I’m sure he does. 9/10 times Jackson comes on he has 2 downs to get a 1st down now…
I looked it up, and apparently Jackson throws 49mph. For comparison, Mahomes throws 60mph and Mayfield throws 62mph. That’s a noodle arm right there LOL.
There is a ray of hope -DeShaun Watson also only throws 49mph; but when you have DeAndre Hopkins (best hands in the NFL) I guess accuracy (I assume Watson has it) is really all you need.
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Sam Darnold out with a foot sprain. For you fantasy guys, I think this means Robby Anderson will no longer be MIA.
Antonio Brown got a ticket today going 100mph on McKnight road (probably the most congested road in Pittsburgh).
I guess the cops forgot to double cover him.
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Short version: a franchise tag for Bell in 2019 would cost the Steelers $25 million; a transition tag for Bell means he can negotiate a deal with another team which the Steelers would have to match.
From what im understanding stat wise… Steelers arent really missing him
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Bell just wants to smoke weed and play x-box.
O’Connor is killing it though!
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Yeah, if the Steelers pay him they’d be CRAZY, they have a discount superstar in Conner. Steelers need to send him wherever will give them the best defensive players.
Steelers just embarrassed the Panthers prime time. Scored more points than ever at Heinz Field. Sacked Cam 5 times.
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I don’t have a ton of free time, but this morning I just couldn’t resist dropping in here with some STEAMING HOT TAKES.
First, let me say that while I love most of the posters in here, Jesus Fucking Christ, get the guys’ names right. It’s Lamar Jackson, not “Luke” Jackson. And James Conner, not “O’Connor” (for Chrissakes, Skyz, the guy played his college ball AT PITT).
Derp. This is because QB’s are (by far) the highest profile picks and the easiest to identify as “busts” - an offensive lineman that plays a few crappy seasons before going away is a lot less visible than JaMarcus Russell stinking up the point.
Saquon is fantastic. I love the guy. And if you’ve watched the games, he is making things happen beyond just the numbers - there have been a bunch of plays where he has to make a spin move, break a tackle and hurdle a dude for a seven-yard gain. But there’s still no good argument for taking a running back that high in this day and age. The only reason this might work out for the Giants is that they’re still having such a crappy season they might end up with a high pick next year, so they can keep Saquon and get a quarterback.
Also, LO-fucking-L at a list of draft busts that omits Trent Richardson, the third overall pick who lasted three seasons with 3.3 yards per carry and got traded in the middle of his second season and was so bad he only lasted one season beyond that. Yeah, high draft pick running backs can bust just as easily as high draft pick quarterbacks.
I’ll happily take a shit on Gruden, but Mack / Carr were in very different situations. If there’s something to blame Gruden (the fucking QB guru himself) for here, it’s for not getting more out of Carr as a coach - this guy was putting up big numbers under Jack Del Rio in 2016, tell me why the fuckin’ quarterback whisperer can’t get more out of him.
Vance looks like a beast. Really good piece to have on the Stillers’ offense.
Again, I love a good shit on Gruden right now, but hard pass on this.
Yes, Harbaugh would be hired almost immediately. That doesn’t necessarily mean it would be wrong for the Ravens to move on…
Longtime Eagles fan here. I loved Andy Reid, who took over a dumpster fire in the late 1990’s and made the Eagles an every-year contender for a decade. But eventually things had pretty clearly just gotten a little stale in Philly and it was time to part ways. Reid left, was quickly scooped up by the Chiefs, turned them into consistent contenders and (now that he’s got Mahomes) I am rooting like hell for him to win a Super Bowl in KC. It worked out for all parties here (eventually). Should Philly have just kept Andy around back then? IDK, but I’m happy to be rooting for him from afar while treasuring last year’s Super Bowl win under Pederson (who I think is a better version of Reid - same offensive acumen with better in-game management).
I could see the Ravens moving on, Harbaugh getting immediately scooped up (and doing well) in a few places, and it still being the right move for all sides.
Also, re: Flacco, I was pretty pro-Joe for awhile after the Super Bowl, but it is hard to ignore how far his production has slipped in the last few seasons. Is the supporting cast entirely to blame? Probably a bit, but Brady made do in seasons where he was throwing to Gronk for half the year plus a bunch of guys I’d never heard of. Rodgers has done the same. Flacco is clearly still a competent NFL quarterback but it’s harder and harder to make the argument that he was/is elite.
I actually am surprised at how bad Peterman has been in the NFL - he was reasonably effective on a good Pitt team in college - but agree, it was pretty much inexcusable to bench Tyrod for him in the midst of a playoff race last year, and once that went the way it did, very very very much inexcusable to bring him back this year.
