kelticwizard

By the way, just saw Hackenberg standing on the sideline of an AAF game. He began the season as the starter, was replaced after a few games for ineffectiveness by Mettenberger, another NFL vet. When Mettenberger got hurt, they gave the ball to an unknown rookie rather than giving it back to to Hackenberg. So he's third string in the AAF.

They dropped the charges for all the other nobodies who got caught with him. Hate to spoil the chance to dump on the Patriots, but as far as I am concerned, unless they find evidence that Kraft was in on or knew about any human trafficking going on, he's just a man near 80 whose wife died of cancer a few years ago.

Maybe not. Stats show that JT O'Sullivan only actually played for four teams-that is actually got onto the field during the regular season. Prior to this offseason Fitzpatrick actually got into games for seven NFL teams-Miami will make the eighth. So it will be a record for Fitz, maybe already is one. O'Sullivan's record: https://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/O/OSulJ.00.htm https://imgur.com/AZPSlfS

Getting sucked into Fitzpatrick is not really a conscious decision. It's like drug addiction-the victim thinks first he'll try it a few times and drop it if it doesn't work out. With Fitzpatirck, a team with no real starting QB says "OK, first we'll sign Fitzpatrick and then keep looking for a genuine starter-if we find one, fine, Fitzpatrick is our backup. If we can't find a starter, well Fitzpatrick has been a starting QB in this league:" Then two years later, when the disaster is over, they all wonder how they could have let themselves get suckered in.

I keep telling myself that there are a couple of thousand NFL players and a few bad ones get the headlines while many donate their time and effort to worthy causes without getting much publicity for it. I still think that's true, but it's hard not to react when just how bad some of the bad apples are.

Unless during the season the team erupts in a massive collective roid rage that fills the media with pictures of a Cleveland locker room that looks like the aftermath of the Battle of Gettysburg.

Tyreek punched his own son while he was still in his mother's womb, and now that the kid made it past the umbilical stage he goes and breaks his arm. And people still want to bring him here so they can cheer for him on Sundays.

Good to see you back, Don. Wondered where you were.

Because despite winning a few games for us, he largely divided the team when he was here. He has an inspirational personality combined with the ability to get hot for a month or two, followed by a swift return to a disappointing sub-norm. This combination works to leave his team in two opposing camps, which we do not want. Keep him away, even in a backup role.

If this happened thirty years ago, the good ol' boy network would have held fast and he would still be working. Now, with the emphasis on substance abuse, including alcohol, people don't get carried like they used to be. He's still young, he's still a legend in the memory of the fans down there, and there a lot of people walking around with great lives who have gone through a rehab. If he get that done sucessfully, he might find the doors of opportunity are not all closed.

Emerson is still alive.

Books written after the fact. Newspaper articles written about old players, many including quotes of how the players rated each other on fighting ability. News articles I remember reading that didn't get much reaction but which frequently laid out what was happening. Did you know the early AFL San Diego Chargers were the first pro football team to have a "strength coach"? There were no assigned workouts back then, players lifted if they felt like it, and many players doubted the utility of weight training. The Chargers were lauded for being forward looking. Among the requirements of the "strength coach" was that the players had to take methedrine capsules before workouts and before the game. The pills were in bowls distributed throughout the locker room, like candy dishes at a party-they were legal then. This was in the papers in the seventies, little attention given. Willie Mays used to keep a bottle of something in his locker room that he was seen drinking from. Very likely some sort of speed. Again-likely legal. Who knows what these guys were taking at home, away from the locker room? Rape? These were highly charged men mostly in their twenties. In the fifties and sixties, if a woman got raped, unless she was suddenly jumped by a stranger on the street or something similar, she was considered largely at fault. People felt it was a young woman's responsibility to keep herself out of situations where she might get raped, or else she was "asking for it". Date rape didn't exist as a concept yet. It's fair to say that many players of the fifties and sixties got away with things that they would be charged for today. As I stated before, I do think the level of thuggishness has gone up somewhat and that needs to be addressed. But the old players were not, as a group, quite the squeaky clean guys they were publicly portrayed as.

I'm sick of the thuggishness too, but in all honesty I don't know how much is an increase in the league's thugs and how much is that the players transgressions don't get covered up like they used to. I remember reading about the ballplayers of the 50s and 60s, and when evaluating each other, they would often go into two categories: How good the player was on the field, and how good the player was in a fight in a bar. Ballplayers used to get into so many barfights that they all got a separate rep for that in addition to their worth during a game. Frequently cops would let a ballplayer go because they figured it wasn't good for the kids to see their heroes aren't solid citizens. There was a lot of covering up back then. I somewhat suspect the thuggishness has gotten worse since then, but the difference might not be quite as great as we think.

Because mouthing off to a cop during an arrest for reckless driving, while not good, isn't the same as punching people? Yeah, I think that's it.

I say not drafting Mahomes or Watson because when Macc gave up on Geno even before the first season of his term began, he should have made a serious plan to get a franchise QB. Instead, he sticks us with two journeymen for four straight years while he dickered around with two 2nd and 4th round projects that never even came close. That's the worst thing.