The Panthers broke the seal and signed Eric Reid. Great move by them as they needed secondary help pretty badly. Opens the door for a Kap comeback to San Fran?
First game watching Goff and the Rams. I thought Goff was the best QB his draft year and he has looked great this game. The Vikings defense is no pushover, and Goff’s ball placement is really impressing me. Good or him.
And I love how much the resurgence of the Rams shows just what a shitty NFL coach Jeff Fisher was.
As of this morning the Browns are getting 1 at Oakland. I’d still take it, I think they’ll win.
I didn’t watch the game last night, but glanced at the box score because I had a couple guys on my fantasy team. What were there, about 900 passing yards combined? Thought the Vikings defense was supposed to be legit, what happened?
I think primarily its the sum of a lot of small things that individually may not be a huge impact, but all taken together… death by 1,000 cuts:
Terence Newman retired as a player to become a member of the coaching staff.
Brian Robison was released (currently unsigned).
The Everson Griffen situation.
Newman & Robison were certainly past their prime but were good role players on a good defense. Griffen could still be considered a star, however, and I would doubt he’ll rejoin the team in the near future (and did not play against the Bills or Rams).
Also with the Vikings, their early schedule went:
home 49ers
at Packers
home Bills
at Rams (on Thursday)
at Eagles
I figured that a 2-3 record would come out of that, with wins against the 49ers and Bills. The schedule gets much easier after that, but I am concerned with their defense.
I think they looked past the Bills and paid for it. My biggest concern is the numerous pass plays where there is no defender within 20 yards of the receiver. One Bills pass, the receiver ran 40+ yards after the reception with no defender within 20 yards of him. Something similar happened against the Rams. Just weird from one of the best defenses from last year.
Akiem Hicks gets booted out of the game for bumping an official. Dumb, dumb, dumb. Bears probably won’t miss him too much, but he’d better hope it’s just a hefty fine from the league.
Goddamn it, Colts, you should not have gone for it on 4th down inside your own territory with seconds left and with the game tied in overtime. Punt it as far away as you can, and play for the tie!
I am enthused for the inevitable “Mitch Trubisky emerges as a great QB” and “Mitch Trubisky is a stud” comments that will follow his beating up on a horrible team.
The Browns were up by 8 and ran for a first down with 1:30 left when the Raiders were out of time outs, but the officials took the unusual step of altering a spot by a few inches after measuring that it was a few inches short even though the video certainly did not conclusively show that was the right spot.
Not a run of the mill screwjob either, this is getting jobbed. Not just me saying it.
Browns run on 3rd down, need a first down to win. Ref spots the ball a little short. Another ref comes and marks it even shorter of where it should be. They measure it. It’s a first down anyway. They decide, at this point, to review the play automatically. Despite video evidence supporting it’s a first down (and definitely not conclusively suggesting otherwise), they come out and spot the ball even shorter than either of the two refs that spotted it put it in the first place.
The sequence of events was weird (measure, then decide to change it) and then that sort of spotting-the-inches thing almost never gets overturned on replay. There was no evidence at all that compelled this one to be. The game was over - Browns could come kneel it. Refs just flat out took it away.
Yeah, yeah, they still could’ve won after that, but how many fucking times do you have to win a game?
This was after they blew a play dead when Carr got the ball knocked out of his hand on first contact and would’ve been returned for a defensive TD. That one didn’t end up being as critical because it wouldn’t have directly lead to the win like the other one.
I try not to be conspiratorial about refs. I understand they make poor judgements in the heat of the moment, it’s a tough job.
But you have to wonder - having all the time in the world, just to see the tape support (or at least not contradict) that their spots for Hyde were actually significantly behind his actual spotting - they reviewed it, gave no explanation (their explanation may as well have been “we wanted to give the Raiders the ball back”, and just overturned it contrary to pretty much every precedent, you gotta wonder how a slow motion ref trainwreck like that happened, and if it had some motivation. Maybe the NFL doesn’t want its Golden Gruden starting 0-4? I don’t know. I don’t need to invoke conspiracy theories, I guess, it’s just that it was such a slow motion screwjob that it looks deliberate.
