NFL - Random Opinions

That's sort of what happens when the guys you bring in are washed or close to it... Rus has been on a downward trajectory for a few seasons and Matty Ice went and got old. The Colts should have just admitted they needed to find a signal caller of the future rather than turning to a 37 year old and crossing their fingers. The Broncos paid way to much for Wilson but I do get what they were trying to do.

 

The NFC B(East) appears to be back and it feels... really weird. This isn't sustainable right? Cowboys are 4 - 1 playing without Dak. Eagles are 5- 0. Even the Giants have somehow managed to get to 4-1 (and the only loss coming inside the division...) with a ton of injuries to key players through smoke and mirrors and excellent coaching. Even with the WFT with only 1 win the division is still an early season monster. How did this happen lol.

 

Problem for the Colts was they already sunk the last draft with the Wentz trade the year before.
Our first pick was at 42, in a weak QB draft.
I think management did what they could, but then yeah, crossed their fingers. It’s going roughly as expected.

Our biggest loss, IMO, was our DC in the off-season. We were a great defense. And now we’re just, maybe above average.
Sure, Shaquille Leonard being injured doesn’t help. But I get the feeling he’s not the only thing missing here.

Not always a popular opinion…but I think our best case scenario long term is to go .500 or worse from here out this season and finish with a chance to get into the top 5 for our QB of the future.

 

Titans were lucky to win yesterday Ruth and leading the way in the AFC South.

I got the Colts winning vs the Jags in a close one and I picked up Indy Defense in my money league.

xinik.......I'm shocked the Eagles are 5-0 and a good chance they will be 6-0.

Your Giants are playing well.

 

@Lyman

Fantastic... you are the man! Thanks for taking the time to do this, I find it very interesting and its even more fun when my favorite team is winning, albeit in heart-attaching fashion (must lead the NFL, Vikings, in 1 score games) over the past 2 seasons.

Looking forward to the Eagles and Cowboys next week... and I see you MAY think that at this juncture the G-Men are for real? Im tending to think they are and should give the Ravens a good fight... as long as they have the 'smart' Jones behind the center, but your right, maybe their performance (litmus test) vs the Ravens will show the world who they really are.

 

I can’t speak for the past two years, but this season we have lost 3 games by a combined 6 points and won one game by 2 points on a last second field goal… then kicked the Steelers ass by 12. So I feel your pain, except mine is more painful being 2-3, lol.

 

My biggest surprises so far...

POSITIVE
The Giants, Eagles and Vikings with excellent records... the NFC East has flip-flopped.
The Falcons offense.
The New York Jets are fun again.

NEGATIVE
The NFC West is weak!
The Denver Broncos and Las Vegas Raiders.
The Cardinals.

 

Thanks

 

Kliff Kingsbury seat is getting hot......................again.

 

Seattle Seahawks are in 1st place, wtf?

 

I don’t know if that counts as a random opinion.

 

Wtf seems to be an opinion. Maybe?

 

No narratives this week. Ran out of time.

 

Gotta rant again at the national media writers. Half the time they're just lazy as fuck and recycle last year's review as if it's fresh news.

This time it's Dan Parr and Eric Edholm, writing for the NFL dot com web site with an early sneak peek at the 2023 draft based on current standings and listing each team's theoretical needs. They claim Atlanta's needs are, in order, OL, Edge and QB.

Did they just copy and paste from an article for the April draft and simply forget to update it for 2023 ? In April those three needs were bloody obvious (along with WR and LB and RB and pretty much everything except kicker). But now? WTF ???

The Falcons just drafted their future QB (Desmond Ridder). He hasn't even played a game yet, and Parr and Edholm already want to write him off? Mariota and QB #3 Feleipe Franks will still be under contract after this season as well, so that one makes no sense.

Atlanta's OL might be the most improved line in the league this year, and they have three backups worthy of game duty plus three more developmental prospects in the pipeline. Two of the five starters (LG Elijah Wilkinson and RT Kaleb McGary) will be free agents, sure, but the team should have plenty of cap space to re-sign them both - and it's hard to envision other teams making a bee-line to offer either of them gazillion dollar contracts. They'll both get paid, but they won't break the bank. So that one doesn't make a whole lot of sense either.

