HardyBoy

The current version of madden is not close to simulation football.

Uh, I think you're missing the part where he has never played in an afc champ game, which is why the "finally" is the wrong term...

I wouldn't be surprised if Daboll pulled out himself. Basically, the reports that he was the front runner came out, that made it much more real, he slept on it and decided it didn't feel right. Hopefully Dorsey can be patient and they give him a big raise and keep grooming him, because him leaving this year would almost be worse than Daboll leaving for the long term. I think he's seen close up what an involved, but not meddling owner open to a rebuild, a gm who is exactly on the same page and a perfect fit personality type wise and a really solid fanbase can do (yeah we can be negative as fans, but not really...we want to tinker and think we know better, but just because we care. It's part of what makes us such an awesome fanbase...that we can recognize the oline in a store by name). The chargers for sure do not have the owner or fans, and who knows on the gm...yeah they played together in high school, but I've played sports with plenty of people who I would not want to work that closely with, or them with me, and they might be a super close friend, just not a good match to work with in a crazy high pressure environment. No idea if that's the case, but Daboll is looking to win super bowls as a head coach, at least he damn better be with his resume, and that takes those three things being in place...just like a good foundation is needed to develop a player, it's needed to develop a coach, team and culture.

So glad people agree on this...honestly thought I was the only one...the power of the internet to unify on clear display!

Have the Bills proven they can win with a roster that includes a franchise qb's salary this year? Brown was out much of the end of the season, so they had a legit #1, a legit slot receiver, some money in the oline and then mostly players on rookie deals everywhere else. I know there is money spent on the defense and they have come up huge in key spots, but that's a middle of the road defense this year (did see they were third in the league in takeaways,which sort of surprised me, and does make a little concern for future regression). There are a lot of contributors on this team that are not making a ton of money...granted most drafts don't have a pretty legit #2 guy sitting there in the 4th round at wr, but they've drafted incredibly well for value and impact. So anyway, I am really hopeful that the bills are already showing us they can build a roster with a top qb salary added, though it will require injury luck, because with this roster, the backups are the people I'm talking about contributing post injuries, where in the future they are going to be the starters and perhaps the backups will look more like the backups from 2018.

The tweezer reprise intro for the falcons in the super bowl was so cool. It's such a regular thing now that my wife just started saying "yes I heard it" before I even ask at this point.

It would make sense if they had the super bowl, but I thought cbs had it.

It's a dumb take, but to be fair I'm pretty sure they go around in their production meetings and decide who's going to give what take. I don't think they make them say anything, but they probably encourage all points of view to get discussed. I mean that's why I listen to the Dan Le Batard show instead, because they parody these overly planned non-genuine radio/tv gas bag shows, but that's what you're getting on those shows.

Nice, thanks I'll definitely check this out! Super curious what he says about his growth compared to the last video he did on JA after the first dolphins game.

Could this be because there are unlimited practice squad call ups in the playoffs and Beane is a jedi?

How about they figure out a way to get the two seed a bye again, before they start making more changes.

Exactly what we need, more meaningless football games at the end of the year. Haven't we seen enough of something like the Bills vs Dolphins both at 7 or less wins in the last game of the season...now they want to add another on the end with teams who have no chance to make the playoffs in a sport with that level of injury risk.

MUT is the problem. Franchise mode from 05-08 was insanely good. It all started to fall apart when they transitioned to the ps3/xbox 360 neg gens, but Madden 25 put it back on track and if they had built on that foundation you could have a potentially great game, but definitely would be good. MUT debuted that year in Madden, I believe, they saw a cash cow and franchise mode hasn't been updated since then from what I understand, and some stuff was removed even. That on top of being forced to switch to an engine that is for first person shooters, the technical stuff is super inefficient. Instead of focusing on a tear down rebuild with a focus on delivering a proper simulation football game, they are focusing on MUT with its gambling card packs.

