The Frankish Reich

The NFL has cleverly created a calendar to keep serious fans locked in all year: early summer OTAs, camp, regular season, Black Monday coach firing day, extended playoffs, Super Bowl, free agency, and finally the draft. And they’ve hooked me. I pay attention to all of that. Except the pre-draft month or so with the preposterous mock drafts in which the very best will get about 4 or 5 picks correct (meaning team + pick number match up). Why people do this, I’ll never know. That’s the time to take a month of from thinking about the NFL. Tune back in on draft day itself.

This is true. I would like to see the government (Fed? State? Both?) condemn a lot of land on the US Side and try to restore it to its natural beauty. That land is a blighted anyway. I see old 1800s paintings and it’s kind of the Yosemite of the East. Let Canada have the hotels and arcade crap.

I've watched a lot of Broncos football this year. And my impression: maybe the guys we thought were big-time playmakers aren't. Sutton appeared ready to resume where he was before injury, but to me he seems like he's not getting separation consistently. Jeudy is nearing bust territory. I thought Noah Fant (he went to Seattle in the Wilson trade) was a only being held back by poor offensive schemes and quarterbacking. He's a bit behind last year's productivity. Add to that 3 guys hurt on the O line and the only real standouts at the skill positions last year - Javonte Williams and Tim Patrick - going down for the season by Game 1 and there's the recipe for the disaster we're seeing. No doubt Wilson has been really bad, and Hackett has been worse. But a season like this makes you reevaluate everything you thought you knew. Sutton, Jeudy, even Javonte - they may not be around. Wilson's contract says he has to be there for basically 3 more years, so they've go to bring in a new coaching staff and new players to try to make it work. There really is no other option. Dreams of a Super Bowl competitor are over. A .500ish team next year? I don't see that as out of the question.

Not ideal for him like SF, but the Rams are a pretty good landing spot: - he will definitely get an opportunity this year on a team that still has talent. Mostly defensive talent, but still. - good offensive minds who may be able to figure out how to maximize his talents and hide his shortcomings - it is by no means certain that Stafford will make it all the way back. He could be Peyton Manning in his final year next season. So Baker has a continuing chance if he stays there.

In my lifetime, I saw the Democrats go waaay to the left of the median voter once: McGovern. And he got clobbered in a defeat that has never been matched. But the primary process will always pull candidates too far to either side. Hillary 2016 was a victim of Bernie; she couldn’t occupy the center like good ol’ Bill after Bernie shifted the party hard left. What we have going on with the Republicans is just plain weird now. Not ideological, just weird. Celebrity candidates like Oz and Tommy Tuberville and Herschel Walker, not to mention Trump himself.

I don't like Julio Jones suddenly showing signs of life again. Yes, there is a perfectly good chance that the Bucs pull it together in time to do some damage in the playoffs.

How bout that F bomb, Tom. Your little girl is watching

Whaaat? Holding on a Brady offense??? What is this world coming to????

23 seconds off the clock on that "drive" Yes it is Brady Time

and there it is

I sense a big PI in 3, 2, 1 ....

Fast pace finally calmed down that Saints pass rush.

so awesome!! Love watching this.

You seem to be describing Jimmy Garoppolo ...

I have zero interest in this game or this whole miserable division. But yet I will sit here and watch just to see Brady humiliated. Yes, I am that petty.

Next year with the 49ers? Sure. He'll be a right-handed Tua with all that speed around him.

I think you mentioned this before. Anyway, thanks! It’s on my quiet (for me!) days of Christmas-to-New Years reading list. By the way, the answer is No. It should not be legal, just as it wasn’t in the NFL till about 2006. It strikes me as a really bad idea from the player safety standpoint, and a boring play anyway. So if Josh is big enough that he doesn’t need the extra push, doesn’t allowing that hurt us rather than help us? It would help a small guy like Tua more.

Me at 4:00 - Go Bengals! Me at 7:20 - Uh oh. Why did I want the Bengals to win? They’re coming for us.

Can we say “last 6 weeks of his rookie season?”

Justin Fields = Josh Allen, Sophomore season? Discuss.

I don't have numbers, and I'm not basing it on anything other than Musk trying to weasel out of his original offer, and the flow of advertisers out of Twitter. And the fact that it certainly wasn't a consistently profitable enterprise before he bought it, and the balance sheet is certainly worse now.

That's such good actual analysis that I might have to give in and actually subscribe to The Athletic. Unless of course you just keep digesting the best parts for me.

I'm no fan of Newt. But if the Republicans want to convince me to vote for them again, they ought to look back to his Contract with America days. I wasn't a fan of all the ideas there, but that's what they were: IDEAS. Actual policy changes and government structural changes. Not "own the libs" talking points. - term limits - social security reform (Yes ... it's necessary. It will happen on an emergency basis with far worse repercussions if we wait instead of doing it with phased-in actuarially sound principles today) - a balanced budget amendment (I don't like this one; COVID showed us the necessity of deficit spending in certain emergency situations. Having said that, I know that everything is an "emergency" to politicians who want to hand out candy. So it's two cheers for balanced budgets) - tougher sentencing on federal criminals - welfare reform (not sure I liked the proposals at the time, but they dragged Bill Clinton toward more sensible strategies that Obama and Biden have been working furiously to undercut) Will we see that kind of serious policy debate in 2024? We certainly didn't see it in 2022 or 2020.

Q. If Elon were to try to take Twitter public again today (new IPO) what would it be valued at? Remember, he paid $44 billion.

What did you buy? I'm thinking of doing what a lot of people are doing now: one larger gas engine vehicle for longer trips (the charging network is pretty sparse in the mountain west where I live), one EV for everything else. By the way: just paid $2.69 a gallon for gas. So it seems like SOME of this was "transitory" after all.