5 minutes ago, Bacarty2 said:

My bottom 5 teams.

Falcons, Texans, Bears, Jaguars, Giants

Side question...

On average  6 teams dont make the playoffs from the previous year. So out of Bills, Patriots, Cinnci, Pitt, Tenn, KC, Vegas, Cowboys, Eagles, Pack, Buccs, Rams, Cardinals and 9ers, which 6 wont be back....

I'll go Cinnci, Patriots, Cardinals, 9ers, Vegas, cowboys

I'll replace Cincy and Patriots with Titans and Pitt

5 hours ago, Couch Potato said:

Apropos nothing, I just had to share this.

(Dialogue is NSFW as there are a few F's and C's going on, but it's so worth it to watch the 'tough guy' get his come-uppance)

 

as long as they don't say the S-word we are OK.  If anyone has read this story it's pretty ridiculous to how far PC has gone off the rockers.  To see the lyrics that are all around the word spaz and to see that's the issue....we are effed. 

 

50 minutes ago, Alphagrand said:

If they put any offset language into the contract where it can be proven Watson didn't disclose certain material facts, then the Browns should be trying to void the contract.  That was the stupidity of the Browns and all those other teams immediately making trade offers to the Texans the moment the grand jury declined to indict him.  I suspect the Browns are stuck now, and know they'll have to play a full season without Watson -- but they structured the contract where it only costs him/them $1M to do so.

 If anything happens between now and the end of this coming season to put his future in doubt (2023 and beyond), then there's no way Watson will see that money.    

My understanding - and it may be incorrect - is that anything Watson disclosed prior to signing the contract doesn't count against him. Didn't plaintiffs #23 & #24 appear after he signed his contract? Unless a Judge would say just more of the same and doesn't affect his contract.

11 minutes ago, Bacarty2 said:

On average  6 teams dont make the playoffs from the previous year. So out of Bills, Patriots, Cinnci, Pitt, Tenn, KC, Vegas, Cowboys, Eagles, Pack, Buccs, Rams, Cardinals and 9ers, which 6 wont be back....

I'll go Cinnci, Patriots, Cardinals, 9ers, Vegas, Cowboys

Patriots, Steelers, Vegas, Cardinals, 9ers, and yes, I am going to call it, Eagles.

13 hours ago, Texas Eagle said:

Finding a scorpion is the house is not a huge deal. I’d much rather have them than venomous snakes (especially with dogs and children). Scorpions are hard to kill though. They have some solid armor.

I have black widows in my garage that I have to hunt. Pest control can’t seem to get them all.

Mud daubers will kill black widows.  Learned (painfully) to check my shoes for scorpions first when visiting my grandparents in South Texas.  I am thankful we do not have them in NC.  We just have copperheads here primarily.  They do sometimes nest in crawl spaces which can be bad. Juvenile copperheads are worse than adults because they will not warn you before biting and they do not regulate their venom.  So they just will release all of their venom with a bite.  It's a good idea to make sure there's no holes for little animals in any crawl space part of your house. 

18 minutes ago, bpac55 said:

as long as they don't say the S-word we are OK.  If anyone has read this story it's pretty ridiculous to how far PC has gone off the rockers.  To see the lyrics that are all around the word spaz and to see that's the issue....we are effed. 

 

Does not being able to say certain words hurt your feelings? 

16 minutes ago, downundermike said:

Patriots, Steelers, Vegas, Cardinals, 9ers, and yes, I am going to call it, Eagles.

I have a hard time keeping us out just because I don't trust the NFC to produce 7 strong teams

21 minutes ago, bpac55 said:

as long as they don't say the S-word we are OK.  If anyone has read this story it's pretty ridiculous to how far PC has gone off the rockers.  To see the lyrics that are all around the word spaz and to see that's the issue....we are effed. 

 

I worked in special Ed for a few years back early 2000s we always had one or two kids in our class with cerebral palsy or the like and I've never heard of "Spaz" being a durogatory term towards handi capable but then again this is 2022 so...

Either way good on Lizzo for listening apologizing and adjusting, I could see how that word could be offensive to those in that community.

 

5 hours ago, Couch Potato said:

Apropos nothing, I just had to share this.

(Dialogue is NSFW as there are a few F's and C's going on, but it's so worth it to watch the 'tough guy' get his come-uppance)

 

Probably a good rule of thumb to not put your finger in someone's face if you have reach up above your eye level to do it. 

