It’s hyperbole, of course, but if you somehow decided to do a replay review of every play to check if there was holding you’d have flags flying all the time. There are 11 players on each side and officials can’t catch everything. Holding is believed to be one of those penalties that flies under the radar more than any other. As it is, the officials seem to do a good job of catching the most blatant cases at least.
Considering your team has Myles Garrett, I kinda expected you on the other side of that debate.
Two separate issues. I’ve seen NFL fans call by the book absolutely perfect and legal pass blocking “holding” because they don’t really know what the rules are and the lineman was (legally) gripping the defender by the inside of his frame. You can find something that would be colloquially called “holding” on pretty much every play, but that doesn’t mean that it’s holding by NFL rules. It’s true that holding to some degree is a judgment call (maybe you get away with a fraction of a second hold from one ref but nother another) so there is room for bias and simple variation in penalties called by different refs, but it’s an exaggeration to say it can be called on every play.
The last year I watched the games in detail (2022? 2023?) Garrett was systematically held on practically every play. The refs were consistently letting the offensive line get away with murder on him doing shit that they would call holding against other players 95%+ of the time. I don’t know if it’s an anti-Garrett bias specifically if they just let offenses hold all of the elite pass rushers because they want to see the offenses succeed and the quarterbacks not get hurt, but it was absurd how much Garrett was held to a different standard than the average D-lineman. That may still be the case, I don’t watch the games closely enough to actually confirm it, but it was 100% unambiguously true then.
Remember the great Goff/Wentz debate of 2016?
I’m thinking Goff won.
The stoppable force and the movable object. Detroit was allowing an opening drive TD in every game and the Browns offense I didn’t think has scored in 2 or 3 years. But the Browns had an 87 yard drive for a TD
Many years ago I remember Mark Schlereth on Mike and Mike in the Morning talking about the holding on every play thing. What he said was he told a ref before a game “I can’t stop these guys so I’m telling you now, I’m going to hold on every play.”
Obviously we’re talking about a former player, likely embellishing his playing days, but still, that was the anecdote I remember. For what it’s worth.
Goff took time to grow into being a good QB while Wentz was impressive early on.
But Wentz kind of flamed out fast and Goff just seems to improve with experience.
Yeah, overall Goff came out far ahead to me.
Flacco threw 2 terrible ints that are the real difference in the game but he just threw 2 beautiful deep passes that his receivers just completely choked and dropped, so we’re boned when Flacco is good and boned when Flacco is bad
Giants WR Malik Nabers is feared to have torn his ACL.
Raiders turn the ball over 4 times … yet are winning by a TD. Ahhh, the Bears…
I will not get my hopes up any more this season.
When CBS scheduled this Ravens/Chiefs game, I doubt they were expecting that they were going to be seeing Cooper Rush vs. Gardner Minshew at the end of it.
Chippewas vs Pirates and quality 'stashes too!
Who just managed to come back with a late TD and a blocked FG attempt for the 1-point win in Vegas!
!!!
(…. Go Birdy-byes…)
Once again Packers get an early lead and blow it with turnovers.
Brian
Quick thoughts on the Bears.
When I saw we had a Week 5 bye I was pissed. But considering the injuries, it’s a godsend. If you haven’t been paying attention we played today without our starting LT, RT, CB, NB, OLB, DT as well as our Move TE / 1st Round pick, pass rush specialist DE, and our 3rd CB / Dime back. I mean, holy shit.
The Bears have been playing like absolute garbage on defense and injuries have a lot to do with it. But not everything. We don’t tackle well and we can’t get any pressure on the QB without blitzing. We’re spending way too much money on that side of the ball to be this terrible.
Ryan Poles is killing this team. We are getting nothing out of too many day 2 draft picks and that’s on both sides of the ball. Just awful work from him. That Sweat trade and contract look unbelievably bad, never mind the Claypool deal.
Caleb is for real. Exiting player who comes up big in crunch time. I get wildly frustrated when his passes get knocked down at the line of scrimmage. I have always been biased against undersized QBs and with Caleb this feels like the Achilles heel that might haunt him. But he seems to do just about everything else you want from a QB which is great. He still can whiff on a big throw from time to time, and it’s maddening, but dude can play the position like no Bears QB in my lifetime.
Ozzy Trapilo, our 2nd round OT prospect, finally got into a game. And he looked awesome. Fans have been losing their minds that he was a healthy scratch over the first 3 weeks. Today, with Darnell Wright inactive, we started an undrafted rookie in his place. An undrafted rookie who inexplicably beat out Trapilo to be the swing tackle. But after Maxx Crosby put him in a blender for a quarter and a half he was benched in favor of Trapilo. And he totally stabilized things and held his own against Crosby. I have no idea what was going on in practice, but that was incredibly reassuring.
Rome Odunze is him. I stupidly dropped him from my fantasy team thinking he’d be splitting targets and wouldn’t be a huge producer. This is the kind of sacrifice I’m happy to make. Nabers is still the big get from that draft, but Rome looks like he’s going to be Caleb’s favorite target for a while.
Cairo Santos is a frustrating puzzle. Today he was clutch and single handedly kept us in that game. But his weak leg is a huge handicap on both kickoffs and long FGs. That said, he nailed 2 from 50+ today.
I had low expectations when we signed Kevin Byard last year. I thought he was cooked, but that dude has been incredible. And it seems like he’s helped Brisker learn the position because he’s been way less of a liability since he showed up.
Much was made of the Bears bringing in 3 IOLs to help Caleb. Thuney and Dalman have lived up to the hype. Jackson has not. He’s been an expensive turnstile and penalty magnet.
Our running game is straight up butt cheeks. Swift is blind as a bat and also falls down at first contact. It’s reallly quite the combo. Rookie Monongai was hoped to be a Pacheco-like breakout candidate, but after 4 weeks, it’s not looking good. He has a knack for running incredibly hard without really going anywhere.
Overall, I’m enjoying the Ben Johnson experience. I think he’s fixed a lot of issues with this team and expectations are much higher. The offense definitely feels more put together and we aren’t seeing a bunch of 3 and outs which is a nice change. Penalties are becoming a massive problem, primarily on offense. Hopefully it gets some focus over the bye.
2-2 after a rough start. We probably didn’t deserve to win today, but neither did the Raiders. Eberflus definitely loses that game, so it’s progress.
Packers/Cowboys game was crazy for so many reasons.
But it was craziest at the end. On 3rd down, Love throws it incomplete into the end zone with one second left on the clock. If he threw a second later, the game would be over.
Instead, they kick the field goal with a second left, with a kicker that reportedly may have been hurt earlier during the initial OT kickoff, and make it, tying the game literally in the last second.
The game ends 40-40, which is the second-highest tie in NFL history (and absolutely has to be a scoragami).
It is, in fact, a scorigami.
Both the Pack and Cowboys have plenty of reasons to be angry at themselves after that game.