Wow! That father/son duo really pulls at the heartstrings. I mean, who hasn’t constructed a “Fuck them hoes” sign with your 10 year old son?
In the book Take Her Deep! (despite what you pervs are thinking, it’s about a U.S. submarine in WWII), there were crewmen whose last names were French and Ffrench. The latter was referred to as “Double-F” to avoid confusion.
In today’s practice, while running suicide sprints, Colts punter Rigoberto Sanchez suffered an Achilles injury that the trainers fear might be a tear.
The Jaguars no longer have any kickers on their roster. This is still an improvement over the Urban Meyer regime, but not by much.
(“Special teams? Is that important?”)
Okay, college football is not in great shape these days. It’s a game of haves and have-nots, and is increasingly nothing more than a farm league for the NFL. And I’ve cut back significantly on my hours watching because of it.
BUT, the amount of shit NFL fans put up with to hand more $$$$ to guys who are already billionaires and know less about football than my 3-year old niece (hey Jerry!) s ASTOUNDING. I really don’t know how you do it.
Oh no. It happens to any position. John Ross is a good example. He was a star wide receiver at the University of Washington (I remember watching his as college player, hew as fantastic), he skipped his senior year for the draft where he was expected to go in the first round. He was invited to the NFL Combine and ran the fastest 40 yard dash in its history. The Bengals did indeed draft him in the first round (9th overall).
But once on the roster in Cincinnati, he was put 6th on the depth chart (which basically means you probably won’t see him on the field unless a lot of people get hurt). They did put him out there in the second game of the season, but fumbled his first carry, and got benched. That was the only time he even touched the ball as a rookie. Part of that was due to a knee injury, but mostly he was benched.
He did better his second season, but only had 21 receptions for 210 yards and 7 touchdowns.
His third season started with a bang, where he had more receiving yards in the first two games then his first two seasons combined as an NFL player. But he was placed on IR for a shoulder injury, and ended with just a bit over 500 yards and only 3 touchdowns.
In his fourth season, he only played 3 games, had 2 receptions for 17 years, and no touchdowns.
In his fifth season, last year, he was a free agent (the Bengals declined his fifth year option, for obvious reasons) and he was picked up by the Giants for $2.5 million. He played one game, had 3 catches for 77 yards and a touchdown.
He is currently a free agent and not with a team, though not retired yet.
This was a very promising receiver drafted extremely highly, and yet over 5 seasons he put up 957 yards and 11 touchdowns. Those are the kinds of numbers a good receiver would be expected to put up in a single season, not 5. And his story isn’t unusual. Over 1/3 of all first round draft picks, people you expect to be contributors, end up being useless. Either they don’t play or make no meaningful contributions if they do.
Outside of threadshitting, are there any sports you enjoy or fandoms you claim?
I was yelling about this back in the pre-BCS days of the mid-90s. There’s probably some old posts in this forum where I was griping about it. This outcome was entirely predictable.
CFB was more interesting when it was a largely regional affair and winning the Conference mattered. The reward of the Rose Bowl was more important than what number the press stuck by your name in the Monday papers.
But the media needed to dwell on manufactured arguments about who the “real” national champ was so here we are.
I honestly didn’t mean to threadshit, although I do see how it comes across that way.
I’m generally a fan of all sports. I’m just not a fan that’s unwilling to call bullshit when I see it.
I’m a fan of MLB - which also has its own issues, but aren’t as often related to essentially ignoring/downplaying instances of violence against women.
I do still enjoy college football, but less than I used to. Partly because it’s too much like NFL-lite these days.
Lately I’ve actually gotten into cricket. It’s a new sport to me and I’m enjoying the discovery of a new thing and trying to get the nuance beyond the raw score.
I will watch soccer (very mild Liverpool fan), hockey (Lightning), curling (went to the National Championships when they were in Jacksonville, FL), and others too numerous to mention.
Finally, I play golf myself and watch the PGA regularly.
All of the above sports have issues - nobody’s perfect. It just seems to me that the NFL is the current world leader in “fuck you, we’ll do what we want and you’ll stick with us anyway”. I mean, name another league anywhere that’s had (in the last year) - their arguably best player ever quit, get accused of tampering with another team for an ownership share, then come back - plus (and related) clear accusations by a head coach of deliberate tanking - plus a player accused a double dozen counts of sexual assault being awarded the most lucrative contract in league history (and all guaranteed!) - plus on-going and apparently systemic discrimination at top levels of the sport. It could be personal bias or “haters gonna hate”, but the NFL just seems more rotten than most.
Anyway, I’m bowing out now (and apologies to you and the mods for the perceived threadshit and partial hijack), just wanted to give you an honest answer. Enjoy the preseason!
You have a point. I am incensed that Deshaun Watson is the hill the Cleveland Browns (and their fanbase!) have chosen to die on.
Did anybody else catch this?
Buffalo drafted a punter. How’d they do?
Well, he kicked an 80 yarder in the first game.
80 freakin’ yards!
Oh. And it has come out that he may have been a part of a gang rape while in college.
Technically, it’s pre NFL, so he didn’t violate the league’s conduct policy.
Man, 80 yards is a long way.
He’ll probably get away with it because he can sportsball very well. If I was accused of such a thing, my life would probably be over.
Nice. 
They claimed kicker James McCourt off waivers from the Chargers later that same day. My guess is that, unless they quickly fall in love with him, they’ll grab someone else when teams make their final cutdowns this upcoming Tuesday.
He and Kareem Hunt can go hit the clubs to celebrate after games.
Not mentioned on here, but the Cowboys took a blow earlier this week as Tyron Smith has torn his hamstring and will be out until December.
Personally, I think that Tyron just needs to hang it up. The guy missed nearly all of 2020 and only played in 11 games last year due to injuries. He’s had a great career, but all these years in the NFL trenches have clearly taken a toll.
Dak Prescott better hope his calf is in good shape; he’s going to be running for his motherloving life this season.
A quality left tackle is literally worth many times their weight in gold. No doubt someone from the team is in his ear telling him to keep on keepin’ on, even though he’s earned almost $100M in his career.
So, the Bills are not going to be putting their rookie punter in the next preseason game.
Just horrifying.
In less evil but still bad news, Aaron Donald was swinging helmets at other players in a joint practice with the Bengals. The Rams will discipline him, the NFL is keeping their hands off.
What is crazy to me is that they will go after teams for being too rough in practice. Here is a fine from just a couple of months ago against the Cowboys for allowing contact in a practice.
But swinging a helmet at people? Eh, let the Rams handle it. It doesn’t make sense to me. What if the Rams just tell Aaron to knock it off and don’t really discipline him, would the NFL step in at that point? It seems like they wouldn’t.
It’s the NFL, man. They suspend Deshaun Watson for about one-fifth of the time they suspended some other guy for smoking weed. Inconsistent punishment is how they roll.
Those are specifically in violation of the CBA. Which also apparently is set up that the league can’t discipline players for actions during practice.
Given that it’s been made pretty public, wouldn’t the conduct unbecoming clause (whatever the hell it’s called) fit here?
It’s impressive that Aaron Donald is only second to Ndamukong Suh for dirty lineman play in my mind. Dude’s a roided-raging jackass, but has faced exactly zero repercussions for his actions.