NFL 2025
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Big week one winners become big week 2 losers. Cowboys get hammered by the Saints. Niners go down to the Vikings (99 yard TD to Jefferson was sweet). Lions lose to the Bucs.
The Chiefs left it very late to get over the Bengals today. The Ravens lost again? To the Raiders? The Panthers may be the worst team of all time.
The Broncos still fucking suck.Offences are in general really struggling this year. Defenses have got much better, and they are sitting really deep. So everything is check downs, screen passes, and short catch and run plays. Fucking analytics. Take what they give you. boo, throw the fucking ball over the top and give us something to watch.
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Wow, the falcons bounce back to beat the eagles. NFC South might be less of a dumpster fire this year.
Bengals and Ravens both have a massive game next weekend. In the last 20 years 103 teams have started 0-3 and only once have they recovered to make the playoffs. (There's also 1 instance where a team would have made the current 14 team playoffs).
Bengals have what shapes up to be a classic get right game against the Commanders. But the Ravens have a tougher match up against the cowboys. If the Bengals lose to the Commanders the season is over - they're obviously not good enough this year. The cowboys are better than the commanders, but the Ravens should be good enough, but if they drop that game I wouldn't completely rule out a run at the playoffs, but they would probably need to finish something like 11-3 to get across the line.
Rams are also in the 0-2 hole and ravaged by injury, looks like a long way back for them, with the 49ers coming to town.
The Panthers have benched Young for Dalton. Given how many picks they gave up, that will hurt. But what hurts even more is that CJ Stroud was taken at 2 and landed in a Texas team that was about as bad as the Panthers were and has thrived. Oops. At least one team in the NFC South will be a dumpster fire.
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The Ravens have a brutal next few weeks. I got a sportsbet special where if you put a bet on a team to win the Superbowl, you got a bonus bet back every time they won. I picked the Ravens. That's going really fucking good.
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The league is fucking loooooaaaaded with QBs who are battling at the moment. Rookies, sophomores, 3rd year guys. Battling.
I am wondering if we are finally heading for a correction in the QB market. Right now, if your guy looks half decent, he gets paid. Dak fucking Prescott has the league's biggest deal and he is leading his team nowhere. Young guys are thrown in the deep end by organisations hoping they hit on the next Mahomes, and then they get cut real quick when wins don't magically arrive.
Meanwhile there are vets out there playing decent footy, often in a new team. Redemption stories are everywhere.
Teams would do better to draft a guy they like, and develop him, preferably without starting. The idea of making your QB better with time, coaching, play-calling, and getting the other parts of the offence right is out the window. It's draft, then either cut or hugely over pay. And unless you get lucky and draft Mahomes, it doesn't even lead to success. The list of Superbowl winning QBs over the past 2 decades is pretty short. -
The league is fucking loooooaaaaded with QBs who are battling at the moment. Rookies, sophomores, 3rd year guys. Battling.
I am wondering if we are finally heading for a correction in the QB market. Right now, if your guy looks half decent, he gets paid. Dak fucking Prescott has the league's biggest deal and he is leading his team nowhere. Young guys are thrown in the deep end by organisations hoping they hit on the next Mahomes, and then they get cut real quick when wins don't magically arrive.
Meanwhile there are vets out there playing decent footy, often in a new team. Redemption stories are everywhere.
Teams would do better to draft a guy they like, and develop him, preferably without starting. The idea of making your QB better with time, coaching, play-calling, and getting the other parts of the offence right is out the window. It's draft, then either cut or hugely over pay. And unless you get lucky and draft Mahomes, it doesn't even lead to success. The list of Superbowl winning QBs over the past 2 decades is pretty short.@mariner4life said in NFL 2024:
The league is fucking loooooaaaaded with QBs who are battling at the moment. Rookies, sophomores, 3rd year guys. Battling.
I am wondering if we are finally heading for a correction in the QB market. Right now, if your guy looks half decent, he gets paid. Dak fucking Prescott has the league's biggest deal and he is leading his team nowhere. Young guys are thrown in the deep end by organisations hoping they hit on the next Mahomes, and then they get cut real quick when wins don't magically arrive.
Meanwhile there are vets out there playing decent footy, often in a new team. Redemption stories are everywhere.
Teams would do better to draft a guy they like, and develop him, preferably without starting. The idea of making your QB better with time, coaching, play-calling, and getting the other parts of the offence right is out the window. It's draft, then either cut or hugely over pay. And unless you get lucky and draft Mahomes, it doesn't even lead to success. The list of Superbowl winning QBs over the past 2 decades is pretty short.And even if you do draft someone good, the team is shit from the owners down to the coaches and the players. So they waste what might be a promising talent by playing them too early in a really tough situation
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Under the current CBA holdouts like that are impossible - the salaries are locked in and holding out means the contract doesn't toll so the contract doesn't tick down.
Peyton is the better comparison here - went back to school rather than declaring in 98 to avoid the jets. But it's a gamble because you don't know who will get the first overall pick.
The Packers have shown a different model - first Rodgers then Luck were drafted late in the first and given years to develop (although Rodgers was a massive talent that was a suprise drop and Luck a bit of a surprise whose overall talent level is hard to judge).
