leviramsey

Roethlisberger is 52-4 at home in games where the Steelers allow fewer than 21 points. Three of the four losses are to the Bengals.

The Panthers became the first team in NFL history to win after trailing in OT.

Football Outsiders looks at Packers-Broncos

The 29-10 score misses the extent of Denver's defensive domination. They recovered none of the Packers' three fumbles. They forced another Packers fumble on a great strip by Harris that was incorrectly ruled down by contact. So even their advanced stats for the game could have been even a little bit higher. As it was, the Broncos' single-game defensive DVOA (-62.8%) ranks second this season (behind only Arizona's 47-7 stomp of San Francisco in Week 3).

Sunday's performance pushed the Broncos' defense further towards a pace among the best of any defense in the past 25 years. Denver currently has the No. 4 defense ever measured by DVOA through Week 8. The Broncos' pass defense is even more extreme, with a defensive DVOA of -50.3%. Only the 2002 Buccaneers (-51.9%) have ever put up a better pass defense DVOA over an entire season.

Like most of the defenses on that list, Denver's will likely fall back a little bit over the rest of the season. But here is one important reason why they are likely to end up somewhere on the list of the greatest single-season defenses: the Broncos are younger on defense than many people realize. By snap-weighted age, the 2014 Broncos had the second-youngest defense in football. By age adjusted for Approximate Value, they ranked fourth. Recent high-profile signings DeMarcus Ware and Aqib Talib are long-time veterans, but the Broncos are young almost everywhere else. Standouts Chris Harris, Von Miller, and Brandon Marshall are all 26. Defensive end Malik Jackson is just 25.

Halfway through the season now (in general, I'd pick a team in a higher tier to win home or away over a team in a lower tier)

1. Broncos
2. Patriots
3. Bengals, Packers, Panthers
4. Cardinals
5. Steelers, Jets, Eagles, Raiders
6. Vikings, Rams, Seahawks, Chiefs
7. Falcons, Giants, Dolphins, Saints
8. Ravens, Bills, Washington, Cowboys, Browns, Colts, Texans, Chargers, Bucs, 49ers, Bears
9. Jaguars, Lions, Titans

Another cool feature: the UI can change color scheme to match the page you're viewing (or technically it's favicon): I get a Claret UI on VT, light green for my employer, blue for Teh Grauniad, etc.

Many of you may remember my long-time advocacy for Opera, which some years ago switched to being essentially an alternative skin of Chrome, discarding nearly every feature of Opera in the process, especially those in the UI. Since then, I've been kind of in limbo: I use a 3 year-old version of Opera Classic except for sites where I need Chromium or Firefox. None of these is a good choice for me.

Well, the former CEO (and original programmer) of Opera has a new browser, Vivaldi. Nearly all of the old features has carried over: customizable key-bindings, customizable UI (tab bar on the left and address bar on the bottom is The One True Browser Layout!), most-recently-used tab-cycling, and, since it's using Chrome's rendering engine, it renders pages exactly as Chrome does.

I know I'm gushing but I found out about this today, and it's in the running for best thing to happen to me in years (also in the running: getting married and having a kid).

Guts vs. Stomps

The Giants tied the 1963 Oilers for most points in a loss; the Oilers also lost 52-49.

More scoring than Rob's collection of films in St. Louis: 49ers lead 3-2.

Tenth best FG percentages

2015: 94%

2005: 86%

1995: 81%

1985: 78%

1975: 69%

Pre-merger, 50% was more than good enough, though most of the kickers played every down.

Was kicking very different back then, or have the Pats not had many top tier kickers? A field goal record of 67% just looks bad at first glance!

Back then kickers weren't as good.

Gino Cappelletti was the Patriots all-time scorer for years (admittedly he also played RB), with a career record of 176 makes for 332 attempted FGs.

That's as much because there aren't many teams over .500 this year.

