The NFL 2018 Season

I know I have harped on this a lot, maybe not here.

But they cut veteran kicker Kai Forbath, who missed 6 FG all year 2017, with 3 of those six coming 50+ yards. They kind of deserved this.

Also, it made me mad because he has been my dynasty league kicker for a while, and I was forced to have to drop a kicker and find a new one, which was more effort than I wanted to deal with for a kicker.

Still shenanigans going on with Josh Gordon. Because he’s a vested vet his release would not send him to waivers, but leave him as an unrestricted free agent able to sign anywhere. As a result there’s still some value to just outright trading for him, so the Pats are apparently on the phones with the Browns right now trying to work out a deal.

Edit : Annnnd, it’s done… Conditional 5th round pick. That’s a bargain for 2013 Josh Gordon, if anyone knows where that guy is.

Edit2 : The Pats send the Browns a 2019 5th round pick for Gordon and they get back a 2019 7th round pick if Gordon isn’t active for at least 10 games.

Yep, drafting Carlson was dumb in the first place. Forbath was fine.

I agree with one of the takes I heard on local radio earlier today. Drafting a kicker is dumb in the first place because draft picks are a limited resource and that’s a poor use of them, yes, but even moreso because it makes management beholden to the idea of rostering the guy even if there are plenty of just-as-good-if-not-better options freely available.

Glad the Vikings cut bait and did the right thing though. Good lord, what a shitshow.

Two questions: when do we cut bait on Devonte Parker?

Do we beat the Raiders next week? Early game, Raiders travel to East Coast. I say, Dolphins win.

I did not grow up on football but learned to really appreciate the NFL and became quite the fan. But the last 5 years my interest has dropped to nearly zero. I still love the sport but I can no longer tolerate the league. The rules on defenseless players, who can get tacked and how, etc. have all created a mess of rules that can be applied depending on how the referees feel. The game has become unbelievably and unmanageably subjective.

I have no dog in this fight as I no longer watch the sport but I saw something about it earlier today on ESPN and read about it. I have no idea how that is a penalty. I have no idea how anyone can conceivably think that is a penalty unless the rule is two-hand touch only for QBs.

The NFL has really run this sport into the ground. By trying to manage head trauma they have created a sport that is so inconsistent that I fail to see how players and fans can understand the rules.

The idea is, to stop 2 things.

  1. Defenders landing purposely with their full body weight on a player, rather than rolling off or to the side (this is very difficult to enforce, as physics are pretty much set in stone).

  2. Preventing defenders from lifting and driving a player into the ground with their sholders, like a bit of a wrestling power-slam style move.

Clearly Clay Matthews did not land with this full body weight on Cousins, he was trying to follow the rules of not landing directly on him, and rolled off quickly.

They say that he purposely lifted and drove Cousins into the turf, and watching that at game speed, maybe you could see that, but seeing it slowed down, it is pretty clear he was trying to make a clean tackle.

https://twitter.com/OllieConnolly/status/1041417898831605760

Point out the lifting there to me?

That was a really clean tackle, where you can see he is purposely putting his hands out to land on his own hands than on the QB’s midsection. (left arm goes down to catch his fall)

Woof that was a bad call, and reversed a game-ending (likely) interception.

And the worst part of the call is that Matthews appears to be changing his tackling to accomodate the rule, and is still being called. This was a bad call for an iffy rule.

Took me a while to find it, but here was a hit earlier in the game that was called against MN.

Same issue, “lifting” It definitely looks worse than the Matthews sack, as his feet leave the ground after contact, but stilll… pretty iffy. You can see a bit of lifting and slamming motion, but it is very light.

Well, I’m not picking the Dolphins in the loser league. Any sort of sustained ground game seems to wear them out by the 4th quarter.

This is the lifting/slamming of QB’s they are trying to avoid.

Very different.

It’s a trash rule that no one, including the refs, have any real guidance on how to call it.

It’s a complete failure by the NFL. In the couple games I have watched, I have seen enough bad roughing the passer calls that I honestly can’t even count them. 5? 10?

I mean, as a fan everyone is going to get up in arms when it screws their team, but it is clearly just a cluster across the whole league.

Yeah, that reminds me. I need to challenge @marquac to a “Compton-Overtown Throw Down.” I hereby wager that the Dolphins will beat the Raiders. If the Raiders win I have to use this avatar for exactly one week.

If the Dolphins win, he has to use this Avatar for a week:

What say you, @marquac ? Do you accept the Throw Down?

I concede.

No no, don’t concede, let’s make it official next Sunday and whatnot. Otherwise it’s not a throwdown…it does become you as an avatar, though.

and if you win and have a better preference of NWA avatar for me, by all means choose it.

The Raiders are not good at all. Apparently they are already going to fire the GM at the end of the season since he and Gruden don’t get along. I see no reason to fight the good fight. :)

We can all hope that this is a learning period, and the refs are using an abundance of caution when making those calls, but I would expect these calls to be scaled back as the season progresses. That Matthews call was wrong, the previous call in the game was more iffy, but still wrong.

At least in the Packers/Vikings game they were “consistent” even though the Matthews call reversed a game-ending play, and the previous call just extended a typical drive on the offense.

Six years on and I am still salty about the refs and an OPI non-call…

This is Josh Gordon’s back ink. It’s just a guess mind you, but I think the chances of him getting the No. 12 jersey in New England are somewhat slim.

josh-gordon-back-tattoo-4

No, no, fight the fight. We are the Dolphins, you know. In any case it’s inappropriate to put on your Uncle Luke Mask before the loss. In the meantime, just listen to this:

Miami is so damn classy.

The quarterback no-hitting rules aren’t about head trauma, they’re about the fact that they made the league so offense and - more importantly - pass heavy that a quarterback getting injured in most cases is an automatic season ender for the whole team. Just ask any Packers fan what they thought when Rodgers was getting carted off in the first game.

You can have the best running back and running game in history and you can’t compete with even an above average quarterback’s ability to throw two touchdowns in the last five minutes of the fourth quarter. Which happens multiple times every week nowadays.

Is anyone really surprised that the roughing-the-passer call is too confusing now?

We still don’t know what a catch is.

@Navaronegun and @marquac: What if there is tie? It’s been known to happen… can I choose the avatars in that eventuality?