Thurman#1

As has been pointed out many times, what are called scalps today were called by several names at the time, including "redskins." https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a29445/true-redskins-meaning/ and https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/a29318/redskin-name-update/ "The story in my family goes that the term dates back to the institutionalized genocide of Native Americans, most notably when the Massachusetts colonial government placed a bounty on their heads. The grisly particulars of that genocide are listed in a 1755 document called the Phips Proclamation, which zeroed in on the Penobscot Indians, a tribe today based in Maine. "Spencer Phips, a British politician and then Lieutenant Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Province, issued the call, ordering on behalf of British King George II for, "His Majesty's subjects to Embrace all opportunities of pursuing, captivating, killing and Destroying all and every of the aforesaid Indians." They paid well – 50 pounds for adult male scalps; 25 for adult female scalps; and 20 for scalps of boys and girls under age 12. "These bloody scalps were known as 'redskins' " A Smithsonian article disputed this, but a later Smithsonian quote disputed the dispute. It's not 100% clear either way, but it's certainly possible this is true. And even if it is not, it's still a racial slur. The reason this change is going to happen is simple. It should. It's time, in fact, it's long past time. It's likely that the original choice of the name was made with good intent. But it's become very clear that it has a significant negative connotation. It's time for the change.

Yup, we're lucky to have him. I wouldn't put McD at #2 yet, but with Cowherd's criteria, where he's looking for a young guy and not a power/control freak so that he threw out Belichick and Payton and a few others, yeah, maybe close.

Yup. Brown is a #1 receiver. Not what people these days call a "true number one," which seems to mean roughly a top ten guy who's tall, but Brown's a #1, and not all that many teams have two of them.

Yeah, all the greatest coaches were terrific pro players.

Moving a statue into a museum and out of public spaces isn't asking people to get over their history. It's asking the government and the country to revere people who deserve some reverence rather than people who chose to fight for a truly abhorrent system. I agree with anyone out there who thinks that political correctness has gone too far. But particularly in the case of the statues in state capitols and statues which were raised far after the Civil War and in many cases with specific racist agendas, I think people are right to call for them to be removed.

Whether names are inspired by native Americans doesn't have much to do with it. The current name refers directly to color of skin and is seen by native Americans as a disparaging reference. Chiefs and Braves not quite so much. As for the news ... nothing has moved that front office in any way ... but now income is affected, in many ways. Expect change.

DiMarco got one hand on it and it was raked out. That throw was there when Josh threw but there was no way to get it there before the safety arrived while still making it over the coverage. Still bothers me that he had two guys open, Brown for a first and Singletary probably for a first and certainly for 10 yards or so on a 2nd and 12 play. The Bills as a team weren't good enough but the same can be said of Allen.

2015 Tyrod was sensational for his first seven games and then for the last seven was almost precisely what he would turn out to be ... he was already 2016 and 2017 Tyrod for that last half of the year in 2015. In game 8, Belichick showed how to defend him and he was never as effective again. His passer rating those last seven games of 2015 were within a point and a half of his career. He went from one game out of the first seven under a 91 passer rating (which is really really good) to four games out of seven below 83 (which is just not good). His last two years with the Bills his passer rating was 89. And that's what he was in the last half of 2015 too.

Completion means from the LOS to the tackle. Air yards means from the LOS to the catch site. If a QB ran backwards 40 yards in a scramble and threw a completion caught one yard beyond the LOS, nobody would call that 41 air yards or a 41 yard gain or a 41 yard completion. Even though if you look at it literally it absolutely travelled 41 yards in the air. Nobody calculates things that way in football terms. Every way of calculating passes starts at the LOS. That Brown play in your second example was 34 air yards and a 40 yard completion. In your first example the picture isn't great but it appears to be made at the 22 or 23, and the LOS is the 47, which makes it a 53 yard touchdown that was about 31 or 32 air yards. EDIT: Next Gen Stats has one called LCAD which does refer to distance from hand to hand, but I don't think anyone else uses that measure.

I'm no Cowherd fan, but changing your position when the facts and the situations change isn't just smart, it's what intelligent people should do.

