Another wild card here (oops, bad choice of wording) may be the fact that the Niners will be starting a rookie QB the rest of the season, unless they sign some journeyman off the streets. Their killer defense may be enough to carry them, but they could drop 3 of their last 5 and end up with 7 losses. One of their remaining games is against the Commanders, which might be a big one.
Dec 15th is the second 49ers - Seahawks game
Dec 18th is the second Giants - Commanders game. Maybe we need to postpone this discussion until the end of Week 15 because that week will answer a lot of questions.
Well, they’ve signed Josh Johnson already (as noted upthread), who is an utter journeyman. And, as noted upthread, as well, Baker Mayfield was just released by the Panthers. Johnson is familiar with the system, at least, having been with the Niners in 2020 and 2021.
Brady and the Bucs offense look pathetic for 55 minutes, then suddenly wake up and drive for two TDs to win by 1 - even overcoming a holding penalty that called back one game-winning touchdown. Amazing comeback, but I can’t imagine any (good) team watching the Bucs seems particularly scared at this point. They are not firing on all cylinders.
Baker Mayfield is now a Ram.
The Rams had to put starting QB Matthew Stafford on IR this past Saturday, due to a spinal cord contusion he’d suffered two weeks ago. Backup John Wolford is also injured (a neck injury), and he may or may not be available for this Thursday’s game.
Apropos of absolutely nothing, except that it’s interesting, Johnny Manziel turns 30 today.
Currently, he is the quarterback of the FCF Zappers of Fan Controlled Football.
Catching up on PTI now I was shocked when I saw on the crawl that the Rams picked up Baker Mayfield instead of the 49ers. Then I thought since they picked him up off waivers, maybe the Rams had a higher priority than the 49ers and just stashed him to keep him away from a division rival.
Now hearing spinal cord contusion, yikes, I wish my imagination was correct for Matthew Stafford’s sake. That sounds ugly. With him having just won a ring, it kind of sounds career-ending to me. Probably not to him, though.
The Rams would, indeed, have had a higher priority on waiver claims, as I believe that those are done in reverse order of current record, so the Rams (3-9) would have been much higher on the list than the Niners (8-4).
A committee from the U.S. House of Representatives has been conducting an inquiry into the Washington Commanders; the committee’s final report has been released. It’s pretty damning to both Commanders owner Dan Snyder, and the NFL: