I might take a writing gig again this year.
Interested to hear from the Brownie fans on their QB swap.
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The initial ruling is 6 game ban for Deshaun Watson. With a talented roster, Jacoby Brisset could pick up a few wins and keep them in the hunt for playoffs if Watson returns to his old form. I hope he has forgotten how to throw a football and the Browns go down in flames. I'm glad that I found a way to watch live sports on a firestick https://www.firesticktricks.co...ports-firestick.html after cutting the cord.
unexpectedly zach wilson is still a bust
@stefaniawine posted:I might take a writing gig again this year.
Interested to hear from the Brownie fans on their QB swap.
I miss your write-ups! They're honestly really very good.
I've been super pressed for time. I have a new day job lined up and harvest has started - blah blah blah.
Remember you don't know anything until after week 4.
Turn over margin change, which is I think the best predictor of improvement or decline has the Cowboys, Cardinals, and Vikings as most likely to decline this year and a surprise to me the Titans as most likely to improve.
Remember a couple years ago when I won a beer off Bill betting the 12-4 Bears would not win 10 games? They went 8-8. The 2021 Cowboys have almost the same regression numbers as those Bears. The Bears had a +20 margin change and 5 defensive touchdowns. The Boys had a +17 margin change and 5 defensive touchdowns. Even before Dak went down I would have called this a 9 win team at best.
Honestly I think the Brown shit themselves massively. My limited times watching Watson on the field he was a typical run around and make exciting things happen average QB. His accuracy is poor on passes when it matters and his decision making on the field mirrors his decision making off the field.
You put that in with first class talent and good coaching and yeah it's a playoff team. The Brown finally have decent coaching, I wouldn't call it good until the penalties get better, but it's decent. They had great talent around the field but that's already bleeding off with salary cap casualties.
It's the exact opposite of what you want to do. If you have a QB off his rookie contract exploding your cap and causing you to loose veteran talent you want to make sure that QB is top 5 and playing all the time. You need 1st round draft picks because you're losing great players every season to the cap. The Browns got none of that.
They basically traded the #1 pick in the draft for a $260 million dollar headache no 1st round picks and got a 6th round draft pick as compensation.
The Bills look amazing, or maybe the Rams suck. Maybe both. What sucks is the Rams and Chargers play 17 games on the road every year.
I got the Boys and Browns out of my system. Honestly the Niners Trey Lance thing, that smells like a Browns Jags type of move. I just can't bring myself to write it all out yet.
In other highlights Mr Potato Head looked timid, cautious and worried through 3 quarters Sunday. Almost like Sean Payton beat all the bad decisions out of him so hard he couldn't make any decisions. Then he lights up the 4th quarter like he's a superstar. If the Saints get two quarters a game out of him like that every game they win 12-13 games. But he is Mr Potato Head, and I'd never bet on that.
I need to spend some time looking at schedules. I can't figure out why everyone loves the Colts and hates the Titans. I watched a lot of Matt Ryan the last few years, and he's an upgrade from Wentz but not a 'we got the division wrapped up' upgrade. The Titans won 8 games against teams with winning records last year. The Rams won 4. 4 is not unusual for good teams. The Titans also had a turnover margin off their pattern last year to the negative. If that corrects, they win 12 games pretty easy and they get the Jags and Texans twice.
Russell Wilson is being over coached. I know that much after week one. Get him a play, the option at the line is 'run around like at recess'. Don't get more complicated than that and you'll win some games.
I'll try and get something together next week on the games I watched.
@stefaniawine posted:Remember a couple years ago when I won a beer off Bill betting the 12-4 Bears would not win 10 games? They went 8-8. The 2021 Cowboys have almost the same regression numbers as those Bears.
Still owe you that beer and many more. 
Always good to see you posting, about anything. Especially busting balls!
@stefaniawine posted:Russell Wilson is being over coached. I know that much after week one. Get him a play, the option at the line is 'run around like at recess'. Don't get more complicated than that and you'll win some games.
This was definitely a coach's battle, and Pete Carroll brought 28 years of NFL experience and 19 years of collegiate into it. Nathaniel Hackett is now 0-1 in his Head Coach career.
The gentleman from Gilroy CA - the floor is yours.
I guess the good news is I get to put off for an entire year how f'ed up I thought taking Lance 3rd overall was. Now we're back to a more predictable scenario of knowing when the game is on the line and you need great QB play Jimmy G is going to suck it up.
