NFL

This season alone Daniel Jones and now Brock Purdy have got injured during QB sneaks. There's also been multiple cases of LBs and DBs launching themselves headfirst in an attempt to stop QB sneaks..Fred Warner did so on Monday night.

Football is a violent sport. The CTE conversation over the last decade means there's a lot more focus on minimising head to head contact in the sport.

The QB sneak is probably the only play left where the two opposing lines literally bang heads.

Given the controversial conversations about the Eagles "Tush Push" (Which is basically the QB sneak on steroids) and Mahomes also getting his knee twisted on one a few years ago...will the MNF incident be the excuses the NFL clings onto to ban this play for safety reasons?

The NFL is obsessed with protecting the QB. They outlawed below the knee hits after the Brady injury in 2008...RTP gets enforced more frequently than ever before...The Unnecessary roughness penalties when a sliding QB gets hit etc.

They have been looking for ways to get rid of the Eagles' tush push play.A head injury to a QB ( One of the league's most promising young QBs at that) during a similar play provides a very good pathway to ban ALL QB sneaks for safety reasons..whether fans agree with that or not.

I was skimming through pro football reference yesterday, and was looking at Kamara and CMC's career stats. They have essentially had the exact same production in their careers.

Both were drafted in 2017. Kamara has played in a few more games, but they have still had almost the same amount of carries and receptions. McCaffrey gets slightly more work on a per game basis, but maybe that's contributed to him missing more time due to injury as well.

Overall though, it's kinda crazy that after 6.5 seasons, two elite RBs from the same draft class are only separated by 18 scrimmage yards and 1 touchdown.

I’m obviously posting this because my team lost due to shitty ref calls in the last 30 seconds of Sunday’s game (Manute Bol couldn’t have caught that pass) but I’m also talking about the Kenny Pickett magical first down that was short and the Christian Wilkins hit on Jalen Hurts as he threw the ball that was roughing the passer apparently. All 3 of these were worse than the replacement ref nonsense of 2012.

Refs are getting away with bad calls because coaches would rather challenge things like spotting the ball and their WR catching in bounds or just catching a pass which is strategically better anyway because refs should be expected to get their calls right and not swing the momentum of a game off of their penalty flags (unless the penalty is clearly what they’re calling). Reviewing penalties will help the refs get it right if the league office is involved.

I know the old saying goes “play well enough to not let the refs decide” or something but there’s been an increase in games decided by crap reffing giving teams 15 yards free or setting them up at the 1 for something that shouldn’t have been called. Fred Vanvleet was spot on with NBA refs doing the same stuff and showing their biases

I do want to end by saying Cleveland outplayed us enough to earn the win especially Myles Garrett

Travis Kelce and I are on the same page, /r/nfl doesnt know football. https://www.reddit.com/r/nfl/s/EdvxbcWam2

For the deep dive this week, I put together a matrix using the Expected Points stats from Pro-football-reference.com for Week 8. The matrix looks at the EP for the Passing game for each team against the opposing teams' passing defense, and likewise for Rushing offenses vs rushing defenses. The first 2 columns show net Passing EP, the last 2 columns net Rushing EP.

The results should help forecast how much, and by which method, teams can move the ball against each other.

A = Away
H = Home
P = Passing
R = Rushing
D = Defense
O = Offense
ex. APO = Away Passing Offense

Full explanation about EP and the matrix using tonight's Thursday Night Game - Bucs @ Bills in the article: NFL Expected Points Matrix - Week 8

Enjoy the game tonight!

nfllines.com NFL Expected Points Matrix - Week 8

Without posting the full article here, the Bucs should have slightly above average success passing against the Bills. The Bills should have an easy time passing against the Bucs.

In the running game, the Bills should have around average production against the Bucs rushing defense. The Bills have a good rushing offense, but it is countered by an excellent Bucs rushing defense. Meanwhile the Bucs have real difficulty running the ball, and against an average Bills rushing defense, they probably cannot rely on rushing the ball to carry the night.

The Bills should hope for good passing weather as such conditions would allow them to play to their biggest advantage, passing against the Bucs defense. Since the Bucs haven't shown the ability to run the ball effectively, if the weather is good, look for a high % of passing from both teams.

