NFL 2017/2018

[DBdude]

wow, that is unexpected

rip cortez

[Diamond Joe]

Damn, thats sad. 48 years old??
Rest in peace.

[BigDaddy]

^Sad to hear.

I think this is the closest the Patriots have come to going all in to win. I wonder if this is Brady's last year as a Patriot.

You have to wonder. I'd be surprised if it wasn't.

[BigDaddy]

Goodell will be hiding behind babies when he comes up to Foxboro this fall.

The plan is to have him standing alongside Kraft and present special awards to disabled vets from all branches of the armed services. Anyone booing will have to worry about collateral damage (and appearing unpatriotic, ugly and a hater of 'Merica). And I believe the armed services get to pay for being used like this. Genius.

[wyeaster]

The Passion Of Colin Kaepernick

By directly challenging white supremacy, racism and imperialism, Colin Kaepernick is making himself a household name for all the right reasons. And the NFL, its billionaire owners and the corporate errand boys of sports journalism simply cannot stand it.

https://www.mintpressnews.com/the-pa...ernick/229182/

...
One team has a desperate need for an NFL-level starter, while the other surely needs an insurance policy on their over-35 and consistently mediocre franchise quarterback, Eli Manning.Both teams reside in a massive, high-profile football market. Both teams represent a city that boasts a majority of people of color. Both teams have a history of employing “controversial” players, some of whom have had significant legal and public relations troubles; the Giants kept serial wife-beater Josh Brown on the roster until public pressure forced them to release him.And yet both teams have refused to even offer a tryout to the lone NFL-level starting quarterback who is still available just two and a half months before the season starts.And why have both teams chosen to move forward with subpar starting and/or backup quarterbacks rather than offering a tryout to an unsigned free agent QB who remains head, shoulders, arms, waist, knees and toes above every other available QB?Because that man is named Colin Kaepernick. And because that man has chosen to use his fame to draw attention to the institutionalized, systemic racism and violence that primarily targets people of color.But oh, we’re told by the preening sycophants of so-called sports journalism – almost without exception just corporate mouthpieces with communications degrees – that it’s not racism that keeps Kaepernick off NFL rosters; it’s not the blacklisting of an athlete for the dangerous sin of being both black and politically radical.No, it’s a purely football decision because Kaepernick is just not very good … or so they tell us.Of course, no one would argue that Kap is Aaron Rodgers or Tom Brady. But “not very good”? Really?Is Kaepernick worse than Josh McCown, Mark Sanchez, Josh Johnson, Geno Smith, Aaron Murray, Case Keenum, David Fales or Austin Davis? If your response to reading those names was “Who the hell are those people?” then you’d be joining the tens of millions of other football fans who would ask the same question. Still, every one of those scrub QBs has landed a spot on an NFL team. But perhaps the even better question is: “Why is this even up for debate?”Kaepernick’s real-world performance on the second-worst team in the NFL (the San Francisco 49ers finished 2-14 in 2016) was more than adequate. In fact, Kap was one of the better QBs in the league when he got a chance to start, even on a horrendous dumpster fire of a football team. Now, let’s look at some numbers. Forgive me non-football fan readers, but this is important:

1. According to the NFL’s official research organization, Kaepernick threw 16 touchdowns and only four interceptions while going 1-10 as a starter. That was good for the sixth-lowest interception percentage in the NFL, just behind Aaron Rodgers and Derek Carr, two poster boys of the NFL who were considered contenders for the Most Valuable Player award in 2016.
2. Kaepernick finished the 2016 season 16th among QBs in adjusted yards per attempt (better than two Pro Bowl QBs).
3. Kaepernick finished 17th in QB rating.
4. Kaepernick finished 13th in touchdown percentage.
5. He finished second in total rushing yards among QBs despite starting just 11 games, as well as posted the best yards per carry of any player with at least 50 carries.

In short, any objective analysis of Kaepernick’s level of play shows that he is at worst a middle of the road, average NFL QB, which should make him sought after by every single organization and earn him tens of millions of dollars. Consider the fact that Brock Osweiler last year signed a $72 million contract and performed as one of the worst QBs in the NFL, performing far worse than Kaepernick in every offensive category. And yet Kap remains unemployed. Why?

