2013-14 NFL Season Thread

[laughedatbytime]

Just for you, duck...

 

TAMPA, Fla. -- He looks as if he could've been one of them at some point, with his beefy arms and gap-toothed smile. There was a time, years ago, when Greg Schiano could have sold a whole room with his conviction. He'd sit on strangers' couches, in Oakland, N.J., or Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and make promises. Give me your boy, he'd say, and I'll bring him back a man. Trust me, he'd say. And they would.

 

But then there were no boys left, only men. Schiano, former hero at Rutgers University, started his second season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a meeting room in late July. He gathered dozens of men together, millionaires with Range Rovers, grunts who'd be gone within weeks. He showed a video clip of the Super Bowl, told the Bucs they were good enough to be there, and passed around a sheet of paper with a connect-the-dots puzzle. The connected dots revealed a picture of the Lombardi trophy.

 

The goals were by no means a stretch. The Bucs had eight Pro Bowlers, and newly acquired defensive stars Darrelle Revis and Dashon Goldson. They'd make it if they stayed together and followed Schiano's theme of Trust, Belief and Accountability -- TBA, as he liked to call it. Trust the system, believe in him, be accountable for yourself.

 

Schiano didn't know that in three months, his team would be 0-7 and he'd be fighting for his job. He didn't know that by the first week of training camp, he'd already lost them.

 

Every now and then, there is an NFL team trapped in a season so miserable, so rife with drama and strange-but-true turns, that it almost becomes a cross between Murphy's Law, a sitcom and a disaster scene. You cannot look away, even though the ending is inevitable.

 

These are the 2013 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. They had a players-only meeting before the regular season even started. They had a controversy over possible tampering with the vote for team captains. They were struck by MRSA, a staph infection resistant to antibiotics, and it got so bad that the NFL and NFLPA had to step in and work in unison in what one source called "basically crisis management." In a way, the MRSA outbreak has been a metaphor for the Bucs this season -- a seemingly ever-present infection, creating a distraction off the field, plaguing them wherever they go. A clean-up crew was dispatched in Atlanta to scrub the visitors locker room in the Georgia Dome after the Bucs played the Falcons; in last week's Thursday night game against Carolina, the Panthers carefully laid towels all over the locker room floor at Raymond James Stadium out of fear of catching anything in Tampa.

 

"We didn't really want to touch anything in here," Carolina safety Mike Mitchell said. "We just wanted to get in and out.

 

"[Dealing with that] every day, man, that would suck."

 

The season opener was lost on a personal-foul penalty in the final seconds. The game, against the New York Jets, started with communication problems when quarterback Josh Freeman's headset malfunctioned. And that was fitting. The first two games were lost by a combined three points. Week 2 provided a glimpse of how good the Bucs could have been, when they narrowly missed beating New Orleans. It was downhill from there.

 

Tensions bubbled between Schiano and Freeman, and on Oct. 3, the Bucs cut their fifth-year starter. Along the way, there were daily headlines about Freeman being barred from the Tampa Bay sideline and questions about who leaked information that the quarterback was participating in the NFL's Stage 1 drug treatment program. Schiano, when previously asked whether he was the source of the information, said "absolutely not." (Freeman later issued a statement saying his participation is voluntary and that he tested positive after switching his ADHD medicine.)

 

This week, it's finally quiet in Tampa. The news trucks have pulled away and moved on to something different, something relevant.

 

"They seem like a team that's just beaten down," said a former NFL executive, speaking under the condition of anonymity. "Let's just say that place right now has a culture of mistrust on many different levels.

 

"It manifests itself. They don't trust what they're being told, they don't trust the message, and they don't trust that people are looking out for them. It's not going to end well."

 

Almost every new regime starts because someone else has failed. Before Schiano left the calm waters of Rutgers for this choppy voyage into the NFL, the Buccaneers were led by Raheem Morris, a young, laid-back man known widely as a players' coach. The Bucs played hard for Morris in 2010, when they went 10-6 and narrowly missed a playoff berth. But when he was fired after a 4-12 record the next season, the franchise sought out a different personality, a disciplinarian.

Schiano started off his first training camp in 2012 with a conditioning test. The Bucs were to run 110 yards from the back of the end zone to the opposite goal line, and had to make it in an allotted time that varied according to position. They ran the 110 yards 16 times. If a player failed to hit his time in any of the 16 runs, he flunked the test and had to do it again before he could practice.

