NFL 2020: Week 3

I’m jealous of the Bears’ QB situation. Is that rock bottom?

Some thoughts:

  1. As someone who likes to watch good defenses try to contain good offenses, I am not enjoying a whole lot of these games so far this year. The Rams/Bills game was a joke, especially down the stretch (everyone was wide fucking open on both teams), and one of the very few good defensive plays was flagged as DPI, giving the game to the Bills. I get that some people love shootouts and there is something to be said for close, back and forth games, but Jesus, play some fucking defense please. (And not just defense that takes advantage of shitty play of the other team. I’m looking at you Colts and whomever is playing Washington).

  2. The Bills will never win a Super Bowl with Josh Allen as their QB.

  3. Why are we still subjected to Taysom Hill? Cute story bro, but he’s not that effective and won’t ever be even an average NFL QB. But thanks for the fumble, Taysom.

  4. Go Nick Mullens!

  5. I sure wish teams would stop handing victories to the Bears. It’s like their NFC Championship run in 2010 all over again.

One fact I learned that surprised the heck out of me:

Total Starts for Mitch Trubisky - 44.
Total Starts for Nick Foles - 48.

As if there wasn’t already enough proof that the apocalypse is upon us, the Lions took a 3-point deficit into the 4th quarter and somehow won the game. This just ain’t normal.

They were playing the Cardinals

Anyone been watching Joe Burrow’s slow-motion murder? I mean, I was one of those that thought that with the return of Jonah Williams and with some chemistry building that seemed to take place during the latter half of last season that we’d be marginally better. Nope. We’ve regressed. IDK how much of that is no preseason or OTA’s, etc but man that was brutal.

If anyone needs proof Burrow is the real deal, in the last three games, despite literally running for his life, he’s compiled

65% completion ratio
648 yards passing
5 TD’s passing
1 Rushing TD
1 INT
1 Fumble on an arm-whack while throwing
Sacked 14 times for 107 yards

And kept his team in all 3 games. Our point differential in 2 losses and a tie is -8
We really should be 2-1, or even 3-0. If he could get HALF the protection an average NFL team provides, I have zero doubt that his yards per game would be in the 400’s and he’d have 10 TD passes by now.

Really impressive win by KC totally dominating the Ravens. Really looking forward to Pats/Chiefs.

Baltimore should stomp Washington next Sunday, but a short week coming off a loss against a desperate Washington tea, who knows?

Well, it’s started …

3 Titans players and 5 staff members have tested positive for Covid. This has caused the team, as well as the Vikings (the team that played the Titans on Sunday), to close their facilities for the week. We can hope it has been contained (Vikings tested negative on Monday apparently), but who knows. It will be interesting to see how this works out. …

Can the Superbowl be pushed back a few weeks to allow for makeup games before the playoffs? Normally I would think obviously not but I’m guessing tons of stadiums will be available and unused however many weeks later. I guess you could sell maybe 10k tickets to get some authentic ambient sound but otherwise, no issue about ticket-holders really. Fans mostly can’t go to regular season games regardless which week you play them. TV schedules are shot to shit, surely there won’t be anything more pressing to air than the Superbowl in late February, right?

Hypothetically, could they reschedule the next Titans game to week 18, starting the playoffs a week later? Maybe the Vikings game as well since they had to shut down and can’t really prepare properly for the game this week. Next outbreak, whichever two teams are involved get their following week’s games also rescheduled to week 18, and so on. Maybe we end up with a full extra week of football, or at least early and late afternoon games.

Or two or three, if it happens to the Titans or Vikings once or twice more.

Albert Breer at SI.com suggests that a bit of juggling would cover this particular situation (assuming that the Titans are able to play soon):

But, that’s just a matter of rescheduling one game that can’t be played this weekend. As you note, if (well, more likely, when) we have more teams with outbreaks, and more games needing to be rescheduled, that could well throw things into chaos.

If the Bengals can just get Burrow a good offensive line and good defense, he could be Troy Aikman II.

Aikman was also a No. 1 overall draft pick but was slaughtered in his rookie season, getting sacked left and right (at one point getting sacked eleven times in one game) and going 1-15 in his rookie season. But the talent and potential was clearly there, and once the Cowboys got him a good O-line and defense he was off to the championship race.

Burrow should be miles better than Aikman. Aikman is the poster boy of “win with” QB’s. Burrow has the chance to be a “win because of” QB.

Sure, but I wasn’t meaning so much physical comparison as career trajectory. Burrow has the makings of a QB who gets slaughtered in his rookie year but, once help arrives, should be a 100% legit championship contender franchise QB.

I think you undersell Aikman a bit. He wasn’t Elway, Kelly or Marino, but he was much more than just the beneficiary of circumstance. The guy on those Cowboys teams that really rose way above his talent level was Emmitt.

Every QB who was a high draft pick and who gets sacked a lot in their first year gets compared to Aikman. It has to be in the top ten of laziest sports hot takes around.

And only one of those three “win because of” QBs actually managed to win a Superbowl, and he was past his “win because of” date and well into his “win with” years when he did it. (twice)