NFL

Bernie Kosar was the Browns QB, Marty Schottenheimer was their HC, Earnest Byner was their leading rusher, and Reggie Langhorne was their leading receiver.

The Steelers were led by Bubby Brister at QB, Chuck Noll at HC, Merril Hoge (yep, that guy) at FB, with Troy Johnson as their leading receiver.

It was a rainy day, but the Browns prevailed behind a great all-around defensive and special teams effort, with 6 sacks from the likes of Michael Dean "Little Fridge" Perry and Clay Matthews.

Highlights from the game

Full game stats

The Browns would win 27-7 to improve to 7-5 on the season, and the Steelers falling to 2-10. Chuck Noll would famously lose the locker room that season as the Steelers finished 5-11 (1 of only 3 losing seasons they've had since '88). The Browns would finish 10-6, good enough for the wild card. However, the Browns were without Kosar, and Mike Pagel wasn't enough to beat Warren Moon, Jerry Glanville, and the Oilers.

That weeks top songs?

• Bad Medicine by Bon Jovi
• Baby I Love Your Way by Will to Power
• Desire by U2
• How Can I Fall by Breathe
• Kissing a Fool by George Michael
• The Loco-Motion by Kylie Minogue
• Kokomo by The Beach Boys on the Cocktail soundtrack

Some of the top movies you could see in theaters that week?

• Child's Play
• Earnest Saves Christmas
• The Land Before Time
• The Accused
• They Live

Some of the top events from that month?

The Sega Genesis/Mega Drive had just launched in Japan

George H.W. Bush was elected as president, defeating Michael Dukakis

Murphy Brown debuted

This has to be one of the bigger head scratching stats I have seen in a while. I was looking at the Jets Bills box score and the QBR numbers caught my eye.

Tim Boyle 7/14 33yds 0TD 1INT 1 Sack 1rush attempt for 1 yard QBR 50.2

50% completion, NFL avg 64.9%

2.4 yard/attempt average, the NFL avg is 7.0

4.7 yards per completion, NFL average is 10.8

So I decided to grab every QBR rating for Sunday(and Passer Rating to keep us all grounded in reality).

That legendary Tim Boyle performance you witnessed, according to QBR, was the 13th best qb performance on Sunday.

https://www.espn.com/nfl/boxscore/_/gameId/401547543

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QBR loves Tim Boyle

Tim Boyle for Joe Burrow? Let me think about it

Tim Boyle for Josh Allen? Maybe if you throw in a 3rd round pick.

Tim Boyle for C.J. Stroud? C.J. Stround and who else?

Tim Boyle for Tua Tagovailoa? If you toss in a 1st rounder we can talk.

Tim Boyle for Russell Wilson? Hang up the phone scoffing at the unmitigated gall for even calling me.

Whew, thank you QBR for keeping me from looking like a complete idiot as a NFL GM.

Because they list Bryce Young at 5’10 and he looks barely 5’10 with shoes on, I feel like he might actually be 5’8, he just looks so small.

Zach Wilson
Anthony Richardson

Richardson achieved grades of 49.3 and 54.3 in his full games weeks 1 and 3, and grades of 73.2 and 50.0 in his partial games weeks 2 and 5.

They first played the Bears which they won by 3, score being 31-28. Then they played the Packers who they beat 19-17, a margin of 2. And yesterday they beat the Vikings 21-20, a margin of 1. Does this mean that their game with the Lions ends in a tie?

Both teams are currently 4 - 6.

Commanders maybe. No idea. But 0% chance of Belichick going to Dallas. Belichik wants full control. Jerry Jones wants full control. Zero compatibility.

Sean Payton has never had a losing season if he was over .500 at any point. Unfortunately he has one kind of losing season.

The 07 Saints and the 14-16 Saints had the exact same 7-9 season, and the Broncos are on the same subpar Sean Payton season trajectory.

2007: Saints start 0-4, they even their record at 4-4 midseason, lose game 9 and never get over .500.

2014: Saints start 1-3, they even their record at 4-4 midseason, lose in OT to the 49ers in game 9 (this was the game where Jimmy Graham’s game winning Hail Mary is called for OPI) and never get over .500.

2015: Saints start 1-4, they even their record at 4-4 midseason, lose in OT to the Titans in game 9 and never get over .500.

2016: Saints start 1-3, they even their record at 4-4 midseason, then lose game 9 to the Broncos via their game winning extra point being blocked and returned by the defense for the Broncos game winning 2 points.

A 7-9 Sean Payton season follows a similar script. The team struggles in September, gets it together midseason, loses the game that will get them over .500 dramatically.

