The NFL 2018 Season

Always impressed by NBC’s commitment to innovation in terrible football broadcasting.

And yet still head and shoulders above MNF broadcasting.

Packers are pretty much done. They only have a 3% chance of the playoffs after this loss.

So I witnessed a pet peeve of mine in this game. In the 4th quarter, after the Vikings recovered a muffed punt, they get stuffed on a run on 1st down. They are up by 10 and there’s 4 or 5 minutes on the clock. So on 2nd down they snap the ball with 12 seconds left on the clock. Why? Why not run off another 10 seconds? They are up by 2 scores with under 5 minutes left, run the clock down as much as possible on each play.

The other weird thing they did was go for it on 4th and 2 inside the Green Bay’s 20 instead of kicking the FG to go up by 13. They didn’t make it and now GB needs just the TD and FG to tie rather than 2 TDs. Odd choice.

I once read that the only team that waits till the last second to snap was Pittsburgh, and their win % in those situations was ridiculously high. It’s a wonder why other teams don’t follow.

Packers may be long term done. McCarthy wasted many (and perhaps nearly all) of Rodgers’s best years, and the team clearly is uninspired.

Meanwhile, Rodgers’s play has clearly slipped this season - he’s missing people, missing open receivers, etc.

Finally, all of this is happening in an era where the formula for winning may be the good enough young QB on the small contract with a mega-team around him, the exact opposite of what Green Bay now has.

Rodgers’s contract isn’t going away. If he is mediocre or even merely good from here on out, this team is going nowhere for 5-6 years.

A QB like Rodgers is still a better bet than a rookie QB. You get a HOF QB you pay him and do your best to build the team around him. Otherwise you risk becoming a team that drafts QB after QB looking for that franchise QB. The Vikings paid a ton for their winning QB tonight too. They drafted Ponder and Bridgewater in the 1st and traded away a 1st for Bradford. That’s 3 first round picks trying to find a QB. It’s easy to say just draft a rookie and get a cheap contract, but it’s not that easy to find that rookie.

Unless tactics change and teams figure out how to win by devaluing the pass. Maybe that’s an avenue available. I’d say with the rule changes that make it even more difficult for defenses, that may be tough. The current rules boost the pass game. Teams that take advantage of that will be tough to beat.

Well the good news is that you still haven’t seen that. Just a glitch in whatever scoring app you were using.

Of course we all predicted that, after 11 games, the Cleveland Browns and Green Bay Packers would have exactly the same record. Right?

Aww, that’s unfortunate.

Rodgers hasn’t been “great” since 2014.

He’s been falling off ever since.

It was a bold move to draft Mayfield, but it looks like the right one. Cleveland may finally have gotten one right!

It’s looking as if they got pretty much the entire draft right. Mayfield, Chubb and Ward have all been multiple Rookies of the Week. If they have another draft as good, they will be serious contenders.

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But paying some like Rodgers means you can’t afford nearly as much to build a team around him. And you’d better guess right, because if you grab the wrong QB in years 1-4, it sucks, but you reload. With a guy like Rodgers, you’re jammed for years if he falls off.

The Vikings with Cousins are admittedly better than the Packers right now, but are they noticeably better than last year without Cousins right now at 6-4-1?

I love Rodgers, but the NFL seems to be going the way of Goff and Mahomes right now, or at worst, teams like the Patriots who have an older star QB, but taking a lower salary to help the team.

Drew Brees admittedly seems an exception right now.

I mean, he was MVP that season, so any non-MVP year is “falling off”

This year, in a “bad” year he is still in the top 10 for QB rating.

This year has been an enigma, but if I were to look at the organization as a whole, and have the choice between trusting in Aaron Rodgers or Mike McCarthy, I am taking Aaron 11 times out of 10.

I would make the case that he is the only reason the packers have been good under McCarthy, and until the last 2 years he has been able to carry McCarthy’s bad play calls and personnel decisions on his back. The collarbone injury, the knee injury, and 2 more years of aging have made it impossible for Rodger’s heroics to cover for McCarthy’s mistakes.

Also, if you are one of the other 31 teams in the NFL, please think that Rodgers is washed up, and lay off the pass rush, he is going to miss those passes anyway right? Don’t need to prepare super hard to play against this guy.

The one kid has had a good season (other than last night when hoo boy was he not ready for Thielen) but the rest of the Packers secondary looks like a scout team. I don’t know that you can win in the NFL without being able to cover good opposing receivers at least some of the time.

That’s the Redskins’ secondary scheme (checks record)… oh, yeah, you’re right.

Hue Jackson as the Bengals head coach next season would literally be the dumbest, most ridiculous, most Bengal-like thing the Bengals could possibly do.

Which is why there is a 99% chance they’ll do it.

But they are missing a prime PR opportunity to turn this around. What if they subbed in Hugh Jackman as head coach and were like, “sorry, autocorrect was off.” They’d be shoe ins for the Super Bowl.

** Trying to make light of it. I know it sucks if you’re a Bengals fan.

The Mayfield - Jackson beef is both fresh and delicious. You’d have to be crazy dysfunctional to hire him, my goodness.