weird Asian candy posted:

Let's check in on Takk who just got his signing bonus...

https://twitter.com/Takk/status/870319043177086977

quote:

Over the past few NFL seasons, getting smaller on defense has been all the rage. Safeties have become de facto linebackers. Linebackers have become edge rushers. And edge rushers have become defensive tackles. Speed — and the ability to negate offensive mismatches with it — has been at a premium, and teams’ quests to find mobility have often come at the expense of the size that defined so many defenses of the past two decades.

It’s important to remember, though, that any time the pendulum swings significantly in one direction, it likely doesn’t take long before it comes barreling back. When it does, people without their heads on a swivel are liable to get knocked on their asses. If the tendencies of the NFL’s elite last season are any indication, offenses plan to react to shrinking defenders and positionless football by promptly reversing course.

quote:

Most of the teams that utilize blocking backs and hefty formations are linked in some way, and all embrace a similar philosophy. By grinding undersized run-stoppers into dust, heavy packages are a way to mine a growing inefficiency for defenses built to live in the nickel formation. But the benefits don’t end there. Using tight ends and fullbacks also allows offenses to create mismatches, some of which may seem counterintuitive at first glance. Those varied advantages are why, as defenses get uniformly fast, the league’s smartest offenses are countering by getting big.

quote:

Schwartz’s clinic talk was especially focused on the run game, which — not surprisingly — is the reason that the majority of heavy formations are used. New England ran the ball 88 percent of the time it was in 22 personnel in 2016; the Titans, who ranked second in the league by lining up in 22 9 percent of the time, ran the ball on 87 percent of those snaps. Tennessee may be the best example of a team bulking up offensively as a means to push defenses around. By adding DeMarco Murray, Derrick Henry, and 2016 top-10 pick Jack Conklin to their roster last year, Titans general manager Jon Robinson showed his commitment to building a physical, run-based offense. Tennessee’s execution mirrored that. Only the Jets and Raiders ran fewer plays out of standard 11 personnel (one back and three receivers) in 2016, and that’s because each spent so much time with four receivers on the field.

The Titans are more than content to line up with two tight ends, a fullback, and one of their battering-ram backs in an attempt to wear down defenses. An offense that lacks a dynamic receiving talent has a defined ceiling (hence Tennessee using the fifth pick in the 2017 draft on wideout Corey Davis), but last year the Titans were so effective on the ground that they also maintained a reasonably high floor. They jumped from 32nd in Football Outsiders’ offensive DVOA in 2015 to ninth last season, thanks mostly to a running game that finished sixth in the same metric.

Chromatic posted:

https://twitter.com/4TomMartin/status/871554617955553280

Kalli posted:

Personally my suspicion is that Chip Kelly is a very good offensive coach and a poo poo awful GM.

Jiminy Christmas! Shoes! posted:

Raku posted:

if you've ever seen his parents--they're both pretty obese (especially his dad) and from new orleans, he wasn't exactly raised on healthy eating habits. His dad has immense mantitties

FizFashizzle posted:

I know this doesn't make much sense but nfl training routines are really not designed to help people lose weight. At this level it's just something that 99% of the time shouldn't be a problem. it'd be like a hospital constantly training their surgeons on basic human anatomy.

These guys are all physical freaks. team trainers are just there to help them survive the season.

None of them are really concerned about helping you cut out carbs or whatever.

quote:

“He asked a few questions to a few cowardly people,” Sherman said. “And I’ll be calling you cowards if you’re afraid to put your name on it. If you have a comment, if you’ve got something to say, you’ve got something to ask or something and you’re not willing to put your name on it, you’re kind of a coward. But maybe they’re not cowards and maybe these people never existed. Because who knows? You don’t even have to exist. You don’t have to prove anything in this world anymore.

“And that’s what I mean when I say there are a lot of TMZ-like media going on because guys like this — nobody is going to ever question him if they come to find out, hey, he could have fabricated this whole story and, I mean, outside of him saying there was an interaction at practice, none of the rest of it was true. But heck, what did he have to lose? I think it’s really unfortunate that’s it’s come to that.”

quote:

“One hundred percent, I feel like (readers) are just sheep,” Sherman said. “I feel like they are being herded, they just believe whatever, whoever is the biggest. ESPN is a huge, huge provider of information, so (readers) look at it as legitimate. They look at it as fact. As truth. As the gospel. They take it and they go with it without ever asking, ‘Wow, would you take anybody saying an anonymous source?’ If somebody just told you, ‘Hey, your wife just cheated on you, it’s coming from an anonymous source, I’m not sure if it’s really true.’ Would you take that as fact? Would you just believe anything anybody said?”

FizFashizzle posted:

But you're not going to go to some five year nfl vet and tell him to drink a milkshake. That's loving ridiculous.

FizFashizzle posted:

I know this doesn't make much sense but nfl training routines are really not designed to help people lose weight. At this level it's just something that 99% of the time shouldn't be a problem. it'd be like a hospital constantly training their surgeons on basic human anatomy.

These guys are all physical freaks. team trainers are just there to help them survive the season.

sean10mm posted:

He's saying you can't *make* them do it, not that they shouldn't do it.

http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2017/06/08/minnesota-vikings-mike-zimmer-eye-problems-nfl-notebook posted:

Why? Because I really don’t recall seeing any other NFL team doing what the Patriots were at the conclusion of their minicamp practice on this sunny New England day, and it’s honestly what you might expect to see at the high school down the street. The assembled group, including many who will be getting their championship rings at a ceremony this weekend, was running hills.

