Yeah, with a Thursday night, Sunday night and Monday night game, you’re gonna get some more stinkers if you do the double bye week. And you’re always going to get end of season matchups that looked good back in summer but are a now a battle of 3rd string QBs on non playoff teams
All the money is in the national games. Thursday night, Sunday afternoon and night, and Monday night. You still get that with the diluted schedule. The only slate that’s harmed is the Sunday morning schedule where there’s usually 8 or more games, all shown in small regions. If you’re a GamePass/RedZone subscriber maybe it’s a bummer but I’m betting the TV contracts go up just the same. The teams don’t get the extra gate which is a negative, but that’s not a huge piece of the pie.
Either way, I think all the griping and handwringing about adding an extra game was mostly bullshit. That was just the NFLPA positioning for the negotiation so they could extract some concessions. They’ll be happy with the uptick in the salary cap and I don’t think we’re going to see some bloodbath on the injury report as a result of the longer schedule.
It won’t line up that way, at least not this year. The Super Bowl is now scheduled for February 13th, while Presidents Day in 2022 will be on February 21st.
Gah, damn you and your stupid birthday Lincoln!
It looks like the Super Bowl will only be on Presidents day weekend once every 7 years. Presidents day is the 3rd Monday in Feb. It looks like the SB will now be the second Sunday in Feb. So only in Februarys that start on a Monday will it work out. That’s not going to happen until 2027.
That is, until they expand the playoffs
The Jets have traded QB Sam Darnold to the Panthers for three draft picks (6th round in 2021, 2nd and 4th in 2022). It makes official what was widely expected anyway, that the Jets are moving on from Darnold, and will be drafting a QB (apparently BYU’s Zach Wilson) with the #2 overall pick this year.
That Teddy Bridgewater contract isn’t looking so great. Didn’t take long for them to realize he was not a starting QB in the NFL. I remember 2 years ago every Bears fan under the sun seemed to be begging to sign him from NOLA and I was relived when the Panthers fell on that grenade.
Speaking of the Bears, I’d have been 100% okay with making that trade to try and resuscitate Darnold’s career. That would have been a million times more satisfying than this Dalton fiasco.
Darnold might be salvageable when away from a toxic franchise and that absolutely terrible coach Gase. He was supposed to have promise. I don’t think it’s likely but it’s possible.
Dalton at his peak was just good enough to get you to the playoffs (but not win there) and he’s no longer at his peak. 
Ryan Pace simply cannot (haha) pace himself:
- 2017: Trades three picks to move up and draft Trubisky instead of simply waiting one pick.
- 2020: Trades for Foles when he could have waited a week or two and gotten Dalton for free (and paid him less).
- 2021: Signs Dalton to a one-year $10 million deal when he could have been patient and traded for Darnold (with a much higher upside) on a one-year deal at $4.7 million. And maybe not had to cut Fuller.
I can’t wait to see him take the first job he’s offered after the Bears fire him next January.
I’m thinking Houston Texans.
Perfect!
It is absolutely unbelievable that the Chicago Bears drafted Mitch Trubisky over Patrick Mahomes. I’m not even a Bears fan. I wonder what they think of this?
We think it was a monumental mistake that set the franchise back half a decade, and we shake our heads in confoundedness that the guy who made the mistake still has his job.
We’ve also talked it to death. Time to move on.
Thankfully, no one ever brings it up so we never think about it.
But seriously, even though it was a huge mistake, let’s not act like Mahomes was the consensus top QB in the draft. Mock drafts went back and forth between Trubisky and Watson, but Mahomes was pretty consistently put 3rd.
It’s odd, because college QB evaluation has such a history of being extremely reliable. That’s why perennial all-pro Giovanni Carmazzi is a household name, and nobody remembers that skinny kid from U of Michigan that played backup for Drew Bledsoe.
And yet no one rags on 31 teams for passing on Tom Brady.
Again, I’m not saying that Pace was smart to pick Trubisky over Mahomes. Just that people are acting like Mahomes was the obvious pick in 2017 when he wasn’t. Hell, people were criticizing the Chiefs for trading up for him at the time.
I hate seeing Brady brought up in any of these conversations. His success is an absurd statistical outlier, and yet he’s constantly brought up to “prove” that scouts and draft analysts don’t know anything. Of course scouts and draft analysts make mistakes, but their thousands of decisions over a long period of time are an extremely accurate predictor of NFL success.
That said, Ryan Pace had this one incredibly important decision to make, and he made the wrong one. You don’t get the benefit of the doubt over a large statistical field when your most heavily scrutinized sample is n=1.
Really? The boards I saw at the time consistently had both Watson and Mahomes in the top 3, often with them as the top 2. It is true Trubisky was consistently rated highly though. And DeShone Kizer was often up there with them.
As you note, it wasn’t a terrible pick on its own. But, and again beating this dead horse, the price Chicago paid was terrible. They massively overpaid to move up a single spot in that draft. And for a QB they likely could have had by sitting tight or even moving down a few spots.
I get that Pace was worried other teams were interested, but his evaluation of the risk/reward was way off considering the other quality QBs that would have been available if another team was willing to trade up to 3 for Trubisky.
Lots of bad decision making with repercussions that have lasted for years. And that’s compounded by the strange and in hindsight unnecessary cloak and dagger show they pulled to hide their interest in Trubisky.
While college QB evaluation is pretty good overall, there are an awful lot of misses (in both directions, good qbs overlooked and touted qbs who flop, and especially the latter). Jumping on a GM for drafting a highly-touted college prospect who flops is silly, because some highly-touted prospects flop. Except if we’re talking about picking Johnny Manziel, because who didn’t see that coming? But on draft day '98, the Chargers felt pretty good about “settling” for Ryan Leaf at 2nd overall after Indy picked Peyton. That wasn’t unreasonable. Nor was picking Alex Smith ahead of Aaron Rodgers, or Robert Griffin ahead of Russell Wilson.
That said, it seems like players who turned into truly outstanding talents are often passed over for guys who are merely pretty good. Not always, but often. Troy Aikman, John Elway, Steve Young, and of course Peyton Manning all went first overall, but Favre was picked after Dan McGwire and Todd Marinovich, Jim Kelly was picked after Todd Blackledge (and Elway), Marino was picked after those three plus Tony Eason, and Ken O’Brian, Montana was passed over for Jack Thompson, Phil Simms, and Steve Fuller, and of course Kurt Warner and Warren Moon went completely undrafted.
That’s a full list of HOF QBs who entered the league after 1975. Finding the next HOF QB in the draft based on scouting evaluations of college QBs is a long, long way from an exact science. That Mahomes didn’t stand out from Trubisky and Watson in the scouting reports is hardly remarkable.