Vikings to start Ponder against the Packers As much as I've hated watching McNabb's inept play, I'm not as happy about this as I should be. I of course want Ponder to succeed but don't have a lot of confidence that the coaching staff is going to put him in position to do so. I worry that this will do his development more harm than good.
The team is still going to win 5-6 games max, but at least I won't have to watch a terribly washed up QB lose the games for us. At least this kid's mistakes will help him learn.... D-Nabb is, I think, done for. I had hope at the beginning of the season too that he could turn it around this year. Not so much. Also if I'm a Raiders fan, I'm not too pleased about the 2 picks thing... but I'm sure as shit happy knowing that a team that has looked pretty good thus far this year isn't going to have to trot out Kyle Fucking Boller to start the rest of the games. Campbell's missing at least 6 weeks, most likely more. Fuck it, I say. Go big or go home.
Because what they really need is an injured QB with several weeks of rust who was outperformed by both Blaine Gabbert and Luke McCown. I thought Ponder looked great against the Bears. His pocket awareness was fantastic. My one worry is that too many pass rushers were getting by, given his youth and injury history.
If you want to talk about a rookie QB with the LEAST amount of pressure on him, here you go. No one expects this kid to do shit in this division, with those WRs. He can literally go out there and have some fun throwing the football around and trying to get better. No homo though, he looks like a QB from a movie.
Sure they say these two QBs outperformed Garrard, but I'm sure as hell not seeing it on the field. The thing about Garrard is he was an above average QB while playing for the jags. Not well above average, but he was. With these two guys taking the field that position has been in the cellar of the league. I know you've been paying attention this year so I won't bother pulling the numbers, but Garrard was and probably still is way better than either of these two at this point. Gabbert may have a good future. Still, as someone who lives in Jacksonville it's becoming laughable how every time Gabbert completes a pass everyone says it's a throw Garrard could never make. Garrard can makes those throws, and he can do it better than Gabbert. As for Ponder, he looked good for a rookie, but that's as far as I'll take it. He didn't score any points and completed around 50% of his passes. I'll need to see more. The long and short of it is that the vikings are fucked. The window closed and they had to see this coming. We'll see Minnesota relevant again, maybe after Peterson expires, sadly.
Because what they really need is an injured QB with several weeks of rust who was outperformed by both Blaine Gabbert and Luke McCown. I think Garrard is at best an average QB, but he was cut for this reason: The Jacksonville Jaguars released Garrard on Tuesday, making a "pure football decision" that will save the franchise $9 million in 2011
9 million isn't much for a starting QB though. Cassel makes over 12. I bet 9 million is below average. I know Cassel rounds out the bottom of the top ten at his price. To fair to Garrard he did have a 91 qb rating last year and he's wasn't exactly playing with elite receivers. In fact, that's an understatement. His receivers fucking sucked. The jaguars probably would have been bad anyway, but in a crappy year for the division there's a chance they could have made the playoffs and Del Rio wouldn't be getting fired at the end of the season. I think there's a few close match ups this week. Some just aren't very good games. Denver at Miami. Who sucks more? Houston at Tennessee. Battle of mediocrity. Seattle at Cleveland. Who's more inept? Atlanta at Detroit. Could be a very good game. Chicago at Tampa Bay. Could become really important in deciding who gets a wild card spot. I might watch Denver at Miami just to see what Tebow does. I mean the guy's just so... magical, you know? For the later game I look forward to GB's defense wiping the floor with Ponder. Poor kid is getting thrown straight into the fire.
Just because I love arguing with you so much. Salaries for every position. Jacksonville made their QB moves under the assumption that Manning would be under center with his pre-snap histrionics. You draft Gabbert with an eye to the future and release a league average QB with an albatross of a contract. With Indianapolis winning the division every year, nobody is going to care if you go 6-10 with a rookie QB. I think Atlanta is going to get the shit kicked out of them by Detroit. Atlanta barely beat Seattle on the road, needing the kicker to miss a 61 yard field goal on the last play of the game to do it. Now they're going into a place that's going to be just as loud and obnoxious as CenturyLink Field but against a much more talented and fired up team. Megatron is going to score twice and Suh gets arrested for domestic violence in the first half. I'm going to be upset if Indy gets Andrew Luck. Mallett following up Brady is ridiculous enough.
I'm was immediately suspicious of that list when I saw that the amounts for Brady and Manning are both well below publicized accounts of their contracts upon signings. In fact, if you look at salary and all bonuses, the cap hit for Brady this year is $13.2 million, rising to $18 by the end of his current deal. For Manning, it's $16mil growing to $20mil. Base salary isn't a very accurate metric here. Also, holy shit Mark Sanchez is making a bunch of money.
