2022 NFL regular season through Super Bowl LVII

[DoctorWhom]

The Falcons - Panthers game is now a battle for 1st place in the NFC South. 

 

I'll be praying to the gods of chaos that Carolina wins. 

[tBBP]

12 hours ago, TrueYankee26 said:

With the Buccaneers losing, them and the Packers may combine for 10 losses before Halloween. Something stinks in the Bays. Is it the rotting corpse of what's left of Brady and Rodgers?

 

It's what happens when your ego serves your own glory for too long.

 

Had Brady stayed retired this past offseason, I don't think anyone would have held last season against him, even though Tampa didn't make the SB. BUTTT....he had to get back out there and, well...this is what happens when your ego serves your own glory for too long. 

 

As for Rodgers, same thing (minus the retiring/unretiring drama--he created his own drama though), and I'll even add that we're seeing full bloom what we may have seen evidence of going back to the day he was drafted, sitting there with that pouty face. For some reason that keeps coming up in my mind more and more when I see him/the Packers this season (which is more than I need to since I live in the NFC North TV market region). I'm sure there's something to that...

 

...So the moral of the story, kids, is you either retire young(ish) a hero...or your ego serves your own glory long enough to see yourself become the villain.

[FiddySicks]

I kinda don’t buy into the whole “His ego made him come back” thing, and more think it’s a “Spent a few weeks back home trying to fix a busted marriage and realized that even playing for the Bucs would be a better option” thing. 

 

This makes me think that even moreso.

 

I think a good handful of us have gone through something somewhat similar in relationships. You think the closeness is going to fix whatever issues the physical distance caused, but then you come to realize that the issues are WAY deeper than that (mainly that you just don’t really like each other that much anymore). Diving back headfirst into work is a relatively common thing when stuff like that happens. 
 

Dude has lived an absolutely charmed life so far, and certainly doesn’t need the sympathy of any fans, but going through all of the Brady is currently going through, almost simultaneously and very publicly has got to be ROUGH. Like, it’s not shocking to see him not playing well. 
 

 

But here’s the real rub. This is still immensely better than any alternative the Bucs could’ve had. I’ll take a year of the best to ever do it finally falling off a cliff both professionally and personally while leading my team than, like, :censored:ing Kyle Trask or some :censored:. The results wouldn’t really be any different on the field, but at least this way there’s still some attention being paid to my team, which is usually just ignored by everyone. 
 

The crazy run was fun at the beginning, but I’m not gonna lie, there’s some sentimental warmth to watching this team revert back to being the same ol dumbass team I’ve always supported. Like, the transition back to this team sucking isn’t a hard one. It’s just going back home. 

[DG_ThenNowForever]

Brady should have taken that Dolphins offer.

[FiddySicks]

Lol that’s an even more dysfunctional situation than he’s already in

[DG_ThenNowForever]

36 minutes ago, FiddySicks said:

Lol that’s an even more dysfunctional situation than he’s already in

 

Yeah, but he'd be in aqua.

[ManillaToad]

Brady isn't looking great, but he's the only guy on the Bucs playing with any fire in him. He's also not turning the ball over. I think if he were on an even slightly competent team he'd be humming along just fine.

[sky1324]

I feel bad for Tom that his marriage is blowing up very publicly, but I'd be lying if I said his football failures weren't bringing me lots of happiness. I miss when the Bucs were in the dumpster. No matter how bad the Panthers were, we could always count on two wins from them. I'd love to see them return to that for like 5-8 years. You don't get the best QB ever for free and not have to pay for it later.

[Kramerica Industries]

2 hours ago, FiddySicks said:

Like, the transition back to this team sucking isn’t a hard one. It’s just going back home. 

 

I'm kind of amused how quickly the old feelings have come back. When you used to do something for a very long time, then even if you get away from it for a few years, you can return and find that the muscle memory is so well trained and so familiar that there's no adaptation process required at all.

 

On a more serious note, I said quite often during Brady's 40 day retirement that people like Brady don't just retire when they have a season like the one he had. Now, Brady isn't anywhere near the top of the list of Bucs concerns right now, but I also think it's fair to suggest he doesn't look like he's performing to his 2021 level, either. No surprise, he's 45 years old. If this season doesn't turn around and he were to retire after this year, I wouldn't be nearly as surprised by that outcome. He's always struck me as someone who's going to make sure the tank is completely on E, no matter how ugly that last part might be in getting there. At least he would be able to live with the knowledge that he didn't have anything left to give when he finally retired.

[tBBP]

3 hours ago, FiddySicks said:

I kinda don’t buy into the whole “His ego made him come back” thing, and more think it’s a “Spent a few weeks back home trying to fix a busted marriage and realized that even playing for the Bucs would be a better option” thing. 

 

This makes me think that even moreso.

 

I think a good handful of us have gone through something somewhat similar in relationships. You think the closeness is going to fix whatever issues the physical distance caused, but then you come to realize that the issues are WAY deeper than that (mainly that you just don’t really like each other that much anymore). Diving back headfirst into work is a relatively common thing when stuff like that happens. 
 

Dude has lived an absolutely charmed life so far, and certainly doesn’t need the sympathy of any fans, but going through all of the Brady is currently going through, almost simultaneously and very publicly has got to be ROUGH. Like, it’s not shocking to see him not playing well. 
 

