a testament to him,” Mahomes said in his Wednesday press conference. “He’s really got in here, he’s learned. He’s learned multiple positions. We’ve moved him around now, it’s not like he’s in that one spot. And so, we’ll just continue to build on that.
With Mecole Hardman placed on injured reserve and JuJu Smith-Schuster in the concussion protocol, the Chiefs may need more from Toney this week. The club also has Marquez Valdes-Scantling, Skyy Moore, and Justin Watson on the 53-man roster at receiver.
3 responses to “Patrick Mahomes: We’re going to keep giving Kadarius Toney more and more”
I’m so excited to watch Toney play. It just looks like he’s having fun, that’s the way Tyreek plays and I miss that. I can’t for the life of me figure out why the Giants let him go.
Toney dogged it for two Giants’ administrations. Would not count on this guy. | 2022-11-18T15:18:37Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Patrick Mahomes: We're going to keep giving Kadarius Toney more and more - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/18/patrick-mahomes-were-going-to-keep-giving-kadarius-toney-more-and-more/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/18/patrick-mahomes-were-going-to-keep-giving-kadarius-toney-more-and-more/ |
Despite a report early this week that Commanders pass rusher Chase Young would be activated for Sunday’s game against the Texans, and despite coach Ron Rivera saying Young is trending in the right direction, Young may not play Sunday after all.
The Commanders now think it may be too early for Young to come back and may sit him for another week, according to Ian Rapoport of NFL Network.
If Young isn’t activated by Wednesday, he’ll have to go on season-ending injured reserve. From all indications, the Commanders do still expect him to play this season.
Still, it has to be a disappointment that he’s not ready to play yet. Young hasn’t played since tearing his ACL on November 14, 2021, and while an ACL tear is always a serious injury, it usually doesn’t keep players out for more than a year. Young has already missed more than a year, and he still isn’t ready to go.
2 responses to “Chase Young may not play Sunday after all”
We are playing fine without him. He wasn’t setting the world on fire before he got hurt. Sometimes I wonder if he messes with the mojo on the d line.
Wouldn’t rush it. Big men have a lot more weight and collide with guys carrying a log more weight. Can’t expect all ACL injuries to heal the same rate and be able withstand different kinds of impacts. A QB may return a little sooner for passing and running but be colliding into another big man every play just might take longer. | 2022-11-18T16:23:58Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Chase Young may not play Sunday after all - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/18/chase-young-may-not-play-sunday-after-all/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/18/chase-young-may-not-play-sunday-after-all/ |
2 responses to “Linval Joseph: The ultimate goal here is to get another ring”
Totally different from the other 31 teams that are not trying to win.
Unfortunately, Jonathan Gannon’s playbook usually makes DTs unhappy, at least for a little while.
And his scheme, which was too passive, is a big part of the reason why the Eagles lost on Monday.
Yeah, I’m turning this into a discussion about Jonathan Gannon instead of Linval Joseph, I know.
But if Linval’s got anything left in the tank, I don’t have faith in Gannon to find it and utilize it. | 2022-11-18T16:24:10Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Linval Joseph: The ultimate goal here is to get another ring - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/18/linval-joseph-the-ultimate-goal-here-is-to-get-another-ring/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/18/linval-joseph-the-ultimate-goal-here-is-to-get-another-ring/ |
Titans offensive coordinator Todd Downing was arrested for DUI early Friday. The team has issued a statement regarding the situation.
“We are aware of the reports regarding Todd Downing and are in the process of gathering additional information,” the team said.
The reports are based on objective fact. He was arrested for DUI. He’s entitled to every presumption and protection under the law.
Still, the situation raises plenty of questions, starting with when and where Downing was drinking. If, as it appears, the team plane landed at 2:11 a.m. CT and, per the police report, he was pulled over at 3:49 a.m. CT, the timeline does little to counter the perception that he was drinking on the team plane.
We’ve asked the Titans to confirm that the team returned on a Delta flight from Green Bay that landed in Nashville at 2:11 a.m. CT. That question has not yet been answered.
Other questions need to be asked. We’ve asked the league for the policy regarding alcohol on team planes. It’s funny when Commanders quarterback Taylor Heinicke has a can of Busch beer in his hand while wearing a bunch of chains on his neck. But it’s tragic when former Chiefs assistant coach Britt Reid severely and permanently injures a five-year-old girl on the way home from the team facility, where he apparently had been drinking to excess.
Whatever the rules regarding alcohol on team planes or in team facilities may be, the NFL needs to be ready to enforce them whenever they’re broken. Even as it derives significant annual revenue from the league’s official beer, wine, and spirits sponsors. | 2022-11-18T16:24:22Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Titans are "gathering additional information" regarding Todd Downing - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/18/titans-are-gathering-additional-information-regarding-todd-downing/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/18/titans-are-gathering-additional-information-regarding-todd-downing/ |
Not long ago, the idea of Tom Brady playing football in 2023 — and playing specifically for the Buccaneers — seemed inconceivable. Now, it’s feeling a little more conceivable.
“Everybody here knows Brady is one year at a time, but what you see every day is a guy who acts like he wants to keep playing,” an unnamed team source recently told JoeBucsFan.com. “This is his team, and the team loves him. He’s heavily invested in many ways. It’s hard to imagine he’d find a better situation with another franchise. And he’s been playing great for three years.”
Another team would surely want him. Football is business. Someone will want a player who would sell every single ticket to every single game, and who would deliver multiple prime-time games. The question is whether there’s a team he’ll want.
But will there be a team that gives him a better chance to win than Tampa does? Former Patriots offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels may want him in Las Vegas (owner Mark Davis once did), but can they win there? The Miami ship likely has sailed for good, especially with Tua turning things around. The Colts could want him, and maybe they’d have enough to contend, if he were on the team. (The identity of the next coach would be a major factor.) The Giants could be intriguing, if Daniel Jones isn’t back. The 49ers could make sense, if they prefer to give Trey Lance another year to sit and learn.
Still, even when everyone else lines up for Brady, he may decide to stay where he is.
At one point, it appeared that Brady wouldn’t be back. Frankly, however, if his ex-wife was the main thing pulling him to retire and with that relationship over, what’s to keep him from continuing to keep playing?
He has said he wants to avoid watching football after retiring and concluding, “‘These guys suck. I could do way better than that.’”
Given his post-retirement arrangement with Fox, Brady won’t be able to avoid it. He’ll be watching football every week. If he thinks he can play better than the quarterback who’ll be playing in the games he handles for Fox, he’ll be tormented.
Can he keep playing, if he wants to? Quarterbacks coach Clyde Christensen recently said that, yes, Brady can.
“He’s playing as good as he ever has,” Christensen said Tuesday on the Buccaneers Radio Network, via JoeBucsFan.com. “I think he’s improving. I think he’s improving. Not to sound like a coaching cliché here again, but you practice, you work hard at what you do, you tend to improve. I think that goes for 45-year-olds, as well. . . . He’s throwing the ball at a high, high level.”
The arm isn’t the issue. The issue will be the legs. Can he move well enough to avoid taking hits? If not, he’ll eventually get hit enough that he’ll be injured.
It seemed to be moving in that direction earlier this year. Recently, it has changed. And it’s changing enough to raise the question of whether he’ll decide play not as a 45-year-old man but to play as a 46-year-old.
3 responses to “Will Tom Brady return for 2023 with the Buccaneers?”
Come play for the Packers, Tom.
We’ll keep your golfing buddy around as your QB coach.
Well, now he doesn’t have a wife and family at home to support and be there for, so he can do whatever he wants I guess. Hope he thinks the tradeoff was worth it. (I’m sure he does… football is apparently the true love of his life.)
Kabasaman says:
He might have too! He may need the money. | 2022-11-18T17:25:37Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Will Tom Brady return for 2023 with the Buccaneers? - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/18/will-tom-brady-return-for-2023-with-the-buccaneers/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/18/will-tom-brady-return-for-2023-with-the-buccaneers/ |
Chiefs left tackle Orlando Brown Jr.’s off-field work has been recognized by the NFL Players Association this week.
Brown has been named the Community MVP for Week 11 of the regular season. Brown has been a regular visitor with diabetes patients at the Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City because he has had several family members, including his father and brother, deal with the condition.
On his last visit, Brown matched a $50,000 donation made by Emilie Rosebud Diabetes Research Foundation to the hospital’s Type 1 Diabetes research center.
“It is an honor to be recognized by the NFLPA for the Community MVP award,” Brown said in a statement. “Diabetes has greatly impacted my life, through my dad and younger brother, and it affects so many people in our community.”
The NFLPA will donate $10,000 to a foundation or charity of Brown’s choice to commemorate his award. He will also join the other weekly winners in being eligible for the Alan Page Community Award at the end of the season. | 2022-11-18T18:39:52Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Orlando Brown Jr. named NFLPA Community MVP for Week 11 - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/18/orlando-brown-jr-named-nflpa-community-mvp-for-week-11/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/18/orlando-brown-jr-named-nflpa-community-mvp-for-week-11/ |
Browns defensive end Myles Garrett paid a big compliment to Dolphins head coach Mike McDaniel today, saying that in the Dolphins’ win over the Browns on Sunday, it always seemed like the Dolphins were a step ahead of the Browns.
Garrett said he was surprised how specific the Dolphins’ play calling was for the Browns, as if McDaniel had scripted every single play of the game knowing what would work.
“It wasn’t like a first 15, it was like a first 60,” Garrett said. “The way they attacked us was very detailed in what they were trying to do. They had us out of position a lot of the time. It seemed like when we tried to switch things up, they were a step ahead,” Garrett said.
Garrett said the Dolphins seemed like they “knew what adjustments we were going to make.”
“We were a second late because of all the movements and motions, all those things kept us on the back foot. That’s another credit to them and their coaches,” Garrett said.
The Dolphins’ offense may have the fastest skill position players in the NFL, but Garrett was talking about the quick-thinking approach of the Dolphins’ offense, which had the Browns’ defense frustrated all day. | 2022-11-18T20:24:03Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Myles Garrett: Dolphins' game plan seemed like they were a step ahead of us - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/18/myles-garrett-dolphins-game-plan-seemed-like-they-were-a-step-ahead-of-us/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/18/myles-garrett-dolphins-game-plan-seemed-like-they-were-a-step-ahead-of-us/ |
Three University of Virginia football players were killed in a shooting at the school earlier this week and the Commanders will be wearing helmet decals honoring those players during Sunday’s game against the Texans.
The team will have the No. 1, No. 15, and No. 41 on their helmets because those are the uniform numbers worn by Lavel Davis Jr., Devin Chandler, and D’Sean Perry while playing for the Cavaliers.
Running back Mike Hollins and another unidentified student were also shot last Sunday night. Hollins was shot in the back and is recovering in the hospital. The shooter, a former football player at the school, faces three counts of second-degree murder, two counts of malicious wounding and additional gun-related charges.
The school cancelled their scheduled game against Coastal Carolina and will hold a memorial service for Davis, Chandler and Perry at John Paul Jones Arena on Saturday afternoon. | 2022-11-18T20:45:51Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Commanders will wear helmet decals honoring University of Virginia shooting victims - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/18/commanders-will-wear-helmet-decals-honoring-university-of-virginia-shooting-victims/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/18/commanders-will-wear-helmet-decals-honoring-university-of-virginia-shooting-victims/ |
Earlier on Friday, the Browns listed Greg Newsome as questionable. He had collided with a player in practice and was being evaluated for a concussion.
Apparently, Cleveland did not receive good news about the young corner.
The Browns announced that Newsome has been ruled out with a concussion. That means the club will be without Newsome, one of its starting corners, for the first time this season.
A first-round pick out of Northwestern in 2021, Newsome has recorded 24 total tackles, one pass defensed, and a half-sack in 2022.
Cleveland also has Denzel Ward, Greedy Williams, Martin Emerson, A.J. Green, and Thomas Graham on its roster at cornerback.
The Browns will play the Bills in Detroit on Sunday due to the snowstorm that’s hit Western New York. | 2022-11-18T20:46:09Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Greg Newsome ruled out with concussion - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/18/greg-newsome-ruled-out-with-concussion/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/18/greg-newsome-ruled-out-with-concussion/ |
Jameis Winston has not played since the third week of the season and he’s set to miss another game this weekend after the Saints chose to stick with Andy Dalton as their starter against the Rams.
On Friday, Winston shared how he feels about his extended time on the bench. He said, via Nick Underhill of NewOrleans.Football, that not playing “hurts my soul” and that he feels well enough to play after suffering a back injury early in the season.
“I just know that I’m ready to go and when my number is called, I’ll be ready,” Winston said.
Saints head coach Dennis Allen said this week that he doesn’t know that Winston is “ever gonna be 100 percent healthy this season,” but Winston seems to think he’s close enough to get on the field. If Dalton continues to struggle this week, we’ll see if Allen gives Winston the chance to prove that’s the case. | 2022-11-18T20:46:21Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Jameis Winston: I just know that I'm ready to go - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/18/jameis-winston-i-just-know-that-im-ready-to-go/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/18/jameis-winston-i-just-know-that-im-ready-to-go/ |
Veteran defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh waited to pick his next team. On Thursday, he did.
Here’s a look at the details of the one-year deal with the Eagles that covers the balance of the season.
1. Signing bonus: $250,000.
2. Base salary: $750,000 for eight weeks, fully guaranteed.
3. Per-game roster bonus: $31,250 per game (total of $250,000).
4. Per-game playing-time incentive: $62,500 for each regular-season game with more than 30 percent of the snaps (total of $500,000).
He gets another $125,000 for each playoff win, if he participates in 30 percent or more of the regular-season snaps. If he doesn’t participate in 30 percent or more of the regular-season snaps, he gets $125,000 for each postseason win in which he participates in 30 percent of more of that game’s snaps.
It’s a deal with a base value of $1.25 million, with a maximum payout of $2.5 million.
On one hand, Suh was able to wait for the true contenders to emerge. On the other hand, he could have made a lot more by, for example, returning to the Buccaneers.
2 responses to “Inside the Ndamukong Suh deal”
Hope the eagles fall flat on their overrated faces
Does he really need the money? Or would he prefer another ring? | 2022-11-19T02:30:09Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Inside the Ndamukong Suh deal - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/18/inside-the-ndamukong-suh-deal/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/18/inside-the-ndamukong-suh-deal/ |
As the Commanders continue an unexpected push to the playoffs, they’ll have one fewer tailback available for the rest of the year.
Per multiple reports, running back J.D. McKissic has been placed on injured reserve with a neck injury. It’s a season-ending move, with no plan to return later.
The move creates a roster spot, which could be filled by defensive end Chase Young. He suffered a torn ACL last November, and he seems to be ready to go.
McKissic hasn’t played since Week Eight against the Colts, with the neck injury making him inactive for the past three games. This season, he has 22 carries for 95 rushing yards, and 27 receptions for 173 receiving yards.
Rookie Brian Robinson has become the top option for the Commanders, with Antonio Gibson serving as the No. 2. | 2022-11-19T17:14:55Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Commanders place J.D. McKissic on injured reserve - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/19/commanders-place-j-d-mckissic-on-injured-reserve/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/19/commanders-place-j-d-mckissic-on-injured-reserve/ |
Lions rule out Josh Reynolds
The Lions won’t have wide receiver Josh Reynolds tomorrow against the Giants.
Reynolds, who was initially listed as questionable with a back injury on the Lions’ injury report, has now been downgraded to out. He is not on the team flight to New York.
Reynolds is the Lions’ No. 2 wide receiver and has 26 catches for 357 yards and two touchdowns this season, and the offense will miss him.
The Lions will lean even more than usual on No. 1 wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown, and wide receiver Kalif Raymond will likely see more passes thrown his way. | 2022-11-19T19:56:00Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Lions rule out Josh Reynolds - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/19/lions-rule-out-josh-reynolds/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/19/lions-rule-out-josh-reynolds/ |
5 responses to “The Bills have made it to the team facility”
Thank goodness the national nightmare is over! Finally we can all relax!
It’s a football game, for crying out loud.
In December 2021, the Bills released a study for their new stadium that said “No roof. Outdoor football.” Less than a year later, they’re running away from Buffalo to play a “home game” in Detroit, indoors.
Can’t believe they waited in this late to leave.
The team plays in Buffalo and is afraid of a snowstorm. Such a soft franchise…no wonder 62 years and counting with no Super Bowls.
It’s Buffalo, and the season will end the same way it has for the last 30 something years – With a loss and a bunch of excuses | 2022-11-19T19:56:00Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | The Bills have made it to the team facility - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/19/the-bills-have-made-it-to-the-team-facility/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/19/the-bills-have-made-it-to-the-team-facility/ |
Bengals receiver Ja'Marr Chase last played four weeks ago tomorrow. Factoring in the Week 10 bye, he’ll miss his third straight game on Sunday, at Pittsburgh, due to a hip injury.
The Bengals didn’t place Chase on injured reserve, which would have required him to miss at least four games before returning. So will he be back for next weekend at Tennessee, the fourth game since his last one?
Per a source with knowledge of the situation, there’s hope he’ll be able to play. Despite the fact that he was still on crutches earlier this week, we’re told that it’s a precautionary move and not a necessity.
Chase had 74 catches for 605 yards and six touchdowns in seven 2022 games. In his most recent appearance, he caught eight passes for 130 yards and two touchdowns. | 2022-11-20T01:18:19Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | When will Ja'Marr Chase be back? - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/19/when-will-jamarr-chase-be-back/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/19/when-will-jamarr-chase-be-back/ |
The Ravens are set to get their leading receiver back in the lineup on Sunday.
