abdomlahor Posted December 1, 2014 Share Posted December 1, 2014 just shows how terrible jacksonville are that we can just have our way with them lol Indeed. Typical Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tegis Posted December 1, 2014 VT Supporter Share Posted December 1, 2014 I have nothing to complain about, feels nice. This running game is heaven sent. CJ gave a hint of this last preseason but injuried himself and we drafted both Hillman and Ball high. And thank you Packers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maqroll Posted December 2, 2014 Author Share Posted December 2, 2014 Blount. What a weapon. Crazy that the Pats get to pick him up mid-season. He looked like Earl Campbell. Beast. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maqroll Posted December 2, 2014 Author Share Posted December 2, 2014 For those of you unfamiliar with him, he was scary. Big and fast, power and finesse. Rarely mentioned in the greatest of all time conversations, but IMO, he's in the top 10. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leviramsey Posted December 2, 2014 VT Supporter Share Posted December 2, 2014 Tanier's Monday Morning Hangover Quarterbacks for Sale Brian Hoyer and Johnny Football Hoyer's job security in Cleveland for most of the year appeared to rest on a) the team's ability to squeak out wins in games in which he completed just 15 passes or threw three interceptions; and Johnny Manziel's dedication to making his personal life look as much as possible like a series of Dazed and Confused outtakes. But there was a tipping point: A second Hoyer interception against the Bills outweighed a week of Manziel Parties Like a Particularly Lame Rock Star headlines, and Manziel made his debut as more than a cameo player at the tail end of the Browns' 26-10 loss to the Bills. We'll get to Manziel later; you probably already saw all 10 of his significant plays at least 30 times each, so you know it wasn't a unanimous coronation of the boy prince. For now, Mike Pettine is holding off his quarterback decision until Wednesday, and Cleveland's decision to postpone any long-term Hoyer commitments this season is looking wise. A few weeks ago, Hoyer appeared destined for the kind of long-term contract a bad franchise regrets when a journeyman starter has a hot streak: the Ryan Fitzpatrick Special. As Hoyer cooled (starting after the Steelers win), it appeared more likely the Browns would franchise him next year as Manziel insurance. If Manziel takes over now—and coaches usually mumble "So-and-so is my starter" when they are not planning to make a change—franchise quarterback-tag money sounds like a lot of cash to throw at someone who has clearly maxed out as a custodian and spot starter. The Browns may elect to let Hoyer play the market next year. Lots of custodial veterans are scheduled for free agency: Hoyer, Mark Sanchez, Shaun Hill, Colt McCoy, Matt Flynn and Matt Moore, plus the Jake Locker-Christian Ponder class of failed prospects and category-unto-himself Michael Vick. Teams that want a caretaker will be able to get one. If Cleveland loses Hoyer, it can sign someone vaguely similar for less than the franchise-tag price. It's the kind of move the Browns failed to make in the past, when they would keep turning back to the journeyman until the prospect's growth was stunted. Over the long haul, a smart, sober Hoyer decision will mean much more to the franchise than making or missing the playoffs as a surprise Wild Card this year. The Redskins Saga, Chapter-Lost Count You know what the umpteenth plot twist in the Robert Griffin III drama has lacked? A financial apology. No Redskins quarterback fiasco is complete until Dan Snyder races down from the owner's box with some homemade chicken soup and a giant novelty check that knots up next year's salary cap like last year's Christmas lights. Shhh, everything's going to be OK, Bob. And even though it's Robert's special day, Kirk, we haven't forgotten about you. Here are some Hot Wheels action playsets! No team commits resource-arson like the Redskins, who burned through two quarterback prospects in under three months and are now starting a journeyman who is an unrestricted free agent next year. With the Donovan McNabb Memorial Never-Again Third String slot on the depth chart at double capacity, Washington has zero quarterbacks on the roster with any real future potential. (And if you were fooled by McCoy's three-touchdown stat line in a 49-27 loss to the Colts, then you are either a complete diehard or a member of the team's front office. Look around and explore your feelings to find out which. Are you surrounded by Redskins paraphernalia and completely frustrated with Snyder? Actually, that does not help at all.) It's fashionable to spread the blame among Snyder, Griffin and Mike Shanahan, giving Jay Gruden the pass because he's the new guy and we all got a refreshing chuckle from his rebuttal of Griffin's "it takes 11 men" comments. Still, Gruden should be putting these fires out, not squirting butane all over them. Dropping a lid on Griffin's