NFL Notes:
- Teammate poison Golden Tate THE THIRD! has been released by the Giants.
- Combined with cutting OL David Mayo, the Giants will save $8.4 million against the cap.
- In another example of life imitating [DFO], Jalen Ramsey reports Deshaun Watson is still intent on leaving the Texans.
- It does help that they both have the same agent.
- Said Ramsey on a podcast – “I highly doubt he will suit up in a Texans’ uniform again. He’s extremely serious.”
- It does help that they both have the same agent.
- There’s a Rules Committee meeting coming up, so let’s see what wacky things are being floated this year:
- League proposals:
- Roughing the passer might be available for replay review.
- They are considering going back to sudden death, first-score overtime.
- The fourth-and-fifteen onside kick option is back on the table.
- Team proposals:
- Bills:
- They have proposed a requirement for all teams to wait to start the interview process for vacancies (head coach and GM chief among them) until at least the conference championship round and delay hirings until after the Super Bowl.
- It’s an attempt to shore up the Rooney Rule.
- No senior staff from any of the four Conference Championship teams got a Head Coach interview.
- Todd Bowles and Eric Bieniemy are the prime examples.
- No senior staff from any of the four Conference Championship teams got a Head Coach interview.
- It’s an attempt to shore up the Rooney Rule.
- They have proposed a requirement for all teams to wait to start the interview process for vacancies (head coach and GM chief among them) until at least the conference championship round and delay hirings until after the Super Bowl.
- Ravens:
- They are the proponents of returning to sudden-death overtime, but with a caveat to the coin toss.
- After the toss, one team picks the spot of the ball to start overtime, and the other team chooses whether to play offense or defense.
- So, If the one team picks, for example, the offense’s own 20 yard line, the opponent would then choose whether to play offense from their own 20 or to play defense, with the other team having the ball on its own 20.
- In essence, the “spot and choose” approach replaces chance with strategy.
- After the toss, one team picks the spot of the ball to start overtime, and the other team chooses whether to play offense or defense.
- They are the proponents of returning to sudden-death overtime, but with a caveat to the coin toss.
- Bills:
- League proposals:
- To remind you that the world is still a terrible place, Kellen Winslow THE SECOND! got a 14-year prison sentence yesterday.
- It was for multiple rapes and other sexual offenses against five women in Southern California, including one who was homeless when he attacked her in 2018.
- Specifically, forcible rape, rape of an unconscious person, assault with intent to commit rape, indecent exposure and lewd conduct in public.
- The 14-year-sentence was the maximum allowed under a plea deal.
- His lawyer raised CTE as a mitigating factor in his ability to restrain his behaviour.
- The sexual battery charge was reduced to assault with intent to commit rape, and that’s why it’s only a maximum of 14 years.
- It was for multiple rapes and other sexual offenses against five women in Southern California, including one who was homeless when he attacked her in 2018.
Tonight’s sports:
- NHL:
- Philadelphia vs Pittsburgh – 7:00pm | Sportsnet
- NBA:
- Toronto vs Boston – 7:00pm | TSN
- LA Clippers vs Washington – 7:00pm | Sportsnet1
- Detroit vs New York – 7:30pm | ESPN
- Miami vs New Orleans – 8:30pm | TNT
- Golden State vs Phoenix – 10:00pm | Sportsnet1
- NCAA:
- Michigan State at Michigan – 7:00pm | ESPN
- Louisville at Virginia Tech – 7:00pm | ESPN2
- Texas at Oklahoma – 9:00pm | ESPN2
- Arizona State at Colorado – 9:00pm | ESPN2
- Wyoming at Utah State – 9:30pm | FS1
Since this is it for me until the weekend, I just want to say “thanks” again to Balls for “Temptation Tuesdays” & Joliet Jake for his “Wrasslin’ Wednesdays”. Not having to do Open Threads every day, at least right now, helps keep me motivated to participate while I also adjust to being back at work. The six days/week can sometimes be a chore during the offseason, so any help is appreciated.
She seems nice.
Pretty high but just saw this,
Both dogs right?
Yes (in that you are pretty high)
Litre (artist’s concept)
So…would the peanut butter thing still be gross??
Gay, but not gross.
I thought Goofy was a hippo
“American South through 1865”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PA-mYIDJ2Hw
So, yoga that the proceeds goes to an animal rescue while buzzed feels real good. Better after as I smoked a hash bowl and poured a glass of red! All loosie goosie and shit.
Just give them money. The dogs don’t care what you do with your body.
Dude, you sis suggested it and my back and hammys feel great. Win-win.