 

According to a couple of accounts, several players vomited in the oppressive Florida heat, and others required IV fluids. Hamstrings pulled, and those who emerged unscathed were fatigued by early August.

 

"Everyone thinks he started losing the team recently," former Bucs defensive end E.J. Wilson said. "He started losing the team around the middle of training camp last year. It never really came out, but there were a lot of guys who were not happy being there. A lot of the veteran guys were like, 'We're going to give it a chance,' but it kind of felt like they weren't really being treated like men.

 

"It was almost like being a freshman in college all over again. You were nervous of being made an example of for breaking one small rule."

 

Wilson was coming back from a torn Achilles in the summer of 2012. He was hurting one day during camp, so a trainer pulled him from a workout. Wilson said Schiano spotted him on an exercise bike and insisted he practice or Schiano would find somebody else who would.

 

Wilson was eventually cut from the team in 2012 and said he's finished playing football, in part, because of his experiences with Schiano. There was a weeding-out process that offseason, an effort to cast out the players who clearly weren't Schiano guys.

 

A Schiano guy is mentally tough and disciplined. He puts team above everything. Derrick Roberson, who played for Schiano at Rutgers and Tampa Bay, said the conditioning tests were a tool to see who was all-in and who wasn't; who trained in the offseason and who didn't.

 

But in the Bucs' locker room, the complaints mounted. Most players hadn't run those kinds of drills since college, before their bodies were older and beat up. Roberson heard the grumblings. "They felt like he treated them like they were kids," he said.

 

Roberson tried to tell them about the Schiano he knew, about the man who did everything he promised, who made him a man. Rutgers had never won a bowl game in 137 years of football before Schiano led them to victory. Trust, Belief, Accountability. The 2006 team bought in, wore bracelets with the mantra and played Kansas State -- and Freeman -- in the Texas Bowl. Roberson had a shoulder injury and a hip flexor and needed to be shot up with cortisone to play. And when Rutgers beat the Wildcats, Schiano found Roberson and whispered in his ear.

 

"You have me for life," Schiano told him.

 

So Roberson, like other Scarlet Knights who were added to that Tampa roster, tried to plead Schiano's case. Their teammates weren't exactly receptive.

 

The rules were too rigid. No hats in the meeting room. No earrings at practice. No conspiring in small groups. Schiano, who's big on hydration, required each player to be armed with two bottles of water during training camp meetings.

 

"They focus on stuff that doesn't need to be focused on," one former Bucs player said. "I don't dance unless I hear music. If I'm not thirsty, I'm not going to drink water."

 

There were signs, by December 2012, that Freeman wasn't Schiano's guy. The coach started to waffle a bit in interviews when asked about his confidence in the quarterback. Freeman was easygoing and confident. Nothing seemed to rattle him, and he was at his best when everything seemed to be falling apart. Schiano is a details guy, a man who likes to plan and prepare for everything.

 

Freeman's camp is convinced that Schiano knew, for at least a year, that he didn't want Freeman. And that he was just waiting for an excuse to cut ties with the quarterback. Freeman missed a team photo because he overslept. That no doubt drew the ire of a coach who preaches accountability. By early in the season, it was clear they had irreconcilable differences and couldn't coexist.

 

"This is the NFL, and successful organizations are a delicate balance," a source close to Freeman said. "If you take someone as significant as your quarterback out of the equation at the wrong time, you jack up the whole system."

 

There are varying accounts as to what was discussed in that players-only meeting before the season started. Some say it was the captains vote, a vote that did not pick Freeman. Others say it was an impromptu pep rally. It is clear that during training camp, a group of players met with Schiano in an attempt to tone down his extra-rigorous workouts. The coach, according to sources, told the players that they had to trust him and that he knew what he was doing. The workouts did not get any easier.

 

Sources told ESPN.com that the Bucs nearly went under review by the NFLPA last spring for their offseason workout practices that were considered violations of the collective bargaining agreement. Schiano declined a one-on-one interview request for this story.

 

In news conferences, he'll say he's working as hard and as smart as he can and that he can't let the outside world affect him. But now there's a billboard in Tampa that says "Fire Schiano." And near Raymond James Stadium, signs advertise Bucs tickets for as low as $30.