over-boiled drama could have kept Gruden out of the situation in which McCoy was his only starting option while preventing Griffin's future trade value from dropping to junk-bond status. And why is McCoy Gruden's only option? Did Kirk Cousins drive Gruden's car over a bridge? If the Redskins draft Jameis Winston next season (hope, hope, hope, hope, hope), Cousins is the best custodial quarterback to keep around, not McCoy. Cousins is younger (26 to 28), more gifted and already under contract. Four more evaluative starts for Cousins (whose trade value is also jammed in the garbage disposal) makes more sense than four more games of punishment for not being the savior to the savior that the District of Columbia hoped he would become. Here's a best-case scenario for Washington: Jerry Jones' infatuation with Griffin (He's like Tony Romo and Johnny Manziel combined!) and willingness to trade first-round picks for underperforming talent (Joey Galloway, Roy Williams) result in just enough compensation to get the Redskins out from beneath their underwater mortgage. Jones will only do this if he thinks the press will hail him as a genius for the move. So making this happen is at least partially on me. DO IT, JERRY. MAKE RG3 YOUR QUARTERBACK OF THE FUTURE. JIMMY JOHNSON AND BILL PARCELLS WOULD HAVE PULLED THE TRIGGER, SO DON'T BE A COWARD. Jay Cutler Griffin's 2015 trade value may be further dampened by Cutler's likely presence on the open market. Assuming the Bears seek the freshest possible start next year, Cutler will be priced to move by a team seeking both a new personality and cap relief. Cutler might only cost a potential suitor a second-round pick, some conditional change and some trade-and-sign debt consolidation. With the devil the NFL knows available relatively cheap, the devil the NFL hasn't figured out yet (Griffin) is not going to fetch a premium. Cutler would be flypaper for the Jets and Titans, though I can hold out hope for a Cutler-for-Griffin-and-Cousins challenge trade. Sam Bradford St. Louis beat Oakland 52-0 with the help of another efficient Shaun Hill game: 13-of-22 for 183 yards and two touchdowns, albeit in scrimmage-the-color-guard circumstances. Hill is no long-term solution, but the Rams have spent two seasons waiting in a holding pattern for a quarterback who doesn't do much to elevate them when healthy. Bradford enters the final season of a gut-buster contract next season; trading him would require some contractual voodoo, but the Rams could release him and swallow a medium-sized dead-money pill (about $3.5 million, says Over the Cap). The team will only part with Bradford reluctantly; the Rams appear content to hover below .500 and notch a few upsets per year until the moving vans arrive. But with so many youngsters developing, waiting another year for Bradford may just be wasting another year on Bradford. Imagine St. Louis drafting a quarterback in the first round and using Hill or Austin Davis as the stopgap. That doesn't look much different than the current Rams, does it? The only difference is that they are not spending eight figures on a player who will probably never provide a return on that investment. Playoff Spots for Sale Returns to the Pack Shoppers for home playoff tickets in cities from Denver to Philadelphia are celebrating on Cyber Monday: The Patriots lost to the Packers 26-21, and the Cardinals lost to the Falcons 29-18, refreshing the playoff-seeding races in both conferences. The two losses were very different. The Packers got brilliant Aaron Rodgers play and just enough timely defense (Ha Ha Clinton-Dix breaking up a Rob Gronkowski touchdown catch was not something you expected to see after Week 1) to hold off the Patriots on an icy afternoon in Wisconsin. It was a simple case of two great teams playing a close game, and it does not have many deep playoff implications for the Patriots, who still hold a tiebreaker over the Broncos. The Packers jockeyed into better position in the NFC, but most of us were expecting a late run anyway. The Arizona loss was a clear case of a team in freefall. Without Larry Fitzgerald, the Cardinals cannot move the football at all. Fitzgerald may return next week, but the team still lacks even the wisp of a running game, and Bruce Arians is running out of magic beans to feed Drew Stanton. The Seahawks are finding themselves, and there is sense that the NFC West is going to snap into a more familiar shape as Arizona faces a December gauntlet of Chiefs, at Rams, Seahawks, at Niners. After watching the 49ers on Thursday and the Chiefs on Sunday night, the Cardinals' best hope may be that other teams are fading faster than they are. The AFC North Cyber Monday brought a market correction to the AFC North, where lack of competition created serious record inflation. You may not want to buy into the playoff worthiness of the Ravens, Steelers and Browns, but you now have a better sense of their real value. The Chargers won a must-win game with the help of a little shaky officiating, a cameo from a fifth-string center and another Houdini-caliber quarterback performance