If this holds true, this could be relatively high scoring from the Bills side of things. Something like Bills 31 Bucs 17 sounds about right.

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https://preview.redd.it/ej8odrveniwb1.png?width=1120&format=png&auto=webp&s=1a8cfc40db4b9593b705fbf096b4cec77beea511

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The early Sunday slate of week seven was highlighted by a highly-anticipated inter-conference matchup between the Lions and Ravens. However, Baltimore took control right now and turned this into a 38-6 beatdown.

I broke down what exactly they did on both sides of the ball. I could only post half the video unfortuntaley (time and file size). So if you want to watch the rest, you can so do here!

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https://reddit.com/link/17gubar/video/mkn8njuqqiwb1/player

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Any ideas why no teams on bye this week? Usually once the byes start, there are byes every week except Thanksgiving weekend. Unless my memory fails me.

Is there any obvious reason why this week wouldn't have a bye? Sweeps week for TV? Maximize competition against the World Series? Giving fans a chance to wear Halloween costumes?

Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vfpjBLtv92U&t=16s

JT O'Sullivan took huge issue over Carr not even trying to make a tackle despite injury around 25 minutes into the video. He says O-linemen see that and get pissed off. How do you feel personally?

It seems safe to assume that the falcons would normally have preferred to play their star running back unless he was actually unable to play effectively.

Given that assumption, there are only three options:

A) Bijan’s injury was unknown to the falcons until it was too late to disclose on the injury report.

B) Bijan was hurt, the falcons knew about it, and they were attempting to gain a competitive advantage against their opponent THIS WEEK by not disclosing the injury

C) Bijan was hurt, and the falcons were attempting to hide the nature of the injury to obtain a longer term competitive advantage.

Let’s ignore options A) and B) as they aren’t very fun to discuss. If we look at option C), what injury would the falcons look to hide? I would argue that an injury capable of keeping Bijan out multiple weeks is a clear motive to mask a more serious injury as a nebulous “headache.” This is especially true if this hidden injury would have the capacity to sideline Bijan for multiple weeks.

Let’s now think - in this era, what injury could have the potential to keep a player out multiple weeks yet be effectively disguised as a headache? CONCUSSION!

The evidence (conclusively?) points to Bijan sustaining a concussion during practice on Thursday or Friday, with the falcons minimizing a concussion by only reporting a single, innocuous symptom - a last minute “headache” - to avoid further scrutiny.

Am I crazy here?

TL;DR: Falcons hid a Bijan concussion from the nfl. Take away all the draft picks.

We're getting to the over the hump part of the season, /r/NFL, and we're no closer to figuring out half of these teams' identities. Happy Halloween week, everyone! I hope all of you get dressed up in some amazing costumers, get big sized candy, and have a great team win. We had a lot of upsets last week, and I was barely able to predict close to halfway on these games, going 6-7 and bringing me to 65-41 on the season. How did everyone else do? We only have four division games this week with some more cross-conference games lined up. But strangely enough, there are no byes in Week 8, halfway through the season. Let's get to it!

Those are my predictions, let's hear yours. Keep it civil and fun. Best of luck!

As the title suggests, the NFL needs to change how they schedule teams after bye weeks. Teams that come off of bye weeks should be playing each other. It is not right, nor is it fair for the team that is not coming off of a bye to have to play against a team that has come off a bye week. I'm a 49ers fan so I can only speak about our schedule. I'm not saying that the only reason the 9ers lost was because of the bye week. The 49ers had a lot of issues, no doubt about it. Even still, we played against the Browns in their home stadium, after the Browns came off a bye. This weekend we play the Bengals who are also coming off a bye. On top of that, my team is coming off of a short week. Again, not saying that is a massive factor, but it does seem right.

