Month: November 2017

If everyone agrees that press conferences are obsolete and that the lamestream media isn’t up to the task and Twitter is the future old man (or whatever, I don’t deal with young people unless I’m cursing them for trampling my lawn), I’m all for any alternatives that get interested parties (i.e. fans) the information they want. If we don’t like the press conferences, I suggest allotting 15 minutes, twice a week, for unscreened questions directly from fans (which I’m sure would go over great after, say, a 17-3 loss in Chicago).

The new system, however, doesn’t kick in until the 2019 NBA draft. In other words, Atlanta, Chicago, Indiana, Phoenix, Sacramento and others will all get one final shot at marginally improving their chances at landing a franchise player through aggressive tanking. Let the games begin.

There is some sentiment for allowing all 32 teams to control their own player activism campaigns, because the issues in Cincinnati might be different from those in Los Angeles. But there’s no clear consensus on it.

The solution has to be either driven by the players or widely perceived to be driven by the players, or it could give the impression that the league is being good and generous about this issue just to mollify the players. The players can’t be sellouts.

Jones was reportedly “furious” about the league’s decision, according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter. Jones had maintained that he did not expect Elliott to face discipline.

“There’s nothing,” Jones told USA Today in July. “I have reviewed everything. There is absolutely nothing, not one thing I’ve seen that has anything to do with domestic violence. I’ve seen nothing.”

In its decision to lift the preliminary injunction that was keeping Elliott on the field, the 5th Circuit court ruled that the U.S. District Court of Eastern Texas must dismiss Elliott’s case. When the NFLPA filed for an en banc hearing with the 5th Circuit, they also asked that the court recall the mandate that the case be dismissed. The 5th Circuit denied that motion on Tuesday.

Elliott will play against the 49ers in Week 7, but the TRO only lasts until Oct. 30 or until the presiding judge, who is currently on vacation, hears the case.

Or the hilarious-er young receiver goes down then leaves a live ball on the ground (though when Victor Cruz did that a couple years ago the officials decided they’d call it differently than they ever had before, so what’s the point?). It’s an archaic rule that unnecessarily creates a gray area for a defender and puts players in danger for no good reason.

Carlos Correa: He just turned 23 in September and has had a blazing start to his career. While he may not be a Gold Glove shortstop, he’s good enough defensively to certainly stick there throughout his 20s, which means he’ll develop into one of the best power-hitting shortstops in the game’s history.

Corey Seager: The best path to becoming a Hall of Famer is to reach the majors at a young age and excel from the beginning. Like Correa, Seager has done just that, as the two rank sixth and eighth the past two seasons in WAR among position players. Like Correa, Seager is going to be an annual MVP candidate over the next 10 years or so. Like Correa, the key is staying healthy. Nomar Garciaparra had half a Hall of Fame career, for example.

I’ve done enough of that for now. Except for dirt track.” Martin answered a fan’s question Friday on Twitter confirming that he was no longer serving as a coach for Roush. Saturday, he answered another fan’s question as to why he wasn’t coaching Roush’s drivers.

“I was very honored, but that game ball was not for me,” Fleck said last month. “That game ball was for our players. That game ball was for our boosters. That game ball was for our fans, our student section, 10,000 strong are chanting ‘row the boat.’ That’s for everybody who believed in what we’re doing, not that it’s guaranteed to happen right now or this year. But that’s for that vision, and I just appreciated it and accepted it on behalf of everybody.”

I don’t believe Trevathan was trying to hit him helmet-to-helmet. But in this case, it doesn’t matter. It happened.

“Each week is its own entity,” Cousins said from Virginia the other day. “But we’ve definitely put some good performances together. Kansas City’s so good and so creative, and they’ve obviously got everything rolling now, and it’s Monday night, in a place that’s really hard for road teams to play.”

You’ve got to hand it to Cousins, who is playing his second straight year on the franchise tag because he hasn’t been able to work out a long-term deal with Washington. But to hear him talk about it, he’s pretty much okay with it.

A fan named Pete has a Trubisky shirt underneath a pair of orange-and-blue striped overalls, as if he’s not fully committed.

Brissett is self-assured, has a great arm and possesses the ability to throw into tight windows downfield—if his early play in Indy is true to him.

So out came LT, lining up at tight end. And it worked—almost. The pass was tipped and flew over the hands of a leaping Taylor in the end zone. ‘‘God, I was wide open,’’ Taylor said after the game.

O.K., fair enough, no one ever gets traded, so you were right to spit-take. And, actually, it’s pretty stunning that now two teams have been willing to take on the albatross that is Dareus’s contract.

Early-season power rankings are a tough exercise, because it’s difficult to know which teams are showing their true selves, and which are just subjects of small sample-size theater. Are Orlando, Memphis and Detroit for real? Is Dallas really this bad? Is Oklahoma City not the juggernaut many thought they’d be? Figuring out where to slot a struggling Cleveland Cavaliers team is also a challenge because whatever the record might indicate in autumn, few believe the Cavs will be anything other than a top-five team come April.

Jay and Mark Briscoe wrestle a physical, ferocious style that leaves an impression–and a mark–on crowds and wrestlers. The pair is headed to Germany to wrestle in Westside Xtreme Wrestling’s World Tag Team League, which is a round-robin, league format tournament. Their opponents in the star-studded tourney include Low Ki and Homicide, EYFBO (who also wrestle as Santana and Ortiz as part of LAX in Impact), and the Ring Kampf tandem of WALTER and Timothy Thatcher.