AFC table:
1. Patriots (7-0)
2. Bengals (6-0)
===
3. Broncos (6-0)
4. Colts (3-4)
===
5. Jets (4-2)
6. Steelers (4-3)
===
7. Raiders (3-3)
8. Bills (3-4)
9. Dolphins (3-4)
10. Chiefs (2-5)
11. Browns (2-5)
12. Texans (2-5)
13. Jaguars (2-5)
14. Chargers (2-5)
15. Titans (1-5)
16. Ravens (1-6)

NFC table:
1. Panthers (6-0)
2. Packers (6-0)
===
3. Cardinals (5-2)
4. Giants (4-3)
===
5. Falcons (6-1)
6. Vikings (4-2)
===
7. Rams (3-3)
8. Washington (3-4)
9. Seattle (3-4)
10. Philadelphia (3-4)
11. New Orleans (3-4)
12. Cowboys (2-4)
13. Bucs (2-4)
14. Bears (2-4)
15. 49ers (2-5)
16. Lions (1-6)

11 teams over .500 (though there are 2 at .500 and 6 more a half-game below .500)

That said, there are only 2 one-win teams (compared to 3 last season, plus the 0-6 Raiders). Thus far there's been a few more lower-mid-table teams than usual.

Gronkowski is now 1 TD behind Shannon Sharpe for the all-time lead among TEs.

And you seem to be beating the crap out of them, so why the borderline-deranged aggro (e.g. the rambling from topic to topic within the space of a paragraph)?

You've genuinely gone off the deep end bicks.

First, it's "demand is clearly not outstripping supply, because you get a car straight away".  Then it's "the supply can never cover the demand."  Which is the case?

If anything, the black cars work the poorer areas of cities.  In New York (apart from airport trips), the taxis generally won't go outside of Manhattan (or even that far north of roughly 110th Street in Manhattan): partly because of pedestrian density making it easier to get street hails, and also because they're more likely to get a good tip (that the driver typically has to pay the owner of the medallion (or the bank they borrowed from to finance a medallion) anywhere from $100 to $200 per 12-hour shift reinforces this); related to this is the general tendency of taxi drivers in the US to only let people who look poor (e.g. black) ride as a last resort.  In the Outer Boroughs (and Harlem), if you need a ride, you call a black car (or Uber).  Complicating things a little is that the black cars will pick up street hails in the neighborhoods where the taxis don't generally go, with the police and Taxi and Limousine Commission looking the other way.

There is the black Town Car (whatever will they do when the last of the Town Cars gives up the ghost?) luxury end of the livery business as well, generally only doing business alongside the taxis

Nearly every large US city makes a distinction between Taxi and Livery (though they're typically regulated by the same authorities). Taxicabs are allowed to pick up street hails, Livery vehicles (typically "black cars") aren't.

Matchup based:

The format of the season is head-to-head, weekly matches. Every week you will play one other user in your league and the user with the highest point total is award the win and three points in the table. Draw and it's a point apiece. Lose and you get 0 points for the week. If there is a tie in the standings at the end of the season, the tie breaker goes to overall player points. The overall points are calculated and tracked on the league table. We have heard feedback requesting that the table be ordered by overall points (and not by head-to-head) and we have put that request on our development roadmap.

Also, you may want to take care when drafting players from clubs where fixture congestion is a possible issue:

Double-match gameweeks (DGW or double-gameweeks) will happen from time to time when fixture congestion requires a match be rescheduled. When this happens, players with two matches will earn points from both games. While there is an inherent advantage for users who start players with a DGW, this is offset across the season because those same players will also have a 'blank' gameweek where they have no match - blanks and DGW correspond, so every time Diego Costa gets to play two matches in a week, there will also be a week the Chelsea hit man does not play a match.

thelab.bleacherreport.com/nfl-x-nba-jersey-mashups/

Some reasonably good ones there.

Up in The County, or back in civilization?

All Jags in the first half.

Ah.

The Yahoo stream has been quite good (though the TD review was a little blurry; don't know if that's the source cameras or the stream). Had to change Yahoo apps in order to Chromecast it, though.

Dual commentary is driving me nuts. 

Que?

Whoever you rented from has a rather broad definition of "or similar".