HappyDays

What has George Karlaftis done to be included in this group? You might as well add Greg Rousseau.

You're from Baltimore, right? Have you ever been to Room 40?

Lamb threw the game. What an awful 2nd half performance.

Very impressive debut for Brian Schottenheimer. They're making it look easy against a defense that was supposed to be dominant.

Raiders are going to have to play Navy football for that offense to function. They only have 4 WRs on the roster, and Jakobi Meyers is the only one worth a damn.

Seems like Benford is good to go. Coleman limited is not ideal but media reports from the start of practice said he looked fine so not too worried. Bass looks to be trending towards not playing.

Matt Prater last year was 6/6 on FGs including a 57 yarder and 10/10 on XPs. As far as emergency kickers go you could do a lot worse than that.

I would actually like to know what kind of cost people would see as fair? If $522 is too expensive, how much lower do you think it would have to be for the large majority of illegal streamers to start paying for it? I'm genuinely curious. My take is that almost no price drop would be enough to reduce the number of illegal streamers. Because once you've decided that you're entitled to the content for free, there's no reason to pay any amount of money for it as long as you have that free access.

It's worth noting that Sunday Ticket at its most expensive is $522. That's for returning users who add Red Zone. Over a year that averages out to $43.50 per month. That's like two DoorDash orders. I understand there is a very very small percentage of the population to where budgeting an extra $43.50 per month would genuinely be impossible and there are no other realistic budget cuts they could make in their life. I'm not trying to belittle those people. But let's be honest, most of the people in this discussion are not in that tiny minority. Most of them just see an easy way to get out of paying for the service so they take it, because they don't want to inconvenience themselves by making small sacrifices somewhere else in their budget.

No but they are making money hand over fist in advertising revenue, for content they didn't create and don't own the rights to. https://sports.yahoo.com/soccer/breaking-news/article/streameast-the-largest-illegal-sports-streaming-service-reportedly-shut-down-after-year-long-investigation-154917542.html

But usually that stealing doesn't become socially acceptable. Like you used the example of rampant shoplifting that was going on in certain areas of this country. And yes that was a real problem where shoplifting became so easy that it became common. That's not the part that surprises me. What would surprise me is if after pharmacies and stores put their items behind locked cases, the majority opinion ended up being "how dare the billionaire Walgreens company stop me from taking the granola bars that I'm entitled to." And if you tried to explain that this mindset is nuts, the average response was "nobody is really hurt by this, you're just a bootlicker." Yet for some reason with illegal streaming that is exactly what happens. Libraries legally own those books and they aren't charging their customers to read them - that's what make them public libraries. Once you own an item you are free to share it with anybody you'd like as long as you don't directly profit off of it. The proper analogy to libraries would be you inviting friends over to your house to watch a game on a streaming package that you own. Or more aptly a TV sports bar. That isn't stealing, that's buying the rights and then sharing the content.

It is not a 1:1 analogy, but my point is that it is bizarre that stealing from the entertainment industry is perfectly acceptable, but stealing from any other industry is rightfully taboo. The average illegal streamer does not perform deep philosophical musings about the ethics of stealing fungible vs non-fungible commodities. That is just post hoc reasoning to explain why your particular brand of stealing is fine - a shameless shoplifter on the other hand might say that stealing basic necessities is inherently and obviously more ethical than stealing media. Ultimately whatever rationalizations you make don't matter. Stealing is wrong, and it's crazy that that feels like a radical statement. As soon as media became easy to steal, it also became socially acceptable to steal. That's the part I don't understand.

