WhitewalkerInPhilly

Well Byrd has now been officially invited. The man was due.

Going for a planted knee on a sliding kick puts a large amount of momentum at a single point end while aiming for a vulnerable spot. Kicking out someone's knee of the ground is a serious self-defense move. If it connected it could have done serious harm.

"Daddy! The man took my ball." followed by either "That's because you threw it to him." or "Balls son. He took your balls."

Whoo! Of course, they only are in because the Ravens are in the Super Bowl but I'll take it. But really, why the hell are we playing the Pro Bowl before the Super Bowl when many of the best players in the game won't be there? I know it wasn't always like this, and I can't remember why they changed it.

Now that I can see the play again, I can definitely see grounds to call out Brady for a penalty. I don't think it would have done much as to how the game played out, but it still does piss me off that Brady never does seem to have anything negative stick to him. If you whiff him immediately after he's thrown the ball, it's a roughing the passer. When he kicks someone, he's defending himself. I can remember when he first came back from injury in the 2009 opener. When we were getting pressure and running the ball well the talk was not about how well the Bills were playing it was how poorly Brady was. When he got better, the announcers immediately jumped back on the wagon. After he threw 4 INTs in his loss to the Bills two years ago the talking heads went on about how he didn't "play bad" and that he was just "unlucky". In the pregame one of the guys (can't remember who) declared Brady the best QB ever. Now, as much as I bitterly hate the man, I have to admit he's good. But better than Joe Montanna? Better than Aaron Rodgers, Brett Farve, Drew Brees, and the Mannings? Maybe, but they constantly put him on a pedestal.

OK, I'm ready for this story to die. Quite simply, I don't care. No money was scammed. Even if he was in on it from the beginning (which at the moment it doesn't look like it did), he didn't get the Heismann for it. He didn't get any endorsements from it. As far as I can tell, no laws or NCAA rules have been broken. If we question his character, that's a worthy question. We can also question whether there are holes in his game as seen in the Alabama game. If we have an issue with that, fine. If not, let's move on.

Does anyone actually have any FACTS or PROOF one way or the other? Because it seems like in two days all we've gotten is conjecture.

I have to say, this is probably the best thought out of the cut lists. There are definitely people who are not worth what we are paying. That said, I'm also going to believe that Fitz will be gone as well. This is not to knock Fitz (who I think is a good man, just not our guy), but Marrone comes from an upbeat, uptempo offense and is being handed the keys to a team over which it seems he will have a great deal of control. If I had the chance to make my mark in my first NFL HC debut, I would want MY choice heading the team, even if it didn't come down to the numbers.

This...this is too f*cking bizarre for me to handle. I have to wait for the whole story to come out. SI did a piece on this thing after all, so if it is indeed a hoax it was a pretty well crafted one. So yeah...maybe he'll fall to the third round now?

Almost sure to happen. The biggest point in commonality I see is that both cities love to grouse about their football teams.

It's interesting to note that he doesn't have a QB on the board yet (though he promises that he will) Would it be worth it to pick up Teo if we could also get Geno Smith/Matt Barclay, the guys who the "take a QB in the first" group have held as their star examples?

Huh, how about that? I'm living in Philly, and the sports writers were tearing into the Eagles GM because they let Chip Kelly walk away. I guess they'll just have to be chewing on another type of bird then... Seriously though, maybe it's living in Philly but I can't hate the Eagles. They too have suffered years of failure with a highly touted roster, have/had a HC and GM who the fans hate and we only play them once every three years, and unlike every other member of the NFC East they've never beaten us in a Super Bowl.

This is where I was going with this. Who have we had for the last six years? Dick Jauron? Chan Gailey? Neither of these guys are firebrands. Jauron was the man with the "It's hard to win in the NFL" quote, and while Chan promised to fix that can anyone really say that we didn't look defeated through November and December?

Look, he may be available, but I really doubt that we're going to take him. Marrone is a brand new coach with a team he is expected to rebuild almost from the ground up. He has an extremely solid O-line and two very highly touted Rb's. If this is isn't prime condition to start molding a rookie QB I don't know what is.

How about our special teams with Bobby April? (who happens to be with the currently leaderless Eagles)

You know, until Marrone came by I was all for this. Now, I don't think so as much. Would he be an upgrade over Fitz? Probably. But what we're going for now is a bold new direction. I have a feeling that Marrone wants to put his own stamp on the offense.

I don't get this. How is he high risk? He was picked in the third round, and signed to that level salary, and then led his rookie team to the division title. Amidst the much vaunted Andrew Luck and RGIII, he was the last rookie QB standing and excecuted a 21 point comeback with under 31 seconds left in he game. Did he come up short? Yes. But the rookie QB made every other QB in the AFC East other than Tom Brady like a grade schooler playing a pickup game. I was critical of the "we should have drafted Wilson" group but I was dead wrong. Of course, we would have probably squandered him last year.

Incredible offensive line work by the Hawks.

It's a mark of how desperate we are that Wanny makes us be willing to even look at anything Williams touched. Of course ten years ago I didn't understand football as well as I do now so it never clicked. Still, I relish the chance of being aggressive again on defense. People keep trying to emulate the Pats, and the only way to stop that is to apply pressure. Without it, how many times have we seen Brady pick apart a zone?

This

Hey, I would be all for it, especially if we move back to a base 3-4. He would be a better fit as an OLB.

Here's a really helpful link I've been using as a reference: http://chi.scout.com/2/646395.html

We can always resign him then. I'm not sure who else would be willing to pay as much as us.

Well thanks...to be honest, I mostly cribbed it from links from Wikipedia so I'm hardly an expert. I'm glad that I was able to explain it decently. I agree that if we go with this, we could certainly need another CB for press coverage. While we might be able to get a decent performance out of someone on the roster, we would really need for them to step it up. Either way, I'm eager and excited to see what Pettine comes up with.

Perhaps Dareus would be better as the NT, since he's a little bigger. But the nice part of the 46 is that it brings in a fourth person in, and I would see that a 4-3 over would be a little closer to what he had last year.