NFL 2018 IV: A Hue, A Cry and now Goodbye

[Jace, Extat]

Blaine Gabbert's windup is longer that Clayton Kershaw

[Ramsay B.]

4th and goal with about a foot to go and Atlanta goes shotgun. Unreal

[Iskaral Pust]

Amukamara should have batted that down instead of intercepting.  He needed to be more aware of downs and field position. 

[A Horse Named Stranger]

Meanwhile the Titans are having Fun (capital F) with the Patriots.

Trickplay, trickplay, trickplay. TD.

[briantw]

The Titans blowing out the Patriots just like everyone predicted.

[Ramsay B.]

I feel like I’ve seen 30 missed fg’s on Red Zone so far.

[Iskaral Pust]

Perhaps that two point conversion should have been given to the Lions, but they used up all their luck recovering an onside kick and completing a 4th & 10 just to get the TD. 

[Iskaral Pust]

Bears saw that out without too much stress.  Their dominance in play should have given a larger winning margin, but eight points missed on easy kicks and two TDs conceded on lucky short fields kept the Lions closer than they deserved. 

6-3 is much better than I expected.  They’re not real contenders but at least they’re competitive and watchable after some grim years. 

[briantw]

 

[dbunting]

2 hours ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

The lions are a poorly coached disaster.

That's not possible, they have a former N.E. coach as their coach now.

[Jace, Extat]

2 hours ago, dbunting said:

That's not possible, they have a former N.E. coach as their coach now.

Seriously though. The Lions kept trying to claw their way back against the Bears but falling on their faces because their undisciplined and poorly led. There's lots of talent on that team. Jim Caldwell did nothing at all to help, and he hurt the team overall but at least he was able to let the talent perform.

[dbunting]

1 minute ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Seriously though. The Lions kept trying to claw their way back against the Bears but falling on their faces because their undisciplined and poorly led. There's lots of talent on that team. Jim Caldwell did nothing at all to help, and he hurt the team overall but at least he was able to let the talent perform.

Yeah, there have been media grumblings here since the preseason that the players do not like Patricia or his style of coaching.

[Jace, Extat]

If Bill Belichick's coaching tree was on my lawn I'd have a priest exercise it before cutting the damn thing down.

[Nictarion]

19 hours ago, Nictarion said:

Teryl Austin is hands down the worst DC we’ve ever had. The players need to stage a revolt and get him fired like they did with Ken Zampese last year. 

And...he’s gone. 

[Maithanet]

I know that @Jaime Land I have both more or less sworn off the Redskins, and to give an update on that, it's going pretty well.  I have seen some of their games because they're on tv and I don't have redzone or anything, but I really don't care about those guys anymore.  Yesterday I had the choice between the Titans/Pats and Redskins/Bucs and I was watching the Titans game about 80% of the time. 

I will say that Alex Smith is the perfect quarterback for the Redskins right now.  He is just shockingly average.  Watch him compared to a really good qb and it's obvious all the things he cannot do.  But watching him against a bad qb like FItzpatrick and he is so much better.  He's a great example of how big the divide between the Haves and the Have Nots on NFL qbing is.

I'd also like to note that this Redskisn team is the worst 6-3 team I've seen in a long time.  All I can say for them is they protect the ball (see: Alex Smith) and thus they don't beat themselves.  But the offense is bad, the defense is inconsistent, really there's nothing special at all about this team.  They really look like a 4-5 squad, and yet somehow they have a 2 game lead in the division?!  If they make the playoffs they're gonna get embarrassed. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

What a stat:

This is the worst start to a Patriots’ season since 2013, and the best start to a Browns’ season since 2014. The Pats are 7-3 and the Browns are 3-6-1.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

19 hours ago, Iskaral Pust said:

Bears saw that out without too much stress.  Their dominance in play should have given a larger winning margin, but eight points missed on easy kicks and two TDs conceded on lucky short fields kept the Lions closer than they deserved. 

6-3 is much better than I expected.  They’re not real contenders but at least they’re competitive and watchable after some grim years. 

They could be if Mitch plays above average. The Bears have the fourth best +/-, and you’re not very far behind the three juggernauts. That said, your schedule gets rough soon and this year’s +/- is so bizarre. The Racial Slurs are also 6-3, and they are +1 (the Bears are +94). And even more bizarrely, the Bengals are -53 and the Ravens are +53. The Bengals are 5-4 and the Ravens are 4-5.  

[The Last Storm]

21 hours ago, briantw said:

Amazing how the Browns offense looks magically competent and the team is significantly more disciplined with the stink of Hue Jackson and Todd Haley gone.

He had a longer run than most of the recent Browns HC. Mayfield looks good though. Might be a trendy place to go now that they seem to have a quality QB in place.

[Iskaral Pust]

7 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

They could be if Mitch plays above average. The Bears have the fourth best +/-, and you’re not very far behind the three juggernauts. That said, your schedule gets rough soon and this year’s +/- is so bizarre. The Racial Slurs are also 6-3, and they are +1 (the Bears are +94). And even more bizarrely, the Bengals are -53 and the Ravens are +53. The Bengals are 5-4 and the Ravens are 4-5.  

Yes, QB is our biggest gap to the real contenders, although Howard’s tepid production at RB matters too.  We’re pretty balanced otherwise, with the secondary and LBs growing as the season progresses. 

The +/- looks great for us so far but the Patriots are the only really good team we’ve faced so far.  Seahawks and Packers aren’t strong (yet) this season.  We haven’t faced the Saints, Rams, Chiefs, Steelers or even the Vikings.  Blowouts against the Bills and Bucs, while only losing by small margins each time, makes the numbers look good.  But the real question is whether we can clinch a close game against a good team.

 

[briantw]

4 hours ago, The Lasr Storm said:

He had a longer run than most of the recent Browns HC. Mayfield looks good though. Might be a trendy place to go now that they seem to have a quality QB in place.

The strangest thing for me is seeing the vast difference between Gregg Williams the defensive coordinator and Gregg Williams the head coach.  He's giving speeches without swearing constantly.  He's much more even-tempered.  He seems to be embracing analytics when it comes to game-planning (the Browns went for it on fourth regularly against KC and went for two repeatedly instead of kicking extra points, undoubtedly knowing that outscoring the Chiefs would be difficult and so they had to be aggressive) and he's seemingly cured the team's lack of discipline under Hue Jackson.  The Browns were averaging something like ten penalties a game under Jackson and I think they've had about four total the past two weeks.

I'm not a huge fan of Williams' defensive scheme, as I think it tends to be overly aggressive and thus easy to manipulate, but he's actually impressed me so far as head coach.  Perhaps that's just because he's average after two and a half years of the worst head coach in NFL history, but it's still strange because I expected ineptitude and got, at worst, competence.  Their offense is also humming with Haley and Hue's power struggle in the rear view and an OC who is actually tailoring the game plan around his players.