There’s a good idea underneath here, but it’s dumb when you have a guy like Flacco or Jay Cutler who’s just gonna go stand there. I think the Ravens are being pretty dumb the way they’ve rolled this out, and as you said, nobody’s fooled. You’ve gotta have some other wrinkles off it (Penn State ran some great plays over the last two years with McSorley lined up wide and Stevens on the field, or with a RB behind center faking or giving to McSorley). Just sending the QB out wide to stand there and running a regular play is useless.
Yeah, I thought Darnold was wayyyyy overhyped at USC. I wouldn’t write him off either - almost nobody except Nathan Peterman deserves to be written off after that little exposure - but what we’ve seen lately shows that most good QB’s look like they belong right away. Guys that look that overwhelmed that often are in trouble.
LOL. I chuckled when I saw the headline that AB was caught doing 100 in Pittsburgh & thought “where in the world was he able to get up to 100 without getting into an accident?”
I posted earlier (I think in this thread) about why Bell was holding out. I’ve always looked at this as more of a protest against the NFL’s current contract structure (blame the Players Association for this, by the way…) which has guys on cost-controlled rookie deals for their first 4 years, then able to be franchise-tagged for two more seasons after that, meaning that most guys will never hit the “open market” until they’re 28 or 29 (by which time many RB’s are finished) than having any axe to grind with the Steelers specifically.
With that said, Conner’s production in Bell’s absence is showing why the Steelers (and all NFL teams) are right not to pay top dollar for running backs in the current system. It’s simply easier to find good young guys who will do the job cheaper at running back than it is at almost any other position in the League. Kareem Hunt was drafted in the third round in 2017. So was Conner. Hell, we can go back to the early-00’s Broncos, when Terrell Davis went down and they subsequently got 1,000 yard rushing seasons from Olandis Gary, Mike Anderson, Clinton Portis, and Reuben Droughns in the years that followed (even Portis was a second round pick!)
Bell had/has a valid reason to hold out, and the Steelers were right not to cave in to his demands because they knew they could replace 95% of his production with a cheaper guy that was already in the building. Both sides are doing what they feel is in their best interest. I think Bell is going to come out of this looking worse, but I think his original reason for holding out is probably sounder than he’s been/being given credit for.
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I agree Bell has become the butt of a lot of jokes. I think he has a 2k yard season next year for somebody else. My sneaking suspiscion is that there’s something else behind this holdout. Like maybe he had a nagging injury at the end of last season and that “torso injury” was really a hernia. Those take a while to heal and maybe he didn’t want everyone to know about it.
Bell would look 100% better in all of this if:
A. He didn’t tell the fans and his teammates that he was going to play this year. The line was seriously pissed because they know their SB window is closing.
B. Although it’s not fair to Connor, the perception now is that any decent back could look like an all pro behind this O Line. Connor had 65yds on 13 carries before they rested him last night. The RB2 and RB3 looked like trash though.
C. He didn’t have two MJ suspensions and two knee injuries. He’s never even played a full season and his YPC have fallen off a cliff since his peak year. He doesn’t deserve Gurley money, full stop. The Jets will give it to him though.
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Agree with most of this. Where I think he really overvalued himself was the whole “I want to be paid like a #1 running back and a #2 receiver” angle. Yes, he offers an elite combination of both skills, but he’s not the first ever to do that, nor is he the only guy playing today to offer that. It’s a necessity in the NFL today. And the MJ suspensions (while I think many of us posting here believe in legalizing MJ) do make him a bit more of a risk until the League, country or both change their stance on MJ.
(oh, and editing to add, yeah, he looks bad for stating he’d play this year and then so publicly flaunting that he wasn’t playing. I feel like if he would’ve kept his head down a little more, maybe called up his closest buddies on the team and said “Here’s what I’m doing and why. I know that it’s tough but this is about more than just money” or something, maybe his teammates would be a little more sympathetic - I read an article that said Ramon Foster being the Steelers’ union rep and so publicly throwing Le’Veon under the bus is a good example of why the owners will always beat the players in labor negotiations)
Re: point 2, yeah, it’s not like Conner is Rudy - he was a monster at Pitt in 2014 and, given time to recover his strength following the injury and battle with cancer, hardly surprising that he would become a force in the NFL. A tangent - watching him this season, one of the things I’ve wondered is if he took a cue from Le’Veon in losing some weight as an NFL running back. Both of those guys were bigger bruisers in college who look almost “thin” in the NFL. I wonder if JC saw Bell’s success as a smaller, quicker, more patient (but still physical) runner and decided to emulate that path.