It took exactly 7 quarters for Mr Potatohead to forget everything Sean Payton tried to teach him. It was exactly like watching those pre-Brady Bucs, great defense, solid running game, good blocking, and a completely incompetent maniac at QB. It's going to be a long painful season in Nola. By the way, only tourists say 'Naw'lins'.
Thursday night I thought a healthy Herbert would have beat the Chiefs. What really needed to happen was someone beat Kirk Dumbstriet. Making jokes about Al Michaels age over and over again is like making fun of grandma at Thanksgiving dinner. You should just be grateful you got an invite you little twerp. My video quality was just ok. Think I'll have to watch the games on a slight delay.
I got to watch the end of the Raiders game in a new brewery in Gilroy full of Raider Nations fans. They were being their usual selfs which made them sulking out the door at the end, so much better. Still not up to the crying Cowboy fans, but fun.
The 3 night games were turds. Almost unwatchable. Monday the girls all went to see Justin Moore so I had a few of the guys over and we drank beer and had Duck Confit and New York Steaks, which believe me was more exciting than the games. The Bills are fun to watch in a beat down kind of way, but only for so long. 2-0 vs a super bowl champ and last years top seed in the AFC is damn impressive. It's all areas of the game also, not like when the Chiefs went on a crazy start but you knew their defense and coaching would catch up with them.
How did the 49ers lose to the Bears? Justin Fields still has all 5 major problems, and none are getting better.
Looks like I was right about Matt Ryan and the Colts. Everyone's sexy pre-season favorite in the AFC South is a dog with fleas. I could talk about what's wrong with the Bengals, but its obvious and everyone is doing it. The real answer though is luck is not repeatable, sustainable or a strategy.
Maybe a little time on the Broncos, DangerRuss and some coaches son. The way teams pick head coaches continues to be a shit show. I mean you basically have three assets. 1) you have good 'pedigree'. So do French Bulldogs and you have to wipe their asses with a napkin every time they take a dump. 2) Your'e friends with Aaron Rodgers, which at this point we all have to say is more than a little creepy. 3) You once lead Blake Bortles to the playoffs in a complete fluke of a season.
I remember writing here about that Jags season and the crash afterwards. I called out in particular how bad the coaching, game planning and play calling was. Some of the worst I can remember. That's your'e resume? I got lucky one year with Blake Bortles? I bet there's at least one Applebees waitress who can claim she should be a head coach also based on that.
Russ is as Russ does. Man I took a lot of crap for putting him in a group of 'average' QBs. My dig is, was and always will be, he's un-coachable. He doesn't do anything at the line of scrimmage to manage the game, and his check down option has always been, run around like crazy and hope my strong arm saves the day. He doesn't make his teammates better, in a way that Brady or Rodgers do every game. He wins enough, he puts up big numbers, but in the end he's not elite in a top 5 way. A couple years ago I said when his mobility goes, he'll fall off a cliff. I don't think we're there yet, but you can see the cliff from where he's at.
Steelers and Browns tonight. It looks like a dogfight to see if the AFC South, NFC South or AFC North is the worst division in football. Pretty impressive by those groups to take the NFC East out of the conversation.
The first week (and now the second) at the new day job is going great. It’s interrupted my writing, but I’m still catching a good slate of games. Stef’s pausing the night games so I can watch the entire game.
Some observations so far. I watched the Browns Steelers game and two things stood out. Kevin Stefanski deserves a lot of credit for changing the culture in Cleveland. No turnovers, no stupid penalties, the Browns aren’t a team that’s going to beat themselves anymore out of selfishness and stupidity. I admired Mike Tomlin and the Steelers organization for putting a plan together and giving all appearances of sticking it out. They really seemed to have a good plan to not rush in an unprepared rookie quarterback. Then I saw Mitch Trubisky play and I realized any plan that includes Mitch Trubisky is a bad plan.
That Sunday morning, I got to watch Baker Mayfield and Jameis Winston. Shit show. Below shit show. How did anyone ever think these two losers were the best football player available in a draft? They’re veterans now, no excuses. Winston still can’t make a good decision of any kind. Mayfield missed more than half a dozen open receivers on flat out bad throws. Not a little off throw, missed by 5 + yards. If you missed it, it was terrible.
