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NFL 2018 thread
EvilPingu
Member Posts: 3,462
There isn't a thread for the best sport in the world yet, so I thought I'd make one. Had to resist putting it in the "Football Corner" with all the soccer threads 
Anyone got any season long punts on? Just got this bet on with Blackburn Rovers' new sponsors during halftime of the Chicago/Green Bay game. Chicago have some quality players, including a talented young QB not being a massive drain on the salary cap due to the rookie salaries, an underrated but decent O-line, a very good young running back, and they've got an absolute steal off my Raiders by trading for Khalil Mack to go along with an already decent defence.
Oh, and they've actually got a head coach who seems to know how to use their offensive talent this season. Should have a decent chance to win 10 or 11 games and compete with Minnesota (probably) for the division or win a wildcard playoff spot.
Pretty sure I got the same prices they had on offer pregame, despite the very impressive first half. Should be a decent sweat.
Anyone going to any of the Wembley games? I was going to go to the Raiders/Seahawks game but it's the same weekend as SPT Glasgow, travel is **** expensive, and we're looking pretty rubbish on paper this season - Plus I'm still tilted at handing over a tenner for a coke and a hot dog last time I went to Wembley and getting asked for the rest of the money
Anyone got any season long punts on? Just got this bet on with Blackburn Rovers' new sponsors during halftime of the Chicago/Green Bay game. Chicago have some quality players, including a talented young QB not being a massive drain on the salary cap due to the rookie salaries, an underrated but decent O-line, a very good young running back, and they've got an absolute steal off my Raiders by trading for Khalil Mack to go along with an already decent defence.
Oh, and they've actually got a head coach who seems to know how to use their offensive talent this season. Should have a decent chance to win 10 or 11 games and compete with Minnesota (probably) for the division or win a wildcard playoff spot.
Pretty sure I got the same prices they had on offer pregame, despite the very impressive first half. Should be a decent sweat.
Anyone going to any of the Wembley games? I was going to go to the Raiders/Seahawks game but it's the same weekend as SPT Glasgow, travel is **** expensive, and we're looking pretty rubbish on paper this season - Plus I'm still tilted at handing over a tenner for a coke and a hot dog last time I went to Wembley and getting asked for the rest of the money
Comments
That second half wasn't supposed to happen.
NFL confirmed rigged.
There were 4 field goals scored in the game, and there would've been a field goal in each quarter...
...Except that instead of actually throwing the ball into the end zone, the Bears decided to throw a pass for negative five yards on 3rd & Goal right at the end of the first quarter, which kept the clock running and meant the field goal actually took place with the first play of the second quarter.
Acutally run so bad. Admins, move thread to BBV please
EDIT: Actually I changed the HH to make the bad beat sound worse than it was, I thought the HT score was 20-0 not 17-0. Would've lost anyway. Meh.
Great idea for a thread. I don't know enough about NFL to contribute much except by asking questions, but I thoroughly enjoy watching it.
Was last night's Dolphins v Titans game the longest NFL game ever?
What can we expect in tonight's 2 games?
Jets @ Lions
Rams @ Raiders
There seemed to be some very high scoring games last night, any reason for that or just an outlier?
Chiefs @ Chargers = 66
Buccaneers @ Saints = 88
Plus 4 other games with 50+ points.
I was on UNDER 48.5 in the Chiefs - Chargers game, & UNDER 40.5 in the Bills - Ravens game. They both went well.
Jesse May wrote this as a bit of spam for a Sports Betting exchange, but it's actually quite enjoyable, & very good advice.
One thing I expect is to see the Lions trying to show they can run the ball with a new HC - They've got that streak of about 9000 games without anyone rushing for 100+ yards which commentators are obliged to mention at least twice every quarter because either the Lions are running the ball or they're not running the ball enough.
The way they've drafted and added to the roster in free agency definitely looks like they're trying to take some pressure off of Matt Stafford.
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Rams/Raiders - Maybe I'm being a pessimistic Raiders fan after the Khalil Mack trade, but I'm expecting us to get murdered
On the flip side, the Rams have the best roster in the NFL right now (IMO) so if we lose to them, it's not the end of the world.
Chiefs @ Chargers was always likely to be high scoring (hence o/u 48.5) - Both sides are strong on offense, and the Chiefs have lost Marcus Peters on 'D' among others in free agency in the offseason. The only reason I can see for the points line being below 50 would be because the market didn't know much about Pat Mahomes at QB as a proper NFL starter. I think when they play again later in the season, depending how banged up both sides are, that points line could well be 3-4 points higher.
Given where the points line typically is for an average game (somewhere around the 42-44 mark), I think for the most part it's just variance that we have 6 games over 50 points this week, and it's not that crazy when you'd probably expect 3-4 in a given week anyway. It's probably more unlikely that we ended up with a tied game this week.
Chiefs sidenote: Despite being a Raiders fan, I can't bring myself to dislike Tyreek Hill because he's just too **** good. Incredible player to watch.
