nfl offseason transactions, fired coaches, general nonsense 2012

unless the respective coaching staffs told their o-line personnel to go 50% because it's a preseason game and it doesn't matter if the qbs take a few hits

see, this is the confusing thing to me. i understand not wanting to show all your tricks in a preseason game but a hit on a qb hurts the same preseason or during the season

yeah that was rhetorical

i mean, i don't know this for a fact, but you have to believe if any area of the team is asked to play with full intensity in preseason it is the pass protectors

preseason is fun, i like all the weird preseason heroes that emerge and then don't even make the special teams unit...plus it means football is back!

The good thing about preseason is that it gives you a look at the new guys and does give you a small preview of what to expect from them later on, since the young dudes may well be fighting for a roster spot and will give 100%. For Packer fans watching Rodgers in the preseason in 2009 was huge, everyone just holding their breath and thinking "please be good".

the good thing about preseason is it means real football starts soon

like how thanksgiving is practice christmas with food & no presents

when belichick talks about preseason he basically says he gameplans to get matchups on tape - like if he has a rookie and he wants to see how he looks against a bunch of different types of players, he does what he can to scheme him up against as many guys as he can. theres no value in gameplanning to exploit another teams weaknesses in preseason

i hadn't heard that but it makes sense

i think other coaches probably have different approaches, but it was interesting because yeah, i hadnt thought of it that way before.

you guys don't like checking out the 2nd teamers and dudes and seeing who's going to make the team?

like in the vikings game this dude name Audie Cole had TWO interceptions returned for a touchdown in the 2nd half, was fun for the kid...

just makes me sad when they get cut in week 4 of the preseason and then never seen again...

holy shit this is amazing

from sapp's new book

In preparation for [the 2002 NFC Championship Game] Jon Gruden have the single best motivational speech I've ever heard. In reality, most coaches' speeches aren't like in the movies, where the coach builds up and up the momentum until the team charges hell-bent onto the field ready to rip down the entire stadium. If a coach does give that type of speech it's usually Saturday night. The Sunday speech is the matter-of-fact review of what we need to do to win the game. All business. Gruden gave this speech at the beginning of the week. He stood up in front of us and explained that there were 10 things we needed to do to beat the Eagles. Ten Things! He went down the list one by one, blah blah blah, blah blah blah, we'd heard it all. But then he got to the number one thing we needed to do, and he started talking about their kick returner Brian Mitchell. "I want Brian Mitchell's ass on a plate," he said. "And once we finish with the Philadelphia Eagles we are going to go to San Diego for the Super Bowl..." he paused, grinned and concluded, "Where the coach is gonna get two hotel rooms for all my bitches!"

The room erupted. Exploded. That was it, that was the greatest motivational speech ever. There isn't even a second place. "The coach is gonna get two hotel rooms for all my bitches!"

I said to Gruden, "Yes, you are one sick fuck! Let's go get this done."

awesome

haha chuckie omg

lol chucky

If I ever met Chucky I would totally fist bump him for that

is he bros with jimmy johnson? they seem like they should be

Kevin O'Neill ‏@KevinBuffalo
So far the #Jets offense looks so pathetic, #NFL Films is playing Sarah McLachlan songs during slo-mo replays.

bwahaha

Omg

hooooooly fuck, marc mariani just broke the shit out of his leg on a return early in the first quarter against the cardinals
that was horrific

i have a bad feeling that this year's gonna be the year where a player dies on the field.

and yet football players live longer than regular population and even longer than baseball players!

http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/8274392/comparing-mortality-rates-football-baseball

Ok I guess I jumped the gun on the CJ2k thing

eh, i wanna believe

only one team hasn't scored a preseason touchdown yet. who could it be?

pats o-line looking as solid as advertised. could be brady's last season in the nfl

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/magazine/why-does-anyone-root-for-incompetent-failing-teams.html
care to weigh in veggrrl?

