2020-2021 NFL Thread

[Old Man]

The being known as “Mahomes” wields the football with unusual skill. 
 

Only watched the last five minutes of the game, but it’s suddenly very weird to see big, muscular, sweaty men sit next to each other and breathe heavily, without masks. 

[unclevlad]

I didn't watch...right now there's a lot more important sports events going on.  (And I figure the first 3 weeks are likely to just be very poorly played too much of the time.)  Scores are fine for now.

 

Caught the highlights tho on SVP after Serena's loss.  The part I'm interested in...they lined up after the anthem, and you could hear fans boo.  But I really couldn't tell how extensive it was.  If you DID see it, I'd be interested to know how extensive you thought it was.

[Pariah]

I know that Skip Bayless is a moron. But this is stupid even for him.

 

Opinion: Skip Bayless' ignorant comments about Dak Prescott's mental health are offensive, dangerous

[Starlord]

43 minutes ago, Pariah said:

I know that Skip Bayless is a moron. But this is stupid even for him.

 

Opinion: Skip Bayless' ignorant comments about Dak Prescott's mental health are offensive, dangerous

 

This is the same guy who fueled rumors that Troy Aikman was homosexual to sell a book and argued furiously that 52 yr old Michael Jordan would beat LeBron James 1-1.

[Michael Hopcroft]

15 hours ago, unclevlad said:

I didn't watch...right now there's a lot more important sports events going on.  (And I figure the first 3 weeks are likely to just be very poorly played too much of the time.)  Scores are fine for now.

 

Caught the highlights tho on SVP after Serena's loss.  The part I'm interested in...they lined up after the anthem, and you could hear fans boo.  But I really couldn't tell how extensive it was.  If you DID see it, I'd be interested to know how extensive you thought it was.

Fans in the stadium? Now? Where's the sense in that?

[Michael Hopcroft]

6 minutes ago, Starlord said:

 

This is the same guy who asked Troy Aikman if he was homosexual and argued furiously that 52 yr old Michael Jordan would beat LeBron James 1-1.

This may be why ESPN let him go. As if Troy Aikman's sexuality is any of his (or our) business.

 

As a person fighting a mental illness, this stings in a lot of ways. The link between mental illness and bad character is something I've been dealing with most of my life. It's what I refer to as "Joker Syndrome", and it's getting worse and worse out there.

 

I know a lot of people despise Steven A. Smith, but at least he is a decent human being who expresses compassion even to the athletes he criticizes. Even with his criticism. A few years ago he told his audiences that Johnny Manziel's gangster-like behavior was going to get him in a lot of trouble, and he believed the life of Johnny Football was at stake. (Manziel has been out of football since the AAF folded, and even at that level he was pretty much incapable.) Bayless, by contrast, has become a professional jerk. If he has a shred of human decency, it is cleverly concealed.

 

The only way this could have been worse is if he dared Dak to kill himself.

[Cancer]

On whose payroll is Bayless now?  Just to make sure I know what media channel never to watch, listen, or read.

[unclevlad]

2 hours ago, Pariah said:

I know that Skip Bayless is a moron. But this is stupid even for him.

 

Opinion: Skip Bayless' ignorant comments about Dak Prescott's mental health are offensive, dangerous

 

No, it's completely in his wheelhouse.  It was on First Take;  he made Stephen A. seem tolerable.  IIRC, ESPN let him go because these kinds of comments were a regular weekly occurence.  Embrace Debate goes only so far;  his wildly absurd statements went well past it.

 

Cancer, he's on Undisputed on....guess who.

Fox.

ESPN cleaned house of its muckrakers within a few months of each other, IIRC...Jason Whitlock always cast everything into a racism argument, Bayless is a total fanboi AND idiot, Colin Cowherd is the archetypal troll.  I know Whitlock and Bayless got suspended while at ESPN, and my (now pretty vague) memory was they did the same kinds of things one too many times.  They all went to Fox, specifically FS1 IIRC.  Cowherd and Bayless have been 1A and 1B atop my Worst Talking Heads EVER list for some time.

 

Michael...from the occasional seating shots I saw, there weren't that many and they seemed MOSTLY to be pretty spread out.  Saw attendance was estimated at ounly about 16,000.  That said, I saw some sections that seemed to be in violation, and who knows what was going on pregame;  KC's tailgating apparently rivals SEC tailgating.  