And the same logic could apply to shoplifting. The Walton family owns the Broncos and also owns Walmart. You could say that stealing candy bars from Walmart isn't a big deal, and you could say since the owners are billionaires that means it's totally an okay thing to do. But 99% of the population would disagree with that. Even shoplifters themselves know on some level that what they're doing is wrong. What's weird is that everyone agrees shoplifting from billionaires is wrong and shouldn't be encouraged, but streaming content illegally has absolutely zero social taboos at all. Quite the opposite, people brag about it and act personally offended when legal authorities shut it down. Like what did you really expect to happen? For what it's worth I don't think people that stream content illegally are evil. Nor do I think shoplifters are. Absolutely there are some people in such desperate financiial situations that they have no other choice and while I don't condone the behavior I don't really begrudge them either. What gets me is that there are plenty of people who do have a choice, who could afford that one month of Netflix to watch a single game (or just choose not to watch it) but actively decide that they deserve that content for free. It's as if tens of millions of Americans all at once decided they were going to start walking out of Walmart with toiletries shoved in their pockets, and then got enraged when the stores instituted security measures to stop the endemic. And yes at a macro level I do believe that such widespread illegal activity absolutely affects the overall price of these services. Because if it happened in the opposite direction of course prices would be affected. Imagine if all of a sudden Hershey lost 20% of their annual sales because 20% of their customers decided to just start stealing their candy bars. You don't think that would affect the price?

I still don't really understand what happened that made everyone so entitled. Back in the day it was well established that you would pay for albums, you would pay for magazine and newspaper subscriptions, etc. You would have been considered a nutjob if you publicly advocated for stealing that stuff at your own pleasure. But today that is the default position. People get angry at 2 minute ad reads in the middle of a free podcast. I guess the modern opinion is that entertainers should do their work for free and feel lucky to have an audience. So I'm with you on this 100%. But there's no stopping the wave now.

Seems like Benford will be fine.

Apparently out for the season:

Yeah by the way that wasn't speculation on my part, it's what I had heard. He's not going to be ready for at least a few weeks. Last I had heard he was unable to pass a physical.

Sorry these stats don't matter because Skylar Thompson.

Your obsession with that game is absolutely hilarious 😂

Bills 29 Ravens 25 All offseason I've been thinking Baltimore would win this game. As recently as last week that would have been my honest prediction. They have the better roster, nowhere you can really poke holes or find a vulnerability. Their offense is the definition of pick your poison. On defense they have a crazy good secondary and unpredictable pass rush packages that gave our OL fits in the first matchup last year. On a pure player vs player analysis it doesn't feel like this is a game our roster should win without the Ravens making several unforced errors. What's changed my mind over the past couple days is my growing sense that no one really knows what this Bills team is going to look like. Especially the defense. We made additions like Ryan Nielsen and Michael Hoecht, coaches and players that don't fit our usual tendencies. There's been complete radio silence out of OBD - training camp was boring, preseason was boring, Hard Knocks was boring. They have been very intentional about keeping the defense under wraps and I've come to believe that it is genuinely going to be different from what we've seen before. So while Baltimore isn't going to be totally unprepared, they're also not going to be able to glean as much from last year's film study as they might expect, and I think that plus the crowd noise in primetime for the home opener is going to create a huge advantage for our defense in the 1st half at least. Also... I fully expect Josh Allen to be at his very best for this game. Something that's kind of gone under the radar because he just won MVP - reports from training camp are that he's throwing the ball better than ever. Even at this stage of his career he's still tweaking his mechanics and perfecting his consistency. It seems crazy to expect him to unlock another level above what he did last year, but I really think he has it in him. This is his 2nd full year in Brady's offense. He has his personal life well in order and yes I believe that stuff matters. He's spent the whole offseason developing chemistry with Keon Coleman who also has been turning heads at training camp. I expect our run offense to be just as good as last year, maybe even better with the addition of Hawes. We ran the ball well against the Ravens in the playoff matchup - our RBs averaged 4.88 YPA. If we can keep close to that efficiency and not have our passing offense fall into a major slump like it did in the playoff matchup, we aren't going to blow the doors off them but we'll put up our points and force Baltimore to play catch up which is exactly the kind of game they are built to avoid. This one is going to have the feel of a playoff game. I still kind of wish we got Baltimore later in the season after Derrick Henry wore down and we got our suspended players plus Maxwell Hairston back. But if it's going to be early in the season, week 1 in primetime was the best case scenario. The crowd noise, primetime Josh Allen, new defensive wrinkles that haven't been put on film yet. I think it all adds up to a win that despite the spread favoring us will still feel like an upset.

Congrats @Billl. You're no longer the biggest homer on this board.