also wtf at TO

I don't think people do root for the home team as much in the old days. One, there is a heck of alot deeper saturization of football fans in the general populus than say the 80s or even 90s, especially among women fans. Because the NFL is way more popular and 'national', I think you get people all over the place that pick really odd ball clubs to be fans maybe for a player or a particular year, as they see them every week most of the time anyway.

depends on the home team.

there is a huge pittsburgh diaspora for whom the steelers are an everlasting connection with home (although rapey ben has complicated this relationship). i'm sure this is the same with the bills and the browns and the lions and other towns that are somewhat less important now than they once were.

in nyc, well, the giants (let alone the jets) aren't the yankees. i don't know, but i guess i'd be surprised if the rams were as important as the cardinals.

i was amazed to find that dc is (or was when i lived there) even more football-dominated than western pennsylvania. maybe it's because they didn't have a baseball team and the wizards/bullets always sucked and wilbon/kornheiser couldn't be bothered to know anything about hockey, but still. the more impressive stools of norval/ballcoach/gibbs/marty/everyone else were front-page material. i hate redskins fans (except for daria) but i do feel bad that they are stuck with a vitally important local cultural institution that is owned by a complete asshole.

i think the sunday ritual, whether it be in front of the tv or tailgating, is something the nfl fucks with at its peril. when i was a kid, you knew church was getting out on time because the game was on at one. now it's like, oh shit there's a thursday game?

kinda feel like the next generation of fans is more likely, due to fantasy football, to be attached to the eric metcalfs of the future than to any specific club. but maybe not; tribalism is a hell of a thing.

ps cankles get off my lawn

in some places, the allegiances were always weird -- i know a guy who grew up roughly equidistant from pittsburgh, buffalo and cleveland who became a cowboys fan cause they were always on tv (see also ta-nahisi coates).

here in nyc i know this dude from brooklyn who's a big yankee fan but he's always wearing steelers stuff, because they were good when he got into it. (also he kind of looks like myron cope, rip)

That's a nice article. As far as rooting for a failed team, I think I initially began rooting for TEHRAIDAHS because they won the first game I ever saw them play live. Lol. 2002 season man, how could you not? Being caught up in the fever of the crowd, it almost felt dishonest to look anywhere else for a team after I'd shared that with all those fans. And I don't think I even considered it. Gannon and Rice and Brown and Chuckie and everything moving like a well oiled machine. Plus they looked badass in silver and black. I dunno, I think maybe there's something about the feeling from that period gets you through a few lean years, like you think there's a chance of coming back and then a few more years go by and you realize there's no coming back but by then you're in it, you've bought into the team as an idea, and you saddle up even though they ARE going to break your heart.

Even when they stunk at their worst, there were always players that I could put my hopes on. A dude like Asomugha who just played no matter what the game was like. There's always a guy like that to get you through to a W. And after they've been losing for a while, a good, legitimate win feels AMAZING, and you measure your year on maybe you got one or two more wins this year than last year. So what if you stink the worst in the division, there's some kind of subtle improvement that you can hang onto.

But it's definitely a version of faith. No two ways about it. It's irrational, on the outside it's kinda stupid. But somehow the commitment makes you feel part of something? I dunno. Bottom line is, you can't really explain it to anyone who doesn't feel it. And you don't need to explain it to anyone who does.

Indianapolis and Indiana in particular was/were always big Bears fans and some Bengals fans, as those used to be the two teams that were on every week befor the Colts. It really took until Manning and them starting to win before those home games against the Dolphins, Cowboys, Bears, Steelers, etc really became 'home games'. Indy also had a pretty crap setup for tailgating etc, while you saw a little bit of downtown really get into the Colts when they got to the AFC title game with Harbaugh, it didn't feel like the city and state was deep into the Colts until really just a couple years before they finally won it all.