The difference between college and the NFL is huge too. NFL schemes (offence and defence) are massively more complex and the reads vastly more difficult, the inelegible receiver rules make running screen plays, play action and RPO less effective than in college and the athletic differences are huge - an elite QB from a big school will generally have receivers who are better that their opponents most week so consistently get wide open, and when they don't will generally win a contested ball so you can just chuck it up. The routine of having to diagnose a complex shell from a single key, then work through 2-3 reads to find the open guy, then fit the ball into a tight window is just not something that they have to do regularly, if at all. Mahomes said he couldn't reliably read a defence until his third year.
Early success for a QB tends to be about having a scheme that figures out the bits they can already do and letting them do that while minimising the stuff they haven't figured out yet.
The biggest disasters are generally when you do the opposite. Zach Wilson probably a good example of this. His skill set in college was rolling out, throwing on the move and extending plays. The jets tried to install a precision timing based west coast style scheme that he was utterly incapable of executing. He probably wouldn't have been that successful even in a different scheme, but that choice just ruined it.
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Great post.
Throw in the development in the pass rush and new QBs need to do all that with no time and constant pressure.
Pass rush is now such a money position that elite athletic talent is drawn there. And it's not just the edge guys any more, interior d-line guys areno longer huge guys to stop the run, they are serious athletes schemed to get to the QB.
Then linebackers are smaller and faster to.cover receivers.The age of the run is back.
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Great post.
Throw in the development in the pass rush and new QBs need to do all that with no time and constant pressure.
Pass rush is now such a money position that elite athletic talent is drawn there. And it's not just the edge guys any more, interior d-line guys areno longer huge guys to stop the run, they are serious athletes schemed to get to the QB.
Then linebackers are smaller and faster to.cover receivers.The age of the run is back.
@mariner4life Also add in that offensive line play has been on a downward trend for years
CBA rules mean less proper contact practices for offensive lines to practice
Aside from left tackle very few teams invest money in offensive line. Most lines consistent of mostly journeymen as a general rule.
The quality of offensive lineman coming out in the draft has been on a downward trend
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Delayed as I took a few days to really catch up, but damn NFL is back baby. I saw the matchups for week 2 and thought 'meh'. Holy shit how wrong was I. Incredible results - it's such an unpredictable league.
Apex sport watching for me. Loving it. And DAZN have upped their game - the streaming quality was top tier and the 'ad free' is the best way to watch a game start to finish. Strong recommend.
Mahomes is still a goddamn cheat code. What a player. Burrow is fucking good, but the Bengals just didn't quite have enough ... still some bone headed plays.
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And Tua goes to IR. Minimum 4 weeks on the sideline. They have a pretty soft schedule over those 4 weeks, so I think 3-1 is possible, putting them at 4-2 for the season, which will put a but of pressure on Tua to come back. I'm not a dolphins fan, and I am a jets fan (for my sins) so I guess this is easy to say, but I genuinely think the best thing for Tua is a 0-4 run, leaving them 1-5 with the playoffs out of reach, totally removing the temptation for him to rush back.
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One thing I'll say about the jets
I think they have the best uniform in the league
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https://www.espn.com/video/clip/_/id/41265207
Some teams will already be getting wood for the 2026 NFL draft with another Manning due to be eligible. Looks like a chip off the old block
haha
he's nothing like Peyton or Eli!
no way either of them could run one in from 60 yards, and they know it
even grandad arch is telling them that his athletic genes skipped a generationwith the added running game, young arch has the potential to be even better than both peyton and eli
his dad (Cooper) was a wide-receiver in college, smashed up his knee real bad (i think) and never made it to the pros
looking like he would have gone ok if he had -
haha
he's nothing like Peyton or Eli!
no way either of them could run one in from 60 yards, and they know it
even grandad arch is telling them that his athletic genes skipped a generationwith the added running game, young arch has the potential to be even better than both peyton and eli
his dad (Cooper) was a wide-receiver in college, smashed up his knee real bad (i think) and never made it to the pros
looking like he would have gone ok if he hadhaha
he's nothing like Peyton or Eli!
no way either of them could run one in from 60 yards, and they know it
even grandad arch is telling them that his athletic genes skipped a generationwith the added running game, young arch has the potential to be even better than both peyton and eli
his dad (Cooper) was a wide-receiver in college, smashed up his knee real bad (i think) and never made it to the pros
looking like he would have gone ok if he hadHis uncles have 4 SB rings between them. Young Arch should be so lucky to be like them
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Anyone watching this TNF blockbuster?
The Patriots have 40 yards for the entire half? 8 pass attempts and 5 rushes total?? Brissett has been sacked 3 times already??
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Anyone watching this TNF blockbuster?
The Patriots have 40 yards for the entire half? 8 pass attempts and 5 rushes total?? Brissett has been sacked 3 times already??
@mariner4life Sure am. It’s a tough watch but if it’s on you bet I’ll be watching it. Patriots are a hot mess on offense and their defense isn’t a lot better today. ARod picking and choosing. This could get ugly