Of course. You gotta stay on it. There’s a time coming when your boy can beat your ass. And mine. Our job is to delay it.
Thats why dogs are awesome. They don’t judge.
My dog does. But I own him and control the food so he pretends not to.
Unless you go for the peanut butter twice in an afternoon.
Need to start doing yoga as I’ve got zero flexibility
Free advice: Don’t approach the lady yoga teacher and ask if you can do it with her doggy-style. She might get slappy.
NOW you tell me.
Ok, but if you fart during a yoga session, it’s considered a compliment to the instructor, right?
Especially in Brazil.
I hate when I get Mayo on my Tate
Very belated film recommendation: finally got around to watching The Prestige this week. I really liked it more than I expected. Not incredibly deep, but a fun twisty drama.
Bowie-as-Tesla worked surprisingly well.
I actually didn’t realize it until the credits.
Teammate poison Golden Tate THE THIRD! has been released by the Giants.
Golden? Mayo? This is just begging for some kind of condiments joke.
I don’t know about that, but around the corner fudge is made.
Bravo, my dear sir! This is the insightful, elevated discourse I come here for!
Please, the expression is “cut the mustard,” not the mayo. Geez, Giants, get with the program.
/frantically scribbles “condiments mock draft” in notebook
//next week has a mock draft about condoms because my handwriting sucks
I GET SPERMICIDAL LUBRICANT FOR FIRST PICK I CALLED IT
Sounds like the Giants are playing catchup.
I relish these jokes
Personally, I don’t think they cut the mustard.
Damn it. He already said it. Ich bin ein sauer kraut.
It’s ok, I’ve seen Worcestershire
What a bunch of pest-os
I really liked that. I would not have thought of Worcestershire. Now it seems soy obvious.
Shit you beat me to the sack punch
I am a bottle of red in, smoked some nice hash wile bbqing, eating cheese and then my wife says we have yoga for a dog rescue tonight. Jesus fuck.
I plan to drink wine during breaks.
Maybe an edible now too. Here we go!
Aussie Cab, Moroccan Hash, Canadian edible fyi
Too good for my homegrown are you? Should’ve named it. “Dick’s Back Yard”. Sounds tasty, no?
/Buddy Cole has entered the chat
Ugh. You’re doing yoga now? She’s really got your balls in her top drawer eh?
I am broken. My back and hammys are so fucked I will try anything.
Stoned and buzzed yoga is A OK!!
I’m not sure that yoga is going to help those dogs.
The dogs love the “Downward Person” pose.
found a funny:
when i donate my body to science they will be like wow. i do not want this.
Me: “Oh, about 4 pounds of pork shoulder should do.”
Butcher takes out a piece, scale reads 6.5 lbs., starts to put it back
Me: “It’s ok, we’re good. Too much pork never hurt any… well, actually it probably has caused many heart attacks. But I’ll take my chances.”
With all of Bienemy’s success, is it possible he’s just a shit interview? Does he have a well known but hidden gambling problem?
Bowles should be hired soon. He’s a defensive coach though so that’s a knock right now. But he won 10 games with the Jets. That’s like those moms who lift cars off their kids after an accident.
Well, I think the NFL rumor mill is that he “hasn’t done well in interviews.” But that doesn’t tell us much. Because it could be that yes, he is objectively bad at interviews. But it could also be that NFL owners decide that he interviewed poorly because he doesn’t fit their view of what a coach should look and sound like, while Generic White Coach, Jr. really impressed, and besides, I knew old GWC Sr. and he was a helluva guy…
I’m not a big believer in interviews as a great tool for screening out candidates. I’ve spend some time on both sides of the interview desk, and the ones that “went well” were often just because the other person happened to have a similar background or hobby to me and we could shoot the shit for a while instead of just reciting the standard interview crap.
I didn’t know about the standard line about him with interviews. Just my guess. But lots of teams have hired black coaches. Not a huge percentage as we know but Romeo was coaching in Houston and they went elsewhere. Bowles was a head coach. Some very successful teams have long term black coaches. I just don’t see how a team could ignore his success if there wasn’t something else there.
I agree with the interview weakness you say there. If someone likes me I can get a job because they like me. It’s why I have a good job now. I’ve been in interviews with people who don’t interview well and get it because the people hiring know their previous boss and get a recommendation. To just assume outright racism seems extreme to me. Surely there are some owners who might be but without knowing them I don’t think it’s fair to judge their values from afar.
I’m not assuming “outright racism,” at least not in the sense of “I hate black people so I won’t hire Bienemy.” I’m assuming subconscious bias, in the form of “yeah, he just didn’t impress me in the interview, not sure why.” Which there’s an entire body of scientific research supporting, so it’s not really a big leap, even before factoring in that NFL owners are probably a little more old-school and sheltered than the average employer.
