Logic

Thanks for taking the time to write this up. Looking at your running back observations reminds me: I said this earlier this offseason and caught flak, but I'm sticking with it: By midseason or thereabouts, Ray Davis will be the starting running back on this team and getting the lion's share of the reps. James Cook will be relegated to the role to which his body type and skillset make him more well suited: Change of pace and third down back. At the VERY least, I expect a 1A/1B situation, but I'm sticking with Davis overtaking Cook as the primary back in this offense.

While the OUTCOMES of preseason games don't matter -- the final scores, the winners and losers -- you still want to see good execution in them. The reps matter. No, you can't glean much when your team isn't gameplanning, particularly if they're going up against a team rolling out stunts and blitz packages and so forth. But you CAN glean things like effort, execution, discipline, etc. For instance...for YEARS prior to the Sean McDermott regime, the Bills would look terrible in the preseason, and we'd all say "it's only preseason", and lo and behold, they'd be awful in the regular season, too. The past five+ years, the Bills have looked great every preseason, and lo and behold, they've been great every regular season. Am I saying that a bad preseason performance means your team will stink? No, certainly not. But I AM saying that the reps matter, the execution matters, and that these games CAN be somewhat informative in terms of where your team needs more work. Saturday's game was atypical for the McDermott era of Bills football. We have not typically seen them get blown off the field like that. Frankly, it shouldn't come as much of a surprise, because it's a pretty young, pretty new version of the Buffalo Bills. They have kinks to work out. If I had one takeaway from Saturday's game, it's that I don't think this Bills roster is nearly as deep as in years past. The reason the Bills tended to win so many preseason games the past few years is that THEIR depth was better than most other teams' depth, so those boring, all-grocery-bagger All-Stars second halves would more often than not be dominated by the Bills. Now? Not so much. The Bears' depth whooped our depth. Will next game be any different? We'll see.

I think it'll be like it always is with these things: The amount of time the offense will get will depend on how good and how sharp they look. If they go out there on the first drive of the game and march down the field on a 6 minute scoring drive, looking crisp and executing well, and punch it in for a touchdown, I think it's realistic to think McDermott would just pull them. If they look sloppier or go three-and-out or something, then yeah, they'll play longer. I don't think it's absolute.

Chiefs will sign him for vet min to be WR5 and Rashee suspension insurance from the slot.

I have no way of knowing this for sure, but I suspect that one of the reasons McDermott is playing the starters against the Bears is that the Bears stink. The opportunity exists to go out there and put together one good, long scoring drive, build some confidence, and then bench the starters for the night. I know that the team being young overall and needing to work on timing and chemistry and in-game communication is part of the calculation, but I'm sticking with my "Bears stink" theory as being part of the thinking as well.

I really hope they don't keep La'el Collins over someone like KJ Hamler or even a younger OL prospect like Richard Gouriage. From all reports in camp thus far, Collins is cooked. If they MUST have some veteran OL depth, I hope they scour the waiver wire after cutdown day.

Jerry Garcia once said the Grateful Dead are like black licorice. Not everyone likes licorice, but those that like it, REALLY like it.

This poem written for Jerry by Robert Hunter just days after he died gets me in the feels every single time. Miss ya, Jer. Elegy for Jerry Jerry, my friend, you’ve done it again, even in your silence the familiar pressure comes to bear, demanding I pull words from the air with only this morning and part of the afternoon to compose an ode worthy of one so particular about every turn of phrase, demanding it hit home in a thousand ways before making it his own, and this I can’t do alone. Now that the singer is gone, where shall I go for the song? Without your melody and taste to lend an attitude of grace a lyric is an orphan thing, a hive with neither honey’s taste nor power to truly sting. What choice have I but to dare and call your muse who thought to rest out of the thin blue air that out of the field of shared time, a line or two might chance to shine — As ever when we called, in hope if not in words, the muse descends. How should she desert us now? Scars of battle on her brow, bedraggled feathers on her wings, and yet she sings, she sings! May she bear thee to thy rest, the ancient bower of flowers beyond the solitude of days, the tyranny of hours– the wreath of shining laurel lie upon your shaggy head bestowing power to play the lyre to legions of the dead If some part of that music is heard in deepest dream, or on some breeze of Summer a sn@tch of golden theme, we’ll know you live inside us with love that never parts our good old Jack O’Diamonds become the King of Hearts. I feel your silent laughter at sentiments so bold that dare to step across the line to tell what must be told, so I’ll just say I love you, which I never said before and let it go at that old friend the rest you may ignore.

