2019 NFL: News & Transactions

BigSoxFan

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May 31, 2007
47,083
Travel
Living across the ocean for half the year
Having no real fanbase
Being god knows how far away from family and friends
Higher taxes
They would get a fan base real quick if the NFL came to London. It’s not like LA Chargers have a fam base. I also think going to London would at least be a novelty at first. And most NFL players are scraping and clawing for a career. They’ll go wherever just for the opportunity. I’d also expect the league to make some kind of accommodation to deal with the tax issue.
 

Time to Mo Vaughn

RIP Dernell
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Mar 24, 2008
7,202
Travel
Living across the ocean for half the year
Having no real fanbase
Being god knows how far away from family and friends
Higher taxes
I really question how many of those would actually be major factors. I have to think that an NFL London team will do their entire preseason and minicamps all in the US, so the living in London aspect would really be from the beginning of September to the end of the year. I think two week road trips will be the worst part of the travel. If it's an east coast team, they'd have a max of 2 away games (facing AFC/NFC West) against west coast teams, so you'd do those in back to back weeks and you could even do them in weeks 1 and 2 coming off of preseason being held in the US.

Have we ever seen an NFL player not sign as a free agent because of distance from their friends and family or lack of fanbase? It's not like Tom Brady refused to play in New England because it's the farthest franchise from the Bay Area. Have any NFL draftees refused to play in Jacksonville, Tampa or Cincinnati because of their lack of fanbase?

The NFL could easily come up with a way to make adjustments for higher taxes for players in London, but there's also massive endorsement possibilities for players in London. The London metro area population is 14M people, smaller than only NYC (23.5M) and LA (18.7M) in the US, but as the only team in the UK you'd probably become the team of any fan in the UK and possibly other parts of the EU as well. THe UK has a population of 66M.

London is also a far nicer city to live in than 90% of NFL franchises.
 

moondog80

heart is two sizes two small
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Sep 20, 2005
8,091
So how do they realign the divisions if the Chargers go to London? Chargers in East, Dolphins to South, Colts to West?

EDIT: Discussed on previous page. Could also send the Texans to West.
 

Time to Mo Vaughn

RIP Dernell
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Mar 24, 2008
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DennyDoyle'sBoil

Found no thrill on Blueberry Hill
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A prominent member of the hot-take industrial complex confesses error:

https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2019/11/06/bill-polian-admits-i-was-wrong-about-lamar-jackson/
Our colleague SMU has it all over him.
It's remarkable how long the shadow cast by the Patriots is. A team beats them in prime time and it's such a powerful moment that assholes like Polian actually take it to heart and admit to being a little bit racist.

Seriously, though, it seems that he may actually be doing some self reflection about his thoughts about race, though the quote is a bit vague.
 

Papelbon's Poutine

Homeland Security
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Dec 4, 2005
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I’m failing to see anything racist there, I think by his comments he’s talking more about being a pocket passer as opposed to so mobile, but I’m open to having it explained to me.
 

SMU_Sox

queer eye for the next pats guy
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Jul 20, 2009
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Dallas
A prominent member of the hot-take industrial complex confesses error:

https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2019/11/06/bill-polian-admits-i-was-wrong-about-lamar-jackson/
Our colleague SMU has it all over him.
Lamar is inevitably going to have some rough patches as the league adjusts to what they are doing. But he has to his advantage that what they are doing is somewhat unique as an every down offense in the NFL. When he felt pressure he made mistakes. In a different game or in a rematch I could see them changing strategies and executing better at home with better refs (or any combination of those and more) and making Lamar look like a red-shirt freshman at QB.

He made some tremendous throws. Style points for the sidearm one. He has a lot of room to grow as a passer which is scary but there’s no guarantee he gets there.

I hate Harbough as a fan but he’s a good coach and he put together a good staff. I hope for Lamar’s sake that Greg Roman stays. Designing an offense around Lamar and what he does well was something we discussed here. They did that. It sucks that it’s the freaking Ravens because this is a damn exciting offense to watch.

Now that I’m done washing their balls if there is a rematch at home Pats are going to win. This is the regular season Steelers game in 2004.
 

E5 Yaz

Transcends message boarding
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Mitch Trubinsky is sad.
In oh so many ways

LAKE FOREST, Ill. -- Bears quarterback Mitchell Trubisky wants televisions turned off inside Halas Hall to insulate the struggling team from outside criticism.
"Trying to get some of these TVs in the building turned off because you've got too many people talking on TV about us and what they think about us -- what we should do, what we are and what we're not," Trubisky said before Wednesday's practice. "But they don't really know who we are, or what we're capable of as people, or what we're going through, or what we're thinking. It's just the outside viewers looking in."
https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/28023135/bears-mitchell-trubisky-wants-halas-hall-tvs-shield-criticism
 

DennyDoyle'sBoil

Found no thrill on Blueberry Hill
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Sep 9, 2008
42,271
AZ
I’m failing to see anything racist there, I think by his comments he’s talking more about being a pocket passer as opposed to so mobile, but I’m open to having it explained to me.
I was using the implication in the article as a springboard for my joke. Mostly. But when your evaluation is to put four white QBs ahead of a black QBs, and suggest the black one should play receiver instead, the idea that there aren’t some stereotypes baked in to your “old” way of thinking isn’t really much of a stretch. And when you admit to “old” thinking like Pollian, to his credit, does, it is not a stretch to also think, or at least hope, that maybe he now realizes that style of play might not have been the only thing embedded in his “old” way of thinking.