After the Wentz-Goff draft I really started to doubt myself. Maybe the league has changed, and maybe the two best quarterbacks should go 1-2, even if they aren’t one of the 30 best players available. Well, I wasn’t wrong, they shouldn’t. I’ve seen Mayfield, Winston, Trubisky, Lance and Mariota play full games this year. They all sucked, terribly sucked. Geno Smith and Cooper Rush are far, far better quarterbacks. I haven’t seen Wentz, Goff or Lawrence play yet this year, and Burrows looked average when I saw him.
I think it points out how important the QB-Coach combo is. Out of that group of turkeys (Mayfield, Winston, Trubisky, Lance and Mariota), I always thought Mariota had the best talent. He’s never had a remotely good coach. I’ve wondered if he has the smarts to do it on his own like Alex Smith, or maybe he’ll be like Manning, Brady or Rogers who gets to the point where they flat out ignore the coaches. I don’t think he’ll last long enough for either of those things to happen.
I’m not sure if it hit national news but Jimmy G stirred things up a little by telling Kyle Shanahan “All your plays suck”. If it did hit national news it shouldn’t have. That’s not news. 28-3, 8 minutes left in the third quarter.
You give up zero sacks and no turnovers, you’re going to win some games, no matter what the play calling is like. It was an impressive game for DeMeco Ryans. The Rams were completely unprepared to see the 49ers blitz or shelling up on defense. It was very Belichick; “ We’re going to give you Cooper Kupp 20 times for 8 yards a throw, we don’t think you can beat us that way, and we don’t think you can make any adjustment mid game to it.” They couldn’t.
We’re 4 games in and other than the Bills being good and the Texans being bad, I don’t think I know a whole lot about anyone’s strength yet. Maybe by week 6 this year.
I’ll start with last Thursday’s game, I guess.
You know I’ve never taken more crap for anything here than when I put Russell Wilson in with the group of ‘above average’ QB’s instead of the elite group, and then pointed out his flaws. You can do a search here for that, I think it’s in the 18 or 19 thread, or you can read one of the 400 or so articles this past week that say the same thing.
That’s the Matt Ryan I’ve watched 2-3 full games of the past few years. His Super Bowl year was an outlier, at least until the 2nd half of the Super Bowl when he was who we thought he is. Thinking about him he’s actually a lot like Jimmy G. When you’re behind by a touchdown with 5 minutes left in the game, you can count on a 15 yard sack or a gut wrenching interception. Hell Cam Jordon should have a special guest house for Ryan. Jordon’s sacks of Ryan in the 4th quarter have earned him millions over the years. The Colts might make the playoffs based on their weak schedule, but they’re not going anywhere.
I think I watched the Packers and Giants play. The Pack has 3 of their next 4 against bad teams. If they don’t win all those, it might be a team that misses the playoffs. I’ll need to be more awake and see a whole game to have an opinion about the Giants.
Looking to explain the game Taysom Hill was having one of the announcers said; “I hear Jim Thorpe played like this”. You know a bad quarterback situation? When you’re hoping the coach finally sees that Andy Dalton is a better solution. Mr. Potato Head is likely to be back this week.
How is it I had to watch Baker Mayfield again? The Panthers were completely overmatched. My favorite play was actually a brilliant design by the Panthers. They used two receivers on the left and a crossing pattern to clear the corners from the left side of the field and got both safeties to commit to deep coverage on the flooded right side of the field. From the 49ers secondary it looked like the Panthers were playing to Mayfield’s tendency to roll right, and they were giving him layers of receiver options.
Then the Panthers best player, they guy you want to get the ball to in the open field, ran a wheel pattern to the left side of the field now devoid of coverage. It was perfect, they got McCaffery in 1 x1 coverage with a middle linebacker who was already two steps behind at the line of scrimmage. McCaffery is wide open, running at full speed with an open field in front of him. Baker hit the linebacker in the back of the helmet with the pass. Doink.
I really didn’t catch much of the night game, other things going on. Monday night, I agreed with the call to go for two. It didn’t work out but playing for a tie against a team that’s much better than you and can put up points quickly, you’re going to lose. I’m not sure who to blame on the Raiders. Mack Hollins had one of the worst games I’ve ever seen a receiver have. He couldn’t catch anything. Then Renfrow screws up his route and takes out Adams who would have been 1x1 with no safety help over the top. Coaching? Players? The GM? The Raiders are easily the best of the one-win teams. Not that there’s anything good about that honor.