Nope. He played a mean organ. In later years, when his health started failing him and as the band's sound evolved, he played organ less and often played only harmonica and congas. From 1965 to mid 1968, his organ was a critical piece of the Dead's sound. Here's a great video of the Dead from Monterey Pop in 1967 where you can very clearly hear Pig's playing.

The eternal optimist in me wants to say "maybe being forced to watch, learn, and have extra time to study and take in what he heard in meetings instead of having to do the physical part is EXACTLY what he needs to learn the complexities of the mental part of his job at an accelerated pace", but you're probably right. I think, as a side note, that it's interesting that Hamlin has taken almost all of the first team reps at free safety so far this camp. Yes, his primary competition has been injured, and prior to those injuries, it was a rotation. BUT...since then, Hamlin has been starting consistently, and -- as you say -- that's not easy to do in a McDermott defense. Maybe, just maybe, last year really was an anomaly and a "getting his body back up to speed after the heart trauma" year, and maybe he can be a capable starter in this defense. And aside from all of these considerations, the fretting all may be for naught anyway if Micah Hyde decides he wants to come back for a farewell tour.

I'm not giving up hope that he will seize the starting job THIS season. Why? For one thing, there's the ever-present threat (and reality) of injuries. The same injuries that have him on the sidelines right now could come for any of our other safeties during the season (hopefully not, but as Buddy Nix says, football is a tough game for tough payple). Aside from that, it's also possible that he just impresses behind the scenes and in a depth and sub-package role and slowly earns more playing time. I refuse to count out a player with the physical talent to go in the 2nd round of an NFL draft and the intangibles to be hand selected (with excitement) by Brandon Beane and Sean McDermott. You may be right that year two will be when he really makes a big impact. You probably are. But I'm gonna stubbornly cling to my hope.

I mean...Bishop is reasonably likely to be ready for the season opener. It's possible he could be eased into the lineup slowly and could either start or play a major role by AT LEAST the halfway point of the season. As for Claypool and his turf toe...yeah...I'm not too hopeful on that one. Frankly, with the way Shavers and MVS have been playing in camp lately, I'm not too confident Claypool will make the roster anyway.

Yeah, I didn't figure the Bishop news was going to be good. Indeed, it is not. How long ago did he injure it? About two weeks? That would theoretically mean he has four weeks left on the sidelines, which means he misses the preseason and MAYBE has a shot to be ready for the season opener, but also maybe opens the season on PUP. Ouch.

Dorsey had some good and imaginative play designs. What he lacked, in my opinion, was cohesion and purpose to his playcalling. Plays were called without particular rhyme or reason. Playcalls did not build on each other in a thoughtful, logical way, or in a way that showed the sequencing one would expect out of a top NFL playcaller. As others have stated, his plays also depended too often on flawless execution and/or too many WR option routes that would only work if the WR and QB were on the same page and, as we saw, they too often were not. While EPA and other metrics that analytics majors love showed that Dorsey was a successful play caller, anyone who watched the games saw stalled drives, poorly timed play calls, lack of cohesion and logic and sequencing to gameplans, and a failure to adapt or evolve. Dorsey's playbook and play calling reminded me of giving a sharp play designer a blank slate and allowing him to design plays and gameplans in a vacuum, but those plays and those gameplans lacked real-time response and adaptation to what the opposition was doing, and they did not build on what they had done on previous plays or in previous games. In short, it often seemed like Dorsey was playing next level checkers, but rarely was playing even beginner level chess. On top of all that, the actual COACHING aspects of being the offensive coordinator -- the attention to detail in practice, the motivating of players, helping the QB be in the right mindset or chewing him out when needed, etc -- seemed to be lacking. For all of these reasons, Dorsey -- who drew up some great plays in a vacuum but whose failure to sequence, evolve, and adapt -- ultimately failed as offensive coordinator for the Bills. Will he learn from his mistakes and fix his shortcomings and improve? Maybe. It WAS his first go-around, after all. All I know is that the whole was never the sum of its parts during his tenure here, and the Bills did the right thing by replacing him.