 

The 31-13 loss to the Carolina Panthers on Oct. 24 was possibly the lowest point of Schiano's tenure so far. Boos and chants calling for his demise rained down from the stands. Schiano did not slow down or acknowledge it. After the game, he marched briskly ahead, past the events staffers in the tunnel. "I feel sorry for that guy," one of the staffers said.

 

Football is a game of centimeters and miles, of luck and despair, and who knows where his team would be without a penalty in Week 1 or a couple of misses in Week 2? Who knows where the Bucs would be if they had trust or belief?

 

"I've had some years where we haven't won very much, but it almost made sense, you know what I mean?" Bucs kicker Rian Lindell said. "I look around this room … We have the talent. And when our offense takes the field, I think, 'OK, we're going to drive down.' Same thing with the defense. I think, 'We're going to stop them.' It just hasn't happened. It hasn't clicked."

 

Outside the stadium, hours before the Carolina game, there was optimism. A man dressed in a pirate suit walked around assuring fans that it would be their night and that the losing skid would end. Tailgaters waved their pewter and red flags. This is a patient city. In 1976, the Bucs went 0-14, the first team to go an entire season without a win or a tie. But that was an expansion team. There are no answers for this.

 

Across the street from the stadium, Jim Kerr, a construction worker in Tampa, wondered when the skid would end. He has missed two home games since 1976, one because of the flu, another because of a buddy's bachelor party. He vomited both times, he said.

 

Kerr keeps coming to the games because, like many others in Tampa, he's loyal. But things could get ugly in the next few weeks. On Sunday, the Bucs visit the Seattle Seahawks, who are 7-1 and leading the NFC West. Then there's a "Monday Night Football" home game against the Dolphins, in a stadium that could be angry and could be half empty.

 

In this dysfunctional, unbelievable season, nobody knows what will happen next.

 

"If we had a roof," Kerr said, "it would've caved in this year."

 

http://espn.go.com/nfl/story/_/id/9911114/the-trouble-tampa-bay

[softfilter]

I think the Browns have a chance to succeed this Sunday at home against the Ravens finally. That's about all i can say with subdued optimism. Really no one looks impressive in the AFC North, Bengals loss against the Dolphins showed there vulnerable and not a lock in to win the division( although I think they probably will) Browns & Ravens game will be crucial for Cleveland and will keep them in wildcard hunt. Another loss fall to 3-6 it's a wrap season over.. Really enjoy seeing the Steelers losing on a regular basis if any satisfaction becomes of this season it will be Cleveland finishing above Pittsburgh. :rfl:

[treeduck]

Just for you, duck...

 

TAMPA, Fla. -- He looks as if he could've been one of them at some point, with his beefy arms and gap-toothed smile. There was a time, years ago, when Greg Schiano could have sold a whole room with his conviction. He'd sit on strangers' couches, in Oakland, N.J., or Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and make promises. Give me your boy, he'd say, and I'll bring him back a man. Trust me, he'd say. And they would.

 

But then there were no boys left, only men. Schiano, former hero at Rutgers University, started his second season with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a meeting room in late July. He gathered dozens of men together, millionaires with Range Rovers, grunts who'd be gone within weeks. He showed a video clip of the Super Bowl, told the Bucs they were good enough to be there, and passed around a sheet of paper with a connect-the-dots puzzle. The connected dots revealed a picture of the Lombardi trophy.

 

The goals were by no means a stretch. The Bucs had eight Pro Bowlers, and newly acquired defensive stars Darrelle Revis and Dashon Goldson. They'd make it if they stayed together and followed Schiano's theme of Trust, Belief and Accountability -- TBA, as he liked to call it. Trust the system, believe in him, be accountable for yourself.

 

Schiano didn't know that in three months, his team would be 0-7 and he'd be fighting for his job. He didn't know that by the first week of training camp, he'd already lost them.

 

Every now and then, there is an NFL team trapped in a season so miserable, so rife with drama and strange-but-true turns, that it almost becomes a cross between Murphy's Law, a sitcom and a disaster scene. You cannot look away, even though the ending is inevitable.