The Colts winning it all for me personally was kind of a bleh moment, as I watched those Colts teams for years, even having that lump in your gut when they really failed but then they faced the Bears in the Superbowl, I ultimately realized that I'm not a Colts fan in that deep way. It couldn't take away the fact that I had a Bears sock hat when I was five and that I remember being a real little kid in the 70s watching my Uncle Elmer live and die watching the Bears and all those years watching them every weekend.

It will be curious to see how Indy goes now that Peyty is out of town. They are not already sold out for the year, which they have been for a few years, as I saw a thing in Indianapolis Star site talking about how early pre-season success for Luck was seeming to bring some back into the fold.

why are you a reds fan?

i have to admit that the raiders and cowboys definitely have a thing beyond the normal draw of most teams.

i kind of think it's a thing that attracts assholes, but i'm totally willing to exempt local partisans and foreigners. (<3 veg)

Same reason...Cincy/Chicago pretty much defines Indiana baseball loyalties for the most part. There are some St. Louis fans in parts of the state, but for the most part Indiana has been Reds/Cubs (and White Sox) place.

Reds radio network is pretty big in Indiana. I grew up in Muncie and there was a station there and one in Richmond, one in Indy that carried the games and you could always get the 50k watt WLW there too. I really grew up closer to Cincy than Chicago and listened to a ton of WLW radio growing up (including their sportstalk which was sports radio before there was sports radio stations). I'm sure for dudes my age, growing up having your dad in the garage or in the car listening to Marty & Joe doing Reds games was pretty common. The Cubs (and lesser degree White Sox) angle was from WGN, as they were always on TV. Reds were on TV back when I was kid, but generally always on the road as they didn't want to compete with the TV to get seats filled. I also watched a ton of Bengals games growing up.

http://gif.mocksession.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/MATT-CASSEL-CELEBRATION.gif

<3 mookie, ty for your exemption

On that same note, living in Kentucky, I would say the Bengals lost a ton of 'market share' to the Colts over the last decade. Colts have done a ton of marketing in Louisville. That said Lexington is kind of weird for football, as you will see Titans and Browns games show up as the 'home game' for this market more than you would think.

There are quite a bit of old Browns fans also littered across Indiana/Kentucky too. Yogi's in Bloomington used to be an actual Browns bar until they moved to B-more back when I was in college.

The weird shit for this is seeing kids being Red Sox fans in the midwest, as that is some exotic weird fandom from when I was a kid. My buddy Tobey, his Dad was a die hard A's fan in Muncie - so into it he had one of those big 80s SETI satillite dishes and these weird de-scramblers to watch A's games.

i have a friend who grew up in lexington and is a huge cubs fan -- wgn has a lot to answer for

Thing is it's kind of dying out because of the Fox Sports pages WGN doesn't carry all the games anymore and Bob Brenly and that other dude are definitely not Harry and Steve Stone, who could be really entertaining even if the Cubs were losing.

Not wanting to drop a whole lot of MLB into an NFL page, but the Reds are really working it to build back up the fan base in the tri-state area. The Castellini's are pretty pro at running a club and are building it up pretty well from the void that Marge and Linder who ran the club into the ground.

My coworker has lived in Sacramento his whole life - baseball he's a Yankees fan, and football he's a Dolphins fan. Go figure O_o

great NYT piece. it's kinda sisyphean - every year you roll the boulder of hope up that mountain in time for the season to begin, and then every season (unless it's your team's year, or you live in boston or nyc) you watch it roll back down

otm

i have to admit that the raiders and cowboys definitely have a thing beyond the normal draw of most teams.

Personally I've never met a Cowboys fan who wasn't a Texan at some point in their life. Although I've read (on this board?) that there a lot of Cowboys fans in DC who chose them back when the Redskins were run by a racist asshole.

Raider Nation on the other hand is this weird, amorphous thing that is hard to describe. They represent an ethos much more than the Cowboys do.

personally I'm a Raiders fan because

1. best uniforms ever

2. I admired Al Davis' fearless and outside-the-box approach.

btw, the raiders aren't an incompetent, failing team. They're officially a mediocre team and have been for two years now.