Radical Liberation Politics in a Reactionary, Oppressive League

Kaepernick’s lack of a job is less about him than it is the NFL and American society as a whole. As the numbers show – and many experts agree – Kaepernick’s performance is, by any statistical measure, worthy of an NFL job. So there must be another reason for his fall from grace.As ESPN’s Bomani Jones eloquently wrote:
“Stop hiding behind code. Stop trumpeting the idea that sports are the ultimate meritocracy, then shrugging and say ‘thems the breaks’ in the face of a visible potential case of discrimination. It’s intellectually disingenuous at best, indefensible cowardice at worst and sounds eerily like the worst of past evaluations and coverage of black athletes…And, then perhaps, we could address the cruelest irony of this. Kaepernick’s stand was a refusal to pay homage to American ideals because he couldn’t ignore America’s reality. Now, writers and fans are ignoring those same ideals and their defense of that outlook is … it’s reality.”Indeed, it is good old-fashioned racism and white supremacy at work in the Kaepernick saga, not some putrid garbage about reading defenses, being a pocket passer or getting rid of the ball too slowly.It is, once again, a professional sports league dominated by the same rich white billionaires who revel in ostentatious displays of hero worship for U.S. military – it makes no difference whether those wars are unjust, illegal, imperialist wars, mind you – and other agents of the state such as politicians and cops.So, NFL owners and the league think Kaepernick is not NFL material? That he is a black eye (pardon the pun) for the game? Well, let’s remember just what kind of league we’re talking about. This is the same NFL that:

• Attempted to cover up and suppress information from studies establishing a correlation between football and brain damage.
• Proclaims itself to be a proud sponsor of breast cancer awareness and research with its pink-colored merchandise, but only actually gives 8 percent of the money consumers spend on pink gear to cancer research. In fact, the NFL takes 1.25 percent of the profits – and even more when they are the direct retailer.
• Maintained tax exempt status until 2015, despite being one of the most profitable organizations in the world. I wonder how many schools, hospitals and infrastructure projects didn’t get funded because of tax revenue that cities and states were cheated out of thanks to NFL accounting practices that have saved the league hundreds of billions of dollars over many decades.
• Refused for years to extend or expand long-term health benefits to former players, despite mountains of evidence regarding the long-term negative health impacts of football.
• Routinely allows teams to blackmail cities and their citizens into providing public funding for billion-dollar stadiums, while the billionaire owners rake in the profits.

....

What the NFL really wants is a league full of Tom Bradys: White, smiling yes-men who date supermodels andsay things like, “What’s going on in the world? I haven’t paid much attention. I’m just a positive person.”

Tom Brady is a hero and an icon, hailed as perhaps the greatest QB to ever play the game. But while his accomplishments on the field are second to none, he remains a privileged, narcissistic, Trump-loving mush-head who has zero interest in the communities from which many of his on-field teammates hail.

In contrast, Kaepernick has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to worthy, grassroots organizations working in communities of color.

[wyeaster]

The Colin Kaepernick situation really isn’t that complicated. Either you believe he is better than a number of current NFL backup quarterbacks and therefore deserves a job, or you don’t. Either you believe that his outspoken political beliefs have earned him a league-wide blackballing, or you believe he’s not even talented enough to merit such treatment. It’s funny, then, to watch NFL reporters, particularly those well-versed in the language of stooging, twist themselves into knots while trying to write about Kaepernick.

The MMQB’s Albert Breer, who has been hard at work positioning himself as the media’s preeminent White Man Just Asking Questions this summer, is the latest to tangle himself up. In a column today, he argues that Colin Kaepernick doesn’t have a job yet because he hasn’t talked about how much he’d like to have a job:

So in the immediate wake of the most controversial thing he’s done since he started kneeling for the anthem, I’m ready to align with others who’ve said it: It’s time for Kaepernick to talk for himself. Doesn’t matter how he does it. It can be through the legion of reporters friendly to his efforts. It can be through a video released on social media. It can be through a Facebook page or a press conference.
Whatever. It’s just time for Kaepernick to talk.
The problem is in the vacuum that his silence has created. It’s been filled with speculation and tea-leaf reading. Meanwhile, teams unsure if Kaepernick was truly interested in continuing his NFL career (rather than focusing solely on his causes) are still wondering. And that’s so long as they haven’t been convinced by his most recent actions that he’s out.