So he's saying, starting tomorrow, and he's very much including the QB's current situation. That would certainly make it reasonable for him to be ahead of Darnold and Fitz. That's still high for me, but not wildly unreasonable. He's clearly wrong when he says they had no deep threat last year. Brown was wide open over the top and overthrown a good 5 - 7 times last year. He is a terrific deep threat though that part of his game was wasted last year. He puts Allen ahead of Cam basically because the defense is better in Buffalo. And he doesn't like Cam's injury history. With those criteria, again, not wildly unreasonable.

I got from the statement that it's now official ... at this time. Things could change. If you had to bet, though, you wouldn't probably bet against this continuing moving forward.

I don't think too many people remember how terrific that defense was. One quick measure of that was that if you look at DVOA, they weren't just the best team in the league that year, they were about 50% better than the next-best team when using unweighted figures and around 70% better when using the weighted figures, weighted for strength of schedule. https://www.footballoutsiders.com/stats/nfl/team-defense/2004 More FootballOutsiders has that 2004 defense as the 7th best ever!!!!!!!!! They only look at teams from 1950 and onwards, but still. https://www.footballoutsiders.com/dvoa-ratings/2014/historical-dvoa-estimates It's a real shame that that offense, and in particular Bledsoe, just weren't very good. The offense was listed as 21st when unweighted and 18th when weighted for schedule difficulty.

60% doesn't matter so much. It's a convenient benchmark, but what matters is accuracy. And while you should absolutely not judge accuracy using only completion percentage ... if you do reduce Allen's drop artificially to NFL average, what you get is a QB who is in the mid-30s in completion percentage. Yeah, it's fractionally above 60%, but that doesn't make it actually good. And again, no, there are NOT a lot of guys who have improved accuracy. Some, no question about it. But not a lot. And Brees isn't one. In college he was already considered deadly accurate, though not so much on long balls. His negatives were his height, having taken few direct snaps and the usual college to pro development worries. Brees' problems his first couple of years in the pros weren't about accuracy so much as reading defenses, quick decision making and generally getting used to the far more complex pro game, not to mention the lack of talent SD had at the skill positions when he was finally put in in his second year. Plenty of guys improve their completion percentages but not many have significantly improved their accuracy. Agreed that Allen appears to already be one of those guys who can improve and has. How much will be a question, but it's certainly hopeful that he already has. And agreed about Cam also, he shows it's possible to be a very good QB even with accuracy problems, but he also shows that guys like that need a lot of things to go right at the same time. It's hard for guys like that to make their teams consistently competitive at the highest level. But if you are going to try, it helps if you've got a defense that is consistently excellent, and it sure looks like McD knows how to do this.

I get the sarcasm. But he's not wrong when he says it's a skill and it's hard to learn. It is hard to learn. Not impossible, but hard. Some QBs have clearly improved themselves over the years in accuracy, and I'm sure you all know the usual suspects. Equally, though, every year in the draft there are a few guys who aren't very accurate and the pundits and draftniks say it's in their mechanics and they can be improved. They may well be right that the mechanics are the key to the problems for a lot of these guys. But a very very large majority of those guys who "can be improved," ... aren't. Some can, and Allen himself appears to be one of them. But he's right when he says it's hard to learn. Oh, and anyone who says that completion percentage and accuracy are not the same thing ... is dead-on correct.

It doesn't necessarily all go on the WRs. Remember that in John Brown's last year in Balt, he was on track to end up with more than a thousand yard when Flacco was QBing, and then when Jackson took over, Brown's yards plummeted. Here are Brown's game by game totals that year. 3 receptions for 44 yards 4 for 92 5 for 86 3 for 116 4 for 58 2 for 28 7 for 134 3 for 28 3 for 15 Jackson takes over 1 for 23 1 for 25 0 for 0 2 for 23 1 for 9 2 for 27 1 for 7 ... and then 72 for 1060 the next year with Josh Allen. I don't think anyone would say that the blame for his late season lack of productivity should all or even mostly go to Brown.

Damn those depraved young QBs. Typo, yeah? Agreed with your range. 3rd to 7th sounds about right. And I agree the Bills wouldn't take that deal.

Well, yeah, if you throw in Allen's rookie year that was supposed to be a redshirt, yeah, you can make things look bad. But last year Allen was 20/9. More, he greatly improved last year after the NE game. In his last 12 games he had 17 TDs and 3 INTs. But yeah, throw in the old data if you want to make him look bad. Not that Allen doesn't have a long way to go. He does. But your argument ignores his trajectory totally, which for a young and improving guy distorts the picture.

