DCOrange

Not sure if it was mentioned yet, but there was a lot of buzz that Shaq might be released in Houston prior to this trade.

There's a lot of Patriots fans that want him fired at this point. On top of being a ***** announcer, he's also just a piece of ***** person.

I would guess the only reason it might be a question is because of the money. They're probably trying to figure out if a backup WR is worth ~$4 mil or if they can get by with cheaper options that they might feel decent about.

Pretty fascinating. The reports had been that he was coming off an awesome week of practices too. Still feels like he's bound to be a valuable fantasy guy in the very least but it'll be interesting. Their receiving corps is good enough that he could end up being a disappointment at least this year. He's in a weirdly tough position because Renfrow is almost certainly the slot guy there. Ruggs is the deep guy there and that's really Brown's thing. Edwards is probably the other wideout and he can be utilized differently than Brown generally is. It's obviously not the strongest receiving corps but the spots are still essentially spoken for.

It seems that he has a bigger issue with it this year because vaccinated players don't have to follow the same rules as the unvaccinated. If we're to assume he has a consistent criticism, that seems to be it; he's saying he isn't anti-vax, but he's being vocal about this because he thinks the unvaccinated players are being treated unfairly.

I'd be impressed if McBeane cut Beasley loose, but I definitely don't expect that to happen. If we were in the middle of a rebuild, maybe, but I think they know how close we are and want to just keep the ship together as long as possible to try to win it all.

You're talking about the TD to Benjamin at the end? That was an excellent rep. Stared down his WR on the left to try to open up the slant and then quickly flipped his eyes, hips, and got the throw out in a hurry and it was a perfect bullet pass. There's nothing to criticize there at all. Having said that, he's had probably 5 or 6 potential turnovers in two games and that's obviously on pretty limited reps. On the flipside of that though, he's made a lot of nice plays, been killed by drops, and Shanahan hasn't really let him show off his dual-threat abilities yet. I'd be surprised if Jimmy isn't the opening day starter and he might start all year if things go well for them, but I do think there's a reasonable argument to be made that Lance raises your ceiling and Shanahan should maybe just roll with him.

Seems like all the AFC East QBs have played pretty well. Trubisky, Wilson, and Tua in particular IMO. It'll be interesting to see how the other AFC East QBs fare in the regular season but their fans must be pretty pleased with how they're looking so far.

I see we’ve reached the part where we now like Warren Sharp

My tiers based on my draft grades for each: Tier 1: Trevor Lawrence Tier 2: Tier 3: Justin Fields, Trey Lance Tier 4: Zach Wilson Tier 5: Kellen Mond, Mac Jones, Davis Mills Tier 6: Tier 7: Kyle Trask As you can see, I'm relatively low on Mac Jones, and additionally, New England doesn't have all that much offensive talent around him. But you never know with their coaching staff; they've generally found a way to have good offenses so it's hard to count him out. Lance seems to be in the best situation for success. I tend to think Lawrence should be good enough to overcome being in Jacksonville.

Costs of recent stadiums in order of when they broke ground (most recent to least recent): Las Vegas Raiders: $1.9 billion Texas Rangers: $1.1 billion LA Rams/Chargers: $5.5 billion Atlanta Falcons: $1.5 billion Perth Cricket/Aussie Football: $1.0 billion Tottenham Hotspur: $1.3 billion Minnesota Vikings: $1.1 billion Singapore Football Club: $1.3 billion Brazilian Soccer Club: $0.8 billion Adjusted for inflation (and removing LA because that one is such an outlier), the average stadium built since 2010 cost $1.3 billion.

Yeah, this certainly looks like the best we've had in awhile on paper. Hopefully I'll be able to watch some film of the guys we've gotten at some point this year. I've seen highlights of course but highlights almost always look nice. Currently the #5 class in the country per 24/7 based on total recruit points and #20 in terms of average recruit ranking. The last time we finished in the top 30 was the 2016 class with Battle, Moyer, and Taurean and our last top 10 class was 2015 with Malachi, Lydon, and Howard.