As to a lot of teams hiring black coaches, well, yes, there’s been some. But statistically speaking they hire well below even the percentage of black people in America, let alone the percentage of black people in the world of professional football. So there’s clearly something going on there. It’s possible that it’s a “pipeline problem,” and that the issue is at the college and coordinator level, where not enough guys get those opportunities early enough to move up the ranks to even be considered for a head coaching job. It could be a lot of things. But there’s a huge middle ground between “NFL owners never hire black people because they’re all consciously racist,” which I agree you have conclusively disproven, and “there’s no racial discrimination at all in NFL hiring,” which I hope you aren’t saying.
No I see what you’re saying about subconscious bias. I have some issues with scientific research claiming to prove biases which the subject isn’t even conscious of but that’s another topic. It’s a soft science at best. I do agree there very much is a possibility of owners having a vision of Tom Landry in their heads when they hire a guy and that influencing things for sure. Like Hank Hill owning the cowboys.
At this point I would murder a slew of hobos if it meant Hank Hill could take over as owner of the Cowboys.
Oh fuck no. There’s absolutely racial discrimination in NFL hiring. And anywhere else hiring as well, but this is a dick-joke and football blog, so I am sorry but I am not prepared to address the problems of society as a whole at this particular moment.
I finally started my first drink of the day, so I should be back in dick joke mode soon.
I’ll get back to light Dick jokes too. I had the day off so I’m 10 or 15 drinks in. And I don’t think it’s right to say a man isn’t a man unless you know him or will say it to him. To duck jokes.
There’s a reason Andy Reid thinks of him as family.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Bieniemy#Legal_issues
None of that stuff is exactly recent, and a lot of it would at one time have been dismissed as stupid kid stuff, but not these days. There’s also a perception, fairly or not, that Bienemy is the offensive coordinator on a team with an offensive genius for a Head Coach. And being busy through the AFC Championship or later the last 3 years running doesn’t help.
I actually don’t buy that Bienemy doesn’t have a job because he’s Black; I think an NFL team would hire a gay trans midget if they could coach them to a Super Bowl. But I do think race will play a role in his getting fired faster and not rehired sooner than a typical failson white coach. /glares in shanahan
Precisely. These are the kinds of things that maybe a white coach gets more of a pass for (especially if so-and-so knows his daddy, etc). I do think it’s more “old boy network” bullshit than straight raycess-ism at this point.
I do think it’s more “old boy network” bullshit than straight raycess-ism at this point.
/nods in Barry Switzer
I hadn’t heard of that stuff. It’s a bit grimy but not the worst.
The issue I have is you say you believe race played a role but why do you think that without knowing the people who made the decisions? I think that’s a serious accusation to make without any idea of why those choices were made. I don’t know anything about why they were and if I were them I would be insulted to have people assume I made the decision out of hate or intolerance or any other ugliness of that sort.
“I think an NFL team would hire a gay trans midget if they could coach them to a Super Bowl”
Well, sure, but that’s not how racial discrimination usually works. Hardly anybody ever says “I’m not going to hire the best person, because I don’t like gay trans midgets.” They say, “I’d be delighted to hire a gay trans midget, it’s just that this particular one isn’t the best person for the job.” And sometimes — many times — they’ll be right. It could be that Bienemy is a terrible head coaching candidate, and that when he eventually gets hired somewhere, we’ll all end up mocking what a shitty coach he is. It’s hard to draw conclusions about one guy.
But just remember this: the world of professional football spent DECADES believing that blacks just wouldn’t make good quarterbacks. And I think for most of them, it was probably a sincere belief. They weren’t refusing to win Super Bowls; quite the opposite — they truly thought that your best shot of winning a Super Bowl was to move that black college QB to wide receiver and start the white QB.
I was hoping to make a point about the CFL and black QBs (non-Warren Moon category) but the first in the CFL was only 17 years before the NFL, per the internet.
Well, and he kind of proves the point, doesn’t it? The NFL clearly blew it there, and I don’t think it’s because they didn’t want a great QB. It’s not just race, either — I think the NFL clearly overlooked Doug Flutie because they didn’t believe someone his height could be a quality NFL QB. The CFL is a little hungrier for talent, so they take fliers on guys the NFL won’t.
Moon is an excellent example of pure racist decision-making, because there is no way, with his credentials coming out of college, that he should have had to go play QB in Canada, and even less reason that he should have had to stay there, (no slight to Canada, you’re all lovely people), for as long as he did.