As the title suggests, the NFL needs to change how they schedule teams after bye weeks. Teams that come off of bye weeks should be playing each other. It is not right, nor is it fair for the team that is not coming off of a bye to have to play against a team that has come off a bye week. I'm a 49ers fan so I can only speak about our schedule. I'm not saying that the only reason the 9ers lost was because of the bye week. The 49ers had a lot of issues, no doubt about it. Even still, we played against the Browns in their home stadium, after the Browns came off a bye. This weekend we play the Bengals who are also coming off a bye. On top of that, my team is coming off of a short week. Again, not saying that is a massive factor, but it does seem right.

Not the hottest take around, but it’s absolutely wild to see instant reactions and turn-abouts following a Monday night game.

Everyone completely ripping Purdy (terrible in 4th quarter).

Everyone completely on Cousins MVP chase.

Absolutely wild.

Other than the John Candy moment. What is really spoken?

It’s well discussed that Jalen Hurts can squat about six benjamins and that it has just as much, if not more, of an impact on the play as good O-Linemen have.

There’s really nothing about the play that’s hiding anything, and the coming play is obvious once the team lines up for it.

While other players may be at injury risk, the QB ultimately matters most and they are the ball carrier getting hit. There are a lot of guys that can squat 600 pounds, most of them just don’t play quarterback. So… why would most teams bother with having the QB take the snap when running the play?

Jalen may have a unique advantage over most if not all NFL QBs, but stick a beefy fullback out there on 4th and 1 to take the snap and chug forward while guys push his tush. Of course the FB lining up behind the center is a clear indication of what’s coming, but that doesn’t matter with this specific play.

I’m willing to bet most teams would increase their success rate with the play if they subbed their QB out and put in a fullback or their powerback RB under center when running it. And maybe less teams would be interested in banning it since the Eagles would not have as large of an advantage.

Thoughts?

tl;dr: have a FB take the snap for the tush push instead of whatever QB a team has that can’t squat 600 pounds

Something interesting I noticed, the Seahawks have just been the Eagles one year apart from each other:

2020 Eagles and 2021 Seahawks: team falls apart and trades it’s qb in the offseason

2021 Eagles and 2022 Seahawks: expected to be rebuilding, surpasses expectations but loses a lopsided affair as the 7 seed

2022 Eagles: Best team in the conference, ends up making Super Bowl

So the Seahawks might not be the best team in the conference, but the NFC is wide open this year and could potentially make this arc complete

Just posting a career stats update on ya boy, Lavonte David.

TFL: Currently ranked 11th all time with 149 behind players like Terrell Suggs, J.J. Watt, Julius Peppers, Jared Allen, DeMarcus Ware, Aaron Donald, Calais Campbell, Von Miller, Cameron Jordan, and Jason Taylor. If you haven’t noticed, all of those guys played on the line. David does not. The next closest offball LB on that is Hall of Famer Brian Urlacher at 138 and you would have to go even further to find the next closest, London Fletcher and then Ray Lewis. Is this a relatively new stat? Sure. Not many LBs are consistently blowing up screens. Solo Tackles: Currently ranked 16th overall with 982 solo tackles. If he replicates last year’s performance, he will finish the season with 1,029 putting him 12th overall just behind Brian Urlacher (1,046), Ronde Barber (1,044), and Lawyer Milloy (1,033). By comparison his peer, Bobby Wagner, is currently at 935. You would have to drop at least 100 tackles to see other LBs of the same generation.

Combined Tackles: David, is currently 18th all time in combined tackles with 1,399 putting him just ahead of Urlacher (1,361). By comparison, Bobby Wagner has 1,586.

Forced Fumbles: David is currently tied at 32 with 27 forced fumbles. Who is he tied with? Tony Brackens, Khalil Mack, Clay Matthews, Von Miller, and J.J. Watt. Again, Dlinemen. If you look at the forced fumble list, its mostly dlineman and legendary DBs like Peanut Tillman, Brian Dawkins, and Charles Woodson showing up near the top. Closest LB is Mr. Derrick Brooks at 24.

On top of all that, the guy has a ring where he was a major factor when he was asked to run with a HoF TE. Now keep in mind with all of that, the guy still isn’t considered to be a HoF lock (when he should be) because of his lack of accolades. And without these accolades, he’s just some guy. Some guy that consistently makes plays in different defensive schemes regardless of who stands next to or in front of him.