Since this requires a subscription (Athletic), posting the article not the link. (Don’t quote). Seems the Eagles aren’t alone.

 

How NFL teams are changing their approach to offseason workouts

"Quite frankly, our players should be here building the concept of team, working hard side by side, constructing our bond of togetherness, formulating our collective priorities and goals. Success in the NFLdemands struggle. Those who have everything given to them become lazy, selfish and insensitive to the real values of team.”

— Former Jaguars executive vice president Tom Coughlin in 2019, speaking on voluntary offseason workouts.

 

In the NFL, the word "offseason” is a more relative term than in perhaps any other sport.

It doesn’t feel like the offseason when you’re in the throes of a two-hour workout in June. And is it really the offseason when your team’s "offseason program” consists of eight or nine weeks of conditioning, meetings and practices?

Jaguars players certainly must have questioned the use of the term after Coughlin described their offseason in the aforementioned manner, drawing the ire of the NFL Players Association, which responded with an emphatic statement criticizing his comments. The league office also reportedly sent a letter of reprimand to Coughlin.

 

The concept of "offseason” in the NFL has always been somewhat nebulous. But for the first time in years, it seems there is at least some momentum toward redefining it.

Despite having the ability to conduct a normal, three-phase offseason schedule for the first time since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen increasingly varied approaches to offseason work among NFL teams.

The 49ers ended their offseason program last week — a full week earlier than planned. The Steelers reduced their offseason from 10 practices to six. The Bengals have eliminated the "mandatory” requirement from their final minicamp. Even Bill Belichick cut the Patriots’ offseason work by three whole days.

Is this truly a permanent shift? Or is it a temporary trend that will fade with time? Arriving at an exact answer will have to wait until after the next few summers, but there does appear to be more openness to reimagining the NFL offseason.

Sure, there will always be those with the mindset of Cowboys coach Mike McCarthy, who expressed his view of offseason workouts thusly: "You just don’t get as much time to work with your team in a real competitive environment as you did in the past. That may not bother the young people, but it gives me a little angst. You’re used to a certain standard of developing your players.”

(What McCarthy didn’t mention is that part of that limited prep time is a result of his club being docked a practice this offseason for violating guidelines around allowable contact during the 2021 offseason. The Cowboys were also fined $100,000.)

But there is an alternate viewpoint emerging, too, like that of San Francisco coach Kyle Shanahan.

"I don’t think you need 12 practices,” he said, referring to the maximum allowed by the collective bargaining agreement. "I never have. And that’s why we’ve never done 12. … You decide that based off where you think your team is, and by the time you get close to 12, I’m always like, ‘All right, we’ve had too much. Let’s stop.’”

This echoes some other load-management principles being applied in the NFL, from the changing attitudes toward preseason playing time to select veterans who practice only sparingly in the days leading up to regular-season games.

But there are other factors at work beyond the willingness (or lack thereof) of coaches to be flexible on workloads.

COVID-19 is a variable. All offseason workouts were scrapped during the height of the pandemic in 2020, but the players union argued it had minimal impact on the quality of play around the league. That’s why when the league resumed offseason activity last year, it was met with some resistance. NFLPA president J.C. Tretter actually encouraged players to stay homefrom voluntary workouts in a supposed attempt to minimize COVID risk.

But that effort actually served a dual purpose. It also encouraged teams to engage players as offseason workouts took shape, with some players taking back a measure of power from their clubs. The Browns, Colts and Eagles are among the teams that reached agreements with their players to lighten offseason workloads.

Some of those sentiments carried over into 2022 as well. Take the Colts, for instance. Indianapolis Pro Bowl center Ryan Kelly — also an NFLPA vice president — took a lead role this year in negotiating an agreement with coach Frank Reich and general manager Chris Ballard on how to structure the team’s OTAs. The Colts focused mostly on seven-on-seven work during practices, with offensive and defensive linemen rarely engaging one another. There was more of an emphasis on teaching technique and individual work during the team’s now-completed offseason.

"There’s a fine line,” Kelly said. "I think the overwhelming majority of guys after playing 17 games realize that when your last regular-season game is Jan. 9, and you’ve been at this since April, you need to change the way it looks.