 

These are the 2013 Tampa Bay Buccaneers. They had a players-only meeting before the regular season even started. They had a controversy over possible tampering with the vote for team captains. They were struck by MRSA, a staph infection resistant to antibiotics, and it got so bad that the NFL and NFLPA had to step in and work in unison in what one source called "basically crisis management." In a way, the MRSA outbreak has been a metaphor for the Bucs this season -- a seemingly ever-present infection, creating a distraction off the field, plaguing them wherever they go. A clean-up crew was dispatched in Atlanta to scrub the visitors locker room in the Georgia Dome after the Bucs played the Falcons; in last week's Thursday night game against Carolina, the Panthers carefully laid towels all over the locker room floor at Raymond James Stadium out of fear of catching anything in Tampa.

 

"We didn't really want to touch anything in here," Carolina safety Mike Mitchell said. "We just wanted to get in and out.

 

"[Dealing with that] every day, man, that would suck."

 

The season opener was lost on a personal-foul penalty in the final seconds. The game, against the New York Jets, started with communication problems when quarterback Josh Freeman's headset malfunctioned. And that was fitting. The first two games were lost by a combined three points. Week 2 provided a glimpse of how good the Bucs could have been, when they narrowly missed beating New Orleans. It was downhill from there.

 

Tensions bubbled between Schiano and Freeman, and on Oct. 3, the Bucs cut their fifth-year starter. Along the way, there were daily headlines about Freeman being barred from the Tampa Bay sideline and questions about who leaked information that the quarterback was participating in the NFL's Stage 1 drug treatment program. Schiano, when previously asked whether he was the source of the information, said "absolutely not." (Freeman later issued a statement saying his participation is voluntary and that he tested positive after switching his ADHD medicine.)

 

This week, it's finally quiet in Tampa. The news trucks have pulled away and moved on to something different, something relevant.

 

"They seem like a team that's just beaten down," said a former NFL executive, speaking under the condition of anonymity. "Let's just say that place right now has a culture of mistrust on many different levels.

 

"It manifests itself. They don't trust what they're being told, they don't trust the message, and they don't trust that people are looking out for them. It's not going to end well."

 

Almost every new regime starts because someone else has failed. Before Schiano left the calm waters of Rutgers for this choppy voyage into the NFL, the Buccaneers were led by Raheem Morris, a young, laid-back man known widely as a players' coach. The Bucs played hard for Morris in 2010, when they went 10-6 and narrowly missed a playoff berth. But when he was fired after a 4-12 record the next season, the franchise sought out a different personality, a disciplinarian.

Schiano started off his first training camp in 2012 with a conditioning test. The Bucs were to run 110 yards from the back of the end zone to the opposite goal line, and had to make it in an allotted time that varied according to position. They ran the 110 yards 16 times. If a player failed to hit his time in any of the 16 runs, he flunked the test and had to do it again before he could practice.

 

According to a couple of accounts, several players vomited in the oppressive Florida heat, and others required IV fluids. Hamstrings pulled, and those who emerged unscathed were fatigued by early August.

 

"Everyone thinks he started losing the team recently," former Bucs defensive end E.J. Wilson said. "He started losing the team around the middle of training camp last year. It never really came out, but there were a lot of guys who were not happy being there. A lot of the veteran guys were like, 'We're going to give it a chance,' but it kind of felt like they weren't really being treated like men.

 

"It was almost like being a freshman in college all over again. You were nervous of being made an example of for breaking one small rule."

 

Wilson was coming back from a torn Achilles in the summer of 2012. He was hurting one day during camp, so a trainer pulled him from a workout. Wilson said Schiano spotted him on an exercise bike and insisted he practice or Schiano would find somebody else who would.

 

Wilson was eventually cut from the team in 2012 and said he's finished playing football, in part, because of his experiences with Schiano. There was a weeding-out process that offseason, an effort to cast out the players who clearly weren't Schiano guys.

 

A Schiano guy is mentally tough and disciplined. He puts team above everything. Derrick Roberson, who played for Schiano at Rutgers and Tampa Bay, said the conditioning tests were a tool to see who was all-in and who wasn't; who trained in the offseason and who didn't.

 

But in the Bucs' locker room, the complaints mounted. Most players hadn't run those kinds of drills since college, before their bodies were older and beat up. Roberson heard the grumblings. "They felt like he treated them like they were kids," he said.

 

Roberson tried to tell them about the Schiano he knew, about the man who did everything he promised, who made him a man. Rutgers had never won a bowl game in 137 years of football before Schiano led them to victory. Trust, Belief, Accountability. The 2006 team bought in, wore bracelets with the mantra and played Kansas State -- and Freeman -- in the Texas Bowl. Roberson had a shoulder injury and a hip flexor and needed to be shot up with cortisone to play. And when Rutgers beat the Wildcats, Schiano found Roberson and whispered in his ear.