The Ravens have three losses this year. In each of them, they were ahead by double digits in the 2nd half. 
Anyone remember my story of how Adam Gase became a head coach? It involved fetching donuts for Payton Manning.
Now we have Luke Getsy and Nathaniel Hackett who fetched donuts for Aaron Rodgers. Ok not donuts, we all know Rodgers is a weirdo so, fetched kitchari and ghee (Google it). Apparently, success with coaching Rodgers is not being publicly called a ‘cheese bag’ by him and delivering his diuretics on time.
Over the years I’ve promoted and trained a lot of new supervisors and managers. One of the top things I teach them is: “don’t try and force someone to do something they’re not good at, it’s just going to frustrate both of you and leads to failure.” Someone want to tweet that to Getsy? Last Thursday everyone on the broadcast felt obligated to point out Fields doesn’t have the talent or skills to be an elite NFL quarterback. He does have many of the same skills and talents as Russell Wilson and Lamar Jackson. Those guys had great coaching though, not coaching by a donut fetcher.
I mostly watched the Saints with a little bit of the Niners Sunday morning. The Saints are just really beat up. Watching the Niners I wondered if there’s a worse in game coach than Kyle Shanahan? His second half collapses are monumental. Great coaches make adjustments at half time, or in game, that puts their teams in position to win games in the second half. I think Shanahan plays Xbox at half time.
Patrick Mahomes looked a little Brett Favre like. One of the best quates about Favre was part of the fun in watching him was knowing at some point he’d try to force a ball into triple coverage with the game on the line. The AFC West was supposed to be the glamour division of the NFL. I read some previews that had all four teams with winning records and three making the playoffs. Instead, it is what it always is; one good team, one above average, one below average and one stink bomb. The good team stays the same, the other three shuffle the deck every season.
Them Eagles have a good team and a good coach. Must watch those Giants at some point still.
On to this week, let’s hope it’s a week free of Mr. Potato Head.
As always, thanks Paul! I always love reading your write-ups.
I think Brian Daboll wins coach of the year, we all knew he was a great OC in Buffalo but he's getting a huge amount more out of the Giants than anyone thought was there.
Buffalo is still the cream of the crop in the AFC and when healthier I think the best in the NFL (though with one all-pro safety playing with a collapsed lung and the other all-pro safety out for the year with a now fused neck they're not ever going to be fully healthy. Though they are finally getting back their CB1 next week) .
SF just traded a LOT for a RB who's always injured, expensive and I think they're going to regret it in two years, if not sooner.
Still not sure how Dolphins beat Buffalo and Baltimore
I’ll rehash an old statement from a few years ago and change the names to start off this week: “Winston and Dalton is not a quarterback controversy it’s a quarterback disaster.”
At one point during the game Murray took off on one of his hold the ball out runs and I booed out loud. Stefania asked why I was boing and I said: “That’s pee wee football. If I want to watch that crap, I’ll go down to the high school Saturday morning and watch the 8 year old’s play.” He should have stuck with baseball.
I made an effort to watch the Giants Sunday morning. After a quarter or so I thought I needed to go check their schedule. Playing the bottom feeder Jags it did not seem like a team that should be 6-1. The wins against the Packers and Ravens don’t look as impressive as they did when they pulled them off. Still they’re beating teams they are supposed to beat – Jags, Panthers and the Bears, and holding their own against good teams (2-1).
None of the wins have been by more than a possession, but they keep winning. You know, you compare that to the Niners losing to the Broncos and Bears, and it’s impressive. If they play 500 ball the rest of the year they finish 11-6 and they have two games against the WTF’s and get the Texans and Lions. They played a solid game.
I wanted to watch Lawrence also. Remember I said he was the best Freshman Quarterback I’d ever seen, and five years later he’s finally getting some coaching. I thought about the path he took vs Arch Manning. I read a lot in the NOLA paper about Manning’s college search and some of the craziness especially at Georgia and LSU. I thought at the time there was no possible way he would commit to George, LSU, Clemson or Alabama. His family knows better.
He’s not going to become a better NFL QB at any one of those four schools. At a powerhouse he’s going to learn he’s got 5 seconds to throw, he can lock onto his primary until he comes open, he can turn his back and he doesn’t have to read defenses and create good running options when the defense dictates it. If the goal is to win a national championship, he’d win one at one of those schools. But the Manning’s goals are Super Bowls. Minor league championships would be nice but developing into the best professional QB is the goal. The best three young QB’s in the league went to Texas Tech, Oregon and Wyoming. Texas will be perfect for Arch. Trevor would be a much better QB today if he had gone somewhere else.