My post was obviously a bit tongue in cheek, but I bet there is some level on which at least some of these old dinosaurs are starting to realize that talent is talent. Obviously, I have no idea of Polian’s actual view of race and player evaluation other than this vague quote.

The truth is this, even in 2019. If the next hall of fame center out there in college is black, at least half the league will whiff on evaluating him. Maybe now Pollian has realized that saying he should move to guard is more than just about football.
 

( . ) ( . ) and (_!_)

T&A
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Feb 9, 2010
5,302
Providence, RI
Lamar is inevitably going to have some rough patches as the league adjusts to what they are doing. But he has to his advantage that what they are doing is somewhat unique as an every down offense in the NFL. When he felt pressure he made mistakes. In a different game or in a rematch I could see them changing strategies and executing better at home with better refs (or any combination of those and more) and making Lamar look like a red-shirt freshman at QB.

He made some tremendous throws. Style points for the sidearm one. He has a lot of room to grow as a passer which is scary but there’s no guarantee he gets there.

I hate Harbough as a fan but he’s a good coach and he put together a good staff. I hope for Lamar’s sake that Greg Roman stays. Designing an offense around Lamar and what he does well was something we discussed here. They did that. It sucks that it’s the freaking Ravens because this is a damn exciting offense to watch.

Now that I’m done washing their balls if there is a rematch at home Pats are going to win. This is the regular season Steelers game in 2004.
I have a hypothesis about the opportunity for long term success of extremely athletic, mobile QBs in today's NFL vs. yesterday's NFL that I don't know how to test. I think back to the historical examples of QBs that were not pocket passers that the media hype machine suggested were going to redefine the position. Michael Vick would be an example from the '00s or Kordell Stewart (Slash) in the '90s. Both were supremely gifted athletes who were threats to score from anywhere on the field with their legs. But I think it's also fair to say that both were not gifted passers. When Vick and Slash came on to the scene I recall a lot of similar commentary to what we here about Jackson today.... going to revolutionize the game, QB of the future, etc...

While those two guys had there moments of success in the NFL and we've seen other QBs besides Jackson in a similar mold but the pocket passer still persists.

What I'm curious about as a factor towards Jackson having more sustained success as a run first QB than previous guys is the affect of playing on better playing surfaces. In the 90's teams played on grass, unless you were at one of the few domed stadiums. As the season wore on the grass got shitty in most NFL cities and in cities with snow the grass got extremely shitty. But now we have more stadiums with roofs and most teams in bad weather cities with outdoor stadiums play on super advanced field turf and some type of heating element to keep it from getting frozen. There is still risk of having to play a game in December or January in New England with 6 inches of snow on the field. But chances are your outdoor game in January is going to be played on a perfect, unfrozen playing surface. While previously you'd be playing on dead frozen grass or frozen dirt that was painted green. I suspect that the impact to a player's speed, agility, athleticism from a poor playing surface is not perfectly correlated to their overall athleticism. In simple terms, I think slow players are likely to be pretty much just as slow on a good or bad field while faster players are going to be significantly slower on a bad field.

There may be other factors that prevent Jackson from having sustained success in the NFL, like injury or defenses adjusting to how they play him. But I really do wonder if he is better setup for success then mobile QBs that came before because he is likely to play on a pristine field significantly more often.

(thank you for reading my long winded, mid-day Friday rambling)
 

johnmd20

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He's always been rather erratic, even going back to his days at the U. Probably was doing roids at the U too.
So that means it's less like CTE and more likely he's just a bad human. This stuff he did is pretty bad and it did it over and over. I know CTE is a brutal, ugly thing but it doesn't turn people into rapists.
 

johnmd20

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Why would Snyder sell? He obviously doesn’t care about what the fan base thinks.
He has absolutely no reason to sell. The only way the Skins are moved is if the NFL somehow forces a sale for the good of the league. Which has about a 0% chance of happening.
 

RedOctober3829

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Jul 19, 2005
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deep inside Guido territory
Looks like Pats-Bills in Week 16 is going to be flexed to Saturday 12/21 mid-afternoon per Mike Reiss. Time slots are 1, 4:30, and 8:00. Most likely the Saturday games will be Texans-Bucs, Bills-Pats, and Rams-49ers but I could be wrong.
 

axx

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Jul 16, 2005
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Looks like Pats-Bills in Week 16 is going to be flexed to Saturday 12/21 mid-afternoon per Mike Reiss. Time slots are 1, 4:30, and 8:00. Most likely the Saturday games will be Texans-Bucs, Bills-Pats, and Rams-49ers but I could be wrong.
Hopefully it'll be one of the day games. Sucks for people outside of Boston that don't get NFL Network.
 

E5 Yaz

Transcends message boarding
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Daniel Jones trademarking "Danny Dimes" to stop merchandisers from profiting off his nickname