NFL 2019 Season Thread

[The Big G]

Damn the Hawks are fighters.

[worstblogever]

Andy Dalton is a fairly handsome guy for a redhead, though!

The lost Weasley brother.

[Witchfan]

The Seahawks are now leading their division. After the Saints beat the 49ers next week and the Seahawks lose to the Rams, the Saints will be the #1 seed in the NFC.

The Eagles are a bad team. They have lost to the last-place Detroit Lions, the last-place Atlanta Falcons, and the Dolphins.

[TriggerWarning]

Reports said it is Minshew for the rest of the season, not just this coming week. Jaguars are saying the healing collar bone prevents Foles from being as mobile as he needs to be as they are currently set up form an offensive stand point so they are going with Minshew. However due to the guaranteed money in Foles contract, they won't save anything (less than a million) if they cut him and very little if they trade him (less than $5 million) and the dead money they carry from him will nearly cripple their ability to sign anyone of substance in the off-season, so it seems likely they will keep him one more year (when all the guaranteed money comes off the books and they can cut or trade him without crippling their cap numbers) but possibly as the back-up to Minshew. It's a lot to pay for a back up, but they would pay just as much for an empty roster spot if they cut or trade him because of the contact's structure.

It's just a bad signing all around for them, not just signing him without considering his injury history, but structuring it so it is financially crippling to get out of the contract for the first 2 years.

-M

Read something yesterday that the Jags might look to find a team like Miami that has oodles of cap room to trade Foles by giving Miami a pick to take him and his cap number off their hands. Miami would then probably just cut him as they wouldn't need him - they have Rosen, probably Fitzpatrick, and probably some rookie they'll draft. Basically the same type of thing that the Texans did to get rid of Osweiler by sending Osweiler and a pick to Cleveland.

[The Big G]

Panthers have fired Ron Rivera....

Damn.

I always liked Riverboat Ron

[SUPERECWFAN1]

Rivera will be an interesting head coaching candidate. The Redskins have to be looking at him given how he is a good coach , but given injuries to Newton and how things fell apart in Carolina he could help that organization. Course the Redskins need a new GM and not Bruce Allen.

[Scott Taylor]

Wow, did not expect Rivera to be fired. They've had a few really close losses this year enough to make a big difference, so maybe the organization concluded it was a game management issue?

Dumb. It was Norv Turner, he ruins things worse than Smaug wherever he goes. And now he's the head coach! Maybe we'll get one of those rare situations where both the head coach and his replacement get fired in the same year.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Saw news of the Rivera firing while at the gym. I have to say that surprised me more than a little, given how he had been hamstrung by not having Cam Newton for practically the whole season. Meanwhile, Rivera could be the hottest offseason coaching name, depending on who else becomes available. Here’s a question: would division rival Atlanta ax Dan Quinn after the season if Arthur Blank decides he wants Rivera as his next coach?

[Deathstroke]

Wow, did not expect Rivera to be fired. They've had a few really close losses this year enough to make a big difference, so maybe the organization concluded it was a game management issue?

Dumb. It was Norv Turner, he ruins things worse than Smaug wherever he goes. And now he's the head coach! Maybe we'll get one of those rare situations where both the head coach and his replacement get fired in the same year.

Actually, Perry Fewell is listed as the head coach now and Norv Turner is assistant to the head coach.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

Wow, did not expect Rivera to be fired. They've had a few really close losses this year enough to make a big difference, so maybe the organization concluded it was a game management issue?

Dumb. It was Norv Turner, he ruins things worse than Smaug wherever he goes. And now he's the head coach! Maybe we'll get one of those rare situations where both the head coach and his replacement get fired in the same year.

Actually, Perry Fewell is listed as the head coach now and Norv Turner is assistant to the head coach.

Yeah Fewell was named the coach for now. The Panthers have a big ? entering the off season. The owner inherited a team and Rivera as his coach. And he's pushed out the GM and now coach the last 2 seasons. So the team will have some big decision making ahead.

[worstblogever]

Wow, did not expect Rivera to be fired.

Bizarrely, as many times as the Panthers have gone to the playoffs with Cam Newton at QB and Rivera at coach, the franchise still has yet to achieve two back-to-back winning seasons. There were a lot of points where people thought Rivera was going to get the hook after underachieving a year after making the playoffs.

They were 7-9 last year. If the trend continued, this should have been a winning season... but it doesn't look like it will. The Panthers are 5-7, have Luke Kuechly getting older all the time (and with serious concussion concerns), and Cam Newton is broken. Greg Olson is almost certainly near retirement. Their hopes fall almost exclusively on Christian McCaffrey and a promising DT corps, going forward.

They're going hard reboot, and I can't blame the new ownership and GM for doing so.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Opinion: Cowboys or Eagles will get a home playoff game, and that's not right

It’s one thing to accept mediocrity and quite another to reward it. Yet that is exactly what the NFL is going to do this postseason.

As the playoff picture stands now, the winner of the very lackluster – to put it nicely –NFC East will host a wild-card game while either San Francisco or Seattle will have to hit the road.

That’s right. The Seahawks and 49ers are two of the best teams in the NFL, 10-game winners already, and, for one of them, it won’t count for anything. They could squeeze into the postseason with a Week 17 win, and the result would be much the same.

This absurdity is the result of the NFL’s archaic system for playoff seeding. Unlike the more meritocratic NBA, the NFL continues to award its top four seeds to division winners, regardless of their records. That means a Dallas or Philadelphia team that likely would be shut out of the playoffs if not for winning the NFC East will get preference over a wild-card team with a better record.

Well, a good deal of solace can be taken from the knowledge that, given how shoddy both Dallas and Philly have played of late, whichever team wins NFC Least will be guaranteed one round and done cannon fodder.

[TriggerWarning]

The Kaepernick tryout from a few weeks ago paid dividends and a workout with an actual team happened. . . . for one of the guys he was throwing the ball to.

Jordan Veasy got a tryout with the Browns after being part of the workout.

[TriggerWarning]

Their hopes fall almost exclusively on Christian McCaffrey and a promising DT corps, going forward.

And as hard as they are using McCaffrey it won't be long before he breaks down.

[WestPhillyPunisher]

Got an alert that Giants rookie QB Daniel Jones has been shelved due to an ankle injury, so Eli Manning will be brought out of mothballs to face my Eagles Monday night.