"I give a lot of credit to Frank and Chris for being open to what the offseason looks like. We’ve changed a lot of things: the running, the workouts, the meetings are hugely important. I think that’s what this time of year should be about. … If you’re in helmets, there’s not a lot of good that can come out of that. When you’re taking a face mask to the shoulder in April and May, it’s not really worth it.”

This is not a new front in the ongoing negotiations between players and the league. You can go all the way back to 1978, when the late John Clayton reported in the Pittsburgh Press that the Steelers had been accused of conducting padded practices during their rookie minicamp. The NFLPA filed a grievance and the Steelers were penalized by losing a third-round pick in 1979.

In 2001, Hall of Fame running back Edgerrin James made news by skipping a voluntary Colts camp, a decision that prompted criticism from then-coach Jim Mora. James, always honest and real, responded by telling Sports Illustrated: "Hell, I only went to college for 2 1/2 years. But I think I know the meaning of the word voluntary.”

That gets to the core of the issue many of today’s players have with offseason workouts. For most players, OTAs basically amount to unpaid work. The overwhelming majority of them receive little, if any, salary during offseason workouts (though some teams, like the Giants, are starting to incentivize attendance at OTAs with workout bonuses). Players, whose base salaries are paid per regular-season game, are entitled to a per diem of $295 per day.

Unless a player has a negotiated workout bonus in his contract — and most don’t — this is the extent of the money he’ll receive for more than two months of work (outside of some permissible travel and lodging costs). If a team holds its maximum number of workouts and a player attends all of the sessions, he’d receive somewhere north of $10,000. That’s not much money in a league where the minimum salary for 2022 is $705,000.

The union’s position on this is clear.

"Frankly,” NFLPA executive director DeMaurice Smith said in 2019, "I think players should never do anything for free.”

Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady has been one of the most vocal critics of the offseason format. In an NFLPA video call during the 2021 offseason, Brady reportedly lashed out.

"One thing I’ve learned in business is what you do for free, someone will never pay you for,” he said, according to the Boston Globe. "And just because we’ve had offseasons the way we’ve had for 20-plus years doesn’t mean that’s the best thing for the health and well-being of the players.”

For Brady, this isn’t just about money. He later added, "There’s no Fing pro baseball player that’s throwing 95 miles per hour in mid-December.”

Still, these voluntary workouts are attended by a huge majority of players. There is clearly a benefit to working on your game, something even the naysayers would admit. But optics influence attendance, too, as a star player’s absence can quickly become a storyline in the media. There also is considerable pressure to attend because coaches are evaluating players throughout the spring and summer. A player’s absence could, in theory, negatively affect his standing come training camp. That creates a huge incentive for rank-and-file players to show up.

But on certain teams, some players are taking their cues from stars who are opting not to attend the offseason programs, which generally begin in mid-April and last to mid-June.

Take the Buccaneers, for example. They had a number of absences during stretches of this offseason among key players, including receiver Mike Evans and linebacker Lavonte David. Not coincidentally, Brady has famously skipped OTAs for years, and others in Tampa Bay are now adopting that approach.

In Green Bay, Aaron Rodgers missed voluntary workouts for the second straight offseason, and he was joined by a long list of key teammates. Jaire Alexander, Preston Smith, Allen Lazard and Marcedes Lewis are among those who missed most of this year’s program.

For players who show up, their respective teams’ approaches to these workouts can vary. In Dallas, OTAs have been intense, complete with a fair amount of trash talk between the offense and defense. In other places, like Cincinnati, there’s been a more laid-back attitude after the Bengals’ taxing 2021 season ended in the Super Bowl. Quarterback Joe Burrow was even seen running wind sprints after a recent Bengals practice, an effort to make sure he got enough of a workout that day. The Super Bowl-champion Rams have also reduced their workload.

"You want to make sure you give them a full chance to recover and really be ready to roll when training camp hits,” coach Sean McVay said.

Ultimately, it’s that sort of open-mindedness that will drive any potential change to the NFL’s offseason format. The offseason outline is codified in the collective bargaining agreement, which is in effect until 2030. But the league and its players have the ability to modify that agreement, as several amendments on other matters have already been made to the March 2020 pact.

If and when concrete changes are made to the offseason setup, it will require a willingness by the league to yield some control to the players on this issue. But managing players’ workloads is potentially enticing, too. What we’re seeing now might be baby steps toward that. If players keep the issue on the front burner and coaches continue evolving, then who knows?