Tight end Mark Andrews missed the team’s Week Nine win over the Saints with knee and shoulder injuries, but he practiced all of this week and multiple reports indicate that he is expected to play against the Panthers after being listed as questionable.
Andrews has 42 catches for 488 yards and five touchdowns this season. He leads the Ravens in all three of those categories.
Quarterback Lamar Jackson (illness) and running back Gus Edwards (hamstring) were also listed as questionable. The Ravens have said Jackson will play and they did not call up another quarterback on Saturday. There are conflicting reports on Edwards’ availability and the Ravens will make an official announcement 90 minutes ahead of kickoff. | 2022-11-20T13:43:23Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Mark Andrews is expected to play for Ravens Sunday - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/20/mark-andrews-is-expected-to-play-for-ravens-sunday/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/20/mark-andrews-is-expected-to-play-for-ravens-sunday/ |
In past years, while Sean Payton was coaching the Saints, November and December would be the time for Sunday Splash! reports (Payton himself coined the term) suggesting that this year would be his last year in New Orleans.
Last year, which actually was his last year in New Orleans, there were no reports during the season suggesting that he’d be done.
This year, it’s just a matter of time before reports emerge linking Payton to potential openings in 2023. He has made it clear he’ll coach again. The questions are where, and when?
“Ultimately, do I think I’ll get back in? Sure,” Payton told Jarrett Bell of USA Today in July. “There’s no way to predict who that club might be. Usually, there are about six openings every year. If there’s a right fit somewhere, that ultimately will depend on several factors.”
Barry Jackson of the Miami Herald previously listed some of the factors: (1) warm weather; (2) a roster that can contend; and (3) control over personnel decisions.
Other important factors apply. Specifically, what the team is willing to pay Payton — and what the team is willing to give the Saints.
Payton, appearing on the most recent episode of the Manningcast, said in jest (we think) regarding Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson, “He has a chance to be a free agent, and I have a chance to be a free agent.”
There’s a very slim chance of either happening. The Ravens won’t let Jackson walk away. The Saints surely won’t let Payton walk away, either.
The Saints still hold Payton’s contractual rights, at least through 2024. Arguably, they’re entitled to compensation for his services indefinitely. He left with three years remaining on his contract. The Saints could take the position that he can’t simply sit out for three years and then go wherever he wants, that his contract tolls after he voluntarily walks away.
It’s an issue that could end up in a legal battle if a coach ever quits with one year left on his contract, and then tries to join another team after sitting out a year. It won’t be an issue with Payton, because he won’t be sitting out three years. He almost didn’t sit out one year.
The Dolphins reportedly were ready to surrender a first-round pick to get Payton for 2022 and beyond. As one league source recently put it, other teams should have been trying to do the same thing. Payton is a proven commodity. Coordinators with no head-coaching experience are a crapshoot.
Although several of them are doing well this year (Giants coach Brian Daboll, Vikings coach Kevin O’Connell, Dolphins coach Mike McDaniel), Nathaniel Hackett is struggling with the Broncos. Indeed, it’s already clear that he’s one of those coordinators who is good enough to get a promotion to a job at which he’s not very good. (There’s a chapter in Playmakers about this dynamic. I mention that because it’s true, and because Playmakers would be a great gift for someone else, or yourself, during the holiday season.)
Payton has shown he can be, and is, a great coach. What’s wrong with the Saints this year? With all due respect to Dennis Allen and company, they don’t have Sean Payton. He’s a force of nature. An every-waking-moment dynamo who demands a full and complete commitment, and who makes one. Not content to have a “system” that works offensively, he’s constantly looking for ways to make it better. For ways to stay ahead of each and every defense his team will be facing.
He’s worth a first-round pick. Actually, he’s worth more than that. He’s worth $20 million a year. Actually, he’s worth more than that.
Really, what’s more important to an NFL team? One great player, or one great coach?
Payton isn’t the only great NFL coach. But he’s the only great one who is currently unattached, and who will be eyeing potential openings for a hiring cycle that begins seven weeks from today.
And the drill is well known by now. Between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day, owners routinely decide that their teams need a new coach. This time around, Payton is in the mix of potential candidates to turnaround a team, quickly if not immediately.
Surely, some owner is already plotting a path to Payton. Possibly, that owner is already putting it in motion.
20 responses to “Pursuit of Sean Payton looms, if it hasn’t already started”
Carolina, Houston, Denver, Tampa should be all over this guy. I think he’s going to either of the first two… especially Houston with all those draft picks and he would be given full personnel control.
If Bill Belichick hasn’t been able to win anything significant without Tom Brady, please tell me we’re not expecting Sean Payton to win without Drew Brees. I don’t think that would be fair.
Would Payton even be a great coach without Drew Brees ? I have my doubts. Taking another HC job somewhere is not a ticket to a great team without a great QB.
The Waltons can afford it. Bring him to Denver.
tigershark0052 says:
He is overrated. Period.
Thank goodness it won’t be Miami!
phinheads says:
He bailed as soon as Brees left. He very well could be the next “great coach” to be exposed i.e Bellichick
Payton won’t go anywhere without a stud QB on the roster and that ain’t the Cowboys.
Would he even consider a team in the same division as his old team…..
Tampa would be highly interesting with all their talent or maybe even the Panthers….
Good article, Mike. I knew that Payton was in the wind, but not the details. thanks.
xmin869 says:
I’d say Cowboys, but is Jerry Jones willing to give him full control??
Both him and Lamar are going to Detroit. Sounds crazy but it’s happening.
jwis6 says:
With all that gushing about how great a coach he is it’s worth remembering he won one super bowl, when his defense paid bounties for knocking players out of games. He knew and lied about it to NFL and got suspended. Just saying he’s not Vince Lombardi..
Has basically the same record as Mike McCarthy and blew several playoff games. Overrated, and as he proved last year, he’s basically nothing without Drew Brees. Five-game losing streak and a 9-8 record with a QB room he hand selected. Missed the playoffs. Never identified a QB successor to Brees and that’s why he quit, so he didn’t have to wallow in the mess he created.
Payton had very good teams with Brees and never even won his conference after 2009.
Sean Payton is overrated he wasn’t anything without Drew Brees
Next Bronco HC. Not a coincidence he openly criticized what they were doing with Wilson and how he’d call plays there. Chargers are too cheap to hire him, and I doubt they fire the GM even if they get rid of Staley because he’s clearly given him a lot of good players to work with.
He is nowhere near BB.
He’s a good HC.
He will get hired. | 2022-11-20T16:29:06Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Pursuit of Sean Payton looms, if it hasn't already started - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/20/pursuit-of-sean-payton-looms-if-it-hasnt-already-started/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/20/pursuit-of-sean-payton-looms-if-it-hasnt-already-started/ |
Usually, when a head coach who calls offensive plays gives up play calling duties, the job falls to the offensive coordinator. In Denver, coach Nathaniel Hackett skipped over offensive coordinator Justin Outten and gave the job of calling plays to quarterbacks coach Klint Kubiak.
As explained by Mike Klis of 9News.com, the decision to pass over Outten was driven by the simple fact that Kubiak has experience calling plays. Kubiak basically ran the offense in Minnesota last year, working for a head coach who was focused exclusively on the defense. And while plenty of Vikings fans have rolled their eyes at this development, Minnesota’s offense was far from horrible in 2021.
Klis writes that Hackett made the decision to give up the play-calling duties after the Broncos scored no points in the second half of last week’s loss to the Titans.
Hackett, obviously, still has final say over the calls that are made. He can veto the decision made by Klint. But the goal is to improve the overall process. And Hackett decided that this is the time to do it.
As one source explained it to PFT, it was obvious all week at practice that something was different. Kubiak had the walkie-talkie, calling the offensive plays. Hackett was dealing with all three phases of the team. To the team’s credit, no one blabbed about the development before the official announcement was made during a meeting on Saturday night. That helped make the news a surprise.
The pleasant surprise will come from a better offensive performance. The Broncos currently are averaging 14.5 points per game, their lowest average since 1966, when the Broncos set the all-time scoring futility record for the AFL with 14 points per game.
Something needs to change, obviously. Otherwise, Hackett will possibly be giving up not only his play-calling duties by the rest of them too. | 2022-11-20T18:35:30Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Experience calling plays gave Klint Kubiak the edge over Justin Outten - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/20/experience-calling-plays-gave-klint-kubiak-the-edge-over-justin-outten/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/20/experience-calling-plays-gave-klint-kubiak-the-edge-over-justin-outten/ |
Curtis Samuel scores on 10-yard run to give Commanders a 14-0 lead
The Commanders are on their way to moving above .500.
They have scored again, taking a 14-0 lead with 11:44 remaining in the first half.
Curtis Samuel ended a nine-play, 85-yard drive with a 10-yard touchdown run.
Kendall Fuller began the scoring for Washington on a pick-six of Davis Mills, returning the interception 37 yards on the Texans’ second play from scrimmage.
Taylor Heinicke is only 4-of-10 but for 58 yards. Terry McLaurin has two catches for 29 yards, and Antonio Gibson has run for 22 yards on four carries.
Houston has only 9 yards, while the Commanders have 121. | 2022-11-20T20:38:00Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Curtis Samuel scores on 10-yard run to give Commanders a 14-0 lead - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/20/curtis-samuel-scores-on-10-yard-run/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/20/curtis-samuel-scores-on-10-yard-run/ |
With all that’s happened this week, the Bills understandably slogged through much of the first half of Sunday’s matchup with the Browns.
But quarterback Josh Allen and receiver Stefon Diggs were able to hook up in the back of the end zone just before the break to give Buffalo a 13-10 halftime lead.
Diggs got loose on second-and-goal to the Cleveland 5-yard line with 18 seconds to go. That capped an 11-play, 78-yard drive that took 1:40 off the clock.
That was the first target Diggs had in the contest.
Allen has looked off with his throws at some points. But finished the first half 9-of-16 passing for 84 yards with a touchdown.
The Browns got off to a good start with receiver Amari Cooper catching a 25-yard touchdown to end Cleveland’s first drive. The club had a chance to go up 14-3 early in the second quarter, but Harrison Bryant and Pharaoh Brown dropped potential TD catches on consecutive plays, leading to Cade York’s 32-yard field goal.
Jacoby Brissett is 13-of-18 passing for 156 yards with a TD. Cooper has six catches for 91 yards with his score.
Buffalo started the game by recording just 15 yards in the first quarter. They have 134 at halftime to Cleveland’s 210.
Bills kicker Tyler Bass kept Buffalo in it through its early struggles with 42- and 36-yard field goals.
Buffalo will have the ball to start the second half. | 2022-11-20T20:39:13Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Stefon Diggs touchdown gives Bills 13-10 halftime lead - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/20/stefon-diggs-touchdown-gives-bills-13-10-halftime-lead/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/20/stefon-diggs-touchdown-gives-bills-13-10-halftime-lead/ |
The Giants have thrown to wide receiver Wan'Dale Robinson a lot on Sunday, but he won’t be part of any further comeback efforts.
Robinson has been ruled out of the game in the fourth quarter with a knee injury. Robinson had nine catches for 100 yards and he was targeted 10 times by quarterback Daniel Jones before his injury.
The Giants also lost cornerback Adoree' Jackson to a knee injury on Sunday. The team has a quick turnaround to a Thanksgiving game in Dallas, so they’ll be hoping for some good news on the injury front after the game.
Robinson was hurt on a scoring drive by the Giants, but they still trail 24-12 with less than 10 minutes to play. | 2022-11-20T20:41:57Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Wan'Dale Robinson ruled out with a knee injury - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/20/wandale-robinson-ruled-out-with-a-knee-injury/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/20/wandale-robinson-ruled-out-with-a-knee-injury/ |
The Commanders didn’t face much resistance in Houston, winning for the fifth time in the past six games to climb above .500. Their 23-10 win over the Texans gives Washington a 6-5 record.
Washington has not been over .500 this late in the season since 2018.
Houston remains on track for the No. 1 overall draft pick in 2023, falling to 1-8-1.
The Texans gained only 5 yards on 21 plays in the first half and trailed 20-0 at halftime. A Dan Snyder-owned team has never pitched a shutout and still hasn’t.
The Texans got on the scoreboard in the third quarter on a 29-yard field goal by Ka'imi Fairbairn, and they made the score respectable on a 4-yard touchdown run by quarterback Davis Mills.
Houston ended up with 148 yards as Mills went 19-of-33 for 169 yards and two interceptions. Dameon Pierce was held to 8 yards on 10 carries.
Kendall Fuller scored Washington’s first touchdown on 37-yard pick-six, and Curtis Samuel added a touchdown on a 10-yard run. The Commanders settled for Joey Slye field goals from the Houston 7 and Houston 6 on their final two drives of the second quarter, and Slye added a 44-yarder in the second half.
The Commanders gained 344 yards as Antonio Gibson ran for 72 yards on 18 carries and Brian Robinson gained 57 yards on 15 totes. Taylor Heinicke, now 4-1 since replacing Carson Wentz, went 15-of-27 for 191 yards.
7 responses to “Commanders climb above .500 with fifth win in six games”
Wentz has played his last game in the NFL. He’s a coach killer.
Watch out Cowboys & Eagles.
Heinicke is the new ryan Fitzpatrick. Can’t help but root for this guy.
That defense is great. At this point during the season, anyone can win. We just have to keep pushing forward. Hail to the Redskins. I loved seeing that guy say it on camera during the game. Because we know what they are.
Yeah right. He will hang around another 5 to 7 Years his teams heart. There are still people think Colt McCoy can play.
Except Heinicke actually seems to not only be more clutch than Fitzpatrick but he also seems to be an even harder worker than him. As a Patriots third stringer back in the day he tried to impress Tom Brady by showing up at 5:30 pm Brady was already there and asked in a much more vulgar way who the hell are you? Heinicke has been overlooked for a long time that Playoff matchup in the 2020 season opened up everybody to the idea that he was a starter.
Good win but I’m slightly disappointed because if Washington was able to shut down Houston and hold them to only 5 yards of total offense in the 1st half we should have been as dominant in the 2nd half but we weren’t… | 2022-11-20T22:30:55Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Commanders climb above .500 with fifth win in six games - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/20/commanders-climb-above-500-with-fifth-win-in-six-games/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/20/commanders-climb-above-500-with-fifth-win-in-six-games/ |
It wasn’t pretty. It wasn’t impressive. But a win is a win is a win, and the Ravens will proudly hang their 13-3 victory over the Panthers in the win column.
The game was tied 3-3 after three quarters, but the Ravens outscored the Panthers 10-0 in the fourth quarter.
Ravens kicker Justin Tucker hit a 37-yard field goal to go with his 32-yarder on the final play of the first half, and Lamar Jackson scored the game’s only touchdown on a 1-yard run with 7:16 left.
Jackson went 24-of-33 for 209 yards with an interception. Panthers defensive lineman Bravvion Roy made the pick in the first half. Jackson ran for 31 yards on 11 carries.
Ravens receiver Demarcus Robinson caught nine passes for 128 yards, and Kenyan Drake ran for 46 yards on 10 carries.
Panthers quarterback Baker Mayfield completed 21 of 33 passes for 196 yards and two fourth quarter interceptions. Marlon Humphrey and Jason Pierre-Paul both had picks as the Panthers were trying to rally.
The Panthers gained only 205 yards.
6 responses to “Ravens move to 7-3 with 13-3 win over Panthers”
I imagine we will see pj walker again. Wow!! That $30M per year the browns offered mayfield and he thought was an insult is continues to get farther and farther away. I actually feel bad for him.
Business as usual for your 2022 Super Bowl Champs. Bye week rustiness, we’ll keep building.
Battle of garbage QBs.
Insane run by Lamar that got called back.
Woulda been a career highlight for anyone else.
Coming off a bye and barely beating a turrible team.
Sure, that’s the mark of an eventual Super Bowl champion..
Lame continues to prove he is no QB. Just a very unintelligent running back. | 2022-11-20T22:31:59Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Ravens move to 7-3 with 13-3 win over Panthers - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/20/ravens-move-to-7-3-after-13-3-win-over-panthers/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/20/ravens-move-to-7-3-after-13-3-win-over-panthers/ |
The Fat Lady might not be singing, but she’s warming her vocals.
The Vikings have come back all season. They made a comeback harder for today by opening the second half by giving up a 68-yard touchdown catch-and-run by Tony Pollard.
Minnesota trails 30-3.
The Cowboys have scored 10 points in the last 2:28, having gotten a 60-yard field goal on the final play of the first half. They faced a third-and-14 on the first drive of the second half, but Dak Prescott found Pollard wide open.
He caught the ball and raced to the end zone untouched.
Pollard earlier had a 30-yard touchdown reception. He has 11 carries for 56 yards and six receptions for 109 yards and two touchdowns.
Prescott is 18-of-20 for 216 yards and two touchdowns.
7 responses to “Cowboys open second half with 68-yard catch-and-run touchdown by Tony Pollard”
Eventually that garbage defense was going to catch up on the Vikings. So it begins.
Hey Vikings. Your playing a man’s game, you don’t belong. The lowly cowgirls are exposing you. Shut Jefferson down, game over.
They real Vikings. Packers beat the ‘Boys and Watson scores 3 TDs. Vies getting horsewhipped by the Cowboys and Jefferson has 3 catches. The works just seems more normal now.
By the time this is over the Vikings could well be 8-2 with a negative points differential.
It was the refs!!!!!!
