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NFL 2016: The Regular Season Thread


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4 hours ago, JWhiz96 said:

Meh, every team just underachieved this year (except Cleveland, this was expected). Hopefully the black and gold have enough in the tank to win the division. It would be nice, the Steelers haven't made it to the playoffs in three consecutive years since 1995-97 (1992-97 was the entire span).

Or as most people call it, the Good old days

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The NFL considering ending Thursday Night Football.

 

http://www.sportingnews.com/nfl/news/thursday-night-football-ratings-contract-nfl-end-rumor/1jp6mqomh6yht15k5cy40oqsx3

 

Fine by me.  I don't ever watch this game...unless the Vikings are playing, then I'll catch pieces of it.  The "hard core football junkies" that will watch every second of NFL being aired will be disappointed, but I think a lot of fans will feel better about it given the quality of play and, frankly, the simplifying of their teams' schedules.  Football is huge in large part because of the week-by-week "event" that takes place with each team.  Monday Night Football is somewhat of an American institution. Sunday Night Football is the same day of the week.  I think most fans are OK with those.  But "over-saturation" may actually have come into play here.  I never thought it would.  I don't follow TV ratings, but I'd guess they were getting viewership.  Maybe player safety (or the perception thereof) weighs in, but I wonder if they are seeing a bigger picture about keeping it simple.

 

(Or maybe they'll just keep TNF, play more games in more countries, and go to an 18-game schedule.  FOOTBALL!)

 

I could see them keeping Thursday Night in smaller doses and have every Thursday game feature two teams coming off of byes.  So THU would include Week 1 and then the weeks in the middle of the schedule when byes are prevalent.  From the player safety and quality of play standpoint, this would improve things.  From the standpoint of over-saturation, they'd be better off letting it go.  But I think the former is more in play than the latter.

Disclaimer: If this comment is about an NBA uniform from 2017-2018 or later, do not constitute a lack of acknowledgement of the corporate logo to mean anything other than "the corporate logo is terrible and makes the uniform significantly worse."

 

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Thursday night football being killed would be fantastic! Nobody I know likes it. The games are often bad. Probably causes more injuries due to lack of rest. The uniforms are terrible. The only time the NFL should play on thursdays is thanksgiving day. What they ought to do is go back to playing Saturday games after the college season is over. I used to love that. 

 

 

 

 

Actual football thoughts:

 

- I went through the motions of watching the Bengals play a football game yesterday against Baltimore. Mike Nugent's gotta get lost. I knew he'd be the weak link, but I didn't think it would be this bad. He lost the Washington game and if he'd made his kicks against Buffalo the team would've been set up to kick a go ahead field goal in makeable range rather than needing an endzone tossup to go their way. 3 straight missed extra points that have greatly affected the last two games. It's gotta be harder statistically to miss 3 extra points in a row than it is to make 3 in a row. Meanwhile Justin Tucker is out there hitting kicks from the midfeild logo. Kickers were the difference yesterday. The Bengals line play has been awful on both sides of the ball and the offense is severely stunted by not having AJ Green. Now I'm rooting for a high draft pick. 

 

- I lived with a Lions fan the year the Lions went 0-16 so I watched a lot of those games. These Browns are worse. They might be the worst NFL team I've ever seen. 

 

- at least the Ravens beating the Bengals means they keep pace with the Steelers. 

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Add me to the list who would like to see the back of Thursday Night Football.

 

I will say though that I kinda like the defending champs home opener on Thursday night to start the season. I'd keep that and Thanksgiving and be done with the rest

1 hour ago, BringBackTheVet said:

sorry sweetie, but I don't suck minor-league d

CCSLC Post of the day September 3rd 2012

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30 minutes ago, waltere said:

Add me to the list who would like to see the back of Thursday Night Football.

 

I will say though that I kinda like the defending champs home opener on Thursday night to start the season. I'd keep that and Thanksgiving and be done with the rest

I don't think the Thursday season opener would be going away as it's not part of the Thursday package. Just as the Thanksgiving days aren't (including the Thursday night game).

 

And, as someone said, I'd like to see the December Saturday games return.

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32 minutes ago, Sykotyk said:

I don't think the Thursday season opener would be going away as it's not part of the Thursday package.

 

This is another thing that's really dumb in the NFL right now, the fact that actual days have lost meaning.

That season opener (about which you're totally correct) is football, on a Thursday night, but not Thursday Night Football!!!1!! Meanwhile Rams-Giants on a Sunday afternoon in London is a Thursday Night Football Special, despite the fact that as someone round here (I think @the admiral) pointed out at the time, only one of those words (football) could really have been used to describe that game, and even then barely.

