THE NFL 2017 Season

Does that LA Chargers stadium even have that many sections?!

No, that doesn’t even look like a StubHub Center seating chart.

This is why the Browns fail. Not even their fans can dot their i’s and cross their t’s.

Decades of futility rub off.

Gronk suspended for a game for the late hit. It’s deserved. It was really uncalled for and he could have hurt the player.

Good one. I also liked when Good Morning Football called him McA-doo-doo.

The Josh Freeman Experience in Minnesota a few years back was incredible.

The NFL needs to do something about the Steelers/Bengals. There are rivalries and then there are these two. They’re thisclose to murdering each other on the field.

Ryan Shazier was carted off the field and sent to the hospital with a pretty terrifying injury. The fact that the Steelers wouldn’t provide any updates until after the game says a lot.

Burfict was also lit up, and Ju Ju Smith-Shuster got flagged for immediately taunting him while he was on the ground. They strapped him to the backboard to carry him off the field.

Personal fouls aplenty. Bewildering plays by the Bengals (at one point, Leveon Bell was running toward the en zone and a Bengals player literally stood still as he ran by; Bell scored). And, in a quintessential Bengals way, they choke up a decent lead at home to lose at the last second.

That game last night felt about the same as when I was a kid, and saw the Larry Holmes/Tex Cobb “boxing match”. It was one of those things where I was like “I’m not sure I should watch any more of this.”

They need to impose harsher penalties for using the helmet like a weapon. Don’t stop with the players. Hit the organization too with penalties. Maybe too many flagrant fouls in a season and the team loses a draft pick. The more the fouls pile up, the higher the pick they lose.

The NFL needs a cultural change. They need players, coaches, and management to buy into the idea that the game is too dangerous and they need to change some practices. They can design better helmets but the brain is still going to bounce around inside the skull like a ping-pong ball.

But the NFL is effectively managed by a committee of owners, and they would never vote for that. They do tend to agree on penalties during play to affect the game, or personal fouls on a player affecting a player. What few team actions are decided upon by the league itself, not left to the declaration by officials.

I know. I’m surprised the league office ever gets to do anything like take away a draft choice as they have done in the past. Jerry Jones is trying to get rid of Goodell because he suspended his star running back. The owners have the power.

I agree. And I have a feeling Jerry is going to win out. Especially so after what happened to their team post suspension. Goodell has had his share of issues though, so if he does get pushed out, it’s not just over a one-issue thing.

Three was some unnecessary nastiness out there but I didn’t see the Shazier injury. Was that due to an act of malice?

And I thought the crack back block by Ju Ju looked ok at first glance, was there helmet to helmet impact to cause the flag? I do agree with the taunting call afterward.

Nope, just happened in the act of tackling, as I recall.

There was helmet-to-helmet, but I don’t think Smith-Schuster was headhunting or anything. He led with his shoulder to Burfict’s chest, and in the act of delivering the hit, his helmet hit Burfict’s. The taunting call is definitely the right one, and Juju could have done more to ensure it was a clean hit, but it didn’t look to me like he was trying to be dirty.

Given that the rule says the ball can’t be moving toward the goal line, the players’ reference frame doesn’t matter, but it’s still a fun practical physics demonstration.

Now consider the case where Russell Wilson is relativistically fast…

Of course it doesn’t matter. Still funny, though.

I know they’re so risky, but I wish there were more opportunistic laterals in football.