Ugly, ugly, ugly
This is such a whooping that the league should give the Vikings two losses for this game. | 2022-11-20T23:36:22Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Cowboys open second half with 68-yard catch-and-run touchdown by Tony Pollard - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/20/cowboys-open-second-half-with-68-yard-catch-and-run-touchdown-by-tony-pollard/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/20/cowboys-open-second-half-with-68-yard-catch-and-run-touchdown-by-tony-pollard/ |
Three weeks ago, it was fair to wonder whether a loss to the Jaguars would result in the Broncos firing first-year coach Nathaniel Hackett. It’s now fair to ask whether, three weeks from today, Hackett will still be the team’s head coach.
Hackett gave up play-calling duties for today’s game. The Broncos still scored only 16 points. And Hackett became more involved in the team’s defense. Which allowed the Raiders to drive from their own 22 to inside the Denver 10, forcing overtime. Which then let the Raiders go right down the field on the first drive of overtime to win the game, in three plays.
And so the Broncos lost to the Raiders, who are now 3-7 overall — and 1-7 in games against teams other than the Broncos. The Broncos are also 3-7. More importantly, there’s just no sense that anything is working, or that it will start working any time soon.
Plenty of competent coordinators don’t make good head coaches. Through 10 games, the evidence has become abundant that Hackett is overmatched. Hiring Jerry Rosburg to help Hackett manage the game didn’t help. Giving up play calling duties, a move that was kept secret long enough to keep the Raiders from being prepared for Klint Kubiak’s tendencies, didn’t help.
It’s harsh, I know. But harsh decisions are made every year about who will, or won’t, be coaching NFL teams.
This year, the bar in Denver was too high. Hackett has failed to come close to meeting expectations. While plenty of the blame traces to the underwhelming performance of quarterback Russell Wilson, he’s not going anywhere. They need someone who can help Wilson take the Broncos somewhere — somewhere other than the basement of the AFC West.
While it’s unclear who that will be. It’s becoming more clear all the time that it will be someone other than the team’s current head coach.
2 responses to “Nathaniel Hackett moves closer to the brink”
No coach can make Wilson good.
That’s B-r-i-n-k-e; header needs an ‘e’ at the end. | 2022-11-21T02:04:47Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Nathaniel Hackett moves closer to the brink - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/20/nathaniel-hackett-moves-closer-to-the-brink/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/20/nathaniel-hackett-moves-closer-to-the-brink/ |
The Bears turned a fumble by Falcons running back Cordarrelle Patterson into a touchdown during the second quarter of Sunday’s game, but Patterson was able to bounce back and help his team on the way to a win.
Patterson took the ensuing kickoff for a 103-yard touchdown that cut Chicago’s lead to three points and made Patterson the NFL’s all-time leader in kickoff return touchdowns. Patterson has now gone the distance nine times in his career and he told reporters after the 27-24 win that he hopes to add to that total before he hangs up his cleats and helmet once and for all.
Changes to the kickoff over the course of Patterson’s career have limited the number of returns of any length and they’ve made touchdowns a rare event around the league. That should leave Patterson in control of the record for a long time whether he adds to his total or not, but the league’s excitement factor would certainly appreciate a few more big plays from the Falcons veteran. | 2022-11-21T13:11:05Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Cordarrelle Patterson: I'm trying to take that kick return record and go crazy with it - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/21/cordarrelle-patterson-im-trying-to-take-that-kick-return-record-and-go-crazy-with-it/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/21/cordarrelle-patterson-im-trying-to-take-that-kick-return-record-and-go-crazy-with-it/ |
A blizzard of stories in Week 11:
Someone named Squirrel plowed Josh Allen’s driveway, and we’ve got the exclusive inside story on Squirrel. “He’s The Man,” Allen said after a big win Sunday. In Detroit. Over Cleveland.
Sean McDermott couldn’t stop talking about the 54th member of the Bills’ roster, the Everyman (and Everywoman) who turned out to help the Bills get to Detroit. “Buffalo gets a bad rap because of the cold and the snow,” McDermott said, “but there’s an awful lot of warmth there.”
The Lions have won three in a row for the first time in five years. Next up: Thursday, high noon, against the home-away-from-home Bills in a Thanksgiving game that may actually be a solid football game.
Oddity of the Week: Eight teams in the two East divisions are over. 500. One team in the two South divisions is over .500.
Baltimore has a gosh-darn friendly slate, and I think that one-game lead over the Bengals will not go away. Carolina came into Baltimore with a 3-7 record Sunday and lost 13-3. The Ravens’ next four foes are 3-7, 3-7, 3-7, 3-7, while the Bengals have Tennessee, Kansas City and Tom Brady on the agenda.
Zach Wilson was awful at Gillette Stadium Sunday, and worse in the Gillette Stadium locker room. Longtime Jets authority Mark Cannizzaro Tweeted: “Zach Wilson has a lot of repairing to do inside his own locker room right now. His answer ‘no’ when asked whether he let the D down has gone viral and this thing is spiraling in a bad way for him.”
Warm up, Mike White.
I bet sometimes when Nathaniel Hackett looks up at the ceiling at night, he thinks, “God, what did I do to deserve this NFL fate?”
The MVP vote has changed—for the better.
Welcome to history, Cordarrelle Patterson.
Justin Fields isn’t winning, but he is doing something no quarterback has ever done before.
A mega-marriage of Jimmy Johnson, Peyton Manning and Bill Belichick? The well-coiffed one tried to make it happen in 1998.
Micah Parsons is good, and Next Gen can prove it.
On with the show, from white-outish Buffalo.
Saved by the Squirrel
Week 11 Happenings
This week I’m starting something I’ll continue for the last eight Mondays of the regular season. I’ll look at my top five in the MVP race, along with the next five contenders on my list. The good thing about this season: There’s no one runaway candidate. It looks like we’ll have a competitive race heading down the stretch.
A couple of points: I’m one of the 50 voters for the MVP, the annual award curated by the Associated Press, so I have a vested interest in thinking about it every week starting right around now. And the Associated Press just announced a change in voting for the award.
This year, the AP will have voters name a top five for MVP. Each first-place vote will count 10 points, each second-place vote five, each third-place vote three, with fourth-place votes counting two points and fifth-place votes counting one. Two reasons—to recognize more than just one player per year, and to make ties difficult. In the past, voters have chosen an MVP, with no runner-up votes. And voting on a 10-5-3-2-1 scale means it’ll be hard for ties (such as Peyton Manning tying Steve McNair in 2003 and prompting co-MVPs) to happen. “I don’t think anyone wants to see a tie for the award,” said the AP’s lead NFL writer, Rob Maaddi, who was behind the change in voting. He’s right.
Maaddi also pointed out that voting for five could give players at positions other than quarterback some shine. “The old way wasn’t wrong,” Maaddi said. “But this way can give more players the attention they deserve.”
In the other regular-season awards, voters will pick a top three, with votes going on a 5-3-1 basis.
Here’s how I see the MVP race as of Week 11:
Lamar Jackson, QB, Baltimore.
Three Next Gen Stats nuggets from Dallas’ 40-3 dismantling of Minnesota that deserve attention:
Micah Parsons had 10 pressures and two sacks on 27 pass-rushes, for an absurd pressure rate of 37 percent. (Twenty percent in pressure rate is very good.) One of the things measured by Next Gen Stats, Get-Off Rate, times how long it takes for a player to pass the line of scrimmage after the snap of the ball, and Parsons’ rate was .7 seconds, the second-highest rate for a game in his two NFL seasons.
Tony Pollard, the rising star behind Ezekiel Elliott at running back, is second in the NFL with 232 rushing yards over expected. Which means, as it sounds, that Pollard is gaining much more ground than the average back. That would lead one to think Pollard is just a speed and finesse back. Not so. Against the Vikings, Pollard gained 55 yards after contact.
Dak Prescott was 20 of 20 when not pressured in Minnesota, the most in the league since mid-2018.
Dallas now has a short week before its Thanksgiving game against the Giants after its most authoritative performance of the season.
Things I Never Knew
I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about the life and times of Jimmy Johnson, who I covered fairly extensively in his career. The mark of a good book is that it reveals things about a subject you were sure you knew well—when you had no idea about so many things in the subject’s life. That’s how I felt reading “Swagger: Super Bowls, Brass Balls and Footballs—A Memoir,” by Jimmy Johnson and Dave Hyde.
Three things that opened my eyes:
The details of Johnson’s bad relationship with Don Shula.
How Archie Manning asked Johnson, then the coach of the Dolphins, to try to trade up to draft his son Peyton in 1998.
The depth of his personal regret of ignoring so much of family life in his singular focus to try to win football games, and the pain of dealing with his son Chad’s alcoholism.
On The Peter King Podcast this week, you can hear Johnson discuss the book and that last regret.
“When I went to my mother’s funeral [in 1998], I couldn’t look at her in the casket,” Johnson told me. “That’s when I realized what I’d missed out on all those years. That’s what made me retire. The situation with Chad is, you know, both sons played football. I never saw either one of them ever play a game. I was always trying to win a championship. I always felt like I needed to outwork the opponent.”
I never saw either one of them ever play a game. That’s pretty eye-opening.
On Shula: Johnson had Shula’s son David on his Cowboys’ coaching staff when he took the job in 1989. In ’89 and ’90, David Shula was offensive coordinator and QB coach. In 1991, Johnson decided to hire Norv Turner as offensive coordinator and move David Shula to receivers coach. Out of professional courtesy, Johnson called Don Shula. In the book, Johnson writes: “Don was angry in a way that never left him.” In 1996, when Johnson succeeded Don Shula as Dolphins coach, he writes that in their first meeting after Shula retired, the ex-coach told Johnson, “You really f—ed up.” Shula told him he’d cut too many veterans like Troy Vincent, and Johnson told him he had little choice because he inherited a salary-cap mess.
Added Johnson: “On top of that, Bill Belichick came that close to coming down and being my defensive coordinator. We could’ve had Peyton Manning as our quarterback and Bill Belichick as my defensive coordinator. But he had too much loyalty to Bill Parcells [on the Jets’ staff].”
There’s nothing stunning in the book about the strife between he and Jerry Jones. I asked him on the podcast: “Were you utterly shocked when you heard Jerry said at the [1993] league meetings he could win the Super Bowl with 500 coaches?”
Johnson and Jones in 1993. (John W. McDonough / Sports Illustrated via Getty)
“It hurt,” Johnson said. “I lived three blocks from the office. I put in five years there of … sacrificing my family to try to rebuild the Cowboys. Tom Landry’s one of the greatest coaches ever but he had three straight losing seasons and they were the worst team in the NFL at 3-13. To take that team and to rebuild it, not only into a Super Bowl winner but the youngest team in the league to win the Super Bowl, that was gonna be really the team of the ‘90s, I was proud of that. I was proud of our accomplishments … Maybe 20 or 30 could’ve won the Super Bowl with them. But I helped put that team together. So, it hurt.”
I thought when I finished the book that there’s a lot in here for extremely single-minded driven people, regardless of profession. Check yourselves. Examine your lives. The stories are superb, of course. But the familial stories make the book. Such as the following one.
Johnson, on his son Chad’s trials with alcohol:
“I didn’t even realize Chad was having a problem. He became an alcoholic. I mean, I could tell you stories that he went through. Just devastating, because I didn’t even know it was going on. He went to a couple rehab centers. I’d lay in bed at night, crying my eyes out. Saying, ‘I’d give a million dollars if somebody could get him back on track.’ When he absolutely did hit rock bottom, we got him into a halfway house. Next thing, he started getting better. He ends up taking over the halfway house. He took over the whole facility. He went and got doctors and consultants to get it certified as a rehab center and they became just unbelievably successful … Now, he’s opening another one up in Austin. I would go and I’d sit in the audience next to Chad, and, like, a mother and daddy would go up to the podium. They’d have all the recovering alcoholics and all their families there. The mother and daddy would say, Chad, thanks for saving my son’s life.
“And then a mother would go up. She told this story. Chad, you picked up my daughter at 3 o’clock in the morning and drove her around for four hours talking to her and then took her to detox. Thanks for saving her life. I mean, I’m tearing up now just talking about it. Businesses had tried to buy Chad’s facility and he said, Daddy, I’m not in it to make money. He said if a business bought it, they’d have like one counselor for 10 or 20 clients. We have one counselor for every four clients. That’s why we’re successful. He said I don’t care about making money; I’m doing something to help people. I mean, it’s such a success story that I’m so proud. When I talked to him, I said listen, I had a couple undefeated national championship teams, as a player, as a coach. Won a couple Super Bowls. College and pro football hall of fame. Broadcasting hall of fame. Nothing that I’ve ever accomplished comes anywhere close to what you’re doing in saving people’s lives. I mean, it’s touching to me.”
Wow. It sort of snuck up on us. But with the big soccer fans in the NFL—Tom Brady, Odell Beckham Jr., Patrick Mahomes and J.J. Watt wax about their love of world soccer, and Brittany Mahomes is a part owner of the Kansas City NWSL team—you’ll hear a lot about the world game with this week’s opening of the World Cup in Doha, Qatar. (For Watt’s World Cup prediction, scroll down to 10 Things I Think I Think.)
The tournament began yesterday, when Ecuador won 2-0 over host nation Qatar in group play. The final is Dec. 18. The United States is in a group with Wales, England and Iran, and opens play tonight at 10 p.m. Qatar time, which is 2 p.m. ET today, against Wales. The U.S. men’s program has transformed since its failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup – the team wearing stars and stripes in Qatar has an average age of 25 years and 214 days, making it the second-youngest team in the tournament.
📆Nov. 21: #USA vs. #WAL 🔥
📺: @Telemundo | 💻: @Peacock pic.twitter.com/wSZmsfedqc
I asked Grant Wahl, the veteran soccer scribe and editor/writer of his own Substack, Futbol With Grant Wahl, to brief me on the biggest sports tournament in the world. Wahl, from Doha, had some great observations on the oddities of this Cup, maybe the biggest of which is that Qatar, the size of Connecticut, has spent $220 billion to stage these games, to build eight stadia and the necessary infrastructure. By the way, you’ve heard the country name pronounced “Cutter” and “Kuh-TAAR.” The latter is better.
FMIA: Give me the setup. What’s it like over there?
Wahl: “It’s an unusual World Cup. First, it’s in November and December instead of when it’s always been – June and July – because the heat is unbearable in the summer. It’s still in the 90s in the afternoon (today, in November). Not Houston humid, but humid. It’s going to be tough for the players. First World Cup in the Middle East, and sitting here in my residence, I can hear the Muslim prayer call five times a day.”
FMIA: You’ve told me you’re conflicted about the Cup being in Qatar because of the human rights violations in that country.
Wahl: “Very conflicted. The World Cup is my favorite sports event in the world. I look at my life in four-year increments around the World Cup. On the other hand, the World Cup is taking place in a country with a long record of human rights violations, and the treatment of migrant workers here has been called modern-day slavery by human rights groups. Qatar has made progress, introducing new worker-protection laws in 2019, but the enforcement of those laws on the ground needs to get so much better, as I saw when I spoke to workers here earlier this year. So I love the event, but it’s true—I am conflicted.”
FMIA: How’s our team? How’s Wales? What’s this first game look like?
Wahl: “This is a really important game for the U.S. if they want to advance. Wales and the U.S. are fighting for second place in the group. I’d say it’s crucial for the U.S. to get at least a tie heading into the second game Friday against England, which is one of the best teams in the tournament. You don’t want to be without a point heading into a game against England. Wales has Gareth Bale, one of the true stars of the sport. A tremendous threat, though he’s getting older. The U.S. [only has] one player—DeAndre Yedlin—who was on the team the last we were in the Cup in 2014. I think the failure of the U.S. to make the [tournament] in 2018 led to the U.S. going so young this time. The top two teams in each group make the next stage (after a round robin). Overall, I think it will be a tremendous disappointment if the U.S. doesn’t advance out of the group.”
FMIA: Who do we need to know about on the American team?
Wahl: “Of course there’s Christian Pulisic, the player who’s probably best-known. He plays for Chelsea. When my Pakistani Uber driver was taking me to the training site the other day, he was kind of excited. ‘Pulisic’s in there?’ They know him from Chelsea. The good thing is the U.S. team has more guys who could be strong players here. I think the breakout star could be Yunus Musah, who is a fascinating story. He could represent four different countries. He lives in England and played for the English youth team. His family is native to Ghana. He grew up in Italy. He plays in Spain for Valencia. He’s only 19. His mom was visiting Ghanaian family in NYC when she was pregnant with him (in 2002) and he was born in New York. He decided to represent the U.S. He’s magnificent with the ball in the midfield. He can dribble the ball on his own through the midfield and create space so well.”
FMIA: Is there a favorite for this World Cup?
Wahl: “I’d say three—France, the defending champion, Brazil, and Argentina, in Lionel Messi’s last World Cup. I’m picking Argentina. Some people think Messi needs to win this Cup—he’s never won one—to be considered the best player of all time. There’s a tremendous amount of pressure among the South American teams, because the last South American team to win was in 2002, Brazil. The four semifinalists in 2018 were all European.”
FMIA: The big story back here in the couple of days before the World Cup starts is about beer—Qatar ruled at the last minute FIFA can’t sell beer in the eight stadiums during games.
Wahl: “Yeah, Qatar moved the goalposts on beer. The thing is, you can get beer here at the Fan Fest, and in hotel restaurants.”
