2019 NFL Season: Super Bowl LIV

[406Cane]

1 hour ago, AstroBull21 said:

i also feel like the Falcons did this in the late 2000's decade with Michael Koenen and someone else.

 

This year the Bucs punter Bradley Pinion will reportedly handle kickoffs and punts.  Matt Gay will take FG's and PAT's.

Danny Kight (sp?) used to handle the kickoffs when Vanderjagt was the Colts' kicker back towards the end of the 90s.

[Sport]

1 hour ago, BringBackTheVet said:

 

Furthering my belief that weeks 1-4 should be all of the interconference games, followed by round 1 of divisional games, then the intra-conerence games, then finish with round 2 of division games.

 

The interconference games have the least impact, so having those first allows for teams to ramp up without costing them too much if they lose.

 

 

 

I 100% agree and there’s no reason they couldn’t do that. Starting the season with a divisional game has never felt right and always felt like too high of stakes too soon. Those teams should be playing each other when they’re both more fully formed. They also should never play a divisional opponent twice in the same half of a season. Spread those games out. 

 

I’d change nothing about your schedule. That’s the ideal. They could even Brand it like “BUD LIGHT COORS LIGHT RIVALRY MONTH”. 

 

Playing all four out of conference games first would have the added benefit of making things more fair amongst divisional opponents so the schedules are more even. When everyone plays their common opponents around the same time of the season youre all playing basically the same team with fewer games to create injuries and the like, fewer games for the common opponents to improve or regress. You’re less likely to have a situation like what happened to the Bengals two years ago where they had to play the Packers with Aaron Rodgers early in the year while the Steelers got them later in the season after Rodgers was hurt and got to play Brett Hundley instead. The fortuitous scheduling for the Steelers basically handed them an additional win over a divisional opponent. In a 16 game season something like that can be the difference between winning the division and missing the playoffs. 

[DG_ThenNowForever]

NFL scheduling is so weird. Why aren't teams coming of byes playing each other? Why aren't Thursday night games coordinated with byes? Why do some teams open interdivision and other teams interconference? Why do some teams have 7 home games and other teams 8?

 

It seems like they could standardize these quirks across the league; they just choose not to.

[Sport]

4 minutes ago, DG_Now said:

NFL scheduling is so weird. Why aren't teams coming of byes playing each other? Why aren't Thursday night games coordinated with byes? Why do some teams open interdivision and other teams interconference? Why do some teams have 7 home games and other teams 8?

 

It seems like they could standardize these quirks across the league; they just choose not to.

 

They have the most perfectly symmetrical little divisions of any sport, only play 1 game a week so logistics of travel aren't a concern at all, and most teams control the schedule of events in their own stadium. There's absolutely no reason for the schedule to be as messy as it is. The Bengals' first two games this year are against the NFC west and they play all 4 in the first 8 games so they're basically halfway to what BBTV is talking about, but look how tidy their schedule could be under his system: 

 

at Seahawks, 49ers, Cardinals, at Rams (London), at Steelers, Ravens, at Browns, Jaguars*, at Raiders*, at Bills, Jets, Patriots, at Dolphins, Steelers, at Ravens, Browns

 

*these two are the fellow 4th place crossover opponents from the other AFC divisions they aren't playing this season. Figured the middle of the season was as good a place for them as anywhere else. 

 

instead of this mess that is their real schedule

 

at Seahawks, 49ers, at Bills, at Steelers, Cardinals, at Ravens, Jaguars, at Rams (London), Ravens, at Raiders, Steelers, Jets, at Browns, Patriots, at Dolphins, Browns

 

They finish their series with the Steelers and Ravens before they even play the Browns once. Who the :censored: thinks that's a good idea? 

 

[BBTV]

Byes definitely complicate things, as do the London games (since they give teams a bye after... right?) 

 

 

You'd almost have to do divisional byes, and that gets really tough.  I think it could work if during the intra-conference round, not only did all the intra-conference games occur, but divisions played the same divisions - so the entire NFC East and NFC West would be off for a week, then play each other the next three.  I don't know... it might be too hard, but if it was my 40-hr/week job, I'm sure I could do it.

 

[DG_ThenNowForever]

The NFL has billions of dollars and presumably Microsoft Excel. They can figure this out.

 

It's a choice that they don't.

[Olmec]

London games shouldn't exist

[BBTV]

1 hour ago, DG_Now said:

The NFL has billions of dollars and presumably Microsoft Excel. They can figure this out.

 

It's a choice that they don't.

 

I'd love to know if there's some kind of algorithm they use, or if it's a bunch of nerds like us sitting there figuring it out by hand.

 

Regardless, I'm sure the networks look at the results and make some recommendations before they're released.