I know he got a late start and had to learn the playbook, but I find it curious that a veteran as tenured as Kareem Jackson hasn't even sniffed second team reps yet. Ditto Terrell Burgess. I would've thought they would comprise the second time by now for sure. Who knows, maybe the youngsters are showing out. Jahleel Addae may turn out to be an ace secondary coach.

I didn't know much about Zach Davidson, other than that he was a 5th round pick in the 2021 draft and that he played both punter and tight end in college. At 26 years old and three years into his NFL career, I wondered what was causing this player to suddenly excel for the Bills in camp. Is he just a classic late bloomer? Was he raw coming out of school? This article shed some light, and I thought y'all might enjoy it. Bills may have found themselves a keeper, and Morris's job may be in jeopardy (if the Bills don't elect to keep four TEs, that is). https://www.foxsports.com/stories/nfl/2021-nfl-draft-zach-davidson-central-missouri-martin-rogers The Incredible Journey of Zach Davidson They love their football in Webb City, just outside Joplin in Southwest Missouri, and a short hop from the borders of Kansas, Oklahoma and Arkansas. They love Webb City’s eponymous high school football team, a 15-time state champion, that serves as a source of civic pride and turns games into de facto community gatherings. And they’ve fallen in love with the feel-good tale of one of their own. Zach Davidson, the NFL prospect who wasn’t even on the radar a couple of years ago, now shapes up as one of the most enjoyable stories of the draft. Assuming he gets picked over the weekend, football fans around the country will soon be playing catch-up, for Davidson’s journey has been remarkable. "Everyone is just amazed and excited by what he has accomplished to get to this point, where his ultimate dream could come true," John Roderique, head coach for 12 of Webb City’s state titles and still in charge of the program, told me via telephone on Thursday. "People see him around town and there is a lot of pride in how far he has come. I’ve told him, I’m going to be in tears when he gets drafted." Davidson is coming out of Division II Central Missouri, but as what, exactly? He punts with a booming leg that can clear the bleachers. He is teaching himself to long snap and place hold. He has even worked out as an H-back. Yet it is at tight end where he appears to have the most NFL potential, and what will likely earn him the call at some point in the middle to later rounds. "I feel like the sky is the literal limit for me," Davidson told KOAM/FOX 14 television. "I’m just waiting on my shot." He is an enigma, and he has an enigmatic story about how it all started. During his sophomore year in high school, Davidson was tall and scrawny and the beneficiary of some good fortune when the varsity squad was hit by a suspension. According to Roderique, a couple of "little knuckleheads had been caught smashing up mailboxes" and Davidson was picked out of an impromptu JV trial. He punted exclusively his junior year and was a depth chart tight end for his senior season, meaning college offers weren’t exactly flowing and the ones that did focused on his ability to boot it miles. Davidson went to Central Missouri off the power of his leg, but never stopped working and never wavered in his belief he could be an elite tight end. He broke out in 2019, with All-American accolades at both positions. He had an average of more than 22 yards-per-catch and a tight end program-record 15 touchdowns. The pandemic robbed him of the opportunity for a final campaign but Davidson committed himself to relentless preparation, both at a camp in Florida and back at Webb City, where he checks in with Roderique and uses the school facilities. His pro day – where he recorded a 37.5-inch vertical, a 4.62 40-yard dash and 6.95 three-cone drill, all while standing at 6-foot-7 – ensured he would be much-discussed among NFL evaluators. Such prospects sometimes go higher than expected and Davidson’s stock has reached a point where it would be a major surprise if he were to go undrafted. "A lot of people didn’t realize he was only 17 when he graduated high school, so he had a lot of growth potential," Roderique added. "He has built his strength and his speed and he is just tireless at it." Webb City hearts were gladdened last year when offensive lineman Trystan Colon-Castillo was drafted by the Baltimore Ravens, where he played two games in 2020. But Davidson is the prospect that came from deep. Really deep. Yet here he is. Having needed to show ultimate faith in himself to get to this point, Davidson sees no reason to change that approach now and feels he can still take major strides forward. "I am definitely very confident that once I get there I’ll be able to just expand my game to an all-time high," he added. "And learn from some of the best to ever do it." Davidson is one of those special draft stories, of a player making the absolute most of his potential and overturning the odds. If that magic moment arrives for him this weekend, it will be the biggest step yet in an extraordinary journey. It will spark delight in Webb City, and see a tear of two trickle from his former coach’s eye. "No one gets to the NFL who doesn’t deserve it," Roderique said. "But Zach, and how far he’s come? He really, really deserves it."