from Philip Rivers. Rivers continues to throw passes that look like they are powered by a remote-control helicopter motor and can accelerate, slow down, climb or dive to elude the hands of defenders. Rivers' 383 passing yards, most of them accumulated while a half-dozen hands groped at his jersey, led the Chargers to a 34-33 victory that restored order to the AFC playoff picture. The Chargers are one of several AFC teams as good as or better than the AFC North teams that have fattened up on easy schedules. But the Chargers face the Patriots, Broncos, 49ers and Chiefs in the weeks to come. For now, they have an 8-4 record and head-to-head wild-card tiebreakers against the Ravens and Bills. The Bills also restored AFC order with their victory over the Browns. It is hard to picture Buffalo as a wild-card contender (as if picturing the Browns in the playoffs is easy), but its front four will make a believer out of you. Doug Marrone may have saved his job in the last two weeks, and it would be interesting to see what he could do with a quality quarterback who has the athleticism for his preferred uptempo system. Paging Robert Griffin or Jay Cutler! The Saints rode a Ben Roethlisberger hand injury and some poor play by the Steelers secondary to a 35-32 victory which was not nearly that close. It was an important win for the Bengals (who backed into the kind of 14-13 win against the Buccaneers that has inflated AFC North records all year) as well as all of the aforementioned Wild Cards. Like all of their division foes, the Steelers have deep flaws that better opponents can exploit. They have just faced a shortage of "better opponents." It was also an important win for the Saints, but writing about the NFC South is depressing. The North will still probably produce one Wild Card, maybe two. But Sunday may have taken us out of the territory where a last-place team will finish 10-6. That's appropriate, because these teams are not that good. The 49ers Thanksgiving could not have gone worse for the 49ers. Not only did their offense collapse into a series of three-yard passes in a 19-3 loss, but the Lions and Eagles won, resetting the NFC wild-card minimum bar at a likely 10 wins. The Packers' win on Sunday further separates the NFC leaders from the chase. The 49ers are seeking the magic prune juice and bran cereal diet that will uncork their offense. We can round up a long list of blockages—Colin Kaepernick, Jim Harbaugh, Greg Roman (the team's offensive philosophy still seems to change radically from series to series), Vernon Davis—but a pair of guys named Martin are a big part of the problem. Jonathan Martin, that holdover from a simpler time when obnoxious text messages were the biggest scandal the NFL had to cope with, has been playing in place of Anthony Davis at right tackle, and rarely well. Marcus Martin, whose 21st birthday was Saturday, has been starting at center for much of the season. Martin's youth makes him an excellent long-range prospect, but he is not ready to start for a Super Bowl contender. On top of some missed blocks, he sometimes surprises Kaepernick with a wild snap. San Francisco is young at several positions and made many bold transactions in the last two years. Balance Jonathan Martin with players like Anquan Boldin and Steve Johnson, or Marcus Martin with rookies like Chris Borland and Aaron Lynch, and general manager Trent Baalke has done a fine job acquiring talent on the cheap. It may not be the right collection of talent, however; too many veteran receivers, not enough reliable subs on the line. The imbalance might not have hurt the 49ers in many divisions, but it's killing them in the NFC West. The Cowboys Dallas will still make the playoffs. Bears and Redskins victories should get the team to 10 wins, a split with the Eagles and Colts to 11 and either reclamation of the NFC East or a safe wild-card slot. But if the Thanksgiving drubbing at the hands of the Eagles did not fill you with pessimism, Jerry Jones' signature postgame speechifying did. "We really stunk it up all the way around," he said on his weekly talk-radio fireside chat. "There's a lot of specific reasons for having that bad day. We didn't execute. We may not have played with the passion you would expect in a game like that. Don't ask me why. And I guess if you can't ask me, who can you ask?" THE COACH, JERRY. WE CAN ASK THE COACH FOR 31 OTHER TEAMS. THE COACH IS THE PERSON WHO EXPLAINS WHAT WENT WRONG. HIS NAME IS JASON GARRETT. HE'S THE RED-HEADED GUY WHO SITS IN THE BACK OF MEETINGS AND NODS. YOU SHOULD TRY TO DELEGATE A LITTLE BIT OF AUTHORITY TO HIM ONCE IN A WHILE. If you don't wish to ask Jones or that Garrett fellow what went wrong, you can ask me. The Cowboys' "new improved" defense has maxed out. Threaten it with no-huddle tactics and the kind of misdirection Chip Kelly loves, and individual defenders will get option-faked and pump-faked out of position. There's not enough pure talent on that side of the ball to win individual matchups and take a good offense out of its game plan. Offensively, Dallas has become over-reliant