NFL - NEWS & NOTES

CBS added Portland, Seattle and St. Louis too? Wow, what a mess.

 

To be honest, I thought the Eagles were actually hit pretty hard by injuries last year. Wentz, Sproles, Ertz, Darby, Peters, Hicks, ...

 

all true, but it seemed like last year their replacements filled in nicely and in Foles case, one of legend as he led the team to the Super Bowl. This year has been a mess since losing to Tampa. Tampa! their GM simply didn't do enough. He didn't do much at all besides trade for a guy and position they didn't need over others. The writing was on the wall and it was obvious but Howie ignored it. He made all the right moves last year and kind of sat on his ass this year. i don't know why. they still had $8 mil in cap room before the Tate trade. ??

 

A major part of the problem is that a lot of your injuries are bunched at one position (or area) - secondary.

But, yeah - a LOT has gone wrong for Philly this year beyond injuries.

 

Rebounding and repeating is just something that never happens in this day and age unless your the Patriots. Some of last seasons teams that were baddd are now suddenly great and vice versa... it will and can drive you nuts trying to figure this out.

 

If you listen to the podcast I bring up why they struggle a few times. Mainly it's the run game for the offense. If it we're better or used more then the passing game could be better. As for defense, it's injuries in the secondary plus Swartz being a stubborn idiot. They always give too much cushion. Passes get made to wide open guys well before the pass rush can get there. Look at the SB. Same thing happened there. The pass rush was a non-factor because Brady got the ball off to wide open guys right away every time until the end when there was finally good coverage.

 

Stability has a lot to do with it.

New England contends just about every season and while they have made changes on both sides of the ball and throughout the assistant coach ranks through the years....the constant there for a very long time has been Belichick and Brady. Arguably the best HC of his time paired with a guy that a large percentage of people will tell you is the greatest ever. I don't agree with them but that's for a different thread.

Take a look around the league...you don't see that kind of stability combined with that level of greatness anywhere else really. Rodgers and McCarthy had that but the relationship soured at some point and obviously affected what was happening on the field. Seattle has Carroll and Wilson...and while both are pretty good at what they do...Carroll isn't Belichick and Wilson isn't Brady. Phillip Rivers has been very good for a long time....he's also seen his share of head coaches come through the organization. Different offenses....different OCs. New Orleans might be the one other place where you have the combination of an elite QB paired with a really good HC for a long period of time. And while they haven't been contenders every single season....they finished 7-9 4 out of 5 seasons from 2012 to 2016...in Payton's tenure they've won quite a bit more than they have lost.

The constant retooling and search for a franchise QB and committing to a coach you believe in causes a lot of the parity you see around the league. In my opinion there are teams that have trusted in their coaches too long with too few results...such as the Cowboys and Bengals...and there teams that have put money into QBs that haven't exactly panned out since being paid or were paid for past results....the Bears overpaid Jay Cutler...Joe Flacco got paid elite money without being elite and so on.

It seems like if you want a chance at prolonged success you need to a really good HC pair with a really good QB. I'm sure that isn't the only formula that works and it's definitely a lot easier said than done...but it comes with a proven track record.

 

A good pass rush needs 3 seconds to get tp the QB. The Steelers have the best pass rush in the league but offenses have started getting the ball out in about 2.3 seconds which pretty much neutralizes your pass rush. You have to have good coverage to force the QBs to use 3 seconds or more so the pass rush can get home.

 

And that's how the Eagles went from being ridiculous on the pass rush to disappearing. Swartz only plays for allowing nothing deep, but teams will get 5-15 yards at a time underneath the cushion all day. And sometimes with that much cushion they have so much room to run for the big play anyways.

 

Parity =/= parody.

Yeah, I'm that guy.

 

I've long given up pointing it out but thanks for keeping up the good fight.

 

I type it wrong 99% of the time and I don't know why. Most of the time I type argument as arguement and a thousand other words that I typically type wrong...only to be saved by the automatic underlining of misspelled words.

 

Agree with that - usage is significantly down.

 

It’s worse on your phone, instead of underline it just changes the word on you. If you don’t proofread before posting you’ll have some BS word in there that confuses everyone.

 

No Ajayi and no one that was ready behind him when he went down.

 

It's even worse when you use speech to text.

 

Josh Adams was putting up good numbers starting around Week 8; how come he didn't see double-digit carries until Week 12? (Asking a serious question; not bagging on play-calling).

 

pairodee… DD <--- pair of D's

 

Will, you’re always on point.

 

Sadly, "parody" actually fits in many of the cases where it is misused. When you think of things like all the "improvements" to the officiating and how much "safer" the game has become, you realize the league has indeed achieved parody...