We all know what the cfl is. It’s still good football and the grey cup is a way better party than the super bowl.
You’ll thank us for the rouge when it comes to the nfl in 5 years.
I’ve always thought the CFL had the better rules, the NFL the better talent (duh).
Yes. The freak athletes are in the nfl. That’s a special thing. We had cam wake for a couple years. Maybe one. But guys like JJ watt and Donald and all those 6’6” 290 lb freaks who run 4.6 don’t slip through the cracks. We get 5’10” linebackers who can play but will get run over by NFL running backs
But you’d get surprised how many major college conference all stars get embarrassed up here. It’s still a pro league
Yeah I consider the two together sort of. But if Moon were white he’d have gone to the NFL. 6’3” 220. At that time you could call true racism. That was the best thing the cfl did was show the nfl he could play. Only took 5 grey cups. Or so.
Funny it took longer to convince them about short guys. I don’t trust them, either.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bfyS-S-IJs
Randy Newman was a troll genius before we knew what trolling was.
Haha. At least you’re the last one to get wet when it rains
Well, height is a definite advantage at QB, as in many positions in sports. It’s just not as dispositive as some teams pretended it was.
In hockey, every team wants to draft the 6-footers. And sure, all things considered, you’d prefer the taller guy. But if you get to choose between some 6’2″ with hands of stone and 5’9″ Johnny Gaudreau, you take the latter.
True. But it seems both nhl and nfl have become more open to shorter guys. Maybe the increase in specialization or decrease in brutal violence in both sports.
I think the crack down on goons will open it up for the shorter guys, 30 fucking years too late for the Whalers, who seemed to specializing in drafting small guys who’d get crushed all game long after Stu Grimson got thrown out for his 3rd fight of the game.
Please do not mistake my somewhat defending Bienemy not having been hired yet for any sort of defense of the NFL. They are truly a collection of some of the most loathsome people this side of a Trump rally, with a significant overlap of the Venn diagrams representing the two.
There were good people on both sides of that rally.
The thing that is pro sports, the NFL being the front runner, is why I now focus on local sports. I like supporting teams that aren’t owned by billionaires. And I hate instant replay. Covid has shit on most local sports but I can’t wait for the local wood bat college summer league baseball to start. $7 a ticket and no commercials.
Minor league baseball is pretty cool. Last time I was at one, someone asked me if I was a scout, I suppose because I was a cranky fat guy sitting by himself keeping score — “scout” was actually the more charitable option.
I think an NFL team would hire a gay trans midget if they could coach them to a Super Bowl.
I’d root for a coach with those qualifications even if they were coaching a team I absolutely fucking hate.
I don’t get the chance assumption with sudden death. If it’s so easy to go down and score the score would look like a basketball game. Just make a stop. One. That’s not impossible.
Also the fact is it’s not guaranteed. The last year of sudden death it was 2 of 17 or something that scored on first possession. I had it written down at some point.
But most of all it’s real football. Not some made up madden exercise with rules from nfl blitz.
The best new rule would be no replays ever. It’s a game not a science equation.
And these damn clouds.
I hadn’t heard of the “spot the ball and choose” OT method until now, and I kind of like it. I’m sure some analytics types have figured out what the league-average breakeven point would be. I fiddled around with this Win Probability Calculator | Pro-Football-Reference.com (pro-football-reference.com)
and it seems like starting on your own 18 gives about a 50% win probability, assuming two evenly matched teams. (If one team is a 3-point favorite, that translates into about a 54% chance of victory). Though I’m not sure if that calculator is applying the current “field goal on 1st possession doesn’t end the game” rule — I think not, because it doesn’t ask me if it’s the 1st possession, even if I change the time remaining.
I love this “spot and choose” idea, too. So. Much. Game theory!
/also, this bers repeating (re my beloved Toffees) – Three points clear of the pencildick Redshite, with a game in hand WOO!!!!!
But you know every team would just say “25 yard line” and the other team would say “offense” and absolutely nothing would change.
Yes, but think of the delightful hot takes: “you GOTTA MAKE SURE TOM BRADY GETS THE BALL THERE! Even if you have to spot it on your 1 yard line!”
It would be like baseball, somebody would play footsie with the analytics. And Old Man Arians WOULD take the ball at the one, you just have to have the stones to TRY making him.
LOL
Today, in “Male Porn Star or Crack Dealer…”
League proposals:
*Brady announces retirement*
See, I just assumed that meant that Brady could challenge a non-call, and get Roger on the phone to tell the refs to throw a flag.
Actually, that’s a much more likely scenario.