[dfwabel]

2 hours ago, DG_Now said:

The NFL has billions of dollars and presumably Microsoft Excel. They can figure this out.

 

It's a choice that they don't.

 

5 minutes ago, BringBackTheVet said:

 

I'd love to know if there's some kind of algorithm they use, or if it's a bunch of nerds like us sitting there figuring it out by hand.

 

Regardless, I'm sure the networks look at the results and make some recommendations before they're released.

This SI piece from last year tells a better story than the NFL Operations page.

Quote

As with most things in the National Football League, “news” is a word to be taken very lightly. Take the annual release of the NFL schedule, which happens in a lull period before the NFL draft, designed to give some breathless coverage for the programming-hungry NFL Network. The channel was running a countdown clock in the corner of the screen on its Thursday TV shows, showing how many hours, minutes and seconds were left before the release of the schedule Thursday at 8 p.m. ET.

 

“Really, the process couldn’t be more boring,” the schedule czar, NFL vice president Howard Katz, said late Thursday inside the small, rectangular scheduling den, The Val Pinchbeck Room, on the fifth floor of the NFL offices on Park Avenue. “But there’s such an incredible fascination with the end result.”

 

Katz (above left, with his team Blake Jones, Mike North and Charlotte Carey) spent work days for the last four months in this room, poring over 59,031 possible schedules and picking the 58,911th, which was spit out of a computer Tuesday around 10:31 a.m. Usually, we have some fun, feisty or silly news (like the Pope’s visit to Philly in 2015 discombobulating the Eagles’ schedule) with the release of the NFL schedule, but this year it’s pretty sane, and pretty efficient. Last year, NFL teams had seven three-game road trips (which are hated); this year, only New Orleans, Baltimore and the Rams have three-gamers, and every one of those trips is less than 1,000 miles. In 2017, five Monday night road teams went on the road the following week. This year, none do.

snip

Quote

Said Katz: “FOX asked to take some of their quality Sunday afternoon games, doubleheader games, and put them on Thursday night. So here was the trick for us as a group: Could we populate the Thursday night FOX schedule with at least a handful of games that would otherwise be FOX doubleheader games? And still leave FOX with enough quality doubleheader games? And still be able to take a handful of FOX games and put them on CBS?”

That happened. FOX had to be popping champagne Tuesday night.

 

Each work day since Jan. 2—two days after the regular season ended—the team fed data from a complex series of factors into computers in the Cloud. And when the team would come in the next day, Carey would be responsible for collecting the schedules, and figuring which ones were the most attractive, and might pass muster with Katz, the veteran final gatekeeper. He’s the heir to the late Pinchbeck, who used to make the schedule by hand. Pinchbeck’s ancient corkboard is on the far wall (an homage to the legendary NFL broadcast/schedule czar in the Rozelle era) behind Carey’s desk. It’s hard to move in this tight room, maybe eight-feet-by-18-feet, with the shades permanently drawn for four months over the big window to the hall outside. Privacy’s the watchword here. The only league employee who can walk in without an invitation? Roger Goodell.

 

This year, Carey instituted another quality check to the schedule: “rest disparity.” Last year, I heard the Giants were not pleased with their schedule because they felt they were too often playing teams more rested than they were. In consecutive October weeks, they played teams coming off byes, for instance. The NFL calculated a figure for every team based on the number of combined days of rest for their foes or for the team, calculating, for instance, in those two weeks, the Giants were a minus-14 (minus-seven for each of the foes, Seattle and Denver, coming off byes). In all, by my math, the Giants were a league-worst minus-22 in “rest disparity.” So Carey factored that into every schedule this year … and this year, no team was worse than minus-11. (The Giants, by my count, are minus-seven in 2018.)

 

Carey would put each schedule into a program the NFL has called the analyzer, measuring for key games (all prime-time games, and network doubleheader games), rest disparity, three-game road trips, being home Sunday after Monday night road games, and smaller factors like making sure more doubleheader games made it into the Los Angeles and New York markets. There were other permanent stadium-block X factors, including mega-concerts like Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran, and Jay Z/Beyonce running into the fall. (The Cowboys stadium, for instance, has dates for all three.) Then she’d print out the best schedules and give them, in order, to Katz at the start of his day.

 

[Cosmic]

There’s a little bit more here, with some mathematicians from my alma mater whose work is being funded by the NFL.

 

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/26523224/how-mathematicians-trying-make-nfl-schedules-fairer

[BBTV]

Anyone still question that Andy Reid cares more about football than humans?

 

I do NOT accept your group apology, and instead want you to take it and shove it up your collective backside.  I was right from the mid-late '00s, and you were wrong.

[dfwabel]

8 minutes ago, BringBackTheVet said:

Anyone still question that Andy Reid cares more about football than humans?