Follow the logic of these paragraphs—while pretending that if Kaepernick was putting out Facebook videos and talking to Dave Zirin, stooge reporters and NFL insiders wouldn’t just be presenting that as proof that he’s more interested in branding himself than in football—and you end up in a bit of a weird place. As Breer has it, there are questions about whether Kaepernick is still interested in playing football not because he has specifically expressed reservations about playing, but because he has continued to show an interest in political causes. Perhaps in the mind of Breer and the front-office types whose conventional wisdom he likes to pass on uncritically, having an interest in something that is not football makes it impossible to also be interested in football. (Is this the case for LeBron James, who wants to become a Hollywood power player? Or Rob Gronkowski, who likes to star in bad movies? Or Carson Wentz, who seems to really enjoy hunting?) If that’s the case, then it says more about the NFL than it does Kaepernick.

Breer has more half-formed thoughts to trip over:

I’ve chronicled here what my reporting has told me. This starts with the erosion of Kaepernick’s playing value, then trickles elsewhere. Bottom line, he’s not seen as a starter, and so teams aren’t making scheme or off-field accommodations for him. That—which is far from a black-balling—has been hard for him to overcome.
No one makes a list of the best 64 or 96 players at any position and just hands out jobs. It doesn’t work that way. Back-half-of-the-roster jobs usually come down to fit.
But Kaepernick also has made it harder on himself, because we’re left to wonder why he keeps doing things unrelated or unnecessary to the movement he’s supporting that hinder his ability to find work. We’re left to wonder why there hasn’t been more aggression from his people in finding him a job. We’re left to wonder, as teams are, if he really wants to play.

So, the league-wide refusal to sign Kaepernick is at least partially due to his political beliefs, but that’s not a form of blackballing, but also, he’s probably not good enough to get a job anyway, but also also, if he would just come out and promise to focus on football and not political causes from now on teams around the league might stop ... doing whatever it is that is not blackballing that they are doing to him.
Breer’s column has led us to a truly stunning revelation: Colin Kaepernick is in fact blackballing himself.

[The MMQB]

[Diamond Joe]

man, if there's anything worse than black text on a dark blue body, I dont know what it is

TL;DR

[wyeaster]

it looked normal when i posted it. the link is there somewhere.


should be better

[wyeaster]

Abdul-Rauf: Kaepernick’s situation ‘mirrors what I went through’

The oldest player in the BIG3 league knows protest can derail a career

BY MARC J. SPEARS@MARCJSPEARSESPN

June 25, 2017

There will be flashes from the past on the hardwood Sunday when Ice Cube unveils his BIG3 basketball league in Brooklyn, New York. Julius “Dr. J” Erving, Rick Barry, George Gervin and Clyde Drexler are coaches. Allen Iverson is a player-coach.

​Perhaps the most surprising player suiting up will be former NBA sharpshooter Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, who is the oldest player in the 3-on-3 league at 48 years old.

Abdul-Rauf played nine years in the NBA, the last in 2001, and is one of the greatest free-throw shooters in league history. The former Louisiana State University star is best known for refusing to stand for the national anthem during the 1995-96 NBA season and calling the American flag a symbol of oppression.


​When Abdul-Rauf takes the court with the Three-Headed Monsters in the BIG3 League on Sunday, his controversial story will certainly come back to life.

​“It’s nothing that I regret,” Abdul-Rauf said of his stance against the flag and anthem. “I’m still doing the same things. I’m still speaking out against what I see as injustice, whether it’s on college campuses or conventions. That hasn’t changed and I don’t plan on that changing. So, I still feel the same way.

“I don’t feel like much has changed, if anything at all. Black folks are still being victimized disproportionately in the penal institution. It seems they are definitely disproportionately being shot and killed by policemen. Just overall the position that we are confronted with, and also being a Muslim, look at what Muslims are going through in this nation. I don’t think really anything has changed, by and large.”

Abdul-Rauf talked to The Undefeated about NFL free agent quarterback Colin Kaepernick, playing at his age, the challenge of the four-point shot, and more.