Well you're looking at base salary instead of just salary. You think they pay Brady only 5.7 million a year and Peyton only gets 3.4 million? Nigga please. Our boy Sanchez still makes the most, which is just silly. This gives another look. So Garrard would sneak in at 12-13 based on that, which seems about right to me since he was a little above average by the numbers, and maybe better considering that offense was just terrible. I don't really care to argue about Garrard too much. It's not like I have a hard on for the guy. I just think he should find work when he gets healthy because there isn't 32 QBs in the league better than him. If Gabbert turns out to be good I suppose it won't have been such a bad decision. It's not like the jaguars were going to the super bowl this year. Yeah, Detroit might stomp Atlanta. The falcons weren't as good as their record last year, as my team was happy to show them. Still, Detroit had a very tough time against Minnesota and was stupid lucky to beat Dallas. I'm not saying Detroit isn't good, but it could be closer than you think. I thought all the talk from Roddy White about how Atlanta was better than Green Bay was amusing. I wonder if Mallett might go to another team. It's really hard to judge how long a QB is going to last. Brady is 34 and Favre was playing the position at an elite level into his 40s until he was literally a grandpa. I just think if it starts looking like Mallett might have the bench for more than three years he might try to find a way out. Hard to call though.
It should be taken into account that the Jaguars were/are going broke and are always mentioned as a team that could possibly relocate to L.A. There was no way they were going to pay Gerrard $9 million this year to lead them to a 7-9 record. On a side note I think that Atlanta is going to beat Detroit. Detroit is the feel good story of the year, but I think they are very overrated.
The only reason I want the jaguars to stay in Jacksonville is so I don't have to drive to Tampa Bay to watch a game live. This has to be the worst fan base in the nfl. They care more about their shitty gators than they do pro sports. When I went to the packers/jags game a couple years ago it was at least 40% packer fans and there were empty seats all over. Sure, we travel well, but this is a long way from lambeau. Also, I go out to bars a lot on Sundays, usually for either the early or late game and maybe 15% of the crowd in the bars are jaguars fans. There should be a man law that if you prefer college sports over pro sports you aren't allowed to be involved in any sports discussion ever. Ok, well that's pushing it, but it's seriously ridiculous how few fans here are willing to support the jags yet would murder to get a ticket to a gators game. I say move the team. LA will have a larger fan base, a better market, and fans that actually give enough of a shit to show up to a game. Either that or give Canada a team. There's a lot of fans up there, right? Why not let one of their cities have a home team so they aren't just a bunch of annoying band wagoners? You know what Jacksonville could have done to get people to show up? Draft Tebow. I would have been afraid to go near the stadium for fear of dying in a stampede. Instead they made football decisions. Silly jaguars.
The Jaguars make the most sense in terms of which team should move to LA. There's never going to be a be a devoted, entrenched fanbase because, just like Kampf said, the area is obsessed with college football. And the Jaguars haven't been around enough to establish any real tradition there either. It's pretty much a no-brainer as far as I can see it. Of course I'm biased because I'm a Vikings fan and losing the team to LA is my worst nightmare. But I still think among the teams with stadium/attendance issues the Jaguars make the most sense. (If it was up to me I'd actually move the Jags to Arizona and the Cards and Rams back to St. Louis and LA respectively.)
I wouldn't underestimate Detroit. All the talk is about Stafford and Calvin Johnson, but their pass rush is lethal and messes the day up for a lot of QBs.
The 1pm games has been some of the worst football ever. Thankfully, in Pittsburgh we only get a choice of a single game to watch: Seattle at Cleveland. As on friend on Twitter said: I'm going to go read for the next 90 minutes.
Arian Foster is having a game for the ages. I've had him on my fantasy team the last 2 years and I wish I was getting the game on TV.
I really don't want to have it out for Tebow, but this is a bit much for me. http://30fps.mocksession.com/2011/10/23/2011-october-23-16-26-4/ Spoilered for size Spoiler
So we get to hear about Tebow heroics for the next week. I don't understand why the Broncos dicks shriveled up in overtime and they chose to take a long field goal with a kicker that missed two earlier, but it worked nonetheless. I'm setting the over/under for games until a soft Tebow floating pass leads to a season ending tackle on one of his WR`s at 4 games. Also, I think it's safe to say whatever the Redskins had going early is over. Boller looks terrible. Put Carson Palmer in already.
Dear Tim Tebow, Nice comeback, you earned it. Keep up the good work. However, stop thanking Jesus Christ publicly for everything you do. Seriously, nobody fucking cares. Not only did Jesus not catch a pass, he wasn't even subbed in. So stop thanking someone who had no impact on the game. That shit got played out when you were still at Florida. Signed, Everybody PS: Complete more than 50% of your passes next time. You won't get away with not doing so very often.
Fuck me I hate Tebow. I'm not even trying to, he just makes me hate him so bad. He's like the new old Brett Favre.