28-3. 28 to F-ing 3. The Pats win. They score 25 points in the second half and win in overtime. What loser coach was responsible for that debacle? Maybe the same one who was outscored 30-10 Sunday? You get out coached at halftime by Andy Reid and you are officially a moron. He’s the Teflon coach. No failure sticks to him. The world seems blind to his disasters. I read one summary of the McCaffery trade and I’ll shorten it a bit and highlight some things but it was:
Sentence #1:
“Coach Shanahan is an offensive genius known for his innovation.
Sentence #2:
Adding McCaffery will help a 49ers offense that has struggled this year despite having talented players like Kittle, Samuels and Williams.
Seriously, what the fuck? Who writes that nonsense?
Maybe the genius was Mike McDaniel all along. He sure fixed Tua fast. That ball comes out fast. I remember one commentator last year talking about how bad Tua needed the 1-2 SACK drill. He’s out in under 3 seconds every time now. Now if he can fix the putting the shoulder down and turning the back, he’s got an NFL QB.
I actually liked Pickett despite the 3 interceptions. I’d bet he’s fixable. His decision making is bad but it’s not Winston bad, it’s young QB bad. He needs to learn the throws he can make in the NFL and the ones he can’t. The last interception at the end of the game summed it up. He had a wide-open check down at 7 yards, instead he tried to force in a tough throw at the marker for the first down. Bad decision. It’s third down, take the 7 yards, see if you’re Star RB can break a tackle, get to the line and now you have a manageable 4th down at worst. Reminded me a bit of Allen early on, trying to do too much. It will be fun to watch and see if he develops.
There’s not a lot compelling about Monday’s game. I bet I fast forward through most of it.
Tom Brady loses his 3rd in a row and finalizes the divorce with Giselle B.
Not a good week for Tom.
Leonard Fournette sucks. That about sums up Tampa Bay and the Thursday game. Tampa Bay is running at 3.0 yards per carry, a full half yard below the next lowest team.
I should note that the comment about Murray and playing pee wee football was not directed at ‘showboating’. I don’t care about that even a little. Holding the ball away from you as you run is a flag football technique some coaches teach. Since it’s a penalty to take the ball away and a fumble is dead at the spot the ball comes loose, there’s no risk in doing it in flag football. Many 7 year old’s find it distracting that the ball is way out there and don’t focus on getting the flag. I remember seeing it still done in High School when I played. Specifically, I remember 240 pound Jim Porter, who was on his way to Penn State to play linebacker, planting a kid from Andrew Hill who did it and we prepared for on film. The kid went off on a stretcher. Don’t teach your pee wees to do that, it will get them hurt as they move up and along. Of course, we all know Murray’s career is ending on a stretcher.
How does a team play the Chiefs to one extra point try one week, and can’t cross the 50 yard line the next? I’ll give you that the Saints have a better defense than the Chiefs but that’s not a good sign for the rest of the season. Seemed like the Raiders have quit. It’s very possible that we will have a 10 loss team in the playoffs this year.
McCaffery was fun to watch, but in the end, you know the deal. At some point you’ll need Jimmy G to just not fuck up.
Is it possible that the Davante Adams trade hurt both teams? The window looks closed for Rodgers and the Pack, they’re not near the same level as the Bills. I’ll admit the only thing I know about Quay Walker is he was out of position, took a bad angle, missed a tackle and then got himself ejected for being an ass. I’m sure he has upside, because it doesn’t get much more downside than that. In the second half I remember thinking that the Bills looked like kids sitting at the dinner table at Christmas: bored, fidgety and anxious to go do something else. I read an article the next day that described them as ‘playing with their food’ in the second half so obviously I wasn’t the only one thinking more about my dinner than the game.
One thing I’ve decided is I’ve watched way too many Browns games over the past few years. I think this will be my last Browns comment until they make a playoff run, which might mean forever. I will gloat, because I do from time to time, but uh, um, I took a lot of crap about my opinion of Baker Mayfield:
https://ftw.usatoday.com/lists...-burrow-daniel-jones
I guess the big story of the week is what the hell happened in Indy? At first I thought maybe it was like the Niners canning Nolan and replacing him with Singletary. Singletary wasn’t really qualified to be a head coach, but that team had quit on Nolan and was in turmoil. Mike came in and kicked some butts and got the team back on track. It was a mistake to keep him the next year, but as a mid-season fix he turned out to be perfect.