Personal plug for my friend Grant:
You can subscribe to Futbol With Grant Wahl ($35 for the full run of the World Cup, $60 for a full year) here. It’s a great, intense and unvarnished way to follow the World Cup, whether you’re a passive or intense fan. By the way, Wahl wrote a post Friday about the beer and pulled no punches: “It’s not about the beer. It’s about Qatar’s rulers running this World Cup, and FIFA can’t do anything about it.”
Tony Pollard, running back, Dallas. On a day Ezekiel Elliott came back from injury, Pollard proved his undeniable value running and receiving. He rushed for 80 yards on 15 carries, giving him 409 yards in his last four games. But the first 100-yard receiving game of his four-year NFL career made this a special day, with touchdown catches of 68 and 30 yards.
Derek Carr, quarterback; Davante Adams, wide receiver, Las Vegas. The 22-16 overtime win over Denver, completing a season sweep over the Broncos, was precisely what GM Dave Ziegler and coach Josh McDaniels had in mind when they made the big trade with Green Bay for Adams last spring. Carr’s 31-yard TD pass to Adams in the second quarter cut into Denver’s early 10-0 lead. On the first drive of overtime, Carr threw a dart over the middle for 33 yards to tight end Foster Moreau, and followed with it with a gem of a throw to a wide-open Adams—who juked corner Patrick Surtain to be all alone for the 35-yard TD. Adams: seven catches for 141 yards. Carr: 307 yards, two TDs, no picks, a 106.5 rating. Better late than never for the Rome-wasn’t-built-in-a-day Raiders of Josh McDaniels.
Derrick Henry, running back, Tennessee. Henry is the Mahomes of the running game—I could make him a player of the week almost every week. In the win at Green Bay Thursday night, Henry actually threw for the decisive touchdown with 20 minutes left in the game, giving Tennessee a 20-9 lead. From the Green Bay four-yard line, the Pack stuffed the middle of the line for an anticipated Henry run. And Henry took the handoff, ran toward the line—and then stopped, jumped in the air and threw a pass to a wide-open Austin Hooper seven yards deep in the end zone. Perfect spiral on that Tebowian jump-pass. His 87 yards on 28 carries lifted Tennessee to a five-minute edge in time of possession. Just another day at the office for the most valuable Titan.
DERRICK HENRY TD PASS!!! #TITANS
(🎥: @NFL)pic.twitter.com/IvINGpntwb
Maxx Crosby, defensive end, Las Vegas. Played a great game in all, but let’s talk about what he did in a five-play sequence spanning the second and third quarters: forces a fumble with the Broncos going in for a late first-half score; blocks the Brandon McManus field goal on the next play; sacks Russell Wilson on the first series of the third quarter, forcing a Denver punt. What a dominating player Crosby is.
Micah Parsons, edge, Dallas. Dallas 40, Minnesota 3. One of the most dominating performances of this season—perhaps the most. With Minnesota coming off the electric win at Buffalo, outsacking the Vikings 7-0 and outscoring them by 37 was stunning. Parsons’ two sacks led the way, and he almost always leads the way for a front that can be downright scary. Parsons showed his versatility. He made his first sack from the edge, and his second was a plow-through-the-line job.
Kyle Fuller, cornerback, Washington. Fuller may have made the play that signals the end of the Davis Mills experiment in Houston. Just 44 seconds into the game at Houston, Fuller baited and waited for Mills to throw a pass to Brandin Cooks. When it was released, Fuller cut in front of Cooks, picked it, and pranced untouched down the left sideline for a 37-yard pick-six. Washington never trailed in improving to 6-5.
Aidan Hutchinson, defensive end, Detroit. His second athletic interception in 15 days—the first one off Aaron Rodgers at the goal line, this one off Daniel Jones—and a key recovered fumble were important in the Lions’ 31-18 upset of the Giants. His pick of Jones in the second quarter on a ball that was a good two feet over his head set the Lions’ up for their first TD of the day. With the Giants down 12 and driving in the fourth, Hutchinson dove on a loose ball and the turnover ended any hope the Giants had.
Special teams players of the week
Some great performances on special teams to choose from Sunday. I chose them all.
Cordarrelle Patterson, running back/returner, Atlanta. Set the NFL record with his ninth career kickoff-return TD. Patterson, in Atlanta, took the Cairo Santos kickoff three yards deep in the end zone and went straight up the middle of the Bears’ return defense, ping-ponging early and then bursting into the clear, and then almost getting caught from behind. An amazing 103-yard return for touchdown—made more amazing because it gives Patterson the NFL record, and by the fact that it’s the first kickoff returned for a touchdown in the league this season.
Brett Maher, kicker, Dallas. So it was in a dome. But Maher had one of the best days a kicker has had in the NFL in years at Minnesota. He hit field goals of 27, 53, 60 and 50 yards—and he made a 60-yarder that was called off because of a lingering replay review. Maher, in three hours, made three field goals of 50 yards or longer. Hall of Fame kicker Jan Stenerud made three field goals of 50 yards or longer in an eight-year span in the prime of his career.
Marcus Jones, cornerback/punt-returner, New England. The rookie third-rounder from Houston made the special-teams play of the year in Foxboro Sunday. With Jets-Pats tied at 3 and the Jets getting nothing done on offense (that is a massive understatement), Jets punter Braden Mann kicked a line-drive punt (not smart at all; you’re not getting beat by Mac Jones from his 30- with 12 seconds left) to Jones, who returned it, untouched, for an 84-yard touchdown. Great play by Jones. Boneheaded by the Jets punting to him. “Crappy way to lose,” said Jets coach Robert Saleh.
Tyler Bass, kicker, Buffalo. On a day the offense sputtered to get into the end zone, Bass was a crucial piece. He kicked six field goals in six tries—from 42, 36, 56, 29, 28 and 29 yards—in 47 minutes, and the Bills won a hardship game in their neutral “home,” Detroit, that they needed badly.
Ron Rivera, coach, Washington. In the middle of the starting quarterback getting hurt and the constant din of the off-field mayhem from the Dan Snyder ownership stench, the Commanders have won five of six. A lot of that is the constant positivity of Rivera, who wouldn’t let two road games in a short week (Monday in Philly, Sunday in Houston) be any cause for concern. Good to have a calming influence making the tough calls, and Rivera has been just that for Washington.
Zach Wilson, quarterback, N.Y. Jets. Two games against the Patriots this year, two awful performances by the second-year QB from Brigham Young. In 26 second-half plays, the Jets generated two yards. You have to try to be that miserable. Really try. But get this: Wilson had seven second-half drives. The furthest he drove the Jets was to his own 35-yard line. I watched the Jets’ post-game show on SNY in New York, and I thought Willie Colon was going to burst out into orbit, he was so enraged over the Jets’ play. (And he thinks, as I do, that Robert Saleh has to worry less about the feelings of Zach Wilson and more about winning games this year with this team, keeping in mind that benching Wilson isn’t a dumb idea.)
Equanimeous St. Brown, wide receiver, Chicago. St. Brown made a perfect play, a hugely valuable play, early in a tight game at Atlanta. On third-and-eight from the Atlanta 16-yard line, the Bears lined up St. Brown and Darnell Mooney twins left, with St. Brown to the left. At the snap, they each ran straight, with St. Brown veering to the right into the traffic of the two Falcons’ DBs. Mooney twisted behind the three-man pile and sprinted downfield. Fields found him alone in the end zone for a touchdown. I hope when Luke Getsy shows the tape to his offense this week he stresses that this touchdown would never have happened without a man who will get zero credit for it, Equanimeous St. Brown.
Mike Hollins, running back, University of Virginia. Hollins was on the bus trip with some classmates back to the Virginia campus from Washington Sunday night when he heard gunshots. Hollins yelled for the driver to stop, and he and two classmates ran off the bus. Realizing no one was following them, per ESPN’s Mark Schlabach, Hollins went back to the bus to try to get others to leave the bus. When he got to the steps of the bus, he encountered the alleged shooter, Christopher Darnell Jones, who pointed a gun at him. Hollins, according to his mom, turned to run and Jones shot him in the back. “He reacted exactly how I would anticipate,” Virginia coach Tony Elliott told Schlabach. “He didn’t care if he put himself in harm’s way, but he was going back to check on his teammates.” After two surgeries on his kidney and abdomen, Mike Hollins is expected to recover. His mother said he is determined to play football again.
I can honestly say we couldn’t have done it without ‘em this week. It took a lot of moving hands, and moving parts, to get us here.
–Buffalo quarterback Josh Allen, on the help of the community to clear snow and get the Bills to Detroit for their game against Cleveland.
We gotta have a plan. We can’t be passively working and can’t just be in the facility and not know what we there for.
–Jets wide receiver Garrett Wilson, questioning his team’s offensive game-planning after the 10-3 loss to the Patriots.
It’s so funny. Playing football, watching football, all these years. The quarterback sneak is done a certain way. And it’s almost been revolutionized this year with this little motion thing. I mean, why nobody thought of that before.
–FOX analyst Daryl Johnston on the Bears-Falcons game, after Equanimeous St. Brown went into motion on a Justin Fields QB sneak and, at the snap of the ball, stopped behind Fields and pushed him forward for a first down. Great point by Johnston. The push-the-pile on quarterback sneaks has become an epidemic.
–Tennessee running back Derrick Henry, after throwing his jump-pass touchdown pass to Austin Hooper at Lambeau Field Thursday night.
We started warming up, and three hours later we’re finishing up and I’m like, ‘Man, that was a good workout.’ And Troy was like, ‘That was just the warmup. And then we went to work. That was a lesson for me.
—Talanoa Hufanga, to Michael Silver of the San Francisco Chronicle, on the influence of Troy Polamalu, who has been a mentor to him. Silver’s story here.
Thursday’s victory over Green Bay was the 80th game of Mike Vrabel’s head-coaching career, including playoffs. In the five seasons since Mike Vrabel became head coach in Tennessee, his record versus his mentor’s:
W-L Win Pct.
Mike Vrabel, Titans 50-30 (.625)
Bill Belichick, Patriots 49-31 (.613)
Steve Young, known for his mobility and memorable runs, played 191 regular-season and playoff games in his Hall of Fame NFL career.
Number of career 100-yard rushing games for Young: 1.
Number of 100-yard rushing games by Justin Fields in the last 15 days: 2.
The (Snowy) Road:
Weekend snow totals in two towns 19 miles apart (as the crow flies) in the Buffalo area:
Orchard Park, 81.0
Tonawanda, 7.1
Lake-effect snow is some crazy weather pattern.
The Dallas edge-rusher, recruiting the free-agent receiver.
I've covered the NFL in Houston for more than 4 decades. I've seen a lot of bad offenses. This Texans offense just might be the worst of all. @gallerysports
John McClain has covered football in Houston since the dawn of time.
The Lions and Bills have fun social media teams.
Talkin’ Yanks is a Yankees-centric Twitter feed. Man, is that cute.
The worst place in the world to watch the World Cup is Qatar. https://t.co/7ZkbFKuQXX
Don Van Natta Jr. writes for ESPN.com.
John Mellencamo just walked by me in the tunnel under Lucas Oil Stadium.
Was tempted to say, (Jalen) Hurts so good.
Alas, I did not.
McLane covers the Eagles for the Philadelphia Inquirer and was in Indiana, native land of Mr. Mellencamp.
Interesting query. From Steve Cammett: “With the success of the Dolphins and Giants this season, in your opinion, how does it impact Brian Flores claims of racial bias? It appears the franchises made the correct hires based on skill and leadership, rather than race. I compared the resumes of Brian Flores and Brian Daboll. Daboll had to coach 20 years compared to Flores 10 years, before he became a head coach in the NFL.”
I don’t know, Steve. Flores hasn’t proven his claims that the fix was in when he interviewed with the Giants, though he has some interesting circumstantial evidence with the Bill Belichick text messages. Flores’ case has one strong piece of evidence: How many coaches ever have been fired with the arrow up the way Flores’ was in Miami, where he finished last season 8-1 in the last two months?
Munich scene. From Shaun Hazelmyer in upstate N.Y.: “Regarding the atmosphere in the Munich game, I LOVE that fans stayed well after the game singing and taking in the environment. I hope that stadiums in the states take a cue from this. I am a season ticket holder and at the end of games, there is a timer counting down to when the stadium closes, kind of ushering fans out of the stadium. It would be nice if we could try to recreate the fun Munich atmosphere here, instead of forcing fans out as hurriedly as possible.”
At the least, NFL teams should study what was done post-game, if for nothing else to alleviate traffic. Game organizers put RedZone on the big screens in the stadium, and there was a post-game event on the field hosted by former NFLers Sebastian Vollmer and Markus Kuhn, Germany natives. Cool atmosphere.
Jeff Pearlman alert. From Dan Young: “I want to thank you for the recommendation of the Bo Jackson biography, ‘The Last Folk Hero.’ As a teacher, I find it hard to pick up any book during the school year, but I couldn’t resist picking this up.”
Same here, Dan. I loved it. Read it in two days.
We can all get along. From Matthew Stevenson: “As a conservative who lives in a small town you’ve never heard of, in the middle of the country, I realized that I have been trained to assume that people like you hate me. I have come to believe that people who live on the coast, the shakers and movers, the people with media platforms and followings, would hate me if you ever met me. I’m sure there are many reasons why we have arrived at the strange and dystopian political crossroads at which we find ourselves, and it’s not up to me to solve all those problems. But I decided today that I am going to strive to not believe that anymore. I like you. I’m sure we’d disagree about a lot of things in the political realm, but I bet that if you and I sat down and had a beer, we would genuinely enjoy each other’s company. You do a pretty good job of making your content, especially your column, something so much larger and more transcendent than the sad and ugly reality of politics. That’s why reading your column is the first thing I do when I get out of bed each Monday morning—after my morning prayers of course. I appreciate that about your column, and I appreciate you.”
Matthew! You the Man! I appreciate you. There are many people I know who I know have different views than I do, and you know what we do? We talk about the things we have in common. It’s interesting. No matter how much I might disagree with a person, it would be hard for me to hate him or her. I’m so glad you took the time to write and to say this. It means a lot to me. You’re a big person to do it.
I shouldn’t have gone to Munich. From Barry Spiegel, of Peoria, Ariz.: “Boy, did you pick a bad week for a European trip. Make sure to think twice, and maybe another time, before wasting a midseason week at a European game, a money-grab for the league, next year. Or will you be in Mexico City next week? Didn’t think so.”
To each his own, Barry. I hope I was able to pass on some interesting fodder about the NFL’s international plans, with some flavor of the first game ever in Germany. Not everyone’s going to like what I do, and that’s okay. Re: Mexico, no, I’m not going, though that would be an interesting trip too. I’ve never been to one of the games in England either. I thought the fervor of the fans in Germany and the potential so many owners see in that country made it a good trip to take.
1. I think it’s crazy that the fate of Odell Beckham Jr. could be decided by the performance of two teams in a Thanksgiving game. Giants at Cowboys. Ian Rapoport and Tom Pelissero reported Beckham is narrowing his list of candidate teams and will visit those two after Thanksgiving. Knowing Beckham wants to only play for a contender who could make a playoff run, the Giants are going to need a Herculean effort to show that potential Thursday in Texas—especially after playing so poorly in the loss to Detroit Sunday.
2. I think it’s official: Jeff Saturday will not go undefeated in his career as an NFL head coach.
3. I think I never thought the Rams would go 1-6 in a stretch of nearly two months, but when Matthew Stafford and Cooper Kupp and Andrew Whitworth are all missing, there is little hope that they’ll be competitive.
4. I think I’ve been pretty adamant that because the off-season practices for teams—with the exception of the mandatory full-squad camp in early June—are voluntary, it is a player’s right to either attend or not. He should not be forced to. So when Aaron Rodgers didn’t do much in the off-season this past year, I thought, “That’s his right. He shouldn’t be forced to be there, even with a lot of new pieces in place he needs to mesh with.” After watching Green Bay a lot this season, I’m more inclined to think differently about next spring. I think it would be fair in February to say to Rodgers (who will be 39 next month): This season showed how important chemistry with receivers is. We saw a lot of miscommunication this year. We’d like you to come in for some or all of the off-season work this year, so you can form stronger bonds with Christian Watson and Romeo Doubs and whoever else we bring in. If Rodgers says no, and I’m the leadership team of Matt LaFleur and Brian Gutekunst, I’d think about alternatives for the 2023 season. I wouldn’t think necessarily of divorcing Rodgers, but I would consider alternatives. One more thing I’d do: once Green Bay is out of it this year, give Jordan Love three or four starts. The Pack’s at the end of year three with the Love experiment. Wouldn’t it be nice to enter year four knowing a little more about what they have in him?
5. I think it might not be altogether nonsensical to consider trading Rodgers to Las Vegas for Derek Carr and a third-round pick. Might being the most important word there. Miles to go before you reach a decision like that, but it has crossed my mind.
6. I think I love when local radio announcers get fired up—for good or for bad. One of the best in the business, Eagles’ play-by-play man Merrill Reese, was justifiably outraged last Monday night when officials missed an obvious facemask call on Washington for yanking tight end Dallas Goedert’s mask. Reese and his partner, Mike Quick, on WIP got a bit frenzied from the Jalen Hurts-to-Goedert play to the aftermath:
Reese: “Hurts takes the snap. He slings it out of the far side of the field and running hard up to the 35 is Goedert … [Pause] Washington running with the football. Are they saying it’s a fumble? They’re running it into the end zone. The officials are calling it a fumble!”
Quick: “It’s a touchdown.”
