The Buscher

To be fair, the Cardinals had a great defense for several years under Bettcher. But the only former Cardinal they've brought in whose looked worth a crap is Markus Golden. If you're going to advocate for bringing in your old players, you'd best be able to back it up. Anyway, it's one thing to lose a game you were expected to lose, it's another to lose and there be next to no positives to take out of it. The defense is still broken and Dallas was able to move the ball at will with no pass rush present, if not for those early fluky turnovers they could've put the game away much earlier than they did. DeAndre Baker continues to look like a bust, gets burned in coverage all the time and when he doesn't, he usually commits a penalty. He was handsy in college and clearly still hasn't figured out yet that you can't get away with a lot of that stuff in the NFL. The OL despite all the work that went into it still looks awful. On any given day three of the five will struggle, and either the OL or Jones has a very blatant tell because the defense seemed to pick up every play instantly, even the quick dump off passes guys were swarmed instantly. Jones turns the ball over far too much, and on the rare occasion he actually has time, none of the receivers can get any separation. But worst of all is the Barkley playcalling. One of the few negatives on him coming out of college was that he struggled to push the pile. What do the Giants do? 90% of his runs are straight into the offensive line for little to no gain. How about running a damn pitch play? Shurmur is horrendous.

I don’t know how James Bettcher still has a job. He wanted the defense to be loaded up with his former Cardinals players who know the system yet it continues to be a complete schematic failure.

I don’t care how bad the Giants are, MetLife being like 80% Dallas fans is disgusting.

7 starts, 7 fumbles for Jones. At a certain point you can’t even call it a rookie mistake. This has been a known problem with him since college and there has been zero progress made.

Giants largely dominate the first half only to give up 10 points in the final 3 minutes and be losing at the half. The only thing Giant about this team is that they’re giant fucking losers.

Apparently he got drafted to the DC team in the XFL, same team that dude from my alma mater went to

2 things: 1) I don’t normally drink during the week, but when I do, it’s to get through another shitty Giants game 2) tonight my dad and I were grabbing dinner and some drinks at a bar near his house. The bartender? Jake Ceresna, a defensive end who lives locally and was with the Giants in preseason

Sterling Shepard was originally cleared to return tonight from his second concussion of the season, but instead he's been ruled out and placed right back at the start of concussion protocol. At this point they need to just IR him. It's never worth risking someone's health having two concussions in the span of two months, especially not when the team is going to be awful whether he's there or not.

It's hilarious to me when Belichick loses to one of his disciples, especially because most of them are terrible.

I think it's different with the Pats. If on any given year you were to say someone would go undefeated and had to guess the team, everyone would say the Pats without much of a second thought.

The Patriots losing a game means I can continue to hold onto 18-1 like grim death. Thank you Ravens!

Adam Gase should be fired before the plane lands back in Newark.

I don’t know - he’s still got two years under contract and whilst the Broncos could’ve simply left his contract as is and released him at no penalty, Elway restructured his contract to free up 2019 cap space. Now there’s something like $13 million in dead money for 2020 if he’s released before June. The problem is they haven’t gotten to look at Drew Lock to see if he’s a viable long-term option. For that reason I feel like Flacco might at least start 2020 as Denver’s QB.

Strasburg opts out of his contract. Aroldis Chapman was expected to opt out of his contract but the Yankees tacked on another year at $18 million for 2022 and he decided to stick around instead. All told he’s essentially agreed to a 3-year, $48 million contract. With the free agent market being what it has been in recent offseasons and teams becoming skittish on giving out multi-year deals for relievers on the wrong side of 30 (he’ll be 32 by Opening Day) I’m not sure he actually would’ve gotten much more than that anyway.

I hope Ravens/Patriots lives up to the hype because almost none of the Sunday afternoon games sound interesting at all. Might be a Sunday to actually go out and do something else.

Awesome hire. Was so worried about them hiring some gutless turd. Interestingly, Terry Collins is also making a return to the Mets dugout as bench coach.

I'd love to think that Bryce Harper is pissed off that the Nats won a title without him. But in all likelihood, he isn't all that bothered. He got paid. It's not like the 80s where rival teams seemed to genuinely dislike each other. Nowadays fans get caught up in that stuff way more than players do. The players themselves have friends all around the league and in general I think once their own team's season ends they're indifferent on who wins the whole thing.

I don’t hate the Nats anywhere near as much as the Braves or Phillies, but a division rival winning a title is always going to feel sickening to me. The only time it hasn’t was the Marlins in ‘03 and that’s just because the Yankees were the most hateable team ever then. I’d have rooted for this year Yankees over the Nats easily. Probably will never see a Mets championship in my lifetime. Oh well.

between Mayfield and Beckham this remains on pace to be a complete dumpster fire

It’s been known for a while that the FOX sand the league are not happy campers if at least one team from New York, LA, Chicago, or Boston doesn’t make it.

Yeah I never understood why Trubisky was so highly rated going into that draft. It could prove to be a really awful couple of years of drafts for the Bears depending on what happens with Roquan Smith. Just a few days ago there were rumors that he was mulling an extremely early retirement. He put those rumors to rest for now but it's something to keep an eye on since the team was concerned enough about it that they were reportedly looking at inside linebackers to trade for as an insurance policy.

I’m rooting against the Nats but they had one of the worst calls of all time called against them only for Rendon to immediately respond by going deep. He’s earned every penny he’s going to get this winter. Really does feel like the type of moment that will carry a team to a title. Unreal that the home team might lose every game. If nothing else I can’t imagine Scherzer not pitching a gem tomorrow after everything he went through on Sunday.

Talib's on IR anyway so I don't see him playing a down for Miami. That said he's a free agent after this year so I'm not really seeing how the Rams retain any cap space for Ramsey if the goal is signing him to an extension that kicks in for 2020.

I'd hesitate to even say that an extension makes sense, because Williams has been a bust.