Most of the chatter is this is an NBA like effort to tank the season and get a top pick but that doesn’t really make sense either to me. That seems like an easy answer, but tanking in the NFL rarely works. Teams win games you don’t expect them too and especially at the end of the season things get wildly unpredictable. Then there’s the question of tanking for who? There’s no clear number one overall QB type of guy out there at the moment. Stroud is on the top of most people’s lists, but at this point not at #1 overall. Just weird.
Maybe Irsay has finally just had enough of the coaching fraternity. Maybe this was a move like Jerry Jones hiring Barry Switzer? Any idiot could do better than you pack of Cronys and Nepotists?
Anyway, back to the week.
I saw a list that had Mills ranked as the 30th QB in the league. He’s clearly not that bad, he just plays on a shitty team. I’ve seen much worse this year. I was a little underwhelmed by Philly. They took care of business, but it wasn’t particularly impressive given the opponent. Given the ease of their schedule it’s going to be a hard team to get a read on going into the playoffs.
Sunday, I watched some of the Chargers, some of the Jets, most of the Cardinals, and the end of the Bucs game. Watching the Cardinals, I wondered if any team has ever had 5 or more defensive touchdowns and had a losing record? I ran through about a dozen checks on that and got bored with it. Basically probably ‘no’. At least they’ll accomplish something this year. I almost got up and hung laundry at the end of the Bucs game, but then I said out loud: “never give up on Tom Brady” and watched the end of the game.
Salah and McDaniel. Related to no one. Smart, Salah graduated in four years, McDaniel graduated from Yale, both with real degrees, no ‘sports marketing’ or phys ed degrees for these two. How do you find these guys instead of some coaches son? Some white coaches son. Maybe you start there for real instead of pretending. I’ll give you this, finding real coaching talent is hard. The college game is so different, not just in the way it’s played but the underlying conditions for success that college really does not feed the NFL anymore at all. I watch the Thursday night post game broadcast and those 4 guys have more smarts than 25 of the head coaches in the league, but none of them are going to go that route, you just know that.
The Titans gave the Chiefs all they could handle with an unqualified back up quarterback leading them. They are easily the most overlooked team in the league.
The red beans and rice were good Monday night. The game not really. The Saints defense is good, but they’re getting no help from the offense to keep them fresh and off the field. I listened to one color guy over the weekend talk about complementary football. It was clear he didn’t understand what that means. It’s not that both sides of the ball are good, it means they play in a way and style to maximize the other unit. I like strippers and I like my Mom. They are not complimentary. A stripper and a good cocktail waitress at the club, those things are complimentary. A defense that is playing contain and don’t get beat for a big play, needs an offense that can hold the ball for extended times. An offense that can move the ball and get big plays needs a defense that’s playing high risk, high reward, not ‘bend don’t break’. I guess the good news is no more Mr. Potatohead.
There was a game Thursday night. If you watched it, you watch too much football. I do.
This week is mostly going to be about coaches. It was a week for coaches.
First off it appears the answer to the Indy question is: “Irsay has finally just had enough of the coaching fraternity…this was … like Jerry Jones hiring Barry Switzer”. A statement: “Any idiot could do better than you pack of Cronys and Nepotists?” I didn’t hear an apology or even amendment from any of the army of ex-coaches who criticized the move, many of them vehemently. Any idiot off the street is better than Josh McDaniels.
I thought about the breakdown and I think it’s roughly 4-5 really good coaches in the league. 4-5 who are average, a ‘C’ grade. 20-25 who are at ‘D’ level and really contribute nothing to their team, and 2-3 who should have already been fired. There’s a lot of talk about how hard and important it is to find ‘that’ quarterback for your franchise, but you don’t hear about the coach quality crisis. Why? Because so many of the commentators and news sources are coaches and sycophants run deep in the fraternity.
Many of you know I’ve had mixed feelings about Mike Tomlin over the years. There’s always that Tebow game back there. As we sat down to watch the Saints game at 10AM and Stefania asked if I thought the Saints would win. I said; “Not a chance.” Why? Tomlin has game planned against Andy Dalton more than a dozen times. He’ll shut him down in the first quarter. The Saints might move the ball some in the second quarter, but then Tomlin will adjust at half time and shut him down again in the second half. That’s what he did.