Not to defend Bill so much, but I agree with this much, that New England has helped a lot of guys reenergize their careers or create them from nothing. It hasn't worked with everyone by any means, but their tactic of bringing in undervalued guys has worked very well over the years. Welker Amendola Dion Lewis Chris Hogan Kyle Van Noy Ninkovich Brandon LaFell LeGarrette Blount Dan Connolly Randy Moss (yeah, he'd clearly been dogging it in Oakland) Danny Woodhead Vrabel Larry Izzo Corey Dillon coming off a down year Reche Caldwell (RIP) had by far his best year for them David Patten Joe Andruzzi Antowain Smith Revis was expensive, but helped bring a championship his one year

IMO this evens things up. I had us as the team to beat if they started Stidham, but with someone better, it's a horse race. Which is more than has been able to be said for a long time. I think it could go either way. Gronk wasn't exactly a shrinking violet. And nobody has said that Cam doesn't give it his all on the field. Nor is Edelman. Nor was Moss.

No, it'd been determined on here that the NFL was going to bury this because they couldn't stand the publicity. Just yesterday, wasn't it?

I think he believes every word of those. He just avoids saying anything about the areas he feels negatively about on those teams. I think he believes that he owes respect to those teams, that he owes that respect not because of what it means to those teams, but because if he doesn't feel genuine respect for every team every week some of those teams will beat him. Do you ever hear him say stuff like, "Well, we think they're better than us and we're likely to lose." Nope. He is very good at finding the areas where even bad teams are good, pointing them out and not mentioning the things that suck. Remember how he used to say great things about Kyle Williams, Jason Peters, Takeo Spikes, Fred Jackson and a ton more Bills? He did that because he really thought Kyle Williams, Jason Peters, Takeo Spikes and Freddy, among others, were terrific players. Now, did you hear him saying great things about guys like Demetress Bell? He wasn't touting those guys for the Pro Bowl. He'd find ways around that, saying, "The offensive line seems to be improving there, they're young and hungry." He'd play the game and play it well. I think he wanted, maybe needed, to believe deep inside that every team was good enough to beat the Pats any given day if New England didn't give their best. He wanted his team and himself respecting those other teams. That's a part of his culture, I think. And again, Belichick isn't re-hiring anybody out of a desire to be nice. Just isn't happening. He believes in Lombardi.

Nice. Thanks. Every time I see that play, the 4th down recovery and lunge for the first down it puts a smile on my face for hours.

Um, yeah. I believe nearly everything Belichick says to the media. When he doesn't want to answer questions he just doesn't. When he doesn't want to compliment guys, he just doesn't. Doesn't mean I like him. I hate him. But anyone who doesn't think Belichick doesn't have tremendous respect for Lombardi just doesn't get it. Lombardi worked for Belichick for years in Cleveland. If Belichick didn't have complete belief that he was very smart and very capable, he simply wouldn't have hired him again in New England. Belichick doesn't re-hire guys "just being nice."

Lombardi was also an assistant to the coaching staff of the Patriots from 2014 to 2016, during which time the Pats won two Super Bowls, and Belichick knew what he was getting because Lombardi had worked under Belichick before, in Cleveland. Belichick said, "Mike's...one of the smartest people I've worked with. He was huge asset to me for the two years he was here...he studies football and he knows it very well." He also worked under Bill Walsh, and his book about his time under Walsh, Al Davis and Belichick is really really good IMO, and from the reviews as well. IMO his TED talk is pretty good, too, though the untucked shirt look doesn't do him any favors. Spends a lot of time on why culture is huge, which I think our current leadership would back him up on all the way. And while the Browns were going through a pretty bad time when Lombardi was there, they improved four games in their second year under him. He looked to have been doing a pretty solid job in an absolute tire fire of an administrative structure. In any case, how smart Lombardi is does absolutely nothing to do with whether he's right in this instance. Attacking the messenger is the name of a logical fallacy. Who the messenger is has no logical relevance to whether or not he's right. Sometimes Einstein is wrong and sometimes Stalin was right. Wanna discredit an argument? Attack the argument. It's the only logical way to go about it.