Reese: “There is a facemask! He was pulled down by the facemask! How can they miss that? Yanked down by the facemask! And the ball came loose. That should be 15 yards!”
Quick: “The call was completely missed.”
Reese: “That is a disgrace. That is a disgrace. He was yanked down by the facemask, causing the fumble. The officials oughta be ashamed of themselves.”
(Later …)
Reese: “It’s been an awfully officiated game. Terrible … I mean the league office has got to fine the official who missed the facemask on Dallas Goedert. That was unconscionable.”
Attaway Merrill.
7. I think this is fervent soccer fan J. Watt’s call on the World Cup: “Brazil is my prediction. Too much offensive firepower, combined with some great goalkeeping and strong defense. They’re built to win. Belgium is being written off a bit, with people saying their prime window was four years ago, but I still believe they have a chance to do something special with the group they have. If Messi and Argentina can pull it off, it would be an incredible cherry on top of an unbelievable career for the GOAT. As for the U.S., I’m looking forward to following along with the rest of the country, pouring my full support behind the boys and hoping we can raise some hell along the way.”
📆 NOV. 21 🔥#ENG, #NED, #USA 😍
📺: @Telemundo | 💻: @Peacock pic.twitter.com/358awfN6Tq
8. I think that is Watt, on the U.S. team, being very, very nice without thinking much of its chances.
9. I think I’ve got one thing to say to those who would ask, “When are the Titans finally going to get the credit they deserve for always being in strong contention?” Win a home playoff game with one of these great teams for the first time in three years. This isn’t cruel; it’s reality. Two years ago, AFC South champ Tennessee lost in Nashville to fifth-seeded Houston by a touchdown in the Wild Card game. Last year, AFC South champ Tennessee, with a bye through the Wild Card round, lost to fourth-seeded Cincinnati by a field goal in a divisional game. Total points scored in eight quarters: 29. I like the Titans as much as the next person, but this has not been a team built for the postseason recently, and to get the ultimate respect, late-January wins matter a lot.
a. Brittney Griner was sentenced to nine years in a penal colony in Russia, for the offense of being caught with less than one gram of cannabis oil. We can’t let Griner’s imprisonment—she has already been in custody for nine months for this ridiculously harsh sentence—be forgotten. Nor can we allow Paul Whelan, the former Marine who’s been imprisoned in Russia for spying for four years, be forgotten.
b. Speaking of what we can’t simply allow to become white noise: When are we going to do something, anything, about this kind of crime—some obviously disturbed person taking a gun out and murdering three students and college football players on a bus returning from a school field trip? Or opening fire with a rifle at an LGBTQ club?
c. We just blithely move on. Nothing to see here. Nothing can be done here.
d. Why? Why can nothing be done? This is America. We fix things here. We need the will, not the political cowardice, to fix this—or at least to try.
e. Radio Story of the Week: Jud-Esty Kendall of National Public Radio, commemorating what would have been the 97th birthday of assassinated Sen. Robert F. Kennedy over the weekend with a find of the words from the busboy who cradled Kennedy in the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles as he lay dying.
f. So incredibly sad to think of that period in history. I was 9. The morning after Kennedy was killed, I walked into my kitchen in Connecticut to find my mother, solid as a rock in all ways, weeping.
g. And so sad to think of the very nice person, Juan Romero, giving Kennedy comfort as he died, and later getting criticized for it.
h. The words of Romero, who died of a heart attack in California in 2018 at age 68:
“I remember him shaking my hand. And as he let go, somebody shot him. I kneeled down to him and put my hand between the cold concrete and his head just to make him comfortable. I could see his lips moving. So I put my ear next to his lips, and I heard him say, ‘Is everybody OK?’ I said, ‘Yes, everybody’s OK.’ I could feel a steady stream of blood coming through my fingers. I had a rosary in my shirt pocket, and I took it out thinking that he would need it a lot more than me. I wrapped it around his right hand, and then they wheeled him away.”
i. Eerie to hear Romero’s words again. And to wonder what might have been if the younger Kennedy had lived. Who would have won the 1968 presidential election—Kennedy, Humphrey or Nixon?
j. Podcast of the Week: Heidi Blake, with David Remnick, on his New Yorker Radio Hour, on how Qatar got the World Cup.
k. Yes, it’s ugly.
l. Blake, who co-authored “The Ugly Game” on the dark side of this Cup, says: “People are normally careful enough not to leave a paper trail … I’ve never seen graft and corruption documented in this kind of detail.” Good interview by Remnick. And a stunning lack of any effort to fix or address the crime by FIFA.
¡Goooool! ⚽ 🏆 @fifaworldcup 🔜 NOV 20 pic.twitter.com/9y9Z01tnGe
m. Wow College Basketball Result of the Week: Northern Kentucky 64, Cincinnati 51. I know NKU has made the NCAA Tournament twice since transitioning to Division I, but beating UC by 13, that made me do a triple-take from my days covering college basketball in the eighties for the
n. Obit of the Week I: Mike Barnes of The Hollywood Reporter on the life and times of Robert Clary, who played Corporal LeBeau on the late-sixties CBS sitcom “Hogan’s Heroes” and did so much more in his 96 years.
o. Lots to say here about Clary and “Hogan’s Heroes,” which was a staple-of-my-youth TV show and seems so odd to think about now. The show was about Allied prisoners of war in a German camp, led by Colonel Robert Hogan (Bob Crane), trying to defeat the Nazis from inside the camp. A comedy. Crazy, but really good for its day, and Clary was excellent as the French POW. Still remember the theme music.
p. Imagine you’re Robert Clary, an Orthodox Jewish man born in Paris. And you agree to act in this show after this experience, per Barnes’ obituary:
One day when he was 16, he and his family were rounded up and sent to Auschwitz.
“My mother said the most remarkable thing,” Clary told The Hollywood Reporter‘s Peter Flax in late 2015. “She said, ‘Behave.’ She probably knew me as a brat. She said, ‘Behave. Do what they tell you to do.’”
q. What a life, post-concentration camp. He sang with Eartha Kitt on Broadway, acted with Paul Newman on the big screen, acted on soaps (Days of Our Lives and The Young and the Restless), sang on jazz albums, and was recognized for years after his “Hogan’s Heroes” run. He was the last member of the “Hogan’s Heroes” cast to die.
r. Obit of the Week II: Eduardo Medina of The New York Times on the death of Mehran Karimi Nasseri in Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris.
s. Nasseri lived in the Paris airport for 18 years.
t. That’s right. He lived in the airport, leaving for a few years but returning recently because it felt so much like home to him. Nasseri, an Iranian, was the inspiration for the Steven Spielberg movie “The Terminal” with Tom Hanks, whose character lived in JFK Airport in New York.
u. Wrote Medina:
With his trimmed mustache and soft voice, Mr. Nasseri became a peculiar fixture in Terminal 1 of the airport as he hauled piles of his belongings, stacked neatly on a luggage cart. He resided in the airport from 1988 to 2006, initially because of legal hurdles to prove his refugee status, and later by choice.
He lived between a pizzeria and an electronics store, planting himself on a red plastic bench that he made his home. On a coffee table, he had a hand mirror; an electric shaver, which he used every morning; and a collection of press clippings that told of his status as an odd figure in France.
His days were punctuated by the rhythm of flights and the presence of travelers, whose numbers swelled in the morning and dwindled at night, leaving him mostly alone to sleep on his preferred curved bench. Airport employees would routinely give him their meal coupons, and flight attendants would give him toiletries left over by first-class passengers.
v. Painful Story of the Week: William Wan of The Washington Post, with details of the events leading up to the tragic shooting at the University of Virginia.
w. So tough to read. So well reported. A 19-year-old student who survived, Ryan Lynch, relayed such haunting details. Wrote Wan:
The shooter seemed to be aiming at specific people, and one witness reported that he shot one of the football players as he slept, a prosecutor said in court Wednesday.
Lynch has been haunted by the image of her friends — Lavel, D’Sean and Devin — as they lay bleeding on the bus.
x. Bonvissuto Family Update: Young Jude Bonvissuto, 12, a sixth-grader in Nashville, just finished third out of 14 students in fifth through eighth grade in the Catholic Diocesan Spelling Bee. Jude got “vicious” and “barbecue” before being stumped on “elucidate.” Three cheers for you, Jude.
y. You’re playing with a lot of emotions now, Devils. Twelve straight wins. Record: 15-3, including 6-0 (perfect on two three-game road trips up north so far) in Canada. They had 15 wins on Feb. 7 last season, so they’re 11 weeks ahead of last year’s pace. Emily Kaplan, I’m going to need an explanation.
z. Cute World Cup Quote of the Week: At the opening match of the World Cup between Ecuador and host nation Qatar, Ecuadorian fans chanted, “Queremos cerveza!” – meaning “We want beer!” – after Qatari organizers banned beer sales in stadiums just before the tournament began. (Ecuador won the match, 2-0.)
San Francisco 26, Arizona 20. In Mexico City for the last of the NFL’s International Series, it’s desperation time for the 4-6 Cardinals and opportunity time for the 5-4 Niners. A loss for Arizona, which finishes the season with three of four on the road, would almost eliminate any chance to leapfrog Seattle and San Francisco for the division title. A win for San Francisco would mean a tie (with tiebreaker edge) with Seattle—with a three-game homestand (Saints, Dolphins, Bucs) coming up. It’s a big and festive day in Mexico, Revolution Day, commemorating the beginning of the Mexican Revolution in 1910. You can be sure the 87,000 on hand will be loud. Also: the stadium is 7,200 feet above sea level, four-tenths of a mile higher than in Denver. We’ll see how much of a factor that will be as the game wears on.
N.Y. Giants at Dallas, Thursday, 4:30 p.m. ET, FOX. There’s no way on Labor Day that any of us thought this middle child of Thanksgiving games would feature teams with a combined 14-6 record. This is where the rubber starts meeting the road for the Giants, who’ve played just one NFC East game in the first 11 weeks. Next four games: at Dallas, Washington, Philadelphia, at Washington.
New England at Minnesota, Thursday, 8:20 p.m. ET, NBC. The Patriots have the toughest slate of any AFC contender down the stretch. Including Sunday’s game against the Jets, six of their final eight games come against teams with six wins or more. To make the playoffs, the Patriots are going to have to get better play from Mac Jones, whose season has been a regression so far.
Cincinnati at Tennessee, Sunday, 1 p.m. ET, CBS. Revenge game? Maybe, considering this is a Nashville rematch of the nightmare game of Ryan Tannehill’s career. Titans have three losses. They lost their third game of 2021 one year ago today. Of course, they earned home-field in the AFC last year, only to lose to the Bengals with Tannehill throwing three picks.
Green Bay at Philadelphia, Sunday, 8:20 p.m., NBC. Realism of the Week: Green Bay is 4-7. They have to win this game, at the NFC’s top seed, to have a prayer to make the playoffs. The Packers will have five games left after this, and dates with Miami and Minnesota remain. So, it’s getting very late early for Green Bay.
Explain the Vikes, please.
Beat Bills heroically,
stomped by Dallas. How?
Saved by the Squirrel Community keeps Buffalo warm in blizzard Week 11 Happenings A few observations and takeaways from this weekend 10 MVP Watch Top contenders for the top award as of this week Hello, Next Gen! Inside the Cowboys' stunning performance 20 Things I Never Knew Revelations from Jimmy Johnson's memoir Voices Jimmy Johnson on his son, Chad 30 The World Cup The world's largest football tournament is underway The Award Section Special teams players rule the week 40 Quotes of the Week On community, the game's evolution, and tough mentors Numbers Game Vrabel vs. Belichick 50 Factoidness More perspective on Fields' rushing numbers King of the Road On a certain northeastern snowstorm 40 Tweets of the Week Thankful this week that Twitter is still up & running Newman! Readers on my Germany trip, and setting aside differences 30 10 Things I Think I Think On the World Cup and stories of the week Monday, Monday An MNF prediction for 49ers-Cardinals 20 Games of Week 12 Marquee matchups on Thanksgiving Thursday & Sunday The Adieu Haiku 5-7-5 forever 10 | 2022-11-21T13:11:23Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | FMIA Week 11: Chiefs Stay Dominant With A Little Déjà Vu; Bills Survive the Storm With Help From "Squirrel" - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/21/travis-kelce-bills-peter-king-fmia-week-11/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/21/travis-kelce-bills-peter-king-fmia-week-11/ |
1 responses to “Lovie Smith: We’re not a good football team, we’re searching for answers”
I kind of feel bad for Lovie Smith.
He’s got a bad team to coach and they clearly in a rebuilding process that will take some time even though they do have lots of picks to do that with. But I doubt he’s going to be around when they start to turn things around.
He’s a placeholder, and it’s doubtful that he’s still there in 2024. Or even next season… | 2022-11-21T14:42:42Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Lovie Smith: We're not a good football team, we're searching for answers - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/21/lovie-smith-were-not-a-good-football-team-were-searching-for-answers/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/21/lovie-smith-were-not-a-good-football-team-were-searching-for-answers/ |
Bucs designate Giovani Bernard to return from IR
Buccaneers running back Giovani Bernard is ready to return to practice.
The Bucs designated Bernard to return from injured reserve today, which means he can start practicing and could be activated to the 53-man roster any time within the next 21 days.
Bernard has only played in two games this season because of an ankle injury, and he never touched the ball in either of those two games, so he has had no impact this year. Any help he could provide down the stretch would be a bonus to the Bucs.
This is Bernard’s second season in Tampa Bay. Last year Bernard got some playing time as a backup running back and carried eight times for 58 yards and caught 23 passes for 123 yards. | 2022-11-21T16:23:00Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Bucs designate Giovani Bernard to return from IR - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/21/bucs-designate-giovani-bernard-to-return-from-ir/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/21/bucs-designate-giovani-bernard-to-return-from-ir/ |
The Bengals took down the Steelers on Sunday to move to 6-4 on the season and put them as the AFC’s No. 7 seed.
Cincinnati was down 20-17 at halftime and Pittsburgh had a few chances to take the lead back in the second half. But Cincinnati scored 13 straight points to take control of the game.
After the contest, quarterback Joe Burrow began his press conference by saying, “That was awesome.”
“One of my favorite wins since I’ve been here,” Burrow said.
“A lot of adversity,” Burrow said. ‘AFC North game. Bad weather, cold, windy. We fought through. We found a way to win.”
Burrow finished the contest 24-of-39 passing for 355 yards with four touchdowns and two interceptions. Three of those four TD passes went to Samaje Perine, who caught all four of his targets for 52 yards and rushed for 30 yards. The Bengals had to rely on him after Joe Mixon went out with a concussion.
“Samaje’s just — one, obviously, he’s a great player,” Burrow said. “He steps up whenever his opportunity presents itself. And two, he’s one of those locker room guys that everybody talks about. Great in the locker room. Great guy to talk to. Culture builder. He’s fun to play with.”
The defending AFC champion Bengals now have an intriguing matchup against the Titans in Nashville next week that should have plenty of postseason implications. | 2022-11-21T16:23:32Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Joe Burrow: That was one of my favorite wins since I've been here - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/21/joe-burrow-that-was-one-of-my-favorite-wins-since-ive-been-here/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/21/joe-burrow-that-was-one-of-my-favorite-wins-since-ive-been-here/ |
A faded Tom Brady autograph sparked a lawsuit regarding an American flag that had been loaned to the Patriots. What better way to fix the problem than to have Brady simply sign it again?
Via TMZ.com, that’s precisely what happened.
Per the report, the Patriots helped arrange for Brady to re-sign the flag. The owner of the flag, Daniel Vitale, had loaned the item to the Patriots for display at the team’s Hall of Fame. Vitale claimed that the team mishandled the flag, allowing the signature to fade.
Vitale said that the signature is now four times larger than the original one, and that he believes it’s likely worth much more than the original appraised value of $1 million.
Maybe that should be Brady’s post-football career. He can resolve civil lawsuits from coast to coast by simply signing something for the plaintiff.
2 responses to “Tom Brady re-signs flag that sparked lawsuit against Patriots”
It’s not the original signature. The new signature is in different color sharpie next to the faded original. It really doesn’t look that great. Maybe I’m crazy but i don’t see how the value of the piece stays the same, much less increase.
That last paragraph is gold! | 2022-11-21T16:23:38Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Tom Brady re-signs flag that sparked lawsuit against Patriots - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/21/tom-brady-re-signs-flag-that-sparked-lawsuit-against-patriots/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/21/tom-brady-re-signs-flag-that-sparked-lawsuit-against-patriots/ |
Texans head coach Lovie Smith said after Sunday’s loss to the Commanders that he wouldn’t “just change to change” in response to questions about what the team would do to change their fortunes after a 1-8-1 start.
Smith sounded a bit more open to shaking things up when he spoke to reporters at a Monday press conference. Smith was asked if he would consider a quarterback change from Davis Mills to Kyle Allen and he replied by noting that the players are not in the facility on Monday so any public discussion of specific changes would wait until he’s spoken with them.
Smith also said that the team needs to make changes as they prepare to face the Dolphins in Week 12.
“You can probably understand that, like all changes and anything we do from week to week, we talk to the players first before we talk to you,” Smith said. “We’re not pleased with where we are. Do we need to do some things differently? Yes, and we will.”
Mills was 19-of-33 for 169 yards and two interceptions while being sacked five times on Sunday. | 2022-11-21T21:41:25Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Lovie Smith on potential QB change: We need to do some things differently and we will - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/21/lovie-smith-on-potential-qb-change-we-need-to-do-some-things-differently-and-we-will/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/21/lovie-smith-on-potential-qb-change-we-need-to-do-some-things-differently-and-we-will/ |
Bengals wide receiver Ja'Marr Chase is moving closer to a return to the lineup.