Maybe the definition of "offseason” in the NFL will come to more closely resemble, you know, the actual meaning of the word.

42 minutes ago, bpac55 said:

as long as they don't say the S-word we are OK.  If anyone has read this story it's pretty ridiculous to how far PC has gone off the rockers.  To see the lyrics that are all around the word spaz and to see that's the issue....we are effed. 

 

Definition of Spaz : lose physical or emotional control. 

uhhhh

Losing emotional control is freaking out, is it not??

17 minutes ago, Shalodeep said:

I have a hard time keeping us out just because I don't trust the NFC to produce 7 strong teams

Rams, Bucs and Packers are gimme's.  I think the Cowboys still win the division, may be close, but Hurts has yet to beat them, heck, he has yet to be competitive against them.

So I am saying the Cowboys win the division, then wild card teams are Vikings, Saints and 49ers, Cardinals and Eagles fighting for the last spot, with Washington as a sleeper possibility.

3 minutes ago, downundermike said:

Rams, Bucs and Packers are gimme's.  I think the Cowboys still win the division, may be close, but Hurts has yet to beat them, heck, he has yet to be competitive against them.

So I am saying the Cowboys win the division, then wild card teams are Vikings, Saints and 49ers, Cardinals and Eagles fighting for the last spot, with Washington as a sleeper possibility.

If it wasn't for Washington being in the paper for all the wrong things, I'd be worried about them. Plenty of talent over there. I think the boys are still dangerous and Cardinals will definitely get a spot. They like to limp into the playoffs. 49ers are like herpes....they always pop up 

 

11 minutes ago, UndyTaker said:

Definition of Spaz : lose physical or emotional control. 

uhhhh

Losing emotional control is freaking out, is it not??

That is the verb definition, the noun definition is different (short for spastic). Either way, we're only a few years away from Demolition Man type language violation ticket machines...

21 minutes ago, downundermike said:

Rams, Bucs and Packers are gimme's.  I think the Cowboys still win the division, may be close, but Hurts has yet to beat them, heck, he has yet to be competitive against them.

So I am saying the Cowboys win the division, then wild card teams are Vikings, Saints and 49ers, Cardinals and Eagles fighting for the last spot, with Washington as a sleeper possibility.

If you already have 3 wild card teams then Cardinals and Eagles aren't fighting for anything

Damn and i finally got it working

 

3 minutes ago, LeanMeanGM said:

If you already have 3 wild card teams then Cardinals and Eagles aren't fighting for anything

1. Vikings 2. Saints and 3. 49ers, Cardinals and Eagles fighting for the last spot.

Did that clear it up for you ??

Was listening to Dan Patrick and Nick Wright was his guest. Had an interesting debate on greatest defensive play in SB history between James Harrison int return vs Arizona and Malcolm Butler interception vs Seattle.  I think it's a no brainer it's Butler.  

Although we could argue it was BG's strip sack.

2 minutes ago, downundermike said:

1. Vikings 2. Saints and 3. 49ers, Cardinals and Eagles fighting for the last spot.

Did that clear it up for you ??

Don't spaz on me

Tulips…….er, I mean Bitcoin and other crypto "currency” in free fall. Down 50% from its high.  

3 minutes ago, Bacarty2 said:

I got Dak getting hurt/missing some games and the Redskins winning the division. 

Wouldn't shock me either. The talent there healthy can accidentally win 11

48 minutes ago, NCiggles said:

Does not being able to say certain words hurt your feelings? 

Not at all.  Reading the lyrics to that song, which talks about cutting off a man's d**k so he can't F, or that fact that she refers to herself as a C-E-HO and hearing that the word spaz was the issue is what stands out to me. 

I'm sure every person around the world has a word that has a different impact on them.  I have ADHD, have had it my whole life.  People are trying to say that phrase is offensive.  I don't care one bit what it's called or how it's used.  

It's OK to continually make fun of the Irish though. 

7 minutes ago, Bacarty2 said:

I got Dak getting hurt/missing some games and the Redskins winning the division. 

I think the Redskins are a dark horse SB contender.  Love him or hate him, I can see Carson being closer to his 2017 form than his last few years.  He has weapons all over the place.  With that defense, all they have to do is coach right, play smart football on offense and they should have plenty of big plays.  I also think Cole Turner is going to be a real weapon for them at TE/big slot.  That offense has potential to be scary. 

This skit is now highly offensive and abelist.