BBTV

The only team in the NL East that has a positive run differential is the last place team.

What sticks out like a sore thumb is the silly number outlines which are inconsistent with every other part of the uniform. They should have only one outline, and it should be thick enough to at least sorta match the sleeve and pants stripes.

Wearing a hat on a hat is weird. Pat is far from perfect, and I guess technically he's a guy wearing a hat on a hat, but he's better than the tricorn. The best they looked in blue was year 2 after they switched to the white numbers and synced the main numbers with the sleeves and get more traditional pants stripes. I give them credit for trying something different with their pants, but it just didn't do it for me.

Do we still make separate draft/FA threads? If not, Davonta Smith will be the first single-digit receiver in Eagles modern history. Dislike.

I've never seen Keith Jones on a national broadcast but if his tv personality is anything like his sports radio one then he'd be a good one to start with.

I'm assuming the ESPN TV deal is why they started including it again on the header bar of their site like a real league and not in the ... menu next to darts and topless bullriding.

If the White Sox put the old sock logo on the sleeve and dropped the white trim, it might be in my top tier of road jerseys.

I did a full erase and factory restore of my phone, so it was basically a brand-new phone. Didn't 'restore from backup' - started out brand new. So no chance of 'viruses' or any bugs or whatever. The first site I came to was this one, and on the very first visit, got hijacked every single time by some site claiming that my phone had a virus and I had to click somewhere to pay them to repair it. Couldn't stay on the site for longer than around 10 seconds before it got redirected to either a virus-scam site or a gambling site. After another restart, I'm not getting hijacked, but I'm dealing with 1" of usable space on the phone because of the pop-up ads and other nonsense - on a brand-new phone. This site (not its content or members) is crap.

So this is the new "safest" helmet for linemen - the Vicus Zero 2 Trench. I wonder if anyone's going to wear it - and how the hell they're going to get decals on it.

This thread is going to end up being for surprise pants unveilings, people freaking out if a jersey tears, and me moaning about how dumb the dumb-ass dummy players look when they wear oversized-loose t-shirts under their skin-tight jerseys like a bunch of dumb-ass clowns.

Isn't it premature to be talking about a merger? Isn't the XFL just some IP right now? As of this minute, there's no TV exposure for the CFL to benefit from, no other technology for them to benefit from, and nothing to be gained through it. Unless the CFL really wants to merge just so it can acquire the Battle Hawks IP, I'm not sure why it's even worth having that discussion now.

Maybe the other thread could get reopened? Otherwise this one will just become that one.

"The 2s played like #2 today"

Sounds like they're all over the place with this.

XFL and CFL teams could play an interleague championship game? And interleague games during their season? I would think the necessary schedule shift for one of the leagues would make the idea a non-starter, but at least some people are thinking about it. https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2021/04/12/xfl-cfl-champions-could-meet/

Yeah I know, but since they're redoing the numbers, there's no reason for them to still need 90-99. They're effectively saying that LBs and DLs get the exclusive use of 90-99, but QBs - the most important players - have to share with everyone else (including LBs.) I don't see why a LB should have more options than a QB, and have overlapping ones at that.

24 23 58 55 59 21 99 77 75 95 22 80 77 66 55 65 76 81 12 82 22 33 There's just something about this that makes me happy.

Back to the number rule change, why do LBs need 90-99 if they now have 1-59? And why shouldn't OLs be able to have 50-79 and 90-99 now? On one hand, they're doing away with the relatively arbitrary assignment of numbers to positions, but on the other hand, by leaving a few out there that now don't seem to make any sense. Also, what happens when a team's WRs, RBs, DBs, and LBs consume most of the 1-19s, and their new QB ends up wearing some trash number because the LBs have 7, 11, and 12 (and the other options are used by others? I do hope this leads to the end of players making their numbers part of their "brands", since there's not an increased likelihood of having to change numbers when traded or signed as a FA, since while usually 12 would be available for a traded QB, now it's very likely that the popular numbers will be in used by previously-unexpected players.

I think hockey numbers used to be used to designate which car a player slept in back in the sleeper train days, and the goalies would get the first (#1) and last (#30 something) ones, with the defense being next (single digits). Not sure exactly why. I also don't think it's always been the case that the defensemen were among the biggest guys.

Yeah from a "rules" standpoint, only 'eligible' vs 'ineligible' really matters. It's not like only players wearing 'end' numbers can line up on the end. I'm completely against the new proposal, but I'm not going to argue that it has anything to do with the rules. I think that it's great to look back at the history of the game and see that so many great QBs wore 12, or 7, or 14 (for Ken Anderson), and so many HOF receivers wore 80, 81, 82, etc. I just don't think anyone but a QB should have 12 - certainly not a linebacker. It's more about the aesthetics and tradition than the 'rules'.

but then it's no longer a novelty.

Why? 80s used to just mean "end", so TE, Split End, or Defensive End. Again - there are plenty of numbers. This is unnecessary and chips away at what a professional football game should look like (not that all the immature show-off "look at me" dudes with their silly socks and to-the-knees undershirts haven't already done that.) I'm far from a yell-at-clouds "gray facemasks and block fonts only!" guy, but some things are right and some are wrong. Number 12 being an iconic QB number is right. Some fat slob wearing it stretched over his untucked undershirt is wrong.

Even then, ticky-tack 15-yard penalties change games, and the defenders would just trip players that have them beat on balls longer than 15 yards. I'd rather the refs just be good, and not throw a flag when whatever the defender did didn't actually impact the play.

Honestly, that's so annoying that I wish there was some way to penalize it. I also wish that PI wasn't so subjective and over-called that it's worth it to them to beg for it every play.

You're not wrong - but players still have "primary" responsibilities, and I liked looking at an athletic-looking chap wearing 56 and just knowing that he was a LB, or a big white guy in the 80s and knowing he was a TE, or a guy wearing 12 and knowing he was a QB. Defense is totally a mess and there's tons of hybridity there, but on offense, while you have RBs spreading out, TEs (and sometimes WRs) occasionally in the backfield, and gimmicky crap, it's not that different a game from when the system was devised. Seeing some giant beast sacking the QB while wearing an iconic QB number like 12 will take a lot of time to get used to.