Chase has missed the last three games with a hip injury, but he is no longer using crutches to get around and head coach Zac Taylor said another big step is coming later this week. Taylor said that the plan is for Chase to get back on the practice field.
“Everything has been positive up to this point, which we hoped it would be,” Taylor said, via Ben Baby of ESPN.com.
Taylor did not make any predictions about Chase’s status for the Week 12 game against the Titans and his participation level in practices will likely provide some hint about his chances of being back on the field. | 2022-11-21T23:47:55Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Ja'Marr Chase set to return to practice this week - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/21/jamarr-chase-set-to-return-to-practice-this-week/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/21/jamarr-chase-set-to-return-to-practice-this-week/ |
The Vikings followed a regular-season win for the ages with the worst home loss in decades.
Meeting with reporters on Monday, star receiver Justin Jefferson called the 40-3 loss to the Cowboys “embarrassing” and a “disaster all around” and “it happens . . . we’re human beings” and a “lesson learned.”
The lesson was, as Jefferson sees it, to get the ball out faster. “I wish we had adjusted faster throughout the game,” Jefferson said.
The bad news, or maybe it’s good news depending on how it goes, is that the Vikings will quickly be back on the horse after suffering the worst home defeat since the Kennedy administration.
The bad news comes from the fact that they won’t have left tackle Christian Darrisaw, who suffered a concussion during the game, his second in two Sundays. They’ll need to do everything better and faster against the Patriots, who have a defense good enough to shut down the Vikings’ offense.
Still, Jefferson said he’s glad the Vikings have a chance to get the bad taste out of their mouth, with a short-week game. And he’s right — as long as the bad taste isn’t replaced by an even worse one.
Jefferson also said something that coach Kevin O’Connell said on Sunday and that other players have mentioned since the game ended. The Vikings are “still 8-2.”
That’s not the way to think of it, if they want to avoid saying, come Thursday night and Friday, that they’re “still 8-3.” The better thing to say would be, “We’re 0-1 and just got beat by 37 points and may have been exposed as frauds and what are we going to do to avoid giving critics more ammunition to say, ‘Yep, they’re frauds’?”
It’s not as concise as “still 8-2,” but you get the point.
3 responses to “Justin Jefferson: “Embarrassing” loss to Cowboys was “a lesson learned””
At least this wasn’t the NFC title game in 2018 coming off a big win.
The Vikings are about to catch another L on Thanksgiving
I’ve got the Vikes going into the Bears game 10-6. | 2022-11-21T23:48:13Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Justin Jefferson: "Embarrassing" loss to Cowboys was "a lesson learned" - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/21/justin-jefferson-embarrassing-loss-to-cowboys-was-a-lesson-learned/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/21/justin-jefferson-embarrassing-loss-to-cowboys-was-a-lesson-learned/ |
An hour after his firing by the Panthers on Oct. 10, Matt Rhule said he received a call from a search firm. It seems inevitable that Rhule will end up coaching again, probably with a return to the college ranks where he had much success.
Rhule talked publicly for the first time since his departure from Carolina, telling Vic Carucci of the 33rd Team that he misses coaching.
“As I sit here now, I miss that whistle,” Rhule told Carucci. “I miss being at practice. I miss being with the guys. I miss seeing something done wrong and, ‘Hey, let’s stop it and do it again.’ I miss teaching.”
The Panthers were 1-4 when they pulled the plug on the Rhule Era, giving him an 11-27 record in two-plus seasons as the team’s head coach. He had turned around Temple and Baylor, going 10-3 in his final season with the Owls and 11-3 in his final season with the Bears.
“I don’t think you ever really know who you are until you go through adversity,” Rhule said. “Before I joined the Panthers, my coaching career had been: Go to Temple, flip it, win coach of the year; go to Baylor, flip it, win coach of the year. Then I come to Carolina, and I’m not able to have that ultimate success.
“I’m proud of some of the things we did, and I think in time that it would have worked. I think the plan was right. I just wasn’t able to execute it in the time given. It’s hard to talk about improvement when you don’t see the results.”
Rhule leaves wondering what might have been. He expected to do in Carolina what he had always done, but the Panthers couldn’t get the quarterback position right. They started five different quarterbacks in his tenure.
“My time with the Panthers obviously didn’t end the way I wanted it to,” Rhule said. “I went there with high expectations and hopes. When you walk into that building and you come up to the second floor, there are the NFC Championship Game trophies from 2015 and 2004. Then, there’s an empty space for the Vince Lombardi Trophy. I took that very seriously, realizing, ‘Hey, this region, this town, they deserve to win it all.’
“So that thought about doing something historical always weighed very heavy on me, and you’re disappointed when it doesn’t happen. But I also look back very grateful for the opportunity. I mean, not many people have a chance to coach at this level, coaching in a league like this.” | 2022-11-22T01:41:00Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Matt Rhule misses coaching, disappointed he didn't deliver a title to Carolina - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/21/matt-rhule-misses-coaching-disappointed-he-didnt-deliver-a-title-to-carolina/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/21/matt-rhule-misses-coaching-disappointed-he-didnt-deliver-a-title-to-carolina/ |
The NFL is a tough, unforgiving business. Almost every day during the season (and for much of the offseason), coaches and/or General Managers decide to terminate the employment of players, reasoning that it’s in the bests interests of the team.
And, yes, you probably already know where I’m going with this.
On Monday, the Broncos released veteran running back Melvin Gordon. Coach Nathaniel Hackett explained the decision during a Monday afternoon session with reporters.
“With Melvin, he’s a true pro,” Hackett said. “He’s done a lot of good stuff here at the Denver Broncos and scored some touchdowns for us this year. We thought it was best for the team and we moved on. I wish him the best of luck and I think it’s great for him to have a fresh start. With the running backs, it will be Marlon Mack. He will be up. Then Devine Ozigbo—we are looking to see if we can get him up along with Latavius [Murray].”
Gordon had only two touchdowns this season. He had 10 in 2021, and 10 in 2020, his two prior years in Denver. The issue, obviously, wasn’t touchdowns but fumbles. He had five this season, in 10 games.
And the Broncos decided that it was time. That the chronic failure to perform at the expected standard justified moving on. That it was in the best interests of the team.
What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. I’ve never known what that means. I know this — Hackett’s goose seems to be fully cooked. Under the standard that he applied to Gordon, Hackett may be not far behind Gordon. | 2022-11-22T01:41:12Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Nathaniel Hackett on releasing Melvin Gordon: "We thought it was best for the team" - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/21/nathaniel-hackett-on-releasing-melvin-gordon-we-thought-it-was-best-for-the-team/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/21/nathaniel-hackett-on-releasing-melvin-gordon-we-thought-it-was-best-for-the-team/ |
2 responses to “NFLPA is reviewing medical reports regarding Matthew Stafford”
Boy wonder doesn’t mind sacrificing players’ futures if it helps him look good as coach.
It’s hard to understand if you’re an attorney who pretends to know more about medicine than actual doctors. The diagnosis is based is passing a series of tests. Pass the tests, you don’t have a concussion. Fail the tests and you do. Get hit again and you fail the tests, you have a concussion again. It’s not black and white like a broken arm that an x-ray can reveal. | 2022-11-22T01:41:18Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | NFLPA is reviewing medical reports regarding Matthew Stafford - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/21/nflpa-is-reviewing-medical-reports-regarding-matthew-stafford/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/21/nflpa-is-reviewing-medical-reports-regarding-matthew-stafford/ |
Colts linebacker Shaquille Leonard had surgery on his back earlier this month and the operation ended a season that was plagued by medical issues for the All-Pro.
Leonard also had back surgery in the summer and he missed the first three games of the season while working himself into playing shape. Leonard suffered a concussion and a broken nose in his first game back and then missed more time before returning for two more games. Leonard suffered a setback with his back at that point and that led to the decision to have another operation.
On Monday, Leonard said “maybe I pushed it a little too quick” in his return and said that he is hopeful that having extended rest after this operation will leave him “ready to rock and roll” once the team’s offseason work gets underway.
“It’s just rest and letting the body heal,” Leonard said, via Nate Atkins of the Indianapolis Star. “Hopefully the nerves can get back right. I’m just making sure I’m staying prepared mentally and emotionally and then, when the time comes, physically.”
Leonard said that he’s seen questions about his ability to return to the level of play he reached before this season and that he’s “just ready to go out and prove everybody wrong once again.” It will be some time before Leonard gets that chance, but he’ll have plenty of people in Indianapolis rooting for him to do exactly that.
1 responses to “Shaquille Leonard: Hopefully the nerves can come back right”
A series of words that you never want to hear from your All Pro LB. | 2022-11-22T16:04:16Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Shaquille Leonard: Hopefully the nerves can come back right - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/22/shaquille-leonard-hopefully-the-nerves-can-come-back-right/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/22/shaquille-leonard-hopefully-the-nerves-can-come-back-right/ |
Like Punxsutawney Phil, former Panthers coach Matt Rhule spent six weeks in purgatory after being asked to take his shadow, and the rest of his body, back home.
Now, all of a sudden, Rhule is everywhere. Talking and writing about football in an extensive and apparently concerted effort to get his name out there. Just as college football season is winding to a conclusion.
When Panthers owner David Tepper fired Rhule, the thinking was that, by getting Rhule on the market quickly for a head-coaching job, he’d be in a better position to reduce his buyout by lining up a prime college job. Apparently, Rhule isn’t getting the response he’d expected.
Why else would he be launching an all-out media tour? He’s banging the drum. He’s waving the flag. He’s trying to get some attention at a time when college programs are compiling their wish lists.
As one astute observer has noted, Rhule thought he’d get the Nebraska or Wisconsin job. Now, he may be left with Arizona State. Or maybe West Virginia, if the folks 30 miles up the road from me dig deep to pay the balance the amounts due and owing to a head coach who clearly needs to go.
Rhule has shown that he can turn college programs around, quickly. Of course, if he takes anything other than a first-tier job as he rebounds from failing in the NFL, he’ll undoubtedly be looking to turn another team around — and then high-tail it to a bigger job. | 2022-11-22T16:39:01Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Matt Rhule suddenly is everywhere - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/22/matt-rhule-suddenly-is-everywhere/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/22/matt-rhule-suddenly-is-everywhere/ |
The Steelers displayed some offensive improvement against the Bengals, scoring 30 points for the first time this season.
But it was a tale of two halves for Pittsburgh, as the team scored on four of five possessions in the first two quarters. Then the third quarter began with three three-and-outs. While a takeaway led to a field goal, the offense failed to get anything else going until it was effectively too late.
Rookie quarterback Kenny Pickett ended the first half 14-of-19 for 141 yards with a touchdown. He finished the game 25-of-42 for 265 yards with a touchdown.
“He’s getting better in all areas, guys, just the same way that George Pickens is getting better,” head coach Mike Tomlin said in his Tuesday press conference. “I’m not going to comb through it every week. It’s moving in the direction that we would like it to.
“Sure, could it move faster? Absolutely. I don’t think anybody is patient — including Kenny. This is not a patient man’s business. You work while you wait. And that’s what he and we are doing. But he’s doing a nice job, just in general.”
The Steelers have compiled a 2-4 record in Pickett’s six starts. He’s completed 65.4 percent of his passes for 1,426 yards with three touchdowns and eight interceptions.
2 responses to “Mike Tomlin: Kenny Pickett is getting better in all areas”
I don’t know about all areas, but I did see that every time he got hit on Sunday he just gave the Bengal a dirty look and cursed under his breath instead of having a hissy fit and jumping up looking for a flag. So that’s an improvement I guess.
He’s meeting my expectations, for what that’s worth. He’s not Big Ben. He never will be. It’s a completely different skillset. But that doesn’t mean he can’t be a quality starter. It’s tough to judge him with his supporting cast and play calling. | 2022-11-22T19:37:45Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Mike Tomlin: Kenny Pickett is getting better in all areas - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/22/mike-tomlin-kenny-pickett-is-getting-better-in-all-areas/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/22/mike-tomlin-kenny-pickett-is-getting-better-in-all-areas/ |
Brady made it clear that he’ll be inclined to be critical.
“I think part of it is, you know, I had 23 seasons professionally,” Brady said. “When I watch football now, the only thing I see — you know, nine out of 10 is ‘that was a really bad play.’ As opposed to the ‘wow,’ the spectacular play that [Patrick] Mahomes made or the spectacular play that Josh Allen made.
“Now, it’s like, ‘Man, what a bad defensive play. . . . What a bad play by the quarterback.’ And naturally. because I think I have a high level of — when you play with Randy Moss, when you play with Wes Welker, when you play with [Rob] Gronkowski and [Julian] Edelman and Mike Evans, you see greatness. And there’s a very [high] standard for perfection that I want to see the game played at. Because I value the sport, I value the coordination of this incredible chess match that’s happen, the play within every play.
“And I just feel like there’s probably more Johnny Miller in me, where when I used to watch him on golf telecasts, he would — it was just scathing sometimes. ‘What, that guy choked under pressure?’ or whatever. That’s essentially how I end up seeing the game a lot now. Not that I want to be negative, but I do want to point out — and Belichick taught this to me a lot — it’s hard to win a game in the NFL, there’s more games lost in the NFL than they’re won. If you don’t screw it up, you’ve got a great chance to win. Because most people do just mess it up. If you do the basic fundamentals of what the sport is, with blocking, tackling, rushing the quarterback, blocking for the quarterback, catching the ball, throwing, kicking the ball properly, you can do really well in the sport. Proven by that Patriot system all those years.”
Brady expressed admiration for Barkley’s willingness to be authentic.
“There’s very few people who say what they feel and get away with it,” Brady told Barkley.
For Brady, a pivot to being that blunt will be a major break from his current approach. He has said that 90 percent of the things he says publicly he doesn’t mean.
Last month, Brady said this of the league at large: “I think there’s a lot of bad football from what I watch. I watch a lot of bad football. Poor quality of football. That’s what I see.”
Most fans will have a hard time stomaching Brady as a broadcaster, if he’s going to be stingy with criticism and criticize everything. He needs to be willing to give praise when it’s due, and to call out bad decisions or mental mistakes when they happen.
Above all else, he needs to realize that few of the players he sees will live up to his own personal standard. That doesn’t mean they suck. And if he comes off as saying that, directly or in so many words, his tenure in the booth could be as short as that of his boyhood idol, Joe Montana. | 2022-11-22T19:38:09Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Tom Brady thinks there will be some "Johnny Miller" in him as a broadcaster - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/22/tom-brady-thinks-there-will-be-some-johnny-miller-in-him-as-a-broadcaster/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/22/tom-brady-thinks-there-will-be-some-johnny-miller-in-him-as-a-broadcaster/ |
Commanders honoring Sean Taylor on the 15th anniversary of his death
The Commanders will honor Sean Taylor on the 15th anniversary of his death, the team announced Tuesday.
Taylor died on Nov. 27, 2007, after intruders shot him in his Miami area home. The Commanders host the Falcons on Sunday.
In honor of his life and legacy, the Commanders will unveil the Sean Taylor Memorial installation and launch the limited-edition Sean Taylor Legacy Project merchandise designed and inspired by Taylor’s daughter, Jackie. Players will wear special “21” helmet decals.
The reveal of the Sean Taylor Memorial installation is the culmination of the Sean Taylor Memorial Project launched on Sean’s birthday earlier this year.
The merchandise collection includes a jersey, sweatshirts, T-shirts and hats, with all proceeds benefiting gun violence prevention initiatives.
“Sean’s life was tragically cut short but his impact continues to reverberate through our Burgundy & Gold family,” co-owners Dan and Tanya Snyder announced in a statement. “This Sunday, on the 15th anniversary of his passing, we honor one of our greats and his legacy by unveiling a permanent installation, so his memory is always with us when we take the field on gameday.”
3 responses to “Commanders honoring Sean Taylor on the 15th anniversary of his death”
I can think of WAY better people to memorialize.
People seem to forget that this was not exactly a stand-up fellow.
I saw him pick off two of Favre’s passes in a game at Lambeau the year before his death.Made an impression on me as a player.
Somebody contact Jackson Mahomes with this news.
I’m sure he’ll want to make another spectacle of himself for this event. | 2022-11-23T01:56:38Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Commanders honoring Sean Taylor on the 15th anniversary of his death - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/22/commanders-honoring-sean-taylor-on-the-15th-anniversary-of-his-death/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/22/commanders-honoring-sean-taylor-on-the-15th-anniversary-of-his-death/ |
The NFL will deny, deny, and deny again that collusion has occurred in connection with the refusal to give fully-guaranteed contracts to “certain quarterbacks.” To have any chance to prove that collusion actually happened, the NFL Players Association will need to develop evidence to disprove the defense that it was coincidental, not coordinated.
That means getting access to text messages and emails exchanged by and between key owners, team executives, and league-office employees. And that’s surely what the union will try to do.
It’s possible that the NFLPA may be facing stiff resistance. As one league source has explained it to PFT, the arbitrator has already applied restrictions to discovery that have frustrated the union.
The source explained that the union is trying to secure emails and text messages exchanged by the owners who belong to the NFL Management Council Executive Committee, along with owners of the Cardinals (who didn’t give Kyler Murray a fully-guaranteed contract), Broncos (who didn’t give Russell Wilson a fully-guaranteed contract), and Ravens (who have refused to give Lamar Jackson a fully-guaranteed contract). The NFLPA has, for now, gotten clearance to get less information than that.