That's the last version I bought, because the hall of fame edition came with streaming Sunday Ticket. I bought every madden from 05-08 and then stopped for a bit (so basically the hey day) and Madden 25 just wasn't that good...so crazy it's viewed as the last good madden game! Micro transactions and card packs killed the game, plus being forced to shoehorn a sports game onto a fps engine.

This is huge, thank you!

Any way to collapse the shoutbox? If not I'll get used to it and might even use it, but just checking.

Wait, John Brown was in that draft class?! Have a feeling I'm going to be saying the same thing about Gabriel Davis in six years!

Am I the only person who had no idea he was part of the Sammy 04 draft class?! I was randomly looking at the top of the 20l4 draft class and scrolled down a bit and there he was! So instead of trading for sammy and kb, they prob coulda figured out some way to get Mack and kb for less?

Holy crap...two season, one offseason entirely cut because of covid. Almost exclusively a blocking TE in college and has immediate contribution in the nfl, granted with flaws...that over the last 3 weeks have been not just getting significantly better (how many times does he drop that away from his body akward catch td against sf earlier in his career), and has kept a veteran TE in kroft on the bench so obviously has shown something to this very quality coaching staff over the last month to show he's turned the corner. Tell me about how we need to replace our kicker and punter again...seriously, if it was up to the fans we'd have rosen, some retread punter and a downward trending kicker.

My guess on the thought process was something along the lines of, let's try and jump on them with big plays early, get a quick two score lead and then go short passing to salt the game away. The steelers aren't going to to up three scores on you quick (without defensive touchdowns), so go for the early haymaker, if you can land it great, if not you're worst within two scores when you transition to what their offense ended up being and you have to feel confident in scoring twice and stopping them twice to get the lead back, especially once you see your scheme against their running game is basically perfect.

You don't get the show

Is the secret to get a quality qb while not bottoming out to trade really good players you aren't going to keep with two years left on their rookie deals for first and second round picks?

Can't decide between: Bonds was the greatest 5 tool player ever, before he started juicing. OR Gotta think at least half the nfl is juicing, so...

I lived in Boston from '06 to '12 and Brady had a weekly radio hit that I caught a lot. Josh Allen is so much better of an interview. Brady was juat a cliche machine, and never said anything interesting. Allen, while definitely saying his fair share of qb cliche, actually says interesting and funny stuff...like the nfc east comment, was straight cliche till it wasn't. Also, the way he goes into actual detail about how he got better and what his flaws were. Don't get me wrong, Brady worked hard as anyone on his mechanics, but I never heard him go in depth on those radio shows. Two caveats, one, Brady had already won a few superbowls at that point, so not gonna get many questions on mechanics from five years ago. And two, WEEI in Boston are the cringiest of hot take radio gas bags around and have nowhere near the skills of mcfee to get an interesting interview. What I'm trying to say, is Allen might have more value as a face of a franchise in terms 9f promoting the brand than brady...until he says something borderline silly and gets a bunch of crap and stops being genuine, but he doesn't seem like someone who would change that.

Depending on the call and the situation, yeah I think it can be extremely problematic. If the chargers score a td at the end, the over hits and the chargers cover. The initial no call on the clear offensive PI td and a few other penalties you rarely see being called in key high leverage situations raises concerns. Also, the lack of a booth review on the pass interference, when it really looked like the ball hit the ground and it would have been game over had they reviewed it, instead hail mary and almost a crazy backend cover and the over. You can't, especially in a post donoghy world, have a ref crew that makes so many more judgement calls compared to other crews, in meaningless garbage time (chance for an onside kick recovery is prob less than the Hail Murray play) making headscratching judgment calls that directly lead to a potential last second cover and the over flipping. I promise I'm not saying I think it's going on, but I also think there will be somebody investigating that crew now if they aren't already just to make sure. The optics look really really bad for the league in my opinion in that last sequence and the bills stopping them saved the league a lot of crap.