The Frankish Reich

You do realize that AJ McCarron looked positively Barkley-esque in some of his infrequent starts in Cincy? For example: Here's his first ever start: 15-21, 192, 115.6 QB rating. What Barkley's start proves to me is this: if we had gone into the season with a reasonably competent NFL QB as our starter, we actually could have been competitive this year, just like we were last year. As it is, it's been a squandered opportunity - a half-assed rebuild, a flaccid PeterTank, whatever you want to call it. So yes, it was a mistake.

I'm sure he's just heartbroken about the impact his holdout has had on fantasy league players. What a selfish jerk.

He clearly would've been a top 10 pick if he'd come out after his junior year. Look, I'll admit it: I wanted us to take him instead of EJ (although NOT in the 1st round.) So far, EJ's had the much better career, if only because Barkley hasn't done much of anything. But Barkley was a very good college QB, much better than Manuel ever was, and I believe he could be adequate as a stopgap/bridge starter for someone ... and that he is fully capable of going all Ryan Fitzpatrick for us over a 4 or 5 game stretch. I don't know what you base this on. Barkley didn't throw at the combine, and the consensus was along the lines of "doesn't have a plus arm." In other words, kind of in that Ryan Nassib category in his draft class, or Kevin Hogan (AJ McCarron?) in other classes. Some of these guys succeed in the NFL, either as solid backups or as starters for a number of years.

Maybe it was that psychedelic experience. Running around naked is underrated as a life changing event. This guy would agree: https://www.vox.com/first-person/2018/2/19/16739386/ayahuasca-retreat-psychedelic-hallucination-meditation Fitzy 2.0! I'll take that. In the short term, that is.

I would love to see a Saints-Chiefs Super Bowl. And not just because that means the Pats aren't in it, although that is a big part ....

That's what I mean ... I had to look to make sure it was in Cincinnati. It was.

If his contract year doesn't motivate him, I'm guessing nothing will. I've been a semi-defender of Benjamin, but that tipped ball play was inexcusable.

Saints. Winning huge on the road is kind of a new thing for them too.

It was a gamble sitting out this season and passing on $14 million. But obviously Bell factored in the risk of serious injury (this happened to Matt Forte in a similar situation), which would destroy his future value. So I don't think it's an irrational decision at all. Whether he will ultimately come out ahead, well, who knows ...

Well, you do have a point on that one. Chase Daniels always performed well in practice and preseason games, and he's had the remarkable good fortune (compare: Peterman) to never have to play in a game that counts in anything other than garbage time. If Peterman had been drafted to be, say, the Chargers backup, we'd probably be thinking the Chargers have a competent backup and maybe (I said "maybe") even a potential successor to Rivers ....

There's a new book out about the early days of the NFL, "The League: How Five Rivals Created the NFL and Launched an Empire." Looks like a good read. Here's a line from a review of the book: "The pros routinely slogged away to scoreless ties in games dominated by running plays and drop kicked field goals. It was hard to throw the roundish ball, and when passes were allowed, they could only be thrown from at least 5 yards behind the line of scrimmage. In 1932, teams averaged 8 points a game." The Bills are currently averaging 10.7 points per game, and trending downwards. We may hit 1932 levels yet! EDIT: The Jets, hardly an offensive juggernaut with a rookie QB themselves, have scored more than double the points we've scored. We are really entering uncharted territory with this offense. It's actually difficult to be this inept offensively in the 2018 version of the NFL. But we're doing it.

Maybe I'm an idiot (o.k., fire away), but I'm actually looking forward to the post-bye season to see what Allen can do with Pryor, more involvement from Logan Thomas in the passing game (as we saw last week), and yes, even Kelvin Benjamin as he (presumably) musters all his willpower to make a push toward free agency in the offseason.

Correct. Remember when Dwayne Bowe (the Kelvin Benjamin of his time) was their #1, and there was absolutely nobody to challenge him for that spot? This wasn't ancient history. It was 2014.

We are officially in Second Training Camp mode. Bring in talented guys who've failed elsewhere and see who can play. This is one part of The Process that I give a thumbs up to. The season is over; it's player evaluation time to see who warrants a contract offer next year. At WR/TE/Kick Returner, that means a training camp style competition between: McKittrick, McKenzie (this is getting confusing), Thomas, Croom, Pryor, KB (good as gone I assume) ... pretty much everyone but Zay (because he's a second rounder, and because he's shown improvement despite all the circumstances around him) and Clay (because he's pretty much unmoveable with that contract).

From the linked article - I don't have much confidence that I'll be able to convince people here about how sports books make their money, but here it is -- sports books want to set their lines to get roughly 50% of the action on each side! When the lines are "wrong" and the wisdom of the crowd results in big over/underlays, the sports books are vulnerable to loss. This is what we mean when we say "Vegas lost big." You are not betting "against" Vegas; you are betting against a line and every other bettor out there. The Action Network's public money tracker shows 82 percent of the bets were on the Chiefs. William Hill releases ticket numbers every Sunday morning and their numbers had 91 percent of the tickets on the Chiefs and a whopping 88 percent of the money on Kansas City. Week 9 went poorly before that, but Jay Rood of MGM said the Chiefs covering turned it into a "disaster." "We were pretty much done at that point," Rood told Purdham. "Disaster." Exactly. Glad to see someone understands ...