In our view, it also would be important to secure evidence demonstrating that Browns management experienced a negative reception at the March 2022 annual meeting, based on the decision to give quarterback Deshaun Watson a fully-guaranteed contract. Texts or emails among key Browns employees regarding interactions with others who may have given them the cold shoulder and/or may have made pointed remarks about Watson’s contract would help support the notion that the other teams didn’t like what the Browns did, making the existence of a wink-nod understanding that the others wouldn’t do it more plausible.
To have a fair shake at getting to the truth, the union must have access to the private communications among owners. Depositions aren’t enough, because it’s too easy to simply say “we never talked about fully guaranteed contracts.” The best evidence comes from electronic communications that possibly were sent by people who weren’t thinking that those communications ever would become public.
All too often, arbitrators and judges fail to understand the manner in which human beings interact and communicate. They routinely have conversations that “never happened,” and they’re committed to keeping that secret — even if it means committing perjury. Electronic communications never lie, however. And that’s always the best way to work backward in an effort to get to the always-elusive truth, in all matters of this nature, regardless of who the defendants may be.
5 responses to “To have any chance to win collusion case, NFLPA will need access to key texts, emails”
sounds like a fishing expedition.
” _______________________________”
Insert a Jon Gruden statement here
Not all forms of communication are so blunt. Gangs use gang signs to communicate. As for NFL owners? I am sure they got some code that the good ole boys have created and maintained on the low.
rastak says:
The owners who said the Browns were dummies prove nothing. If you do something stupid, and it was, does it mean I’m colluding if I say “I’m not that stupid?” They need an email from the league saying “Do not guarantee any QB contracts in full or else”.
So…subpoena every single text and email sent by every owner, GM and head coach? What a mess that would be. | 2022-11-23T01:56:44Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | To have any chance to win collusion case, NFLPA will need access to key texts, emails - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/22/to-have-any-chance-to-win-collusion-case-nflpa-will-need-access-to-key-texts-emails/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/22/to-have-any-chance-to-win-collusion-case-nflpa-will-need-access-to-key-texts-emails/ |
3 responses to “Tom Brady threatening NFL single-season records for attempts and completions”
Divorced Brady is every unhappily married man’s dream. Becoming the best version of himself after trying to be someone else for someone else:
Here comes the crying in 3…2…1
Oh but he’s just a game manager…. He can’t throw deep…. His football has 2psi less than that football, and that means the other team couldn’t score any points, because their football didn’t have the same air pressure as his. Yes Yes I know that air pressure has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not ur defense can make a stop, but it gives us an excuse to cry 😢
If they do anything but run up the middle against this generationally bad Browns interior DL then we’ll know they’re more interested in records than winning. | 2022-11-23T15:14:22Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Tom Brady threatening NFL single-season records for attempts and completions - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/23/tom-brady-threatening-nfl-single-season-records-for-attempts-and-completions/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/23/tom-brady-threatening-nfl-single-season-records-for-attempts-and-completions/ |
Tracy Walker believes artificial turf in Minnesota led to his torn Achilles
Add Lions safety Tracy Walker to the list of players who think artificial turf increases their risk of injuries.
Walker, who suffered a torn Achilles tendon in Week Three at Minnesota, told Dave Birkett of the Detroit Free Press that he could feel during pregame warmups that his cleats were sticking awkwardly in the turf at U.S. Bank Stadium. That led him to change into a different pair of shoes, and he believes that all contributed to his season-ending injury.
NFL players have grown increasingly vocal about their preference for playing on grass, while the league says injury data shows synthetic turf is no more dangerous. Walker is among those who think it’s past time for safer playing surfaces. | 2022-11-23T16:19:43Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Tracy Walker believes artificial turf in Minnesota led to his torn Achilles - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/23/tracy-walker-believes-artificial-turf-in-minnesota-led-to-his-torn-achilles/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/23/tracy-walker-believes-artificial-turf-in-minnesota-led-to-his-torn-achilles/ |
The Jets benched quarterback Zach Wilson on Wednesday and offensive coordinator Mike LaFleur got a chance to comment on that call at a press conference later in the day.
Wilson had a terrible game against the Patriots last Sunday and then made things worse by showing a lack of accountability for his performance during his postgame media session. LaFleur’s response to the benching was focused more on where he felt wrong than where he thinks Wilson went off track.
“First of all, it stinks because I know what kind of competitor he is and what kind of man he is and I wholeheartedly believe that. I’ve gotta do a better job. I’ve gotta do a better job for him, I’ve gotta do a better job for the offense. It starts with me and ends with me. I’ve gotta figure out a way to reset him, get him back to fundamentally sound football and, more importantly, just consistent football. He’s done some really good things, but I haven’t done a good enough job to get the consistency out of him so that starts and ends with me,” LaFleur said.
If Wilson had shown that kind of accountability after the loss to the Patriots, there’s a chance that the Jets would not have made the move they did on Wednesday. LaFleur said that he doesn’t think Wilson meant it when he said he didn’t feel he let the defense down, but “obviously can’t take it back” and the coordinator added that he hopes it will be a learning experience for the quarterback. | 2022-11-23T17:29:10Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Mike LaFleur: I've gotta do a better job - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/23/mike-lafleur-ive-gotta-do-a-better-job/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/23/mike-lafleur-ive-gotta-do-a-better-job/ |
Zach Wilson’s return to the lineup will be up to him
The Jets are putting Zach Wilson on the bench. But they’re not pulling the plug on him.
While it’s rare to have a highly-drafted quarterback take a step back, the Jets believe it’s a necessary step in Wilson’s broader long-term effort to become the best quarterback he can be.
Per a source with knowledge of the situation, there’s no timeline on this move. Ultimately, it comes down to when Wilson shows that he’s ready to resume his role in the lineup.
The problem seems to be that, in his desire to be great, Wilson has lost sight of the things needed to be ordinary. The magical moments — no-look throws, sidearm missiles, etc. — don’t just happen. They’re the product of checking the boxes on the fundamentals over and over and over again.
Recently, Wilson hasn’t been doing that. From bad footwork to issues with accuracy on short, easy throws to bad decisions when it comes to going through the progressions, Wilson wasn’t getting it done.
Now, he’ll run the scout team. He’ll get a chance to hit, for lack of a better term, the reset button on his career, while focusing simply on playing the position. Once he shows that he has done it, then he’ll be back under center.
Along the way, those who currently are blaming Wilson for the offense’s struggles may understand that it’s not just Wilson. And then maybe people will realize that things will actually get better once he’s back.
So it’s not the end of the road for Wilson. It’s a fork in the road. And it’s up to Wilson to choose the right path and stick to it.
14 responses to “Zach Wilson’s return to the lineup will be up to him”
Bailey Zappe > Zach Wilson
All he had to do was show a little bit of humility. It’s not about you or what you did or didn’t do on the field. It’s about being a leader and looking within. You can’t be a leader until you can admit your own faults.
kdk33 says:
Choose the path less traveled. That will make all the difference.
Whats with all the love for this guy, just because you hand picked him as great in the last draft ?
Wrong-o they are moving on from him #2 pick a sad fall for sure. Go Jets!!!
Anybody else see this as Ryan Leaf 2.0?
Feels like we’ve seen this episode before…highly drafted QB that prefers stylin’ & profilin’ over work ethic, mechanics…you know the things that would make him good.
This may have zero to do with anything, but this idea that 1st round picks HAVE to start almost out of the gate in year 1 might need to be revisited. Maybe the brakes need to start being pumped on these rookie QB’s a little bit.
It’s called a reality check, and his was long overdue
Maybe he should buy the “How to Adult” book with all that scratch he got paid at #2 overall?
Doesn’t Flacco give them a better chance to win right now?
People can change but this would require a full 180-degree shift of his personality. For a player that young and green to show ZERO humility even when playing terribly is not an easy thing to just reset and it’s not easy to win back over a locker room that has turned against you.
anadromous2 says:
Looks like a bad year to be a quarterback named WILSON. | 2022-11-23T19:14:19Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Zach Wilson's return to the lineup will be up to him - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/23/zach-wilsons-return-to-the-lineup-will-be-up-to-him/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/23/zach-wilsons-return-to-the-lineup-will-be-up-to-him/ |
Waived by the Rams on Tuesday, running back Darrell Henderson has found a new home.
According to multiple reports, Henderson has been claimed by the Jaguars.
A third-round pick in the 2019 draft, Henderson was leading Los Angeles with 283 yards rushing and three rushing touchdowns. He also had 17 receptions for 102 yards.
Henderson now joins a running backs group that includes 2021 first-round pick Travis Etienne, who’s leading the club with 725 yards rushing and four touchdowns.
The Jaguars will take on the Ravens in Week 12. | 2022-11-23T21:33:27Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Jaguars claim Darrell Henderson off waivers - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/23/jaguars-claim-darrell-henderson-off-waivers/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/23/jaguars-claim-darrell-henderson-off-waivers/ |
On Tuesday, the Panthers announced Sam Darnold would take over at starting quarterback for their Week 12 matchup against the Broncos.
Darnold has missed most of the year after suffering a high ankle sprain in a preseason game. But now he’s healthy and will be the third QB to get a chance to start for the club this season.
“The skill set is there,” Wilks said, via Darin Gantt of the Panthers’ website. “I wanted to give him that opportunity to see what he could go out and do.”
The No. 3 overall pick of the 2018 draft, Darnold started 11 games for the Panthers last year after the club acquired him from the Jets. He was 4-7 as a starter, completing 59.9 percent of his passes for 2,527 yards with nine touchdowns and 13 interceptions. His passer rating was a career-low 71.9.
Wilks noted Baker Mayfield will serve as the backup for Darnold this week, as he’s not sure that P.J. Walker will be ready to return from his high ankle sprain.
Mayfield was 21-of-33 for 196 yards with no touchdowns and two interceptions in last week’s start against Baltimore.
2 responses to “Steve Wilks: I want to give Sam Darnold the opportunity to see what he can do”
They’ll only need about 17 points to beat the Broncos
Why not? Nothing to lose at this point. Hope he succeeds. | 2022-11-23T21:34:12Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Steve Wilks: I want to give Sam Darnold the opportunity to see what he can do - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/23/steve-wilks-i-want-to-give-sam-darnold-the-opportunity-to-see-what-he-can-do/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/23/steve-wilks-i-want-to-give-sam-darnold-the-opportunity-to-see-what-he-can-do/ |
During Jets quarterback Zach Wilson‘s last visit with the media, he said he didn’t feel like he let the defense down in last Sunday’s 10-3 loss to the Patriots.
That comment was not well received in the Jets locker room and Wilson addressed it during a Wednesday session with reporters from the team’s facility. Wilson said he sought out teammates to tell them that his response on Sunday was not the correct one.
“The way that I handled the situation wasn’t right,” Wilson said, via Connor Hughes of SNY. “I gotta be a better football player and then I gotta be a better leader for these guys. I have an opportunity to turn a page here as a player and as a leader.”
Wilson was benched by head coach Robert Saleh on Wednesday in a move that the team hopes will reset things for the 2021 first-round pick. Wilson called it humbling and shared how he plans to move forward.
“It’s tough, man,” Wilson said. “It’s never fun. The first thing that kinda went to my mind is that I gotta get to work. I gotta get better and I’m gonna approach that every single day to keep working to get better. . . . I wouldn’t say necessarily surprised because I haven’t been doing my job. Of course, I would like to not agree with the decision but it comes down to I’ve gotta play better.”
Saleh said that Wilson remains part of the team’s plans and Wednesday’s show of accountability is a step in the right direction in terms of how the quarterback is handling things off the field. It remains to be seen when he’ll get a chance to be on the field again and that will likely be a big factor in determining what kind of future Wilson has with the Jets.
6 responses to “Zach Wilson: The way I handled Sunday wasn’t right”
Leader? Seriously?
Dude doesn’t have a clue, and probably never will.
Both Wilson and Jones looked horrible last week. Both failed to score a single touchdown between them. I have a feeling we will be reading a similar story about Jones before the season is over.
A little late Pal
I’m missing something. Since when do guys get benched for not feeding the media material?
I don’t see Zach getting to a 2nd contract with the Jets. He’s already fumbled the bag.
moochiemcbiggumz says:
The Blake Bradford (Black Bortles/Sam Bradford) of 2022 | 2022-11-23T21:34:18Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Zach Wilson: The way I handled Sunday wasn't right - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/23/zach-wilson-the-way-i-handled-sunday-wasnt-right/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/23/zach-wilson-the-way-i-handled-sunday-wasnt-right/ |
The Cardinals have had an interesting week or so, to say the least. It will be interesting to see how much of it makes its way into the in-season Hard Knocks series that focus on the Cardinals.
Here’s a guess — not much, if anything.
We’ll start with the surprise release of running back Eno Benjamin. On Thursday, Bo Brack of the PHNX Arizona Cardinals podcast sent out an email blast declaring that “NFL Films and HBO Hard Knocks director Terrell Riley tells PHNX Cardinals the interaction that led to running back Eno Benjamin’s release for the Arizona Cardinals was ‘shocking’ and will be on next week’s episode.”
Since then, Bob McManaman of the Arizona Republic reported that there will be no scenes in this week’s episode regarding the cutting of Eno Benjamin. Director Steve Trout told McManaman that “it wasn’t because of anyone [censoring] a scene or scenes.”
“‘We simply did not capture anything,” Trout told McManaman. “‘Some things do happen away from the cameras and that was the case here.'”
Trout also characterized Riley’s remark as something that was “spun into an expectation that we would be showing something that does not exist.”
“Mistakes happen,” Trout told McManaman. “That was an innocent one.”
Innocent or not, the fact remains that the Hard Knocks series isn’t a true documentary. It’s an informercial. The NFL owns the company that produces the show about an NFL team.
It’s been known for years that the team that is the subject of the show has final say over what’s included in the broadcast. If the Cardinals don’t want to get into the details of the Eno Benjamin situation, those details will remain concealed.
Ditto for the events resulting in the termination of offensive line coach/run game coordinator Sean Kugler. The email circulated by HBO regarding tonight’s debut of the latest episode highlights only this quote from quarterback Colt McCoy: “It’s been crazy . . . getting to play in Mexico.”
In other words, forget about getting the real story regarding Benjamin or Kugler.
Surely, the cameras were in position to capture something about Kugler. He was fired and sent home on Monday morning, the day of the game in Mexico City. It surely was a big deal for the team.
It also was a hot potato, and an embarrassment. Too hot and too embarrassing for the Cardinals to allow any mention of it in the Chamber of Commerce brochure masquerading as an authentic look at the trials and tribulations of a team that is woefully underperforming and dealing with plenty of issues that would be very compelling, if they didn’t end up on the cutting-room floor.
Narrator (literally): They ended up on the cutting-room floor. | 2022-11-24T01:15:28Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Will new episode of Hard Knocks address Eno Benjamin or Sean Kugler? - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/23/will-new-episode-of-hard-knocks-address-eno-benjamin-or-sean-kugler/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/23/will-new-episode-of-hard-knocks-address-eno-benjamin-or-sean-kugler/ |
Melvin Gordon: “A wide variety” of teams are showing interest
Former Broncos running back Melvin Gordon, abruptly cut by the team on Monday, cleared waivers and became a free agent. He can now sign with any team.
So who’s interested in adding the veteran tailback?
“It’s a wide variety [of teams showing interest],” Gordon told Mike Klis of 9News.com. “We’re trying to figure out which situation is the best. There’s a couple teams, at this point they’re setting up for the playoffs, and I’m trying to figure that out.”
Gordon still hasn’t figured out exactly why the Broncos cut him. Outsiders assume it was because of his chronic fumbling issues. Gordon disagrees.
“No, that wasn’t even mentioned,” Gordon told Klis. “It was crazy when I’d seen that. Because [G.M.] George [Paton], when I talked to me, he didn’t mention anything about that. He knew what type of environment it was for me. He knew how I felt toward my situation there and he told me about the fan base and how it’s been tough for me and said he didn’t want to put me through this anymore and with our situation it was probably best.
So, as Gordon sees it, he was cut because the fans of the team aren’t fans of his.
“It’s been a hard three years for me there, with this year being the hardest,” Gordon said. “I’m not mad. Came here and I was never on good terms with the fans, but I want to let them know I’m not upset with how they treated me. It’s part of the game. They come with high expectations for their players and I didn’t reach those. It’s no hard feelings.”
He also said he felt at times as if he were “a scapegoat” for the new coaching staff.
“I hope I did save them some time,” Gordon told Klis. “Because [coach Nathaniel Hackett is] a good dude. That staff, they’re great dudes. They just weren’t great for me. But I respect those guys. It was hard there for me. But I respect that organization. They gave me a chance to keep playing my dream.”
The dream apparently will continue elsewhere. He can pick his next destination. If he makes the right choice, he could be playing deep into January — and maybe even into February. | 2022-11-24T02:25:10Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Melvin Gordon: "A wide variety" of teams are showing interest - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/23/melvin-gordon-a-wide-variety-of-teams-are-showing-interest/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/23/melvin-gordon-a-wide-variety-of-teams-are-showing-interest/ |
The Colts’ offensive line has not played well this season, and if there’s one position new interim head coach Jeff Saturday is qualified to coach, it’s the offensive line. But Saturday says he won’t be benching any of the under-performing players.
Saturday said that he remembers his own Colts coaches, Tony Dungy and Jim Caldwell, being more interested in making players better than in getting rid of them.