It’s one thing to see this during a strength-and-conditioning session. It’s another to see a pro team doing this after a full practice. And yet, there the Pats were, disappearing down the hill and then coming screaming back up in groups.

The message?

“Uh, get in shape and get in shape now,” said new Patriots tight end Dwayne Allen, who came from the Colts in a March trade. “That’s the message. Running the hills, it’s been quite an adjustment. But anything can seem like an uphill battle. Long as you take it day by day, and keep taking steps towards your goal, you’ll be OK.”

Our offseason lesson for this week: With pelts on the wall, Bill Belichick can get away with more of this than any other coach, and it’s absolutely part of the Patriots’ cultural advantage. In other locales, without all those wins on the ledger, this sort of practice might be seen as High School Harry BS. Not in Foxboro.

New Patriots corner Stephon Gilmore told me he hasn’t been subject to post-practice conditioning runs since college. Fresh-off-the-free-agent-market receiver Andrew Hawkins went a step further, saying he couldn’t remember the last time he’d gone through the sort of running that all of us who played high school football used to dread.

“I think high school was the last time I conditioned after practice, because as receivers we run so much,” said Danny Amendola, a fifth-year Patriot. “But since I’ve been here, late in the season and into the playoffs, I’ve noticed it. When you put it in the bank, like Coach Belichick says when you’re on the hill, it really helps out. You notice your endurance down the line.”

The hill run itself is 60 yards long, and Amendola says that while the Patriots may not do it after every single practice from May through January or February, they do it close enough to all the time that, “personally, I expect the hill every day.” On a good day, they may run seven sprints up it. If Belichick thinks they’re dogging it or need more, the number can reach 12.

“It’s tough, after a full day of practice, going over there,” Hawkins says. “But everything pays off, so you can’t question it. I think it’s great.”

And yes, this would all seem silly somewhere else. Because it’s happening here, though, it’s hard to doubt—especially when 40-year-old Tom Brady is chugging up hills too. The guys who’ve been around aren’t shy about buying into it.

“I feel like in the offseason, when we’re not playing games or beating each other up, a lot of teams are at the same conditioning level,” Amendola says. “And then once it gets into the season, and then on into the playoffs, that’s when you see the hill in our team.”

So maybe this isn’t why the Patriots were able to rally from 25 down on the last day of the season. But it probably didn’t hurt.

JIZZ DENOUEMENT posted:

If you gave one of the smart goons 5-years guaranteed as GM with total contract and personnel control, they would perform well above the mean GM. Simple things like "don't give old rb's huge contracts" and "trade down to diversify risk" are concepts too convoluted for existing gms.

whypick1 posted:

Said Goon GM will have that team's fans crucify him on sight for drafting 12 straight OL though.

Volkerball posted:

A lot of players have and are still in the league because they don't suck.

Hot Diggity! posted:

Letroy Guion got popped for another DUI. He's gone.

Jiminy Christmas! Shoes! posted:

https://twitter.com/OnlyInBOS/status/877896488478679042

Demon Of The Fall posted:

I wonder what Marcus is gonna get when his rookie deal runs out. Do you pay him 125m like Carr?

FizFashizzle posted:

https://twitter.com/adamschefter/status/879423672301346816

quote:

Fortune pilfered, Clinton Portis contemplated revenge under the veil of darkness. On a handful of late nights and early mornings in 2013 he lurked in his car near a Washington, D.C.–area office building, pistol at his side, and waited for one of several men who had managed a large chunk of the $43.1 million he earned with his 2,230 carries over nine NFL seasons. Purportedly safe investments had suspiciously soured, and almost all the money Portis set aside to fund his future had evaporated. That future included a mother who doubles as his hero and four sons scattered across the Southeast. Their comfort and security. Their happiness.

The hucksters he deemed most responsible ignored his calls. None were bound for jail. Their coffers were dry; a lawsuit seemed pointless. Once his helplessness gave way to rage, Portis lusted for a confrontation. He would meet this betrayer not with pleas or demands, or even blows delivered by thick fists attached to thick forearms. Bullets, he thought, were his sole means of balancing the scale.

“It wasn’t no beat up,” Portis says. “It was kill.”

quote:

More worrisome are the occasional lapses in memory that have begun to plague him. Portis sometimes struggles to find words or loses his train of thought; through the course of an interview he habitually repeats himself as he searches for his next point. He gets lost driving in familiar places. He missed the last two months of the 2009 season after taking a helmet-to-helmet shot against the Falcons, and he says he suffered more than 10 concussions in his career. On occasion, he strode off the field with no memory of the game he’d just played. Content to sleep it off, he rarely sought medical help—as a young player, he’d been taught to avoid the training room at all costs. “You can’t make the club in the tub,” he says.

Portis is among the former players eligible to receive benefits from the NFL’s $1 billion concussion settlement, which could entitle him to up to $1.5 million if he shows signs of early dementia and as much as $5 million should he be diagnosed with ALS—but in order to receive even a penny he would have to undergo testing and demonstrate clear symptoms of severe problems. And he’s wary of being evaluated because those tests might reveal that the fog is encroaching just as he has learned to navigate this complicated world. “F--- that concussion money,” he says. “I’m scared. I’m really scared of the results.”

weird Asian candy posted:

You really don't.................everytime I think I'm over it, some assholes like you all bring me right back into the pain and suffering

weird Asian candy posted:

Some of those picks...woof