The handle is the thing I'm looking for more than anything from Copeland. He really struggled in those earlier games I watched; was nearing double digit turnovers per game mainly from just losing his dribble, sometimes without any defensive pressure. It definitely looked like he tightened it up at least a bit in some of the more recent footage I've seen but I haven't really had a chance to dive in fully yet. I've been too busy lately to really keep my ear to the ground, but I had been told a month or so ago that JJ was probably a lost cause, though we're still trying. Bunch seems like he's always been very interested but it's seemed like he might be on our backburner. Sounds like this Dominick Barlow might be the new forward to keep an eye on. And yeah, re: Westry, I had basically heard that he's always wanted to come to Syracuse but he's not the one in control of his decision and it sounds like he'll be headed elsewhere.

Excited to see him hopefully continue progressing now that he's at IMG next year. I'm still not totally sold on him; the games from a year or two ago that I had watched weren't pretty, but he does seem like he's improved based on the more recent games.

I think the reaction is more along the lines of nobody caring because they're still the NYC teams to them even if they play a couple miles away. I get that that's not what Buffalo716 was talking about in his original post though.

I don't think they'd necessarily be looking for a place where they can move and privately fund the stadium. They'd be looking for a city that will offer to pay most of it, and they'll almost certainly have takers on that if it does come to it. I'd still be surprised if it gets to that point though despite Graham's assertions.

Some other notes that stood out to me: Downtown Stadium budget came out to $2.5 billion. Doesn't seem likely that the government would go for that. The Miami Dolphins are currently the smallest media market to own their own stadium; Miami is the 18th largest market in the country. Buffalo is 52nd and declining. Tim Graham thinks we may need to grapple with the idea that the Bills could actually move, as he doesn't think it's a given that the government will feel comfortable paying what it will take for the team to stay given some of the economic difficulties in the area already. I think it was already mentioned in another piece, but PSE says they haven't asked for anything related to the Sabres arena yet; they're planning to work on that after the Bills situation is sorted out.

The city spent almost $500 mil on their baseball stadium though

Minnesota is #2 behind Dallas, around $850 mil between two stadiums. https://www.sportscasting.com/taxpayer-money-billion-dollar-stadiums/

They’ll obviously end up coming way down from this number. Just a question of how much. I may be mistaken but I think Vegas is currently the record holder at $750 mil in public funding for their football stadium. Dallas is #1 in total with just under $1 billion spread across their baseball and football stadiums.

Wasn't mentioned in the OP, but these rankings do not factor in OLine whatsoever. It's solely RBs, WRs, and TEs. I don't get the Packers ranking personally. They have a good RB and an elite WR and that's it IMO. I don't think Tonyan, Dillon, or the other WRs are anything special. I'd probably put them somewhere in the 15-20 range.

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/06/21/the-science-is-clear-more-highways-equals-more-traffic-why-are-dots-still-ignoring-it/#:~:text=They found that for every,lane capacity and traffic increases. Just the first result that popped up but it mentions what I was talking about. Basically, studies have shown that more highways = more cars = same amount of traffic congestion (but with more cars). So you could argue it's a net positive if you're just trying to get more traffic into the city but it isn't really improving the flow of traffic the way urban planners used to think it would. They call this effect "induced demand".

I don't remember if it was mentioned in the article or if I read it elsewhere, but one thing I learned recently that was pretty fascinating is that a lot of studies have shown that highways don't actually improve traffic congestion at all. So theoretically, the point would apply to cities that aren't shrinking as well. But also, the article mentions Seattle, Dallas, Atlanta, Boston, etc. and I don't think those areas are shrinking.

Yeah, most of DC will likely be fine since the government insists on having everyone in DC still, but for example, there's a ton of offices across the bridge in Arlington where office workers like myself would generally be. These companies spend so much money to have their own buildings when it may not be fully necessary anymore. My partner's company for example had their lease expire during COVID and they're still deciding if they even want to rent an office building anymore. It'll be interesting to see how these sorts of decisions impact everything else. A much smaller anecdote, but there's a street by our offices in Arlington that's just lined with food trucks taking advantage of all the worker bees being in one area; I'm not sure what happens to those food trucks if there's no longer a centralized place for all the corporate offices.