Denver Nuggets guard Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf stands with his teammates and prays during the national anthem before the game with the Chicago Bulls on Friday night, March 15, 1996, in Chicago. Abdul-Rauf, saying that the U.S. flag was a symbol of “oppression and tyranny,” was suspended Tuesday for sitting down during the national anthem. Friday was Abdul-Rauf’s first game back.


Have you talked to Kaepernick? What do you think about what he is going through with no NFL team willing to sign him after he protested during the national anthem last season?

We met through friends of his, but it’s not surprising to me what he is going through. I said from the beginning that I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t get another job. With all the death threats and assassinations of his character, it mirrors what I went through. This is just the way things are. It’s unfortunate when in particular black athletes are in this position.

I remember the words of [linguist] Noam Chomsky saying all these other things could easily be accepted and we can let them go. But to try to influence people to be socially, racially and politically conscious opposite of what the mainstream wants us to think is unacceptable. Athletes are looked at and viewed with much more importance than teachers and professors by far by the youth. There was a time years ago during Edgar Hoover where they wanted athletes basically brain-dead. Pushed away from the Muhammad Ali types. Those things are promoted day in and day out.

When a person like Kaepernick or anybody else comes and stands out against anything that is contrary to what image they want you to have as an athlete, then they will make an example of you because they want to discourage other athletes from doing the same thing. And that’s just my take on it. And it doesn’t surprise me. It’s just sad. You are hoping that it will galvanize us as people and say, look we not going to tolerate this anymore, period. You ain’t going to do this to this person, and then especially when you see blatant examples of when you’re white or other people doing things that are even worse. I’m talking about assault, battery, rape, whatever and nothing happens. But he speaks out as an activist and you want to deny him access to a profession that he has been training most of his life for, it’s not like he can just pick up right now and go and become an engineer and a doctor. And you are trying to take his livelihood away just because of that when you see all of these other examples.

And unfortunately, we don’t come together and fight and hit them where it hurts in the pocket. Hit them where it hurts. That’s what the United States does, anytime they have a problem with a country we affect them financially at the negotiating table. And what happens? They bring their friends and say don’t trade with them, buy from them, nothing, and eventually what happens is most of them come back

[Sandbox]

Training camps are almost here which mean preseasons is right around the corner.... I'm just happy that football is almost back!!

[Sandbox]

Also..... does anyone run a Fantasy Football league on this site?? if so i'd love to get in on that assuming JONGS are allowed? If not i'd be happy to start one

[DBdude]

The Passion Of Colin Kaepernick


One team has a desperate need for an NFL-level starter, while the other surely needs an insurance policy on their over-35 and consistently mediocre franchise quarterback, Eli Manning..

eli is a better qb than kap. kap's out of pocket style does not fit a lot of teams

second, I agree it is ridiculous that kap doesn't have a job. that said, since this has started, he has not said he wants to play

third, the league is run by risk averse, white men. they just don't want to deal and kap is not good enough to take the risk of signing him from their perspective

[Sandbox]

eli is a better qb than kap. kap's out of pocket style does not fit a lot of teams

second, I agree it is ridiculous that kap doesn't have a job. that said, since this has started, he has not said he wants to play

third, the league is run by risk averse, white men. they just don't want to deal and kap is not good enough to take the risk of signing him from their perspective

Kap has such a unique QB style and like you said thats not overly great for a backup QB. a couple of teams who run similar QB styles (Seattle, Carolina) might have an interest ( he already had a tryout for Seattle). For the rest of the teams you would need to run a totally different O from your starter to your backup so that doesn't make any sense. In Madden it might work but in the real world it doesn't.

I also don't believe that Kap has come out and said anything.... If you are unemployed and you want a job you usually pimp yourself and do what it takes to get hired but he has been silent which tells me a little about his mental state.

I don't agree with what he did at all but i don't see an issue in wanting to address social issues and its well within his rights but when he became such a headache for his team i think he did himself a great disservice. However i hope its resolved one way or another so we can stop talking about it!