 

EDIT:  Bayless' comments here might be pushing him towards the door at Fox.

Quote

"We do not agree with Skip Bayless’ opinion on Undisputed this morning," FOX Sports said in a statement. "We have addressed the significance of this matter with Skip and how his insensitive comments were received by people internally at FOX Sports and our audience.”

 

[Michael Hopcroft]

1 hour ago, Cancer said:

On whose payroll is Bayless now?  Just to make sure I know what media channel never to watch, listen, or read.

Fox Sports. Instantly, Troy Aikman also works for Fox Sports and is significantly higher on the totem pole than Skip is. For one thing, Skip is almost never actually sent to games and I have no record he played any sports.

 

3 minutes ago, unclevlad said:

Cowherd and Bayless have been 1A and 1B atop my Worst Talking Heads EVER list for some time.

The best Talking Head is obviously David Byrne.

[archer]

17 hours ago, unclevlad said:

I didn't watch...right now there's a lot more important sports events going on.  (And I figure the first 3 weeks are likely to just be very poorly played too much of the time.)  Scores are fine for now.

 

Caught the highlights tho on SVP after Serena's loss.  The part I'm interested in...they lined up after the anthem, and you could hear fans boo.  But I really couldn't tell how extensive it was.  If you DID see it, I'd be interested to know how extensive you thought it was.

 

Definitely didn't see it. The couple of news reports I've read about it characterized it as scattered and mostly coming from only a section or two.

 

Take that for what you will.

2 hours ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

Fans in the stadium? Now? Where's the sense in that?

 

Both covid and BLM have become politically controversial. No matter what the unity was supposed to be celebrating, there's going to be some people who see "unity" as supporting the Democrat party line.

[unclevlad]

1 minute ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

Fox Sports. Instantly, Troy Aikman also works for Fox Sports and is significantly higher on the totem pole than Skip is. For one thing, Skip is almost never actually sent to games and I have no record he played any sports.

 

AFAIK, Bayless has never done a game broadcast, with ESPN or Fox.  He might have been a part of halftime analysts from time to time;  Stephen A. is doing studio pre- and post-game for ESPN's NBA playoff coverage, and that often goes on-site...but Bayless was never high on the totem pole, that I can recall.  Certainly, he totally lacks any analytical skills or sports knowledge to actually be in the booth.  (Correction...he apparently did on-course golf analysis at the majors for a couple years...for the Golf Channel.)

[archer]

2 hours ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

 

As a person fighting a mental illness, this stings in a lot of ways. The link between mental illness and bad character is something I've been dealing with most of my life. It's what I refer to as "Joker Syndrome", and it's getting worse and worse out there.

 

 

I'm with you on that. I'm not considered by the government to be mentally competent enough to sign contracts on my own or to serve on a jury. And my Social Security check goes to my spouse rather than myself even though my problems have never exhibited any tendency to spend money to random or succumb to hucksters.

 

The signing contracts and not serving on juries makes perfect sense from my perspective. My short term memory is spotty at best and if I become fatigued and can't take a nap on my own schedule, I might not remember what happened in whole chunks of days. I won't have acted any more eccentricly than normal or have done anything which is out of character, I just won't remember. On the other hand, I'm a lot more stingy and skeptical when it comes to money matters than my spouse is, so not officially having control of my own money has never made sense to me. Instead that seems like one of those government agency pigeonholes where "person has a mental problem" automatically goes into the "can't be trusted with money" slot.

 

I had to explain that when called to serve at short notice on a federal jury and didn't have time to get anything written up by my doctor. (Now I'm on file with both county and federal court as being unable to serve.)

 

I can tell people in real life about my vast number of chronic medical problems, get sympathy, and have conversations about it. I can't do the same thing with my mental problems. At best the person, even family members, will look uncomfortable. At worst, they look like they think I'm about to grab and axe and go on a killing spree. It doesn't seem to matter whether I'm talking about depression, memory issues, or anything else: if it's related to the brain, I'm best to not mention it.

 

I'm particularly irked when public figures accuse other public figures of mental problems without having any evidence. Being prejudiced against people who have mental illness is one of the few prejudices which people can still display without facing unlimited public scorn.

[Pariah]

51 minutes ago, Michael Hopcroft said:

The best Talking Head is obviously David Byrne.

 

I see what you did there. Well played.

 

In terms of sports talking heads, I'm going to go with Dennis Miller's all-too-brief stint on Monday Night Football.