on 120 DeMarco Murray rushing yards per game and did not appear to have a plan when it fell behind early, perhaps because Jones did not create one and is not sure who else would. The Cowboys have now lost three straight games in Jerryworld, negating the significance of one of the team's sleeve aces (the victory over the Seahawks that could tilt home-field advantage Dallas' way). The team's search for easy playoff draws is narrowing: The Cardinals and Eagles beat them, while the Packers are in a higher weight class. Maybe Dallas can host the Lions or the 49ers. At any rate, we have come a long way in the six weeks since we were hailing Jones for assembling an outstanding offensive line. The Cowboys' offensive line really is outstanding, but it takes more than that to survive a full season as a legit contender. Coach Shopping Tom Coughlin Sunday's 25-24 loss to the Jaguars was the final Coughlin-era death rattle, so Giants fans who have called for Coughlin's head for eight years (not counting three-week vacations to celebrate Super Bowls) will soon get their wish. But Cyber Monday is about shopping, and Coughlin will not be hopping on the coaching carousel. He will be heading for a well-deserved retirement, which for him will probably mean an athletic director's position at a small Catholic college or something. None of Coughlin's assistants will be in great demand; after much ado, Ben McAdoo provided a handful of offensive highlights and zero consistency, so he will probably be reabsorbed into the Packers' hivemind. And Eli Manning will be the starting quarterback until the sun burns out. Sorry, Giants fans. Dave Gettleman and Ron Rivera The Panthers barely qualify as an NFL team after Sunday's 31-13 loss to the Vikings. Two blocked-punt touchdowns revealed a dry-rotted roster and a coaching staff that has run out of ways to spackle the most obvious cracks. Rivera will almost certainly take the fall for this season. He will have no problem getting a defensive coordinator gig next year, and he should get a second head coaching job down the line: He was dealt a no-win hand this year. His cutting-edge fourth-down strategies should earn him consideration for a specialized strategic role on a deep, creative coaching staff, like Coordinator of Keepin' it Real When the Rubber Meets the Road, Baby. John Fox could use a guy like that. Gettleman gets a lot of benefit of the doubt because a) he inherited an ugly cap situation at the start of 2013 and Jerry Richardson has his fingers in some of the more penny-wise, dollar-foolish decisions. After two offseasons, though, the tight-budget excuse no longer holds up. Sorry, but we were low on cap space, so we can no longer punt properly. The Panthers may need a smarter shopper, not just a thriftier one. Marc Trestman Let's lock this one in now: Trestman, quarterbacks coach, Cleveland Browns. Wouldn't it be great if he were the Manziel whisperer next year? Trestman could succeed as the offensive coordinator for a firebrand defensive coach, but if his true calling is not to teach deep philosophy to tipsy young megatalents (as Andy Reid once mumbled to Brett Favre), then he may be destined to be the official voice of the NFL for National Public Radio. Rex Ryan Ryan's Jets do not play until Monday night, but with his job insecurity becoming increasingly vindictive and nasty (no, you cannot talk about your ailing father, Coach), let's look ahead to the good times when Rex will once again entertain us as the NFL's Quipmaster General. Ryan seems like a booth natural, but that could easily backfire. Television networks would encourage him to be as goofy as possible, which could turn him into a second Tony Siragusa, which no one needs. Ryan would make an excellent coordinator, though while his ego could take it, his head coach's ego might not. Ryan would be a natural fit in Arizona if Todd Bowles leaves: He'd have the weapons to succeed, and Bruce Arians would not mind a little bluster. Mike Pettine would hire his former boss in Cleveland, but that would be just like having two Pettines, or two Ryans, on one staff. Ryan could really help an offensive mastermind who is having trouble putting his stamp on a roster, someone who needs both a strategist and a tone-setter to galvanize the identity of a struggling team. Jay Gruden! Look, you have your shopping list and I have mine. We all want outstanding football down the stretch, but my Santa wish list for the future is a stocking full of NFL narrative insanity! Stat of the day (from later in the column): the Rams scored 52 points and ran only 49 plays on offense. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
maqroll Posted December 2, 2014 Author Share Posted December 2, 2014 How shit is Oakland? At this point their fans might support a move back to LA! (which might actually happen) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tegis Posted December 2, 2014 VT Supporter Share Posted December 2, 2014 Geno Smith, what a player Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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