 

At the risk of spinning this tangent a way that probably shouldn't be spun, yet at the same time is germane to your point and the point preceding it: I get it. I've also been there. My divorce was finalized two months ago...finally. And so what I say next I speak from experience...

 

...No doubt in the world that both Brady and Gisele were dealing with a metric crap ton of pain trying to wade through all the murky waters of the divorce process. Both probably still are dealing with some of the pain post-divorce (I wasn't aware they'd already finalized it). And although mine obviously didn't play out in the public, I can identify with the way dude felt. And you're right, DJ: we men, when things in our lives are collapsing all around us, definitely do tend to throw ourselves into our work, whatever that may be. I did it too...at the time it was all I could do to keep from losing my ever-loving mind. (That was three years ago.) That said, if y'all look at what Gisele said in that article linked above, she made it clear that she wanted Brady home more with the kids, so let's park it there for a minute. 

 

I'm sure there are those who would say Gisele should have known what she was getting herself into by marrying a professional athlete, let alone the starting QB of a perennial SB contender. Yet, she and Brady fell in love (I presume) & tied the knot. Sometime down the line, four kids showed up. And now here he are, he's still playing, Gisele (I'm gonna guess) having been stuck with the majority of the burden of childbearing at home while still also pursuing her own career--that one thing right there probably burned her out more than anything else; whatever other issues may have arisen as a result probably compounded it. And so here's where more guys might wanna learn to put themselves in the shoes and the mind of a woman, particularly the mother of his children (and mind you, this next part pertains only to those women who are actually ambitious enough to go after what they desire in their career): She sees Brady out there working, succeeding, advancing his career. He's focused, he's determined, he's wanting it, he's getting it. Those of us focused guys knows that that feels like. Now imagine that Gisele had the same desires for her own career--except the time and energy devoted to running a household and raising children is less time she can devote to her own goals and interests. Compound that over years and years and you can see how small seeds turn into big weeds. It's possible her sacrifice turned into frustration, frustration that built over the years...and one thing I can tell you is that the phase of frustration is where the heart change, if one happens, occurs. 

 

That Brady let it be known he wanted to play til 45 I'm sure did neither of them any favors.

 

So yeah, big house, mansion yacht, both of them with individual net worths that together could finance the national debt...yet all of that couldn't replace or fix what was already broken, because of seeds planted so early on. All these many years later, here we are. 

 

(There's more I can add to this impromptu TED talk but I'll save that for a forum in the lounge somewhere.)

 

 

Okay--I now return you to your regularly scheduled football season rants, raves and musings...

[gothedistance]

The league needs to do something about artificial turf. Because too many players get injured on them.

[DoctorWhom]

4 hours ago, ManillaToad said:

Brady isn't looking great, but he's the only guy on the Bucs playing with any fire in him. He's also not turning the ball over. I think if he were on an even slightly competent team he'd be humming along just fine.

Yeah, the o-line is garbage, Bowles is a terrible HC, and the only receiver he has that is worth a damn is Mike Evans (and even is his slumping). 

Brady is like Lebron at this point, still a great player, but he's long  past the point where he could carry a bad team. 

 

Put him on the

Vikings

Titans

Raiders

Cardinals

 

And he'd look so much better than he does now. 

[GDAWG]

For those in the media (ESPN's Mike Tannenbaum mostly) who think Gronk is coming back, he's not.  Gronk said a few weeks ago on Fox NFL Kickoff that he didn't miss getting hit anymore.  

[GDAWG]

Brady right now is like Gob Bluth in season 4 of Arrested Development....he sits dejected as "Sounds of Silence" from Simon and Garfunkel starts playing while saying very quietly "I've made a huge mistake"

[Red Comet]

There's a part of me that admires Brady gutting it out until he just can't play at all anymore. The other part of me is curious to see what his brain looks like after he croaks. 

[The_Admiral]

5 hours ago, Red Comet said:

There's a part of me that admires Brady gutting it out until he just can't play at all anymore. The other part of me is curious to see what his brain looks like after he croaks. 

He doesn't take a lot of contact, so probably about the same as it does now:

 

[Red Comet]

I liked that pic because of the dog. I'm a simple man. I see a picture of a dog, I click like. Anyways, here's the TV Map for tomorrow: 

 

 

1:00 PM EST/12:00 PM CST CBS Games

Red: Pittsburgh at Philadelphia

Blue: New England at New York Jets

Green: Las Vegas at New Orleans

Orange: Miami at Detroit

 

4:00 PM EST/3:00 PM CST CBS Game

Yellow: Tennessee at Houston 

And, as @Sec19Row53 has said, it looks like Minnesota is flipping off the country while on fire yet again. 

 

 

1:00 PM EST/12:00 PM CST Fox Games

Red: Chicago at Dallas

Blue: Carolina at Atlanta

Green: Arizona at Minnesota

 

 

4:00 PM EST/3:00 PM CST Fox Games

Red: San Francisco at Los Angeles Rams

Blue: New York Giants at Seattle

Green: Washington at Indianapolis

[DG_ThenNowForever]

Giants/Seahawks isn't Fox's national game? I'm shocked.

[Sec19Row53]

Hoping to have a fun time at Highmark Stadium tomorrow night. Expecting to not come close to covering the spread.

[DG_ThenNowForever]

54 minutes ago, Sec19Row53 said:

Hoping to have a fun time at Highmark Stadium tomorrow night. Expecting to not come close to covering the spread.

 

Are you planning to wear Packers gear?