 

"You have me for life," Schiano told him.

 

So Roberson, like other Scarlet Knights who were added to that Tampa roster, tried to plead Schiano's case. Their teammates weren't exactly receptive.

 

The rules were too rigid. No hats in the meeting room. No earrings at practice. No conspiring in small groups. Schiano, who's big on hydration, required each player to be armed with two bottles of water during training camp meetings.

 

"They focus on stuff that doesn't need to be focused on," one former Bucs player said. "I don't dance unless I hear music. If I'm not thirsty, I'm not going to drink water."

 

There were signs, by December 2012, that Freeman wasn't Schiano's guy. The coach started to waffle a bit in interviews when asked about his confidence in the quarterback. Freeman was easygoing and confident. Nothing seemed to rattle him, and he was at his best when everything seemed to be falling apart. Schiano is a details guy, a man who likes to plan and prepare for everything.

 

Freeman's camp is convinced that Schiano knew, for at least a year, that he didn't want Freeman. And that he was just waiting for an excuse to cut ties with the quarterback. Freeman missed a team photo because he overslept. That no doubt drew the ire of a coach who preaches accountability. By early in the season, it was clear they had irreconcilable differences and couldn't coexist.

 

"This is the NFL, and successful organizations are a delicate balance," a source close to Freeman said. "If you take someone as significant as your quarterback out of the equation at the wrong time, you jack up the whole system."

 

There are varying accounts as to what was discussed in that players-only meeting before the season started. Some say it was the captains vote, a vote that did not pick Freeman. Others say it was an impromptu pep rally. It is clear that during training camp, a group of players met with Schiano in an attempt to tone down his extra-rigorous workouts. The coach, according to sources, told the players that they had to trust him and that he knew what he was doing. The workouts did not get any easier.

 

Sources told ESPN.com that the Bucs nearly went under review by the NFLPA last spring for their offseason workout practices that were considered violations of the collective bargaining agreement. Schiano declined a one-on-one interview request for this story.

 

In news conferences, he'll say he's working as hard and as smart as he can and that he can't let the outside world affect him. But now there's a billboard in Tampa that says "Fire Schiano." And near Raymond James Stadium, signs advertise Bucs tickets for as low as $30.

 

The 31-13 loss to the Carolina Panthers on Oct. 24 was possibly the lowest point of Schiano's tenure so far. Boos and chants calling for his demise rained down from the stands. Schiano did not slow down or acknowledge it. After the game, he marched briskly ahead, past the events staffers in the tunnel. "I feel sorry for that guy," one of the staffers said.

 

Football is a game of centimeters and miles, of luck and despair, and who knows where his team would be without a penalty in Week 1 or a couple of misses in Week 2? Who knows where the Bucs would be if they had trust or belief?

 

"I've had some years where we haven't won very much, but it almost made sense, you know what I mean?" Bucs kicker Rian Lindell said. "I look around this room … We have the talent. And when our offense takes the field, I think, 'OK, we're going to drive down.' Same thing with the defense. I think, 'We're going to stop them.' It just hasn't happened. It hasn't clicked."

 

Outside the stadium, hours before the Carolina game, there was optimism. A man dressed in a pirate suit walked around assuring fans that it would be their night and that the losing skid would end. Tailgaters waved their pewter and red flags. This is a patient city. In 1976, the Bucs went 0-14, the first team to go an entire season without a win or a tie. But that was an expansion team. There are no answers for this.

 

Across the street from the stadium, Jim Kerr, a construction worker in Tampa, wondered when the skid would end. He has missed two home games since 1976, one because of the flu, another because of a buddy's bachelor party. He vomited both times, he said.

 

Kerr keeps coming to the games because, like many others in Tampa, he's loyal. But things could get ugly in the next few weeks. On Sunday, the Bucs visit the Seattle Seahawks, who are 7-1 and leading the NFC West. Then there's a "Monday Night Football" home game against the Dolphins, in a stadium that could be angry and could be half empty.

 

In this dysfunctional, unbelievable season, nobody knows what will happen next.

 

"If we had a roof," Kerr said, "it would've caved in this year."