1 hour ago, BringBackTheVet said:

sorry sweetie, but I don't suck minor-league d

CCSLC Post of the day September 3rd 2012

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A few months ago I started doing a blog that is almost exclusively about the Bears.  If you're interested (or would be willing to give him some feedback), it's www.1985edition.com.

 

Here's the latest piece, which is about the Bears fans attendance, or lack thereof.

 

https://1985edition.com/2016/11/28/the-fog-of-bore/

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2 hours ago, Dalcowboyfan92 said:

I don't really like TNF; especially now the "everyone playing TNF games" rule is in effect.

 

Just get rid of it.

Until just before TNF started, it WAS a rule that every NFL team got at least one primetime game on SNF or MNF. Then in the next TV contract, they considered a 4pm game for east coast teams as 'primetime'.

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2 hours ago, CS85 said:

A few months ago I started doing a blog that is almost exclusively about the Bears.  If you're interested (or would be willing to give him some feedback), it's www.1985edition.com.

 

Here's the latest piece, which is about the Bears fans attendance, or lack thereof.

 

https://1985edition.com/2016/11/28/the-fog-of-bore/

 

 

Quote

From the perspective of a fan, however, there’s not any good reason to go to Soldier Field these days.  It’s getting cold, the team will finish below .500 for the 3rd consecutive season (last time that happened was 2002-2004), and frankly watching the game on an HDTV from the couch is an infinitely more comfortable & pleasant view than this one:

Funny you mention this timespan, because that's the last serious Bears malaise that I remember. The bad year in Champaign, the last year of Dick Jauron, and the first year of Lovie had sort of a backburner feel to them, especially when the Cubs were fighting for the playoffs and had everyone's attention. From 2005 to the end of Marc Trestman's reign of terror, it felt like Bears interest was really at a fever pitch, where every outcome was either "this team is going to the Super Bowl" or "this team is a disgrace, fire everyone."

 

But now it feels like it's finally been too many years of mediocrity, especially now that both baseball teams slayed their dragons and the Blackhawks won three out of six (and went to the semifinals five times out of seven). Even the Bulls, whose championships are fading into the rearview, were highly competitive under Tom Thibodeau and between the event experience and the wins, are by all accounts a fun night, and that speaks to your second point about spending too much on tickets and parking to freeze your ass off at a lousy stadium where the home team tends to lose. I think more and more people are asking what I asked about the Bears, which is "what, exactly, am I getting out of this?" It's not just the losing, because lots of football teams lose, but how many have as much coming in as the Bears in terms of revenue, viewership, and just plain goodwill, and have as little coming out? Cleveland and Buffalo come to mind, but with all due respect, they don't have the sheer population of a ~10-million metropolitan area and the economy of a global-level city. It's a real problem. I used to like the Bears, and then I succumbed to irony poisoning and pretend to root for the cholo team.

 

I think a lot of things are happening right now with increasing consciousness about football's effects on the human brain plus the interest in fantasy sports and video games further globalizing and abstracting all the teams. If you're a kid growing up in Chicagoland right now, what if your teams are the Cubs and Hawks, and DA BEARS are just something your dad and grandpa tell you about but something that doesn't speak to you, like boxing or horse racing?

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I wouldn't say I'm a fan of the Thursday games (I don't really watch them unless the Falcons are on), and they sucked for fantasy purposes (more about league structure than actual performance), but I understood the logic.  For one, it made the NFL Network a sought-after product for cable.  Second, it made things fair for every team, since everyone would have to deal with a short week.  And the players liked the back-end of these Thursday games....it became a second bye of sorts (as well as less padded practices in the short week).

 

Ultimately though, the product suffers.  It's hard to get folks excited about working all day, go to a game that night, then work the next day.  The games were pretty sloppy (though the Sunday games are sloppy too....thanks CBA).

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1 hour ago, the admiral said:

 

 

Funny you mention this timespan, because that's the last serious Bears malaise that I remember. The bad year in Champaign, the last year of Dick Jauron, and the first year of Lovie had sort of a backburner feel to them, especially when the Cubs were fighting for the playoffs and had everyone's attention. From 2005 to the end of Marc Trestman's reign of terror, it felt like Bears interest was really at a fever pitch, where every outcome was either "this team is going to the Super Bowl" or "this team is a disgrace, fire everyone."

 

But now it feels like it's finally been too many years of mediocrity, especially now that both baseball teams slayed their dragons and the Blackhawks won three out of six (and went to the semifinals five times out of seven). Even the Bulls, whose championships are fading into the rearview, were highly competitive under Tom Thibodeau and between the event experience and the wins, are by all accounts a fun night, and that speaks to your second point about spending too much on tickets and parking to freeze your ass off at a lousy stadium where the home team tends to lose. I think more and more people are asking what I asked about the Bears, which is "what, exactly, am I getting out of this?" It's not just the losing, because lots of football teams lose, but how many have as much coming in as the Bears in terms of revenue, viewership, and just plain goodwill, and have as little coming out? Cleveland and Buffalo come to mind, but with all due respect, they don't have the sheer population of a ~10-million metropolitan area and the economy of a global-level city. It's a real problem. I used to like the Bears, and then I succumbed to irony poisoning and pretend to root for the cholo team.