[DBdude]

seattle should have signed him... time will tell

[Sandbox]

seattle should have signed him... time will tell

Yep i think that would have been a decent pickup for them, wasn't their backup QB arrested for something this off season? Kap and Bennett would be a very interesting locker room presence though... I'm sure that was discussed at length in that Seattle office

[Sirshredalot]

Yep i think that would have been a decent pickup for them, wasn't their backup QB arrested for something this off season? Kap and Bennett would be a very interesting locker room presence though... I'm sure that was discussed at length in that Seattle office

The bigger locker room issue with Kap is that he's probably going to lobby to start at some point. For the style of play issues mentioned above and to avoid that issue, he's a better reclamation project for a 6-10 team than a backup for a contender. But he's probably done and has set himself up nicely for a gig on ESPN if he wants one.

[DBdude]

i don't think espn will touch him

they prefer the buffonery of stephen A

[wyeaster]

let's see. no nfl team will touch him, millions of white people hate him, and espn will think it' s a great idea to put him on the air.

[Diamond Joe]

Also..... does anyone run a Fantasy Football league on this site?? if so i'd love to get in on that assuming JONGS are allowed? If not i'd be happy to start one

Theres a 2 pic minimum for JONG entrance to said FF league.

Wife, girlfriend, or recent hooker. Sans clothes. Pay up and you get on the waiting list. Extra pictures or extra compromising positions bumps you up to the top

[Sirshredalot]

let's see. no nfl team will touch him, millions of white people hate him, and espn will think it' s a great idea to put him on the air.

Hey, I never said ESPN was well-run, that our media environment was anything short of completely toxic, or that I would do the same. It's just that he fits the current media model of "famous for being famous rather than for accomplishing anything plus good for politically-charged yelling by uninformed people." There's a spot in the media for him somewhere if he wants it and can deliver eyeballs. Fuck, that's all Kim Kardashian or Donald Trump do, and one of those reality TV goofuses conned the Republican Party idiots into making him President.

[neufox47]

There is only one team that matters this year. It's the Pats vs the field. I can't wait to see the Pats try to defend the Title! Back to back has a sweet ring to it. Wonder if Brady hangs it up if they win this year. I doubt it.

Enjoy it people. We will never see a GOAT coach and qb together again. Partly because it is unlikely either will be surpassed in the next 40, 50 years. Rename the trophy already.

Sent from my SM-G930V using TGR Forums mobile app

[GiBo]

There is only one team that matters this year. It's the Pats vs the field. I can't wait to see the Pats try to defend the Title! Back to back has a sweet ring to it. Wonder if Brady hangs it up if they win this year. I doubt it.

Enjoy it people. We will never see a GOAT coach and qb together again. Partly because it is unlikely either will be surpassed in the next 40, 50 years. Rename the trophy already.

Sent from my SM-G930V using TGR Forums mobile app

We aren't seeing any GOAT coaches and qb's together. Jesus you chowds are insufferable!

[I've seen black diamonds!]

We aren't seeing any GOAT coaches and qb's together. Jesus you chowds are insufferable!

Of course we are. They've won more than any other team in history in an age in which the CBA and shear number of teams make prolonged domination more difficult than ever. And who are the other clear cut hall of famers on those teams? A couple years of Moss. A Year of Revis. Seau past his prime. Thats it. But Belichik constantly reinvents the way his team plays on both sides of the ball. He takes washed up guys and busts and makes them look like stars. And Brady? Well he has a career record of 18-9 in games when he throws 50 or more passes. No one else has won half of such games. Manning was 4-12. The aggregate NFL record for games in which a QB throws 50 passes is about 25%. He consistently succeeds in conditions under which everyone else consistently fails. He just went 43 of 62 in the Super Bowl to come back from a 28-3 deficit. At age 39! His top two receivers were a college quarterback and a college lacrosse player. The only athlete with such an iconic performance at a later age is Ali.

Only other NFL player with a similar combination of longevity and greatness is Rice. But he at least slowed down a little his last 7 years. Brady hasn't slowed a bit. Keeps getting better even. And QB's > WR's.

[Sandbox]

Theres a 2 pic minimum for JONG entrance to said FF league.

Wife, girlfriend, or recent hooker. Sans clothes. Pay up and you get on the waiting list. Extra pictures or extra compromising positions bumps you up to the top

haha let me see what i can dig up!

[Sandbox]

On Kap.... i don't see any sports media hiring him right now. I still think he will find a job before the season starts as there will most likely be a QB injury in camp or pre season.