 

http://espn.go.com/n...ouble-tampa-bay

 

http://orangefizz.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/CM-Capture-61.jpg

[laughedatbytime]

Another one ducky should enjoy...

 

(Tuesday, at the office of Falcons GM Thomas Dimitroff)

 

TONY GONZALEZ (WEARING A FAT SUIT, RED WIG AND MOUSTACHE, CHIEFS APPAREL): Hrm, hey Tom, can I talk to you a minute?

 

DIMITROFF: Sure Gonzo. That's a cute Andy Reid Halloween costume!

 

GONZO: Hrm, no, you must me mistaken. It's me, Big Red himself: Andy Reid! But, hrm, Tony Gonzalez is a heck of a player, and I want to talk trade for him.

 

DIMITROFF: Heh, heh. What's your proposal, "Andy"?

 

GONZO: With all the injuries, hrm, the Falcons have to rebuild. And the Chiefs … I mean, MY Chiefs … are a contender that needs a tight end upgrade. Tony, hrm, he is a legend in Kansas City, and it would be a heck of a story if he came back before we faced the Broncos. I am prepared to offer three first-round picks. Just sign this already notarized contract. The time is yours.

 

DIMITROFF: This stationery has a "from the visionary mind of Scott Pioli" watermark, Gonzo. You must have taken it when you left Kansas City. Anyway, we cannot trade you. The Panthers may be playing well, but we have beaten them in five of our last six meetings, so this could be our chance to turn the corner. And Matt Ryan is an incredible young quarterback and an amazing competitor. He needs every possible offensive weapon to demonstrate his awesomeness.

 

GONZO: Wait a minute: That suit you are wearing is off the rack. And that is not your real hair, it's a Robert Downey wig!. You are not Tom Dimitroff at all. You … you …

 

MATT RYAN: (ripping off disguise) Ha ha, that's right Gonzo. It's me! Happy Halloween, big guy. You are stuck with me until you retire.

 

GONZO: (Sigh). Guess Plan B won't do me any good. I am going to go put this Patriots hoodie back in the bottom of the compost heap.

 

http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/63582152/

[laughedatbytime]

Another one duck will appreciate, from the Bucs preview...

 

Saturday is All Souls' Day for Catholics. That means that the tykes at Our Lady of Perpetual Discipline are instructed to pray for the souls of departed loved ones who are working off their non-mortal sins in purgatory, a kind of celestial drunk tank. As a child -- and this is the kind of experience that proves to be really formative with you -- I spent many a post-Halloween evening binge-praying Hail Marys to commute the sentences of relatives like Uncle Carmine, who carried a racing form and was still wearing a fedora in 1982, so they would not suffer a moment's more punishment and despair than they had to.

 

What this has to do with the Buccaneers, I will leave you to decide. Purgatory, unlike h-e-hockey sticks, does not have a warden, but if it did he would probably refer to himself in the third person and assign Darrelle Revis to zone coverage.

[laughedatbytime]

The Chiefs as lycos.com or Social Security/Medicare.

 

There is an old sports adage about teams with soft schedules: "You can only beat the teams you are scheduled to play."

 

The adage is false. A team can do far more than "only beat" their scheduled opponents. A team can beat those opponents convincingly. It can establish dominance over weak opponents. It can show progress as a season goes on, with strengths getting stronger while flaws get corrected. A truly great team with a soft schedule does these things. The Chiefs are doing the opposite.

 

At press time, it was not clear whether the Bills would start Thad Lewis (ehhh), Matt Flynn (ewww) or Jeff Tuel (errp) at quarterback. No matter who starts, he will be the third consecutive third-to-ninth string quarterback the Chiefs have faced this year, and the fifth straight backup or first-year starter.

 

The Chiefs defense has established a kind of insider-trading agreement with these quarterbacks. The third-stringers have great-by-their-standards games against the Chiefs defense, which established its reputation by shutting down Eli Manning, Tony Romo and Michael Vick. The Chiefs defense performs well enough to keep the final score low so their offense can squeak out a victory. Everybody wins: Case Keenum gets to further his career with 271 yards and a touchdown against a top-ranked defense, while the Chiefs get to remain a top-ranked defense by beating Case Keenum. It's a house of cards, and the weather is about to get windy.