Edge rusher at least has a stat to support it - Atlanta's overall pass rush is still among the least effective in the league (though it's already much improved over last year). The catch is the Falcons already drafted three edge rushers in the last two years, and so far all of them are progressing as expected. Give the kiddies a little time to develop before you declare that the team should draft another group to replace them. Adding one more OLB to keep the pipeline going nearly always makes sense, but it's hardly a top area of need at this point.

In the meantime, the team currently has only two interior defensive linemen on the field that would rate as middle-of-the-pack or better. When you play a base 3-4, that's a problem. Defensive tackle really should be draft need #1 on anyone's Falcons review list - and possibly both #1 and #2 if you list NT and 5-tech as separate needs. It's surreal that Parr and Edholm managed to miss it.

I can forgive them for overlooking WR because it isn't a certainty that the front office will move on from Calvin Ridley once he's reinstated by the league. If they keep him, they'll have a trio of Ridley, Drake London and Kyle Pitts as receiving targets. (Welcome to the NFL, Desmond Ridder!) So yeah, that HAS to be tempting.

But frankly, I don't think Parr and Edholm gave it that much thought. And given that the front office just threw away Deion Jones and has now disposed of nearly every other big money contract from the Dimitroff / Quinn years, you do have to consider it likely that Ridley won't be back in a Falcons uniform.

And then factor in that every WR other than London and prospect Jared Bernhardt (currently on IR) will be a free agent after this season. None of them should be the least bit expensive to resign, but if you're the agent for KhaDarel Hodge or Olamide Zaccheaus or Damiere Byrd, would you really steer your client to go back to a team that only threw the ball 13 times in a game even though they were down by 3 scores? So for an early preview, gotta give strong consideration to WR as a likely area of need.

In the secondary, the two veteran backup safeties are both on one-year deals right now. Starting corner Casey Hayward (likely out for the year) will be in his final contract year. Prospect cornerbacks Dee Alford and Cornell Armstrong are unproven. Nickel corner Isaiah Oliver will be a free agent, and I'm getting the sense that the coaching staff has little confidence in Mike Ford, who is only here on a one-year contract. With that in mind, DB - either CB or safety or both - would almost HAVE to be ahead of any of OL, edge rusher and QB on the list of likely draft needs.

RB too, for that matter. Cordarelle Patterson will be 32. #2 RB Damien Williams (on IR with a rib injury) is only on a one-year deal. Avery Williams is the team's return man, so avoiding using him too much at RB would be a good move. Tyler Allgeier and Caleb Huntley are putting in a strong showing, but one more feature back to fit the "lightning" role vs Allgeier and Huntley's "thunder" at some point of the draft seems likely - and would be a better choice for a midseason article than the positions selected by Parr and Edholm.

It feels like they didn't really even try when they came up with that list.

Okay, rant over...

 

Nathaniel Hackett too.

 

Yup... here comes another media anti-Falcons bias rant.

This time it's The Athletic, because they left the Rashad Fenton trade off of their roundup of significant trade deadline moves and because writer Bo Wulf took repeated shots at the Falcons in three different parts of his Power Rankings writeup.

But first I'll focus on one specific part of Wulf's article. In his weekly power rankings missive, he pushed the idea that the unsportsmanlike conduct penalty against Moore on the incredible game-tying Hail Mary throw from P.J. Walker was a bad call by the officials that potentially stole the game from Carolina.

In the Carolina section of his article, he included a link to a Twitter conversation spelling out the rule and claiming that the call was bad. In the Atlanta section, he said Falcons team owner Arthur Blank should do the right thing and pay Carolina kicker Eddy Piniero's salary for the rest of the year. And in the Tampa section, he stated that Atlanta should have lost at home to the Panthers. Yes, he had it in for the Falcons so badly that he actually worked his opinion of the Falcons-Panthers game into the Bucs portion of his Power Rankings.


So here's the Random Opinion portion... I get it that Panthers fans feel jobbed by a penalty at a critical moment that helped them lose the game. I know that feeling quite well after Atlanta's game from three weeks ago, when referee Jerome Boger both ignored Tom Brady trying to kick Grady Jarrett AND called a bogus roughing the passer foul on Jarrett on the very same play. The Falcons had already scored 15 unanswered points in the fourth quarter at that point and were about to get the ball back with the chance to win, but Boger's call gave the ball back to Tampa and gift-wrapped the win. So yeah, I understand Carolina's pain.