 

I think a lot of things are happening right now with increasing consciousness about football's effects on the human brain plus the interest in fantasy sports and video games further globalizing and abstracting all the teams. If you're a kid growing up in Chicagoland right now, what if your teams are the Cubs and Hawks, and DA BEARS are just something your dad and grandpa tell you about but something that doesn't speak to you, like boxing or horse racing?

 

The NFL is essentially eating itself alive, and it will eventually succumb to all these tumors you brought up.  As far as the Bears are concerned, they suffer from the same thing the Cubs & Blackhawks required to catapult them into a tier of unknown success:  Ownership change.  There's a lot of nice things about Ryan Pace and for all his faults, John Fox is a decent enough coach.  Some talent on the roster (when healthy).  Organizationally, however, the team has no respect or reverence whatsoever.  Everything they do is built on top of an ancient burial ground full of people who either knew what they were doing or who played well enough to become one of Those Names.  

 

Kids in Chicago now will grow up rooting for the Packers, Cowboys, Patriots, etc because the team that plays near the lake isn't discussed at home anymore.  Like you said, it's that one team that Grandpa likes but he's old, foolish, and will probably die soon.  

They're in stasis, and honestly if they put together a playoff season in the next 2 seasons, all will be forgiven and the same fans that are currently not so excited to wear a uniform will burst out of the woodwork, they'll helmet the lions, and for a few months WSCR won't be quite as silly.  I dunno.  It's exhausting to contemplate, but that's basically all I do for 5-odd months out of the year.

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The product on Thursday Night Football is washed down. The players are too tired and disinterested to play consistently on Thursdays. Leave the Thursday games to Thanksgiving and the defending champs.

 

19 hours ago, anythinglogos said:

Or as most people call it, the Good old days

Good old days for Steelers uniforms, yes. Good old days for winning, no. Those 90's Steelers continually underachieved, none more so then that dreaded '94 team.

 

Good luck to your GMen on Sunday, but not too much ;)

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12 hours ago, JWhiz96 said:

Good old days for Steelers uniforms, yes. Good old days for winning, no. Those 90's Steelers continually underachieved, none more so then that dreaded '94 team.

 

Nobody feels bad for you. 

 

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17 hours ago, the admiral said:

 

 

Funny you mention this timespan, because that's the last serious Bears malaise that I remember. The bad year in Champaign, the last year of Dick Jauron, and the first year of Lovie had sort of a backburner feel to them, especially when the Cubs were fighting for the playoffs and had everyone's attention. From 2005 to the end of Marc Trestman's reign of terror, it felt like Bears interest was really at a fever pitch, where every outcome was either "this team is going to the Super Bowl" or "this team is a disgrace, fire everyone."

 

But now it feels like it's finally been too many years of mediocrity, especially now that both baseball teams slayed their dragons and the Blackhawks won three out of six (and went to the semifinals five times out of seven). Even the Bulls, whose championships are fading into the rearview, were highly competitive under Tom Thibodeau and between the event experience and the wins, are by all accounts a fun night, and that speaks to your second point about spending too much on tickets and parking to freeze your ass off at a lousy stadium where the home team tends to lose. I think more and more people are asking what I asked about the Bears, which is "what, exactly, am I getting out of this?" It's not just the losing, because lots of football teams lose, but how many have as much coming in as the Bears in terms of revenue, viewership, and just plain goodwill, and have as little coming out? Cleveland and Buffalo come to mind, but with all due respect, they don't have the sheer population of a ~10-million metropolitan area and the economy of a global-level city. It's a real problem. I used to like the Bears, and then I succumbed to irony poisoning and pretend to root for the cholo team.

 

I think a lot of things are happening right now with increasing consciousness about football's effects on the human brain plus the interest in fantasy sports and video games further globalizing and abstracting all the teams. If you're a kid growing up in Chicagoland right now, what if your teams are the Cubs and Hawks, and DA BEARS are just something your dad and grandpa tell you about but something that doesn't speak to you, like boxing or horse racing?

 

I dunno @the admiral, maybe it's time for Virginia McCaskey and her brood to sell the team...hell, you saw what changes at the top did for the Cubs and Blackhawks.  As an Illinois native, the Bears were, more or less, my second NFL team (behind another team full of malaise and incompetent ownership, the San Diego Chargers), but I always found it somehow bothersome that a team with the history and tradition that they have, and as one of the founding NFL franchises, they're ran like a small-market operation, if there's any such thing as "small-market" in the NFL.

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