Re-reading the ESPN article, there’s a bit here which I initially missed:
So, not a practice-related injury, but something that occurred off-field, it sounds like.
Exactly right, though back then it was the RB you had to worry about, as opposed to the QB running it himself. When Belichick presented his game plan to the defense, explaining how they had to let Thurman Thomas run wild in order to win the game, they were less than impressed. But he got them to buy in, and his defensive game plan for that game is enshrined in the Hall of Fame. The idea was to eat the clock to limit their possessions; them running was the surest way to chew up time. In the end, the Bills possessed the ball for only 19:27 and were held to 19 points.
Personal aside, while I had watched some football as a kid, I didn’t become a proper fan until the summer of 1990, when a buddy’s passion for the Giants got me hooked during the offseason. That 1990 season was my first. Can’t really ask for a better first season.
I definitely saw parallels to that game in 2007 against the undefeated Patriots.
That’s really cool. 
The speculation (heavy emphasis on “speculation”) is that a team doctor accidentally punctured his lung while giving him a painkiller injection. That seems to be based mostly on wild-ass guesses because the nebulous reports sound like what happened to Tyrod Taylor with the Chargers in 2020.
The tiny thing that gives it a little more credence is that the NFL Players Association (NFLPA) has been in contact with Watt and his people, which is slight support for it being something that involves negligence.
I agree their primary purpose is to get the bets to be 50/50 on either side. For that to happen 50% of people (weighted by the amount they bet) need to think the odds favour one team and 50% the other. Therefore they attempt to measure the perceived strength of each team by the betting public, if the initial line fails to do this they are quickly adjusted as they see more people bet one side than the other.
The question then becomes how strong is the correlation between perceived strength and actual strength. You often see the media report “advanced analytics” win probabilities in my experience while these vary a bit from one media company and another they are all fairly similar to the betting lines.
Very few punters make a profit from betting on football, those that do spend huge amount of time and resources analysing data to find bets where they expect to make a profit dispite the bookies cut and even then the margins will be small. To make a claim like the Chiefs have a less than 50% chance of winning on Sunday when the spread is makes them 4.5 point favorites you would need a lot more analysis than a gut feeling based on recent results.
Is anybody here making that claim? I stated that I believed that the Chargers would cover +5.5, and I haven’t changed my position. Right now it appears that 50% of the bettors agree with me, and 50% disagree.
My small hometown in Arkansas was mostly Cowboys fans but they were big Giants fans for that window - Mo Carthon was born and raised there and came back pretty regularly. Pretty exciting for small town folks to have somebody win a Super Bowl ring.
Oddly enough, we had a second - Cortez Kennedy was born in town but played for the high school the next town over, so sort of counted as well when he won with Seattle
A very strange win for the Falcons, who seemed to want to set a record for penalties, but hung around and hung around for Cousins to bring them down the field far enough for their kicker to seal the game. I only watched the second half, but it was pretty painful. From the stats, the first half must have been just as bad.
It was. Just with less scoring.
Sad Joe Burrow reminds me of the “Smokin Jay Cutler” memes from a while ago.
Quoted as saying “If its not fun, then what am I doing it for.” I guess the $400M contract has nothing to do with it.
Bucs head coach Todd Bowles ripped into his players in his post-game press conference last night, after his team blew a 14-point lead and lost to the Falcons.
Maybe I’m old-school, but that sort of tirade is something I think belongs in the locker room, in private, and not in a press conference. Good leaders don’t throw their people under the bus in public; IMO, this is the way that a coach loses the locker room.
Maybe I misunderstood your post of the 9th.
”Speaking of underdogs, I’m a bit mystified by:
…
Chargers +3.5 to the Chiefs, on the road”
I took that to mean you were mystified that he Chargers were underdogs (rather than you thought they should be underdogs but by less than 3.5 points). The spread has how extended to 5.5 as the betting public were mystified that the chiefs were not even bigger favorites than 3.5.
Justin Fields is hurt, Tyrod Taylor is hurt, so the Jets are down to undrafted free agent rookie Brady Cook to start against the Jaguars on Sunday. They have re-signed Adrian Martinez to their practice squad, and will undoubtedly activate him to serve as Cook’s backup.
Agreed. This looks like a coach reaching a breaking point to me, actually. That’s a public meltdown. It’s unprofessional to do this in a press conference.
I almost wonder if he was recently told he is on the hot seat and he’s flaming out.
I had never heard of him, so I looked him up. He doesn’t seem to have had a particularly spectacular college career. I’m not surprised he wasn’t drafted, I’m a bit surprised he was signed to an NFL team at all. Good luck to him!
I was, and still am. I thought it would be a much closer spread. Thus I am even more mystified that the spread has grown to +5.5 points.
Now, if you interpreted that to read that ‘the Chiefs have a less than 50% chance of winning on Sunday’, that’s certainly not what I meant. And I’m not sure how one can extrapolate a point spread into a percentage chance of winning the game. Sure, a large point spread could mean a higher percent chance of a win, but how does one take a -13.5 spread and change it into a percentage chance of winning?
Confirmed today, in a social media post by his brother J.J., that this was exactly what happened; T.J. underwent surgery yesterday to repair a partially collapsed lung. No word yet on his timeline to return to play.
As I said in my post I thought you were mystified the Chargers are any sort of underdogs, though I accept I might have misunderstood you.
An underdog is a team with less than a 50% chance to win, (If a point spread is 0 a punter gets exactly the asme amount for betting on either team which implies a perceived 50% chance of each team winning). I agree other point spreads do not exactly match win probabilities though I suspect they are extremely strongly correlated.
Given that home-field advantage is generally 3 points, I would have expected the Chargers to be anywhere from 1 to 3 point underdogs. Right now, I think that the Chargers are a slightly better team that has been playing much better than the Chiefs in the last month.
But I do (finally!) see your point.
Cam Newton says that Indianapolis signing Philip Rivers instead of him was “like a slap in the face.”
Dude stunk up the joint in his last season(s), as far as I recall. Rivers got to the playoffs last time he suited up.