 

I do NOT accept your group apology, and instead want you to take it and shove it up your collective backside.  I was right from the mid-late '00s, and you were wrong.

Well, talking about it gets you fired. Hooray, football!!!

[dont care]

So Antonio Brown asked for his release via Instagram. He’s mad the raiders took his guarantees away. Dudes such a head case and needs to have his cellphone taken away from him for awhile and see that social media is not his friend.

[BBTV]

21 minutes ago, dfwabel said:

Well, talking about it gets you fired. Hooray, football!!!

 

Yeah I referenced this a few pages ago.  I was blasted on here for making the same comments years ago, and apparently I'm not alone.  Dude is a scumbag that puts winning above everything else, but sells the media on him being a good Mormon family man that wants his players to do things the "right way", is a father figure, etc.  He cost the Eagles more games than he won for them, but nobody outside of the local area could see any deeper than the consistent 11, 12, 13 win seasons.  Everyone also got on my for my opinions on McNabb, the insecure baby that threw up in the Super Bowl, choked more often than not, and helped drive TO out of town, likely costing them SBs.  Now he's a bona fide alcoholic that has been caught on camera trying to use his 'fame' to get out of DUI stops, and has what - 3 already?

 

Screw them both.  I hope that on each of their death beds, they pull me closer, like Darth Vader did to Luke, and whisper "you were right about me.  Tell the CCSLC, you were right."

[SFGiants58]

I’m convinced it’s a combination of the Raiders’ garbage front office and Browns’ mounting mental illness/CTE.

 

I’m just hoping Brown can get help from a mental health professio... who am I kidding, he’d rather suffer than lower himself to ask for help with his mental health, because of the stigma.

[BBTV]

2 minutes ago, dont care said:

So Antonio Brown asked for his release via Instagram. He’s mad the raiders took his guarantees away. Dudes such a head case and needs to have his cellphone taken away from him for awhile and see that social media is not his friend.

 

I'm 100% in favor of players using their leverage to get as much $ as they can, whether it be by holding out or whatever, but jesus this is insane to a serious level - like he clearly has something wrong with his brain, and I"m not saying that in a 'funny' way.  I can't imagine that this is some brilliant ploy by his agent to get him released so he can get a better deal elsewhere - this screams of legitimate mental issues.

 

His posts about 'not recognizing talent like his' and playing under a system that fails him, etc, are so off the wall that they warrant an evaluation.  

 

What does 'week to week' really mean?   If his guaranteed money is gone, do they just take the grand total of the contract (including what used to be guaranteed) and divide it by the number of games, therefore changing (probably increasing) what his likely paychecks would be (while decreasing bonuses)?  What about the signing bonus he already received?

[dfwabel]

3 minutes ago, dont care said:

So Antonio Brown asked for his release via Instagram. He’s mad the raiders took his guarantees away. Dudes such a head case and needs to have his cellphone taken away from him for awhile and see that social media is not his friend.

That hit from Burfict, among others, scrambled his brain. Armchair doctoring makes me thinks he is Bipolar. Like many who turn to or are angled to play youth football, his f'ed up childhood didn't help either.

[SFGiants58]

He’s the new Alonzo Spellman. Bipolar disorder, significant head trauma, troubled upbringing, and so on all apply to Brown. I just hope he doesn’t have the same crash & burn that Spellman did (e.g., verbally and nearly physically assaulting fellow plane passengers).

 

I could also make the Mark “Gator” Rogowski comparison (bipolar, worries about skills fading, feeling unappreciated), but Brown doesn’t have that same history of abusive relationships or a big turn towards religion. I doubt Brown could kill anybody, but I hope somebody keeps him from hurting somebody. 

[dont care]

4 minutes ago, dfwabel said:

That hit from Burfict, among others, scrambled his brain. Armchair doctoring makes me thinks he is Bipolar. Like many who turn to or are angled to play youth football, his f'ed up childhood didn't help either.

I agree with you, when you watch the interviews he was doing before being traded you could tell there was something wrong with his head. Trying to use words and have no idea what they actually meant. And was just going everywhere and not being able to focus the conversation. There was also the blonde mustache and blue hair as well.

[dont care]

2 minutes ago, SFGiants58 said:

He’s the new Alonzo Spellman. Bipolar disorder, significant head trauma, troubled upbringing, and so on all apply to Brown. I just hope he doesn’t have the same crash & burn that Spellman did (e.g., verbally and nearly physically assaulting fellow plane passengers).

 

I could also make the Mark “Gator” Rogowski comparison (bipolar, worries about skills fading, feeling unappreciated), but Brown doesn’t have that same history of abusive relationships or a big turn towards religion. I doubt Brown could kill anybody, but I hope somebody keeps him from hurting somebody. 

He threatened to punch Mayock, I could easily see him doing that.