Monthly Archives: November 2017

The Bears won that day at Lambeau Field.

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The 5th Circuit will not abide by the NFL’s request for a decision by Sept. 26. Instead, oral arguments have been set for Monday, Oct. 2:

Oral argument on NFL’s motion to stay injunction in Ezekiel Elliott case is set for Oct. 2 in New Orleans — day after Week 4 game vs. #Rams

Rodgers returned exactly eight weeks later to beat the Bears at Soldier Field in the last game of the season, the NFC North title game as it turned out. Green Bay went 2-4-1 without Rodgers, using Matt Flynn and Scott Tolzien.

New England (4-2). I’ve got the same questions as everyone else about the defense holding up, and Tom Brady taking a jillion hits, and the end of the dynasty being around the corner. But if it’s close late, and it usually is with the Patriots, you’re going to have to knock them out. Most times, teams can’t.

Pittsburgh (4-2). The Steelers are only slightly psycho. Ben Roethlisberger had his nightmare five-pick game eight days ago in a 21-point loss to Jacksonville, but Pittsburgh sandwiched that with strong games on the road against rivals Baltimore and Kansas City.

Somebody needs to figure out what’s going on. I’ve been thinking: Wait a minute, how come the legends are not happy once they get out of town? I don’t know. But I’m happy with the Red Sox. I’ll tell you that.”

His other opinions are less potentially controversial, such as his approval of the choice of Astros bench coach Alex Cora to replace John Farrell as the Red Sox manager. “That’s my boy,” he says. “We played together in 2007, when we won the World Series, and we always stay in touch. He’s a baseball guy. Very smart, man. He’s going to be successful there.”

Phil McConkey, the Giants most unlikely Super Bowl hero a year prior, also grew up in Buffalo and had the Week 5 game against the Bills circled on his calendar for months. Literally.

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He’s an option in two-TE leagues.

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NASCAR Sprint Cup Series veteran Mark Martin, who was hired last July as a driver development coach for Roush Fenway Racing, is no longer with the organization.

I am going to make a confession that will make me seem older than my age (60) and confirm that I am completely out of touch with the youth of America: Until last Wednesday, I had never eaten ramen.

So the issue with all this is that L.A. viewers have been conditioned forever to watch the NFL on Ch. 2 and Ch. 11, and that left a large number of people without any clue that the Chargers were even on TV. Predictably, the ratings were dreadful, especially for last Sunday when the call was made late to accommodate the Cowboys’ broadcast. Again, I’m not crying for the Chargers.

Jordan Howard (4.1 OTD, four TDs) and Tarik Cohen (1.9 OTD, two TDs) are almost exactly at their expected totals, and the team is a mess at wide receiver, which made this a tricky team for this article. That said, the tight ends are worth a quick look since Zach Miller (2.1 OTD, two TD) was lost for the season, opening the door for Dion Sims (0.5 OTD, one TD) to take over as a starter.、

A hefty 25 percent of the team’s targets have been directed at the tight end position, and Sims figures to handle 60-plus percent of the looks. The Bears don’t score often, but if Miller’s usage is any indicator, Sims is positioned for a handful of touchdowns.

Brandon LaFell (2.4 OTD) has scored one touchdown on 36 targets this season. Though we all would love to see rookie speedster John Ross take on a larger offensive role, the fact remains that LaFell is Andy Dalton’s top target not named A.J. Green.
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Fleck brought the mantra “row the boat” from The Great Lake State

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Now Khan is thinking bigger. Earlier this year he won a bid to develop 70 acres of land near the old shipyards near downtown Jacksonville, on the St. Johns River, next to EverBank Field.

He struggled to beat the Bengals in his first start, dueled Tom Brady to a close loss in his second start, then threw 12 touchdown passes in his past three games. As you read this, Watson, who might have spent the year on the bench if Savage had torn up foes in September, leads the NFL in TD throws, with 15. And on Sunday, before the game against Cleveland, he wore a Warren Moon jersey in honor of the best quarterback in franchise history.

As mentioned earlier, they likely wanted to evaluate Garoppolo before committing to him financially as their quarterback of the future, information they’ll get over the second half of this season. Outside of Cousins or someone out of the box like Drew Brees, they won’t have better information on any of the quarterbacks they might be considering over the next decade than the knowledge they’re about to gain on Garoppolo.

Now, that has changed, although (barring a trade this week) the player won’t join the Patriots until 2018. It’s difficult to imagine him doing anything else, but you have to wonder whether Belichick plans to be coaching the Patriots after Brady decides to retire.

Fleck brought the mantra “row the boat” from The Great Lake State (he spent four seasons at Western Michigan) to the Land of 10,000 Lakes, and the words quickly took off. He invited fans to donate oars inscribed with messages for the football team, to be hung high on a wall deep inside TCF Bank Stadium running down a ramp leading to the field.

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it’s hard to imagine them making a playoff run now.

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Two key questions were presented by the panel of judges, one to each side, according to NFL Network’s Tom Pelissero. They asked Elliott’s and the NFLPA’s attorneys if any court had accepted the argument that a lawsuit could be filed prior to the NFL’s arbitrator issuing a decision.

The NFL’s representatives were asked to explain why the league was willing to let Elliott play in Week 1 when the crux of their emergency motion was that it would cause irreparable harm to the league.

Said Sherman: “My God, Houston’s so lucky. By next year he’s going to be a top-five quarterback in this league, and that includes the two big dogs [Brady and Rodgers]. He makes you dig to the deepest part of your competitive juices to beat him.”

For the most part, the aforementioned Steelers plan, which was put in motion by coordinator Todd Haley in 2012, has worked to make Roethlisberger less of a power forward, making throws with guys draped all over him, and more of a point guard, facilitating for others.

