dave mcbride

Chicago is without question one of the great American cities.

Oh please. It’s The New York Friggin’ Times, for chrissake. And no, I’m not going to bloviate about its content. Read the story yourself.

Yeah, I knew it was in the same space, but I thought it was basically new ($500 million was a lot in 2000 too). I've been to the old one and not the new one, so you'll know better than me. Yeah, that appears to be right. Lambeau's upgrade made it basically a new stadium.

The new Soldier Field opened in 2002. It's not close to being the oldest stadium.

The argument isn't what he did in the Miami game (although he made a couple of poor plays trying to make stops on outside runs along with fulfilling assignments well), but more on his overall performance last season, which wasn't great and a step backward from 2019. Granted, he played injured for much of it, and that doesn't get mentioned enough. Playing with a bum shoulder as MLB is really rough. Regardless, the guy he was drafted to be -- Luke Kuechly -- made play after play after play after play. Edmunds does not, at least up to this point. Maybe Edmunds gets closer to that level of performance as this season progresses. I am hopeful because of the talent. But it's laughable to suggest he's anywhere close to Kuechly at this point in his career. His postseason performance last season was uneven too -- good against the Ravens, but mostly a JAG-level player against the teams that had strong passing offenses: Indy and KC. He was awful vs. KC, but so was almost everyone else. https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/K/KuecLu00.htm https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/E/EdmuTr01.htm

Our defense is predicated on having a MLB who is as instinctive, as good in coverage, and as capable of making big plays as Luke Keuchly. That's who the Bills thought they were trading up for. He is not close to being that player. Badol is right that it's a devalued position, although just as there are elite RBs, there are elite MLBs (all of the ones who fall in that category are guys who can cover, however). The better way to think about it is that inside LBs who are excellent at stopping the run are more or less a dime a dozen relative to DEs, pass rushing OLBs, and CBs. Think Reggie Ragland ad infinitum. Wagner is special just the way that Alvin Kamara is special -- they are excellent in the pass game. Edmunds has the tools to be good in the pass game, but the fact of the matter is that he was a poor pass defender last season. It's too early to tell this season. I'm hoping for the best.

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/23/sports/football/josh-allen-buffalo-bills.html Have at it.

Ryan has had some great years, was an MVP, and by all rights should have been super bowl MVP if Shanahan doesn't call an incredibly stupid pass play on second and 11 from the NE 23 with 3:56 to go and up by 8.

Cassel was a very, very stiff player with a slow release. Jones is more compact, more fluid, more accurate, and already better at digesting quickly what's in front of him. He's not Michael Vick, but he's clearly better on his feet than Cassel. Cassel had a couple of attributes, but the limits on his game were more numerous than Jones's. Don't forget that the 2008 Pats' roster was coming off a 16-0 season and completely loaded still.

He looks quite good to me. I don't like the fact that he's on the Patriots, that's for sure. Saying he's rag-armed or being set up for success seems akin to whistling past the graveyard to me. He made a lot of great throws at Bama last year that demonstrated he could play. Disagree. The Pats roster is very strong top to bottom and as I said, he looks good. The Bills can definitely win the division, but they're not a shoo-in. He looks much better than Cassel to me.

This seems like a more convincing assessment to me than the Kubiak evaluation. Kubiak didn't even mention the late third-quarter near pick on the McKenzie throw.

I know it's only two games, but he's averaging 8.0 ypa, has a completion rate of 68.5 percent, and has a rating of 100.5. I always liked him coming out of college, and I think that the Jets situation totally warped people's view of his talent/potential. He is now with a functioning organization, and this is when the judgments of him based on his play will be more or less accurate. What the Jets dumped on him was just ridiculous, both in terms of personnel and Gase's horizontal passing game.

I was wrong about that - I misremembered. He didn't fumble in that game. Sorry!

He's gotta stop the fumbling. Three fumbles in two games (and just 29 touches) isn't really acceptable.

Actual evidence?

Yet with no evidence.

Does that include the throwaways that go out of the EZ? I'm less concerned with the completion percentage (although it's certainly a decent proxy) than with the accuracy percentage. One of those throws was to Sanders in the Pitt game and accurate, although the defender (Pierre) was in position to make a play on it immediately (and did). The lofted throws to McKenzie and Diggs were both accurate, although they resulted in incompletions because they shouldn't have been lofted. But yeah, a bunch of off-target throws so far. On a few, the coverage has been good enough to cause an incomletion.

I've long said that Darnold was a lot better than the Jets situation made him look. He has real talent. He's a classic example of a bad organization ruining a player's ability to perform at a high level. It didn't seem to ruin his potential, though, and the Panthers are the beneficiaries.

The lofted pass to McKenzie was bad, but I wonder if that was the product of the bullet that sailed badly over the head of an open Singletary earlier in the game. That would have been a 25-30 yard gain. Point is, he seems to lack confidence in his velocity. The 3rd and 1 play last week that was lofted and defensed should have been on a rope, but it came shortly after the low-arc bomb that sailed over Sanders. Might that earlier miss caused him to lose faith in his deep-rope accuracy? A couple of nice things to see, however: the short TD pass to Diggs yesterday was peak Allen--a really strong throw on a busted play--and the late bomb to Diggs was something I've been militating for for a while: a bomb with air under it that gives the player the time needed to adjust to it and make a play. The early deep throw to Sanders was great, although that's one of those throws that he's bound to occasionally complete due to the law of averages. That was a pretty typical deep throw by Allen, and he misses a lot of those. Anyway, there were some good things with the bad yesterday. To me, the main issue has been consistency with regard to accuracy and velocity/arc choice as well as platform mechanics. I suspect he'll get it sorted out before too long. We all know he's capable of being a consistently elite producer.

Yup. Just look at Tom Brady's ypc lifetime! Granted, he's hardly a runner, but he's better than 1.6 ypc lifetime! I bet you half of those 637 carries of his are kneel-downs.

Brissett got them into FG range a number of times but they always went for it or turned it over on downs.

The thing that most impressed me on the run was that he didn't fumble. The Dolphins DB made a textbook-perfect strip attempt right before he crossed the goal line.

I thought Brissett played pretty well except for the pick. The number of drops of good passes was ungodly.

They had a ton of players go down yesterday. Factor that in.

They did go 12-3 in 2016 before Carr got hurt. In their playoff game vs. Houston, they didn't have a functional QB and got steamrolled.