 

Make no mistake: The Chiefs defense is very good. Its value is just dangerously inflated right now. Think of the Chiefs defense as an over-speculated tech stock. Now check out the graph of the Chiefs' overall DVOA rating at Football Outsiders. The smart money bailed a few weeks ago. Black Sunday is Nov. 17. The Chiefs could surprise us, but you don't want to bet the farm on it.

 

This game would have been a fashionable trap/upset pick if not for the Flynn/Tuel scenario. As it now stands, some Bills quarterback will throw for about 250 yards. The Chiefs will barely win a low scoring game. We will then marvel at how well the Bills played using crude flint tools, and also how tough the Chiefs defense has become. This is last call before a bye week. Then the real (really, really real) quarterbacks crash the party. Enjoy your drinks.

http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/63582152/

[treeduck]

The Bucs blow a 21 point lead and end up losing 27-24 in overtime. Typical Schiano.

[Shredder2]

The Bucs blow a 21 point lead and end up losing 27-24 in overtime. Typical Schiano.

The Seahawks just pulled the EXACT SAME BULLSHITE they did back in Houston! ARRRGH!!!

[softfilter]

Browns win 24-18... :D See told ya!!! :outtahere:

[laughedatbytime]

Browns win 24-18... :D See told ya!!! :outtahere:

I was very impressed with Chudzinski's decisionmaking on that last drive. The key was to keep the ball away from the Ravens, and going for it on 4th down was the right call, as was passing early in the next two series.

[laughedatbytime]

It's nights like tonight where I don't miss Vontae Davis.

 

Andre Johnson is torching him...190 yds and 3 TDs in the first half...

[treeduck]

Kubiak down and out!

[laughedatbytime]

Kubiak down and out!

What happened? I missed halftime and they were talking about him when they came back but I didn't catch what happened.

[treeduck]

Kubiak down and out!

What happened? I missed halftime and they were talking about him when they came back but I didn't catch what happened.

He just collapsed and according to Michelle Tafoya he was in pain and couldn't even open his eyes, but he was able to talk at least.

[laughedatbytime]

Kubiak down and out!

What happened? I missed halftime and they were talking about him when they came back but I didn't catch what happened.

He just collapsed and according to Michelle Tafoya he was in pain and couldn't even open his eyes, but he was able to talk at least.

Yep, heard the report....thanks!

[laughedatbytime]

These calls are killing the game.

 

There was a ridiculous call against the Jets on Brees earlier today.

[treeduck]

Kubiak down and out!

What happened? I missed halftime and they were talking about him when they came back but I didn't catch what happened.

He just collapsed and according to Michelle Tafoya he was in pain and couldn't even open his eyes, but he was able to talk at least.

Yep, heard the report....thanks!

He's not that old is he, like 52, he's younger than you! :o

[laughedatbytime]

Tonight the phrase "Suck for Luck" is taking on a whole new meaning.

[treeduck]

These calls are killing the game.

 

There was a ridiculous call against the Jets on Brees earlier today.

The low hit call? Yeah that was bullshit.

[laughedatbytime]

Kubiak down and out!

What happened? I missed halftime and they were talking about him when they came back but I didn't catch what happened.

He just collapsed and according to Michelle Tafoya he was in pain and couldn't even open his eyes, but he was able to talk at least.

Yep, heard the report....thanks!

He's not that old is he, like 52, he's younger than you! :o

Not quite. I'm 51.

[treeduck]

Tonight the phrase "Suck for Luck" is taking on a whole new meaning.

It's that weird beard he has, it's dragging him down.

[laughedatbytime]

These calls are killing the game.

 

There was a ridiculous call against the Jets on Brees earlier today.

The low hit call? Yeah that was bullshit.

That's the one. I guess Payton decided to call a reverse on a 4th and 1 because he felt it was undeserved.

[laughedatbytime]

Tonight the phrase "Suck for Luck" is taking on a whole new meaning.

It's that weird beard he has, it's dragging him down.

He's not a good looking guy.

[treeduck]

It's nights like tonight where I don't miss Vontae Davis.

 

Andre Johnson is torching him...190 yds and 3 TDs in the first half...

Andre is a BEAST tonight!

[treeduck]

These calls are killing the game.

 

There was a ridiculous call against the Jets on Brees earlier today.

The low hit call? Yeah that was bullshit.

That's the one. I guess Payton decided to call a reverse on a 4th and 1 because he felt it was undeserved.

There was some weird calls and penalties right from the off.