The Broncos this year: start 1-5, even their record at 5-5 midseason, and now we’re at the biggest game of their season. If they can’t beat the 7-3 Browns the Broncos are on the same script.

Their next 4 games are the Browns, Texans, Chargers, and Lions. They could easily find themselves at 5-9 and that would be consistent with the type of bad season Sean Payton has.

For bonus points, even though Payton was suspended in 2012 the Saints still followed the script. Started 0-4, got to 5-5, never got over .500 and finished 7-9.

Not what two teams do you think will get there. Not what two teams are playing the best. Of the teams that have at least a reasonable chance of making the playoffs, what match-up would you enjoy seeing the most?

So there are Watts, Kelces, Mannings, and other star pairs of brothers, but I want to know if there have ever been brothers that both weren't very good or just straight up stunk. Not a situation where a guy is a star and his brother happens to also make the league at some point. I feel like it's already so rare to make the NFL it's unlikely for your family to be good enough to send two guys to the NFL and have them both suck.

So I’ve done this for the past couple of weeks and it’s worked out pretty well. As always, this post is meant to give a brief rundown of what’s happening around the league based on yesterday’s games like who’s playing well, who’s playing poorly, injury updates, etc.

Here are a few of mine:

Zach Wilson is ass and the jets are unredeemable even if Rodgers comes back in a month

Jaylen Warren is better than Najee Harris

Justin Fields isn’t the problem in chicago

Bengals season is basically over, they should tank for a premier lineman

I always had a feeling quentin johnston was a bust but this week solidified it

Jalen Ramsey is HIM and I expect the dolphins D to get a lot better in coming weeks

CJ Stroud had a bad game, but that still doesn’t mean he’s out of mvp talks. In Aaron Rodgers’ 2014 MVP season, he had 2 separate games where he shit the bed and threw multiple picks.

What have you learned from week 11?

What makes this situation frustrating is that the Jets knew what Wilson was after watching him for two years as a starter. It stands to reason that if Rodgers were lost at any point — and certainly that had to at least be entertained as a scenario given his age — there should have been a question asked in connection with it. And that question is this: If Rodgers is lost for extended time, why is there confidence that Wilson’s performance will be any different than it was in his first two seasons?

There’s a backdrop of knowledge for that question. When the Wilson plan went wrong for the Jets, the internal assessment of the failure after the 2022 season landed on one central point of regret: If the franchise could do it all over again, Wilson would have redshirted his rookie season. When the powerbrokers inside the organization looked back on what went wrong, it was the assumption that Wilson was ready to commandeer the team as a rookie, even when the surrounding depth chart had lingering issues.

He wasn’t ready. What they didn’t expect was the consequences of that reality. Not only wasn’t he ready in 2021, it would linger into a disastrous 2022 and get worse to the point of a near mutiny in the locker room. The response to that was to admit the mistake and make a move for Rodgers. But that move ended up carrying the fatal flaw that we are seeing now.

After depending on Wilson to be something that he wasn’t for the first two years of his career, the Jets rolled the dice a second time, leaving him in place as a backup. And the results are suggesting a fundamental truth. Not only did Wilson need a redshirt year in 2021, he needed another one in 2023 to begin reconstructing him from the ground up. It’s a stark and expensive reality, but the Jets would have been in much better shape if they had started the season with another dependable backup for Rodgers. And with that decision, Wilson should have been put at the third spot on the depth chart with the expressed goal of allowing him to learn from Rodgers without exposing the team to the risk that Wilson wouldn’t be ready when called upon.

Of course, most NFL architects would tell you that such a scenario is absurd. You can’t take a quarterback with Wilson’s salary and slide him all the way down to the third spot on the depth chart so that he can take a sabbatical from pressure. Either he’s capable of being a backup who can help rather than hurt, or he’s no longer an asset to the roster. The San Francisco 49ers came to that conclusion when they dropped Trey Lance to the No. 3 spot on their depth chart and then subsequently traded him to the Dallas Cowboys. It was a hard mistake to admit, but it also put the front office and coaching staff into the position of staring at their backup spot and thinking the player there, Sam Darnold, can at least give them a fighting chance to survive in case of an injury.

They could have gone with Lance as backup and made their own twice-baked mistake. But they knew that the risk he represented as a backup was too great, and declined. Everyone in that organization has moved on and is sleeping just fine.

The Jets went the other way. And they’re reaping what they sowed. The only questions now are how much longer they’re willing to stand in the path of this relentless imperfection at quarterback, and whether it’s already too late for everyone to get up from the collision.