“I think it was Dungy or Caldwell who used to say it’s always easy to fire guys, but who are you hiring? If the guys are having a hard time, our job is to coach them to be better, and to be the players that we know they can be,” Saturday said. “These guys, the effort is there, the technique is getting there, they’re getting better every week, and I think you continue to get better each week as you get reps and you get activity.”
Specifically regarding the much-maligned rookie left tackle Bernhard Raimann, Saturday said people notice the sacks he gives up but not some good plays he has made that have been overlooked.
At this point in the season, the Colts won’t be able to make significant improvement in their offensive line talent. They just need the players they have to play better, and Saturday thinks that can happen. | 2022-11-24T10:20:03Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Jeff Saturday not benching any offensive linemen: "Our job is to coach them to be better" - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/24/jeff-saturday-not-benching-any-offensive-linemen-our-job-is-to-coach-them-to-be-better/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/24/jeff-saturday-not-benching-any-offensive-linemen-our-job-is-to-coach-them-to-be-better/ |
The Cardinals came back from Mexico City without offensive line coach/run game coordinator Sean Kugler after he was fired from his job and sent home early after allegedly groping a woman during the trip.
Cardinals head coach Kliff Kingsbury did not delve into the details behind Kugler’s dismissal during a Wednesday press conference, but he noted that the team has had practice in dealing with unexpected coaching departures. Running backs coach James Saxon left the team after being charged with domestic battery in August and Kingsbury said his replacement Don Shumpert left the team last month because the team wanted to move in a “different direction.”
“It’s certainly not ideal for a team and focus,” Kingsbury said, via the team’s website. “You wish it didn’t occur, but it did, and our team has done a great job of adjusting. Our staff, being down some numbers, guys have had to step up and answer the call.”
Right tackle Kelvin Beachum said there’s “been a lot that has gone on since this particular offseason,” but that players still have to do their jobs and that the team has “a great opportunity to handle the cards we have been dealt at this point.” | 2022-11-24T12:35:15Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Kliff Kingsbury: Coaching staff changes "not ideal" for a team or focus - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/24/kliff-kingsbury-coaching-staff-changes-not-ideal-for-a-team-or-focus/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/24/kliff-kingsbury-coaching-staff-changes-not-ideal-for-a-team-or-focus/ |
The Playmakers personalized bookplate bargain is back
Yes, it’s back.
On November 1, as a one-day only thing, we made a simple offer. Anyone who buys a copy of Playmakers that day and follows the specific steps listed at the publisher’s website gets a signed and personalized (up to 10 words) bookplate (fancy word for sticker) that can be added to the front page of the book.
We’ve decided to bring it back. And not just for one day. (I don’t know why in the hell I agree to these things.) Starting on Black Friday and continuing through December 11, anyone who buys the book and follows the appropriate steps gets the signed, personalized bookplate by December 23.
Then, ideally, you can combine the bookplate and the book and give it to whoever you need to give a gift to.
Here’s the link to buy the book. Here’s the link to get the free bookplate.
And to be clear, the book and the bookplate come separately. You’ll get the book. Then, the bookplate will arrive.
To summarize, buy it tomorrow. Upload the information tomorrow. And make me spend the entire month writing messages like “nobody gives a shit about your fantasy team” and/or “don’t waste your time reading crap like that.” | 2022-11-24T12:35:17Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | The Playmakers personalized bookplate bargain is back - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/24/the-playmakers-personalized-bookplate-bargain-is-back/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/24/the-playmakers-personalized-bookplate-bargain-is-back/ |
After Jets quarterback Zach Wilson lost his starting job on Wednesday, he spoke to reporters about his response to his performance in last Sunday’s loss to the Patriots.
Wilson went 9-of-22 for 77 yards in a game that the Jets lost 10-3 on a punt return touchdown in the final seconds and then said he didn’t feel like he let the team’s defense down. That comment led to bad feelings in the team’s locker room and Wilson said on Wednesday that “the way that I handled the situation wasn’t right.”
Wilson said he also spoke to his teammates directly about what happened and cornerback D.J. Reed said that the quarterback’s words were well received.
“What he said was very genuine,” Reed said, via Mark Cannizzaro of the New York Post. “It came from his heart. It was very real. He definitely poured his heart out. If he didn’t already have it, he definitely earned and gained everyone’s respect from what he said today.”
Mike White is starting this Sunday, but the message from the Jets was that they want Wilson to use this time to reset himself with eyes on a return to the lineup. It’s not clear when that might happen, but handling the fallout from his comments was a necessary part of that process. | 2022-11-24T13:40:33Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | D.J. Reed: Zach Wilson "definitely earned" respect with what he said Wednesday - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/24/d-j-reed-zach-wilson-definitely-earned-respect-with-what-he-said-wednesday/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/24/d-j-reed-zach-wilson-definitely-earned-respect-with-what-he-said-wednesday/ |
I love to write, as you may have noticed. For more than 21 years, I’ve been banging out multiple items per day, every single day, in this space.
What we write here has limited relevance. Post it one day, and by the next it doesn’t really matter because there’s always something new to take its place. I wrote Playmakers in part to create something that would have a little more permanence than the non-stop news cycle.
In 2020, I started messing around with fiction. Yes, I wrote a shitty sci-fi football novel many years ago, which in a weird sort of way led me into this business in the first place. This time around, a combination of some extra free time during the pandemic and a jolt of inspiration got things going.
My dad was a bookmaker in the small town where I grew up. He was connected to a broader crew, and my parents did a very good job of keeping me sheltered from the realities of the things they (not my dad, as far as I ever knew) did.
On the night of my birthday in 2020, I had a very vivid dream about my dad and the things he, and they, may or may not have done back in the 1970s. It gave me an idea for a novel about small-town mob life. I started writing it the next day.
One thing led to another, and I’ve written six novels since then. I’m more than halfway through a seventh. I’ve got a few ideas for No. 8, No. 9, and No. 10. It’s night after night process, with one or two hours of writing and re-writing and editing and re-editing as a way to reset my brain for the next day of constantly thinking and talking and writing about football. I’ll finish one, start another, tinker with a prior one, work on that one, start another one, without any real plan or strategy.
Last December, I wrote a Christmas novel. It was based on an idea that had been rattling around inside my head for more than a decade. Once I sat down and started the hunting and pecking, the words and sentences and paragraphs and chapters flowed. It felt less like I was writing the story and more like the story was writing itself.
So what in the hell do I do with these things? One thing I learned from the Playmakers experience is that, even with a not-too-shabby advance from the publisher, writing books won’t change anyone’s life — with extremely rare exceptions. And while I’d like to eventually cobble together something that people possibly will read and enjoy after I’m dead and gone, I don’t expect or need or even want to make a penny from this hobby that has become part of my daily routine.
The whole idea was to create something that people will read and enjoy. So why not just let people read it, and possibly (if they’re a little drunk) enjoy it?
That’s what I’ll be doing, with the Christmas novel that basically wrote itself last year. Officially, this is a Thanksgiving thank you to everyone who has supported what we do over the years. Unofficially, it’s an experiment to see whether anyone will read this stuff and possibly (if they’re a little drunk) enjoy it.
The book is called On Our Way Home. If you love the holiday season, there’s a decent chance you’ll like it. If you have dealt with the pain of losing a loved one, the story may resonate with you even more.
I’ll post one chapter per day from Thanksgiving through Christmas. It has just enough chapters to fit that 32-day window.
Give it a try. Here’s Chapter One. Whether you like it or not, you’re guaranteed to get your money’s worth. And feel free to get a little drunk before starting it. | 2022-11-24T13:40:39Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Now for something completely different - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/24/now-for-something-completely-different/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/24/now-for-something-completely-different/ |
The Bills are back in Detroit today, for their second game in five days at Ford Field. They’re waking up in the same hotel. They’ll be dressing in the same locker room. Standing on the same sideline. They chose to act like the visiting team on Sunday for that very purpose. | 2022-11-24T13:40:52Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | On Thanksgiving, the Bills return to their new home away from home - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/24/on-thanksgiving-the-bills-return-to-their-new-home-away-from-home/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/24/on-thanksgiving-the-bills-return-to-their-new-home-away-from-home/ |
As the Broncos continue to try to reverse their misfortunes on the fly, their underperforming starting quarterback has identified the one specific portion of the game in which the offense underperforms the most.
Yes at a time when many are pointing a finger at No. 3, No. 3 is pointing a finger at the third quarter.
The obvious explanation is that opposing defenses are doing a good job of using halftime to make adjustments to what the Denver offense is doing, and that the Denver offense is struggling to stay ahead of the guys who are trying to stop it.
“So that’s something I’m focused on over the next few days and going into this game [at Carolina] and the rest of the games we have this year,” Wilson said. “And hopefully we can turn it around.”
It’s unclear what Wilson personally can do to ensure better overall offensive performance in the third quarter. But the problem has been identified. It will be up to the players and the coaches to fix it.
The more important question is why was it broken in the first place? Again, something has kept the Broncos from getting things going immediately after intermission. There’s a good chance that, like so many other issues with the 2022 Broncos offense, it’s not about what the other team is doing well but what the Broncos aren’t.
9 responses to “Russell Wilson points to third quarter as a big problem for the Broncos offense”
The good news is that Denver’s 15 point average should be enough to beat the Panthers
Seems to be a Wilsondemic in the NFL.
The problem is a head coach that is so lost he thinks he’s found and a QB that has zero clue what’s happening. Seeing how well he played in Seattle is a testament to how good a coaching job that team did to hide his deficiencies.
Actually Russ, the big problem isn’t just the third quarter, it’s any quarter number 3 is under center. Perhaps it’s really just a problem with the number 3. I have and idea. Let’s change your number from 3 to 2 — because “number 2” is a polite way of saying what you’ve played like all season long! Why “coach” Hackett hasn’t benched you is beyond me. Perhaps that will be the next “big problem” to be discovered next week.
I’d point to the Head Coach.
Just one more TD per game in the 3rd qtr and they’d be 7-3-2. Wow, that was easy. Make it so #3!!
The 3rd quarter definitely. Oh, and the 4th quarter, sure. The 1st and 2nd, yep.
Maybe Russ should point at the guy in the mirror. “Let Russ Look”
“Broncos fans and all football fans point to Russell Wilson as a big problem.”
Here’s another guy who was always a ME ME ME player, but his play and the team’s success covered it. As soon as he got older and couldn’t do Russell Wilson things anymore, his selfish, egotistical personality was on full display. He was a top tier quarterback for many years because of his mobility and athleticism, coupled with above average football IQ. The problem with guys like that is once the physical ability inevitably declines with age, they can’t rely on the mental side of things. It’s not that they don’t know anything or aren’t smart, it’s that they never had to rely on that so much before, and the mind still thinks the body “can.” Now look at greats like Montana, Manning, and Tom Brady. None of them have or had superb physical ability. They had good to very good physical ability and top tier minds/competitive attitudes. As the physical ability declined, they almost got better, because they found ways to compensate and didn’t have to rely on it. in fact, the only Super Bowl winning quarterback I know who combines unbelievable physical ability and mental acumen is Patrick Mahomes. | 2022-11-24T16:00:12Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Russell Wilson points to third quarter as a big problem for the Broncos offense - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/24/russell-wilson-points-to-third-quarter-as-a-big-problem-for-the-broncos-offense/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/24/russell-wilson-points-to-third-quarter-as-a-big-problem-for-the-broncos-offense/ |
Recently, game officials have missed multiple facemask fouls in real time. They called two on the Patriots in Minnesota on Thanksgiving. But they failed to call a critical facemask that would have extended a key New England drive in the fourth quarter.
The Vikings led 33-26. The Patriots had the ball on their own 34, facing third and one with 8:20 to play. Vikings defensive end Danielle Hunter grabbed the facemask of quarterback Mac Jones after he threw a ball that landed incomplete. Referee Alex Kemp, who is (or at least should be) in position to watch any and all contact with the quarterback, flat-out missed it.
As NBC’s Mike Tirico said while viewing the replay, “A pull and a grab and a twist. Should have been a flag.”
If a flag had been thrown, the Patriots would have had a first and 10 from their own 49, with 8:14 to play. Instead, they punted.
It doesn’t mean the Patriots would have tied the game on that drive. It doesn’t mean they would have won the game. But the call should have been made, and they should have had a fresh set of downs with 15 extra yards of real estate.
The missed penalty becomes the latest piece of powerful evidence for making facemask calls and non-calls subject to replay review. There’s no judgment or discretion involved. It can be reviewed by the replay assistant or the league office and fixed, when it’s missed.
What’s the argument for not making it reviewable, given the many other situations in which video is used to fix officiating errors? There simply isn’t one.
Again, in an age of ever-increasing legalized gambling, these are the kinds of missed calls that need to be subject to a quick and easy fix. It’s the right thing to do for the good of the game, and it’s the only thing to do to minimize the perception by some that something fishy is happening when fouls the rest of us see on TV are not seen by the people who are supposed to be seeing them. | 2022-11-25T06:10:06Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Missed facemask foul ended key Patriots drive - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/25/missed-facemask-foul-ended-key-patriots-drive/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/25/missed-facemask-foul-ended-key-patriots-drive/ |
With Thursday night’s game tied at 23, the Patriots had the ball at the Minnesota six. It was third and goal.
Tight end Hunter Henry caught the ball at the goal line and reached it across before hitting the ground. He lost possession of the ball and then finished the catch in the field of play.
The official near the action ruled that it was a touchdown. The question on replay review became whether Henry kept possession after hitting the ground. NFL senior V.P. of officiating Walt Anderson, who handles all replay-review questions, ruled that the ball struck the ground when Henry landed, making it an incomplete pass.
After the game, Patriots coach Bill Belichick told reporters, “Why don’t you guys go to them with your pool reporter and ask them about the play? Isn’t that what you do?”
Indeed it is. And indeed they did.
Here’s how Anderson explained the decision to pool reporter Mike Reiss of ESPN.com: “He was going to the ground, the ball ended up touching the ground and then he lost control of the ball in his hands.”
Why wasn’t Henry ruled to have possession before the ball hit the ground?
“Because as he’s going to the ground, he has to maintain control of the ball upon contacting the ground,” Anderson said. “The term that’s commonly used is ‘surviving the ground.’ A lot of people refer to that. So, as he’s going to the ground, he has the elements of two feet and control, but because he’s going to the ground, he has to maintain control of the ball when he does go to the ground.”
As Reiss pointed out to Anderson, Henry had two hands on the ball.
“Well, if he had maintained control of the ball with two hands, even if the ball were to touch the ground, if you don’t lose control of the ball after it touches the ground, that would still be a catch.”
The decision raises an interesting question as to the application of the “clear and obvious” standard. The ruling on the field was a catch for a touchdown. For replay review, here’s the proper question: Was the ruling on the field clearly and obviously wrong?
There are two separate components to the “clear and obvious” standard in this case. It was indeed clear and obvious that Henry lost possession when he landed and re-secured possession short of the end zone. That would have given New England the ball on the one-inch line, fourth and goal.
But was it clear and obvious that the ball struck the ground and moved sufficiently to make it not a catch at all?
Remember, reversals are supposed to happen only when it’s clear and obvious. Fifty drunks in a bar would have to agree, as it’s often described.
In this case, it seems clear and obvious that it wasn’t a touchdown. But it doesn’t seem clear and obvious that it wasn’t a catch; Henry’s hand was at all times under the ball. Thus, New England arguably should have had the ball just outside the Minnesota end zone, fourth and goal.
While it’s possible that the Patriots would have opted for the field goal and the 26-23 lead, the Patriots may have chosen to try to punch it in for a touchdown. If the process had been true to the “50 drunks in a bar” standard, the Patriots should have had that option. | 2022-11-25T06:10:12Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Walt Anderson on reversal of Hunter Henry touchdown: Ball touched ground and player lost control - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/25/walt-anderson-on-reversal-of-hunter-henry-touchdown-ball-touched-ground-and-player-lost-control/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/25/walt-anderson-on-reversal-of-hunter-henry-touchdown-ball-touched-ground-and-player-lost-control/ |
Vikings head coach Kevin O’Connell says his team bounced back quickly from its lowest moment.
On Sunday, the Vikings got blown out at home, 40-3 by the Cowboys. But they shook it off quickly to beat the Patriots on Thursday night, and O’Connell was proud of that.
“Four days after being here with a pretty dejected feeling, asking our team to respond and our coaches to respond, and show up tonight on a mission to try to play really good football team and try to get a win, I could not be more proud of my football team and staff,” O’Connell said.
O’Connell said he knew the day after the Cowboys loss that the way his team responded would go a long way toward defining what kind of season they’re going to have.
“You could feel it Monday,” O’Connell said. “We really needed to challenge ourselves to emotionally and physically play with unbelievable enthusiasm.”
O’Connell thinks he has the kind of team that will step up when the chips are down.
“My goal here is just to have our organization ready to put it all together,” O’Connell said. “Even when people don’t give us a chance or adversity hits, that’s when I believe the best parts of our team come out, and I think that will continue to serve us well with our football team this year.” | 2022-11-25T10:05:14Z | profootballtalk.nbcsports.com | Kevin O'Connell: Vikings were dejected after loss, I'm proud of how we responded - ProFootballTalk | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/25/kevin-oconnell-vikings-were-dejected-after-loss-im-proud-of-how-we-responded/ | https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2022/11/25/kevin-oconnell-vikings-were-dejected-after-loss-im-proud-of-how-we-responded/ |
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