Here's the Carolina fan beef: Moore took off his helmet after he went out the back end of the end zone. He then went to the back of the end zone and celebrated with a few visiting Carolina fans in the front row. The rule states that players can't take off their helmets in celebrations or protests within the field of play or in the end zone. But Moore was already in the white paint that marked the out of bounds area at the back of the end zone. That means he wasn't technically in the field of play at the time he took off his helmet. So... allegedly a bad call.

And here's why the beef is wrong: that wasn't when the flag was thrown. After going over to the fans behind the end zone, Moore returned to the field (still with his helmet off) and continued the celebrations with his teammates both in the end zone and in the actual field of play. THAT was when the flag came out, and at that point the flag is legit.



Getting back to the regularly scheduled rant, that's what makes Bo Wulf at The Athletic the fucktard du jour. He didn't say a thing about how the Bucs were gift-wrapped their win over Atlanta in that week's writeup or in any of the writeups he's done since then. It's the only game that Tampa and his man-crush Brady have won since week two, including their own loss to Carolina in spite of being huge favorites. But somehow Wulf moved the Bucs up a spot to #16 after yet another loss AND justified putting them three spots ahead of the Falcons (who have a better record) because Atlanta "should have" lost - but didn't.

Yes, Atlanta was incredibly lucky to get the win. But he's dead wrong in implying that Carolina got jobbed by the refs, and continuing to push Tampa as the top team in the division on the grounds that some other team allegedly got an undeserved gift from a bad call is a joke.

But that's not enough. The theme for this week's review was one "fact" and one "opinion" on each team. The best "fact" he could offer Atlanta fans is that Falcons head coach Arthur Smith has the same first name as team owner Arthur Blank.

I'm not making that up. That really was it. That combined with the jab that owner Blank should pay the Carolina kicker's salary for the year (as the "opinion" portion) made up the entire Falcons portion of his Power Rankings review for the week.

The Athletic charges readers $72 a year for this sort of brilliant analysis.


As for leaving out the trade in the roundup by "Jeff Howe and The Athletic staff", consider this: Rashad Fenton was a starting cornerback for the Chiefs. He has been out a few weeks with a hamstring injury, but he opened the year with 5 games played, 5 starts. Meanwhile, one of Atlanta's starting CBs is on IR and probably out for the year. The other starter and one key backup have also been out with hamstring injuries, so for the last two weeks the team has actually been playing a practice squad guy who had not appeared in a real NFL game in two years. They've given up 798 passing yards in those two games.

So... a team suddenly leading their division in a slugfest of a division race trades for a badly needed starting cornerback. They get him from another team that is also leading their division in a slugfest. But somehow this isn't important enough to make The Athletic's roundup of trade deadline moves.

Ummm.... what?? The Bills picking up a running back and a backup safety gets a review. The Vikings picking up a tight end gets a review. The Jaguars picking up a receiver who isn't even eligible to play this year gets a review. But Atlanta acquiring a new starter at a key defensive position to help them potentially hang on to their division lead and become the biggest surprise to make the postseason isn't important enough to include??

Okay then. Go fuck yourselves, Jeff Howe And The Athletic Staff. And go wank off to your Tom Brady poster, Bo Wulf.


And just to help make it up to any Falcons fans who might happen to find their way over here from The Athletic and see this:

Fact: Bo Wulf has the same first name as one of "The Dukes Of Hazzard". You get that amazing bit of insight for free. No $72 per year subscription required.

Opinion: Atlanta really needs to get Cornell Armstrong off the field. He's the practice squad CB who got called up and pressed into action the last two weeks. He has promise, but calling him up from the practice squad and immediately throwing him into duty as one of the two main outside corners, putting him up against the likes of D.J. Moore and Tyler Boyd? That's a tall order for any practice squad player. And that's why the Rashad Fenton trade is one of the most important deals that took place on Tuesday. If Fenton, A.J. Terrell and Dee Alford can all work past their hamstring injuries, the Falcons secondary down the stretch will be very different from the group that just played against the Panthers.

Bonus Opinion: Dean Marlowe's performances filling in for starter Jaylinn Hawkins (who suffered a concussion in the Bengals game) was likely a factor in Atlanta trading Marlowe to the Bills, in the sense that he basically played his way off the roster. If you look at P.J. Walker's highlights from the game, you'll see a whole lot of #22 (Armstrong) and #21 (Marlowe).

 

Too bad Wulf doesn’t have the same first name as Roscoe. He writes like that should be his name.

 

That was fun to read, Torgo... nice job.