If Dalvin Cook has a torn ACL, as is suspected, the most electric rookie runner in the NFC will be lost until next season. With the quarterback injuries the Vikes have suffered, it’s hard to imagine them making a playoff run now.

Known more for his eccentric celebrations and bicycle dramatics, JuJu went down in Steelers lore with a 97-yard catch-and-run in the third quarter, the longest pass play in franchise history.

Surrendering 112, 123 and 114 points in three consecutive losses to non-playoff teams is the stuff of panic attacks in Cleveland. The Cavs rank in the bottom quarter of the league defensively, and the lineup experiments haven’t produced success on either end of the floor. Are the Cavs bored, old or poorly assembled? Or are they toying with us, as they traditionally do, until it’s time to flip the switch?
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Cowboys owner Jerry Jones publicly supported Elliott when asked about the investigation.

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“I have reviewed everything. There is absolutely nothing, not one thing I’ve seen that has anything to do with domestic violence. I’ve seen nothing,” he told USA Today.
The NFL announced that it suspended Elliott for the first six games of the 2017 season.

“We knew it was possible that we would get it,” said Terrell Suggs of the Ravens. The team enraged many of its local fans when, in London last week, in response to President Trump urging owners to fire any “son of a bitch” who does not stand at attention for the anthem, many Ravens took a knee during the anthem.

The unmistakable smell of slop and pig manure scents the air as the home fans unfurl orange and black blankets.

“We had about four guys that were just fill-in players, young players, all with the last name Jones.” Levy said. “One was Darrell, one was Darren, one was Donny, one was Donnell, and I couldn’t figure which one was which. But one of them, no matter what you did, if you chewed him out or anything, would just say ‘thank you.’ So we named him Thank You Jones.”

When the news came down that Lawrence Taylor would be returning, and Levy would have to attempt to thwart him with a bunch of guys named Jones, Levy told The New York Times that he was not going to adjust his blocking plans. ‘‘We don’t make personnel plans during these replacement games,’’ he said to the Times. ‘‘The players are struggling to learn their assignments.’’

Asked now what his first thoughts were at that time, Levy says, “I don’t remember any other reaction other than raising my eyebrows and then going back to work. You have to be prepared for everything as a coach.”
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With stars outshining everyone in this World Series, an amazing number might be future Hall of Famers

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In an incredible Game 2, it took Houston’s superstar trio to finally take down a Dodgers bullpen anchored by the best closer in the game. This star-powered thriller came one night after Los Angeles rode the best pitcher on the planet to a World Series-opening victory. If this seems like an especially star-studded World Series, it’s because it is a star-studded World Series. We have Cy Young winners, MVP candidates and as many as nine future Hall of Famers.

If, say, Drew Brees (who can not be tagged in New Orleans) follows through on his professed love for all things Doug Marrone and wants to come to Jacksonville, or if Eli Manning, who has some kind of past relationship with Tom Coughlin (I don’t know the details, I think they were roommates in Bayonne, New Jersey), want to come to Jacksonville, the Jaguars would presumably figure out a way to make it work. But it just got a lot more difficult, and much more likely that they’d have to part ways with quality players for it happen.

McCown, with a wife and four children, on the strain of often being an absentee father while he played in one city and his family lived elsewhere, often in Charlotte: “When your employment begins and ends at training camp, it is hard when you’ve got family to go, ‘Okay, let’s move before the school year,’ so we stayed … We’ve just learned to manage it. It’s not been ideal by any stretch.

Thank god for FaceTime. But I also understand that I am not the only guy that works, and works away from his family. We have people serving and protecting this country that spend six to eight months, or years, at a time without being able to see their family.

The time away is hard. There were so many nights I hung up FaceTime and hung up times with my kids that I would just sit there and cry and go, ‘Man I don’t want to, I can’t do it! I can’t do it anymore.
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Kevin Hogan gets his look, and the Browns will keep evaluating both young quarterbacks.

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On the other side of the Mississippi River, north of Lake Nokomis, The Phelps-Minnesota Falcons gear up for their fifth game of the season, against Osseo at Roosevelt High. The eighth-grade football team wears blue jerseys with lightning streaks so bright it’s difficult to see the numbers. Telyse Henderson asks her boys, Isaiah and Zaevion, to wear long sleeves so she can find them more easily while pacing the bleachers.

In the meantime, And there’s still a chance Cleveland takes another QB high in the draft. Now, I do know the Browns see Kizer as having a future in Cleveland, and my sense is he’ll get another shot—Jackson said Wednesday at his presser that this is a week-to-week thing. But the other thing I’m sure of is that the team’s future at the position remains wide open.

And that’s the part of this whole Indiana experience that still leaves Miller a bit flummoxed. The part in which Miller dropped by an open gym at a high school in his first week on the job and eight news cameras descended. The part in which he pulls up to Joe Huber’s Family Farm & Restaurant, on the border between Indiana and Kentucky, and the line for the IU fan event snakes its way down the length of the road.

Pulling up to the farm that day, Miller looked out the bus window and thought to himself: “It’s this big that they want to come down and hear me speak for 25 minutes?”

It’s the open gym session in New Albany, Indiana, in late September — three days before Miller will officially kick off his 2017-18 debut campaign with the Hoosiers’ first practice — but he’s here, two hours southeast of Bloomington, to check in on Romeo Langford, the fifth-best high school senior in the country.

In the notes Prescott writes his mom on his phone, he always assumes she already knows what he’s doing on the field and about his work off it. So, he usually writes something simple like, “I love you” or “Thank you.”

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