The Ravens had another positive COVID test today (a player on injured reserve who had no close contacts on the team), and were unable to practice today due to this. It appears that their game against the Steelers, which had been delayed until tomorrow (Tuesday), is going to get pushed off again, to Wednesday.
The 49ers will be playing their next two home games at State Farm Stadium, the Cardinals’ home stadium in suburban Phoenix. As I think was already noted upthread, Santa Clara County will not be allowing any contact sports (games or practices) for the next few weeks, forcing the Niners to find an alternate location.
Has there ever been a Wednesday night NFL game? Maybe in the very early years when college football was still king.
The last NFL game to be played on a Wednesday was in 1948; the Los Angeles Rams hosted the Detroit Lions in their season opener, which appears to have been played at 5:30pm local time. However, the article below also notes that there was an AAFC game held one week later, also on a Wednesday night.
We’ve lost 5 straight. If that stretches to 7 straight, I think they may just pull the trigger on the in-season firing. They didn’t even fire Trestman mid-season so it would be a shock, but the fan base is livid.
The meatballs on Reddit are begging to have ownership jettisoned. Setting aside the practical problems, I think this is a pretty stupid take. While yes, having good ownership is important I can’t single out a situation where ownership meddled or otherwise got involved in football decisions at all. They spend money. Yes, they hired the last 2 regimes (and all the regimes since Ditka) so they own that, but it’s not like they did anything super crazy there, it just didn’t work out.
They also want to get rid of Ted Phillips, but for the same reasons as above I don’t see how that would be anything more than a symbolic move. The Bears are a good business and I can’t see where that has hurt them on the field, though the stadium remains a fantastically stupid thing and that’s all him.
Pace is a little bit tougher. I won’t miss him if he’s canned, but he’s been a bit of a feast or famine GM. He hired Fox and Nagy, so that’s a problem, and his QB moves thus far have been Mike Glennon, Mitch Trubisky, Nick Foles, Chase Daniels, Tyler Bray, Brian Hoyer, Matt Barkley and Mark Sanchez. Trubisky is the only one he’s ever drafted. And when he took the job he was quoted as saying you could draft a QB every year, so there’s that. When he was hired I was a little worried because he came from the Saints front office that was continually in salary cap hell, constantly mortgaging their future to win now in the Brees era. That POV seems to have been imported into what used to be a conservatively run front office.
That said, Pace has regularly drafted some really great players in the middle rounds. He found Jaylon Johnson, Eddie Jackson, Adrian Amos, Bilal Nichols, Darnell Mooney, Cody Whitehair, Nick Kwitkowski, Jordan Howard, Anthony Miller, DeAndre Houston-Carson, all of whom became impact starters. Obviously that’s heavily skewed to the defense, but we’ve had above average success in the draft. Even when you factor in the complete disasters that were Trubiskiy, Kevin White and Leonard Floyd in the first round and bunch of high picks traded away. He can evaluate talent in some situations, but he’s failed miserably at building an offense. QB, WR, RB, TE and OL have consistently been bad (yes, every offensive position group).
On balance, I think I’m ready to blow the whole thing up. Fire Pace and Nagy. Trade away everyone of value on the defense for picks. Purge these bad contracts and eat the dead cap. Suck really hard for a season and do anything and everything to find a franchise QB. I’m sick and tired of walking this tightrope where the plan is to win the close, low scoring games with a C+ at QB.
In any case, this isn’t going to be a Wednesday night game. The NFL has somehow lost primetime to a dead tree.
As an aside…why aren’t the Ravens being made to forfeit here? Clearly they weren’t taking proper precautions. Why is the league forcing everyone to accommodate them?
Why is the Ravens situation so different than the Broncos who were basically told to pound sand?
That Broncos-Saints game was really bad.
My guess would be that the Ravens are in contention for the Super Bowl and have MVP Lamar Jackson while the Broncos are in contention for nothing and have Drew “where am I supposed to aim?” Lock.
I was watching football shows yesterday, and the take that I got was:
–NFL wants to play all of the games, and does not want a forfeit.
–The Ravens as a team cannot play with so many positive COVID results. Postponing a few days to make sure enough players are clean is an option. That is why they keep moving it out. I would guess that more COVID positives today would cause a forfeit.
–Except for one QB, no other Bronco tested positive for COVID. The other QBs have to quarantine, since they were stupid enough to not wear masks as mandated by the NFL. Since all but 4 Broncos are available, they are good to play their game on schedule. It sucks that those 4 all play QB, but thems the breaks.
With the Ravens having no new positive test results today (the first time that’s been true in ten days), they’ve headed to Pittsburgh for tomorrow’s game against the Steelers. Lamar Jackson (who tested positive on Thanksgiving) is still unavailable, and it’s expected that Robert Griffin III will start at quarterback.
And, now, I see that Adam Schefter is contradicting this, in a recent tweet:
The ghost of RGIII vs an undefeated Steelers? Not liking those odds.
Well the Lions (finally) fired Matt Patricia. From the stuff I’ve been reading, we was a douchebag who was disliked by his players. He also had no problems throwing his players under the bus and blaming everyone except himself for the Lions’ failures.
Good riddance to yet another Bill Bellicheck coaching tree failure. Makes me feel bad for Jim Caldwell.
Plus, Bob Quinn is gone now too. I wonder how a Mike Borgonzi/Eric Bienemy combo would do. Should be interesting.
Ugh, that was so not the Ravens/Steelers game I was looking for. Both teams were offensively offensive. But just a sloppy game.
Still it was kinda cool having a game to watch on a Wednesday afternoon.
Yup, that’s exactly the RG3 I remember. Horrible passer, good runner, got hurt. 