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I’ll bet. Most RBs in the pros sit at around 200lbs. You just can’t run over defensive linemen and linebackers in the pros near as much as college. Might as well be lighter and make them miss.
I like that open letter he sent to all the NFL owners saying how he wanted to be a hall of fame running back and was willing to outwork everyone.
Pouncey said he runs like a man who’d faced death.
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Well, Gronk is arguably the best TE in football and Brady is arguably the best QB of all time… Flacco hasn’t exactly been throwing to all-stars either.
Flacco deserves blame, no doubt. A lot of his issues over the last 2+ seasons have been injury related (He torn his ACL in 2015 or 2016 iirc), but he does make some really dumb decisions.
However, their run game has been pretty bad since Justin Forsett retired (Collins showed a lot of promise last year, but has not delivered this year) and if you can’t run in the AFC North you’ve got problems. O-line has been up and down for several years. WR play is inconsistent at best and has been since Steve Smith Sr. retired. It was inconsistent when he was here too, but he was such a great player it masked some of the issues. TE play hasn’t been great since Pita hurt himself the first time… This year has been better, but still not great with a lot of dropped passes (Crabtree in particular) at least Perriman isn’t dropping the ball every game this year. The defense, I don’t even know what to say about the defense. The Raven’s lost, iirc, 4 or 5 games last year with a lead in the 4th quarter and this year they have not played well against even decent opponents. There is no pass rush up the middle. Suggs is getting old. Their LBs are good, but struggle in coverage over the middle of the field. Jimmy Smith is a fantastic player, but either gets hurt or does something stupid and misses half the season. Their stats are a bit skewed because of the Titan’s and Bill’s games.
Anyway, I’d say a lot of it is on DeCosta, Harbs, and Ozzy (retiring this year).
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Hah. You got me. When I looked up “Luke” Jackson to see what the “hype” was about, I realized I misspelled his name. But between the 49mph noodle arm and the 13 (0 percentile) wonderlic score (yeah, but still…) I decided my “diss” of poor Lamar was the Universe guiding my hand…
You’re absolutely right about Trent Richardson, and I thought about him after that post (Kevin Kolb who? was on that list too for some reason), but my point still stands about drafting QBs. (Is Winston going to make the list, can Mariota avoid it?) Saquon is an (obvious) generational talent. After Mayfield (kudos to ballsy Cleveland GM), who else actually had “sure thing” college careers? I don’t follow college ball so I don’t know. I do know that except for the “sure thing” (Luck, Peyton), the best QBs somehow seem to not be the most touted in the draft (Rodgers, Brady, Brees the 3 best were not). And BTW, are you fricking kidding me using Brady/Rodgers in an analysis of Flacco? That’s either an insult to Brady/Rodgers or an unusually sanguine perspective of Flacco.
(Back to Richardson) I know my limitations, so I use the interwebz to get baseline info on players. According to playerprofiler, the best comparable to Richardson was Toby Gerhart. Best comparable to Saquon is David Johnson/Tomlinson/Gurley.
*best comparable -aggregates physical attributes, workout metrics, and college and pro productivity & efficiency to find each player’s most similar NFL peer.
My opinion is Belichik is an overrated coach and an underrated GM. One of BB’s greatest strengths is getting rid of players just before the hype fades, and the skill fade becomes obvious.
Supposedly, Belichik wanted to trade Gronk this past offseason, but Gronk said he would retire first. Imo, Gronk’s injuries and age have caught up to him and he is definitely not the best TE any more -not even top 3 imo, barely top 10 looking at production. The best TE is easily Kelce.
Breaking news: Dez Bryant tears achilles during practice.
Le’Veon take note…
hahaha … He’s rated accurately as both man … he takes low ranked players and coaches them up to be fuckin’ stars man. A lot of guys who leave to other teams don’t perform as well as when on his teams…I mean your opinion is your opinion but I disagree whole-heartedly…
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I have a biased (favorable, HAH, lol) perspective as a Giants fan who happily watched Belichik help us win that SuperBowl against a (far?) superior Patriots team. Memory is blurry but something about passing up an (easy?) field goal to go for it on fourth down and failing.
edt to add: even BB was not immune to the curse of the Browns during his brief tenure there as coach
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And how can I forget about last year’s SB? Wouldn’t you say BB handicapped the team by benching Malcolm Butler when the Eagles were catching passes all over the place?
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