And that’s it. I answered my own doubts. Mike Tomlin is a great coach. That’s how Bill Walsh ran his games. Come in with a plan that works, adjust as you go, make changes at half time and dominate the third quarter. I also wanted to watch Pickett again and see if he’d made any improvements. Remember I said there was talent there, just poor decision making and I wanted to track his progress. He looked solid. A huge improvement in 3 weeks from when I saw him last. Three weeks of coaching and practice with Tomlin and it’s an easily noticeable improvement. Kenny Pickett has made more progress at quarterback in the past 5 weeks than Trevor Lawrence has in the past 5 YEARS. Kenny picket has had better coaching in the last 5 weeks than Trevor Lawrence ever has had.
I saw the catch. Rewound it on my own 3 times. I still couldn’t explain how it’s possible to take a ball away from a guy with both hands on it using your wrist and the heel of your hand. The next two catches he made were spectacular as well. That brings me to Sean McDermott. If you have 8 minutes watch this, it’s the Saints vs the Bills in 2017:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJAW2B338ko
They key takeaway is Sean Payton ran the ball 23 consecutive times, in destroying McDermott’s Bills. It started out innocent enough. The Bills started with 5-6 DBs in, game planned to stop Drew Brees. Payton just ran the ball, daring McDermott to change his plan and try and stop them. The Bills couldn’t stop it. McDermott made a change, by the third quarter you can see on the film that the Bills are now putting 8 men in the box and are now playing 4 or even 3 DB’s. Does Payton stop? Hell no, he goes all Belichick on the Bills. He’s not going to stop until you stop him. He’s not going to outthink it. Something is working, do it, make the other weaker guy blink. 23 times in a row. McDermott tried to make changes, a good coach thing, but couldn’t. The horrible? Some how he decided the change that needed to be made was putting in Nathan Peterman. 5 Interceptions and 30 minutes later, he showed me a lifetime of doubt about his abilities.
Then there’s Kyle. Poor, stupid, ‘D’ level, white coach’s son, Kyle. He starts the game with three runs to McCaffery. 3 yards, 4 yards, 7 yards. And then? Well let’s stop doing that, it’s working. Let’s not go back to it at all on this drive until we’re on the two-yard line. Here’s the game film. Go to about 1:30 into the film:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ktuADz3KBM
You have the best left tackle in the game, a guy many think is the best PLAYER in the game, and next to him on the left side is one of the best blocking Tight Ends in the game. Where’s the best blocking Fullback in the game? He’s on the team, but he’s not on the field? You have one of the top running backs in the league. Put that fullback in, run the ball left. Make the other guy blink. The point of getting all that talent on the roster is to use them. Make the Chargers prove they can stop that. We all know they can’t. So Kyle? He runs a counter right for no gain and kicks a field goal. Loser. D-
I told you the Eagles were suspect. They have to clean up those 15 yard discipline penalties. You can’t beat good teams doing that, much less average teams.
There is to be a huge blizzard in Buffalo starting today. 4-5 feet of snow. So, the NFL has moved the Cleveland at Buffalo game, scheduled for Sunday, to Detroit, where they will play in the indoor stadium there. That’s Sunday.
The Bills next game after that is a road game……..in Detroit against the Lions on Thanksgiving. So, they will play two games in a row in Detroit, and I suppose, stay in Detroit in between the games.
Well – I obviously have not much felt like writing lately. I did a primer for SBN on Russel Wilson’s struggles in Denver that I put a lot of work into and the only thing they used was “Fall Off a Cliff” in the title. I originally wrote that here in 2019 or 2020. The writer instead did an entire article about how the Broncos could get out of Wilson’s contract to which Fanside published an article the next day detailing how there was no way the Broncos could get out of the contract. What a waste of time.
They did ask me to do another primer about how Baker Mayfield would fit in with the 49ers earlier this week and I responded: “Why they’ve seen him play this year, there’s no way they’ll put him on the roster.”
I did get to go to the Niners - Saints game at Levi. Fun time tailgating. The Superdome is still a better place to watch a game.
If McVay gets fired then does everyone who ever wore a polo shirt near him also get fired?
Maybe next week I’ll feel a little more like writing. I mean it sounds like I’ll get to watch Baker cook tonight, that’s sure to generate a lot of funny things to write