All indications this morning are that it's gonna be the Steelers, who have been the betting favorites for months anyway.

On the one hand, Aiyuk, Polk, Baker, Douglas, and Osborne is an outstanding WR room. Really good. On the other hand, I'd be happy to see Judon go, if that's the move. I like the thought of Josh Allen having to outscore Drake Maye better than I like the thought of him being chased by Matt Judon twice a year (past successes against Judon notwithstanding).

It also is one of the few moves I've seen proposed that actually help the 49ers THIS season. It's nice to get a draft pick next year and all, but they're firmly in their Super Bowl window NOW. Trading Aiyuk would hurt, but if they could get a high quality pass rusher in return, a replacement receiver who knows their system (albeit an inferior one), AND a draft pick for next year, all while sending him to the AFC and, in all reality, a non-contender? That's a win for the 49ers.

RUMOR: Patriots to send Matthew Judon, Kendrick Bourne, 2025 2nd round pick for Aiyuk. Done deal.

Amazing game. I was a "regular" board game guy my whole life. I knew nothing of "designer" games or, for lack of a better term, nerdy board games. Someone introduced my wife and I to Catan a few years ago (back when it was still called Settlers of Catan). We loved it. We bought our own set, and we still play it to this day against other couples friends (and it can also be adapted to play with three people instead of four). Things I like about it: - The board is different every time, so there is no ONE strategy that's going to win every single game. You have to adapt to the board and use different strategies in different games to give yourself the best chance to win. - There are multiple ways to go about trying to win. It's not just "first one to get Boardwalk and Park Place wins!". - Trading of resources with fellow players adds an interactivity that is lacking in other games. - The game takes skill, logic, and forethought to win. While it involves SOME luck, it involves way less of it than other games. I know there are a bunch of different expansion sets, but honestly, I don't feel the need to use any of them, because the base game is about as well constructed and consistently fun as a game can be. No need to fix what isn't broken. I can see why the guys play it camp. And "a bunch of 20-something pro football playing jocks play it a bunch at training camp" is about as good an endorsement of how fun it is (and the fact that it isn't just for nerds) as any I can think of.

Ah, well that must be my issue. I've only got around .78oz of integrity. It's a genetic condition.

Wait, can our wives see what we post here?! In that case, my wife is very smart and an excellent cook and she does that one thing much better than she used to!

He's tryin to front like she's too skinny. I'm just pointing out that he would abandon his entire life with the swiftness if it meant a weekend of Mario Kart 64 and Totino's pizza rolls with her in a Scranton Motel 6.

Wait wait wait.... ...WHAT?! She makes ***** Pierogis?!?! Tell me more.