[unclevlad]

Dennis Miller can't even be called a talking head;  more like a foolsh act of utter desperation because their ratings had dropped about 25-30% from 1994.  "Oh we want a fan perspective!"  

 

And it wasn't anywhere near brief enough.

 

Worst analyst...hands down, runaway, lapped the field 20 times.  Bill Walton.  Virtually guaranteed to make a game unwatchable in 30 minutes...usually less, especially if it's Pac-12 teams.

 

Worst NFL analyst...limiting things to the national network guys...Booger's time on MNF was another epic fail, considering it's such a high-profile slot.  Sporting News puts James Lofton down there among last year's announcers, but I can't remember him well enough.  Bruce Arians dropped some good stuff every now and again but was mostly taking up the char, IIRC.

[Cancer]

I admit I watch just about all TV muted, and all I watch are sports and animal and fail videos.

 

Sometimes all on the same show.

[Old Man]

 

 

Cards @ Niners could be postponed because hellpocalypse.

 

[unclevlad]

That's been a concern several times, IIRC;  fires mostly, volcanic ash/dust once I think.

 

I went to get the (completely ignorable) mail at around 5:30.  Sun was small and quite orange due to smoke;  it hadn't been getting here as notably, altho some people have taken some stunning shots of blood-red moons.  But the jet stream shift has, I think, brought it over.  

 

I remember being up in northern Cali during the...I think the Shasta fire.  Red sun at noon, dirty brown-gray sky.  And definitely remember some fire seasons as a kid in southern Cali...but that was the 70s and the smoke wasn't any worse than some of the bad smog days when you couldn't see the mountains from maybe 5 miles away.  

[Pariah]

So today we have the first day of NFL football in earnest. My two choices at the moment are Carolina-Oakland...er, Las Vegas, and Green Bay-Minnesota.

 

The Green Bay-Minnesota game is effectively unwatchable because of the fake crowd noise they're pumping in. It's almost impossible to make out what the announcers are saying. I suppose I could go Cancer's route and just turn the volume off.

 

The Raiders just scored a touchdown to take a 17-12 lead, but their first round wide receiver is now headed to the locker room. My distaste for the Raiders is of course well known, but you hate to see something like that happen to anybody in their 1st NFL game.

[Old Man]

I typically mute football anyway so I don’t have to listen to the announcers. I still think they should have cancelled the season, but it’s nice to be able to pretend things are sort of normal and watch grown men chase an oddly shaped ball around a field. 
 

Kind of liking the Falcons’ new arena football uniforms. They’re a huge improvement over the digital-number ones. 

[Badger]

2 hours ago, Pariah said:

So today we have the first day of NFL football in earnest. My two choices at the moment are Carolina-Oakland...er, Las Vegas, and Green Bay-Minnesota.

 

The Green Bay-Minnesota game is effectively unwatchable because of the fake crowd noise they're pumping in. It's almost impossible to make out what the announcers are saying. I suppose I could go Cancer's route and just turn the volume off.

 

The Raiders just scored a touchdown to take a 17-12 lead, but their first round wide receiver is now headed to the locker room. My distaste for the Raiders is of course well known, but you hate to see something like that happen to anybody in their 1st NFL game.

Look like instead of canned fans, this would be perfect to show what is actually said on field by players and coaches (with tape delay obviously)

[Cygnia]

Proving that some things remain the same in the face of chaos, the Browns comfortingly lose....

[unclevlad]

I'm OK with the canned crowd noise.  I'd rather NOT have it, but the lack of it does impact things.  If you can't hear the announcers, someone messed up.

 

1 minute ago, Cygnia said:

Proving that some things remain the same in the face of chaos, the Browns comfortingly lose....

 

Decisively, too.  You can't read anything into week 1 in a normal season;  this year, even less.  Mind, the bias confirmation with the Browns and Jets is nice.   

But hey, Browns fans, you have a GREAT chance to get back to .500 Thursday!  Browns-Bengals....<sigh>.  That should be game 2 of Heat-Celtics.  No brainer there....  

[Cancer]

Seahawks seem not have had a lot of trouble with Atlanta, but the DL play for them was not confidence-building.

[Enforcer84]

The Jags are undefeated.

[Logan D. Hurricanes]

51 minutes ago, Enforcer84 said:

The Jags are undefeated.

 

Don't jinx us!