When Prescott emerged from the locker room after that game, he was mobbed for autographs, but Coach Hevesy’s young daughter determinedly cleared a path for him to his mom. They all went back to Dak’s apartment, where Nathaniel cooked gumbo, and Phil helped Peggy out of her wheelchair onto the couch, and the big football star on campus laid down on his mama’s lap.

He’s so protective of it that he grooms it himself. “I couldn’t recognize myself today without a mustache,” Khan says. “That’s the mojo.”

At Fleck’s side during Minnesota’s 3-1 start has been his wife, Heather, and five children from a previous marriage. On Saturday morning, with Fleck otherwise occupied, the Gophers cheer squad grouped around Mrs. Fleck in a corner of the field to sing her “Happy Birthday.”

“Anything that happens during the season, whether its Thanksgiving or Christmas or birthdays, we typically don’t celebrate on the day,” she says later. “But we celebrated on Thursday. Thursday’s our date night. So I had, like, three birthdays this week.”

In fact, Taylor was lined up all over the field, given pretty much free reign to cause havoc however he deemed fit. He didn’t learn many, if any, of his provisional teammates’ names. So he took to calling Dan DeRose “Boss Man.” And since DeRose was the defensive captain, and Taylor wasn’t all that familiar with the new dumbed-down defense that had been installed for the replacement players, it was DeRose who was still receiving the play calls from Belichick and relaying them to Taylor and the other defensive players in the huddle.

The Broncos have replaced five starters off their 2015 defense and are still very much elite on that side of the ball (which is bad news for their offensively challenged Sunday Night opponent from Jersey).

Wentz wasn’t his best statistically (18 of 32, 211 yards, two touchdowns, one interception) and had a handful of missed opportunities, but it didn’t doom the Eagles. At 7-1, no one’s going to lament how Philadelphia’s quarterback could have been better in a win.

A woman who identified herself as Elliott’s ex-girlfriend filed a police report claiming Elliott had been abusive over the course of five days in July 2016. She filed two separate reports with the Columbus Police Department. Witnesses who claimed to have been present did not corroborate her statements, and police and prosecutors decided not to bring charges against Elliott.

Dak Prescott (1.4 OTD) has scored on three of his 23 carries this season. On a per-look basis, Prescott’s 13.0 percent scoring rate is seventh highest in the NFL. Prescott also defied the numbers by rushing for six touchdowns (3.7 OTD) on 56 looks last year, though his scoring rate was a bit more reasonable.

Jonathan Stewart became the first Carolina player other than Newton to score a rushing touchdown and Christian McCaffrey broke the team’s single-season record for receptions in a single season with his five-catch, 49-yard effort, giving him 49 catches for the season. It wasn’t a chunk playfest by any means, but Newton probably will be happy to talk about this one.

He moved his family to Miami this year, though he retains his house outside Boston, where the oldest of his four children—a daughter—attends college. Florida, though, offers year-round baseball, attractive to his soon-to-be 14-year-old son. “He’s developing really good, so I want to be around the next couple of years to see how much I can help him,” Ortiz says.

Julio Jones (3.4 OTD) has managed only one touchdown this season. That 2.4 gap is the eighth largest in the NFL. Only five players have exceeded Jones’ eight end zone targets. Jones is fantasy’s No. 17 scoring wide receiver despite averaging 8.7 targets per game (only a slight decrease from 9.1 last year).

Javorius Allen (4.5 OTD) ranks 15th in the NFL in OTD but has scored only two touchdowns. Despite his primary gig as a passing-down back, Allen has handled four of the Ravens’ eight carries inside the opponent’s 5-yard line and also has an end zone target.

Instead, the Patriots guarantee themselves a high second-round pick in the 2018 draft, a much better selection and one that comes a year earlier. The 49ers are the second-worst team in football and have a 98.6 percent chance, per the Football Power Index, of finishing among the league’s five worst teams.

The league’s policy does not rely on the same burden of proof as the legal system does. The personal conduct policy says that “persons who fail to live up to this standard of conduct are guilty of conduct detrimental and subject to discipline, even where the conduct itself does not result in conviction of a crime.”

The NFL has a public relations problem when it comes to its handling of violence against women, and for good reason. The league has been inconsistent in doling out discipline.

The offensive output from the post-PG Pacers defies earthly logic. How is the league’s No. 4 offense getting it done without Myles Turner, who still hasn’t been cleared to play after suffering a concussion? Look no further than Victor Oladipo, who is averaging 26 points per game on a true shooting percentage of 64.3. Domantas Sabonis, his fellow traveler from OKC, has also been a net positive for Indy. He scored 22 points on Sunday in a win over the Spurs, shooting a perfect 9-for-9 from the floor.

Melvin Ingram and Joey Bosa entered the game with 34.5 combined sacks the past two seasons, tops among any pass-rushing duo league-wide. How the Patriots countered these two powerful beasts reminded me of their victory over the Seahawks in Super Bowl XLIX, with Tom Brady unfurling a flurry of quick-release passes to his stable of versatile running backs.