DCOrange

Great start to the year for our main three guards. They all looked good tonight. I was very happy to see Mintz look more like the player he was in high school after his struggles in the two exhibition games. Tonight was pretty much the best case scenario of how I hoped he would look; drawing fouls, keeping the defense off balance, and knocking down mid-range shots. Jesse was awesome as well; didn't really expect us to be a team that looks for alley oops a lot but that was a really nice surprise to see. The forwards unsurprisingly looked to be our main weakness. Benny's athleticism popped a little more than last year's play but he still looks like a kid that just began playing basketball. Bell didn't really do anything but at least he knocked down one of his 3's and had the nice steal and finish. Brown did his thing, but his relatively poor leaping ability stood out to me and I remain a bit skeptical of how his game will translate against real competition. Taylor looked the part but shot like crap. Based on how our forwards looked in high school, I think we had to sort of pin our hopes of being a tournament team on the idea that things would click for Benny this season, and unfortunately, that doesn't appear to have happened. Overall though, obviously a very young team and they all showed at least flashes of promising stuff. I think this team was more fun to watch than last year's team. We'll see if that remains the case as competition gets stiffer.

The part before that where he posted the happy tears emoji and then someone asked if it was about his elbow or rotator cuff. I don’t understand the use of that emoji if it’s bad news…there’s like 5 sad crying emojis and he happened to pick the one happy one for bad news? Maybe he just doesn’t understand emojis lol.

Have I been doing it wrong all this time…isn’t that emoji supposed to be happy tears?

They’re my local team and it’s annoying that my local team is not only an embarrassment on the field but an embarrassment off the field as well. Not to mention I like seeing people happy and him being gone will make this entire city happy.

Headline should probably mention Snyder might remain the majority owner but fingers crossed we can just get rid of him entirely.

Seems like a great deal for the Jags.

He had good stats the one year but it was mostly manufactured stuff that any WR could do with an occasional highlight play mixed in. If you've watched his film, he's a huge WR that plays like he's 5'8" and just doesn't really know how to do the things that make WRs successful. He routinely turns what should be 80/20 balls into 50/50 or worse. With his tools and unrefined play, he's the type that teams should be surrendering a Day 3 pick for to take a flier and see if they can teach him. Instead, Chicago is giving up a likely top 40 pick to take him off the hands of an organization that's routinely considered the best in the league at developing WRs (and they couldn't develop him themselves). Maturity issues on top of the on-field issues too. It's not that he's a bust; he just hasn't played up to the level that teams should be surrendering valuable picks for him.

I liked the other two trades Chicago made but this is a hilarious overpay to pray Claypool learns how big of a human he is.

I would probably rank the teams something like: Buffalo Kansas City Philly Baltimore Dallas Miami San Fran Minnesota (or maybe still hold out hope for Tampa to figure things out) AFC remains better at the top IMO but it's certainly not as deep as a lot of people expected it to be (and the NFC is just as weak if not weaker than it was expected to be).

I think they’re probably right to try to go for it before they’re paying Lamar big money. NFC is obviously extremely wide open and Baltimore likely thinks they’re the #3 team in the AFC right now and one or two lucky breaks away from being #1. Doubt it results in a Super Bowl but they might never have a better chance in the near future than this year.

Yeah, I don’t really think it was deserved. Much like Devin White (and previously our boy Edmunds), his reputation has far outweighed his actual play IMO. Having said that, LB was a major need for Baltimore and he’s skilled enough to be a major upgrade for them. As the secondary gets healthier, maybe their defense will start to transform into what people expected them to be this year.

Think Roquan might fare better in Baltimore than he did in Chicago, but he hasn't been anything special the last couple years in Chicago. I've been relatively down on Edmunds for most of his career too, but he's been better than Roquan this year. Really nice deal for Chicago, especially considering they were probably going to let him walk in the offseason.

It hit the ground and bounced up after the fact and then he controlled the ball. There’s no logical argument for that being an INT even with the newer, more loose rules around defining a catch.

Somewhere around then, and Buffalo was interested at that time too.

Based on our past interest in him and our recent pursuit of CMC, it feels like we should maybe keep an eye on this one.

Probably more important than Breece.

I think it was pretty obviously just the QB rankings and it looks to me like it's essentially saying they were willing to take Allen, Darnold, Baker, or Rosen there but nobody else.

Don't we know for sure at this point that Rosen was the #4 QB on their board that year? I'm pretty sure the draft board leaked out that year that showed Allen was #1, Rosen was #4, and Lamar was off the board.

I watched a lot of him in college he was the guy I wanted the year before he ultimately entered the draft. He was one of those nonsensical ones where he was considering entering the 2017 draft and was being talked about as a 3rd-4th round prospect, but the day he decided to stay at Wyoming, he was instantly talked about as a contender for the #1 pick despite it being a stronger QB class. He's certainly improved as a passer the last couple years, but he was always a better passer than given credit for. He was pretty great his sophomore season when the surrounding pieces were better; he had a good RB, Tanner Gentry (who was a great college WR), and a pretty good O-Line. His junior year, all of that disappeared and he was left running for his life nearly every play and his WRs were laughably bad. He just didn't really stand a chance. And even then, they went 8-3 with him as the starter (with the 3 losses being against Iowa, Oregon, and Boise State) and 0-2 without him, losing to Fresno State and San Jose State and putting up a total of 24 points in those two games. I understood the skepticism around him, but the physical tools were obviously off the charts, and he was one of the few QBs that was actually making full field reads in college (granted he was too slow at it at the time). But he was pretty much the ultimate home run swing, and knowing his personality the way we now do, it's not surprising to me that he's turned into an MVP level QB.

I think including Cook would make sense if Carolina is interested in him, but I imagine they're more interested in getting the best picks possible to position themselves for a QB. At any rate, I personally don't really want CMC much, but I can at least understand why we might do it if it only cost one or two Day 2 picks. Anything including 1sts is just idiotic IMO. At the same time, I think short of getting 1st round picks for him, Carolina should probably just keep him to help their future QB.

The fumble was probably on Allen but yeah, McKenzie just tripped as he was trying to throttle down and it cost us the TD that last drive. Good hold by the defense to get it back quickly though.

I can’t imagine he’s at all surprised that Buffalo is the better team by a wide margin. I doubt his decision had anything to do with football.

I do not at all expect Pickett to save them but he looked better yesterday than Mitch has looked at any point this year. The OLine has killed that team more than anything though.

In case nobody else mentioned this yet, the reason this is not a hold is because the pass rusher is attempting a swim move, which sort of naturally puts the OLineman in this position. There's an exception to the holding rule that states it will not be called if: I remember Geoff Schwartz talking about this a year or two ago and couldn't believe it. So basically, any time you see a play like the screenshot above and it isn't called, it's likely because the ref felt it was caused by the defensive player.