Had to Google, and apparently it's the longest game in terms of time elapsed since the NFL merger in 1970. I don't know if there's any records kept before then.
Interestingly, the Dolphins also took part in the longest NFL game by game time elapsed: a 1971 playoff game against the Chiefs, which ended with a field goal halfway through a second overtime period.
Was so glad I watched last year's Super Bowl live rather than try to avoid hearing the result until I had chance to watch a recording!
It is amazing how the draft system does level the playing field to a degree and I can actually see Cleveland winning some games this season after a fairly good pre season.
Having said that I imagine New England, Green Bay and Pittsburgh will be in the frame as usual at the end of the season, but I wouldn't be surprised if San Francisco made the play offs with Garropalo as QB even though they did lose their opening game.
Can someone explain "free agency" to me, please?
One of which was the Browns v Vikings game at Twickenham including a tailgate party at the Stoop. Three hours pre game with free alcohol and food, and a chance to meet Vikings hall of famer John Randle. Free alcohol and food
We arrived bang on time to make the most of the freebies, only to be told that they couldn't serve any alcohol for the first hour due to their licence. They quickly announced that to compensate, we could return for an hour after the game instead. Also, John Randle would not be attending until after the game. Perfect. We had an hour after the game to have a beer while the station cleared.
On returning to the Stoop after the game, it soon became clear that John Randle would not be attending due to his driver being taken ill. The Vikings fans were disappointed but it didn't make much difference to us.
On returning home, I suggested we should fire off an email to say how disappointed we were with the non attendance of Randle. We soon received an apologetic reply offering us 3 free tailgate party tickets for a 2018 White Hart Lane game. We are not sure yet, but assuming theses will be transferable to any of the Wembley games which we have season tickets for.
To answer the question in one sentence - Free agency is basically where a player's contract expires at the end of a season, or they're cut by another team, so they become a free agent and they can be signed by any other team in the league.
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The finer details are far more complicated - You get restricted free agents and unrestricted free agents, franchise tags to stop players becoming free agents, and during the regular season most players that become free agents have to 'clear waivers' before they can be signed by another team.
You'll hear "Waivers" talked about quite a bit during the season when a player is released so I'll expand on that a bit - It's basically a 24 hour long window to pick up a player's existing contract after they are cut and before they become a free agent. Most of the regular season cuts are guys at the bottom of the depth chart so they usually clear waivers, but it's not uncommon to have a team release a more talented player for disciplinary reasons, then a team gambles on their future behaviour because they have talent and claims them off waivers.
It goes in draft order from last season (before any trades), then after a few weeks it switches to worst-to-best in current season standings. That means if a team cuts a player tomorrow and they go through waivers, the Browns get first dibs on him, then the Giants, then the Colts etc.
In my time being an NFL fan, I've seen San Francisco go from being average in the late 2000s, perennial contenders under Jim Harbaugh, back to being a joke again in the last 3 years, then looking like getting back to respectability again at the end of last year and beginning of this year.
Just makes the Patriots' feats even more impressive to be consistently good for so long under Belichick.
The Eagles/Jaguars game this year looks like an absolute cracker - definitely going to be sat watching that game and wishing I bought tickets. Only game I've been to was the Raiders/Dolphins game a few years back, where we lost 38-14 and Dennis Allen got fired after the game. The game got pretty one-sided early on, and about midway through the third quarter you would've been forgiven for thinking the Dolphins were the 'home' team. So it'd be pretty cool to go back and see an actually competitive game.
I'm very much a "recreational" NFL watcher, but I know enough to see that this is quite extraordinary;
Just makes the Patriots' feats even more impressive to be consistently good for so long under Belichick.
That's seriously impressive.
"It goes in draft order from last season"
I'm slightly vague on all this "draft pick" stuff, but I think it means, essentially, the teams with the worst record get first puck, & vice-versa. Is that right?
More intriguing is this thing where Teams "trade away" draft picks. It goes something like "The Browns traded away Draft Pick # 1 in the 18/19 Season for 3rd & 4th picks in the 19/20 Season".
None of which makes a lot of sense to me.
One other thing that helps me understand & vaguely follow NFL is how important to every team the QB is.
More - far more - than a leading goalscorer, midfielder or goalkeeper in Football (Association Football), the whole team seems to revolve around the quality of the QB.
For me, again as an armchair viewer with only a basic understanding of the game, the QB is the one player I can follow throughout a game, & sort of identify with.
Once the snap has completed, with players rushing in all directions & the ball often invisible, I can at least watch the QB & see what he is trying to do. And oh my, marquee QB's get paid a LOT of money.
The trading picks thing - There's no transfer fees or anything like that, so draft picks and players are the only 'currency' with which to trade. Think of picks as the NFL's currency and it makes much more sense.
Often teams will have a model that assigns a value to all the picks in a draft in order to help with deciding what is a good or bad trade, based on what players picked at that stage of the draft are likely to do in their careers - They usually look something like this:
https://www.drafttek.com/NFL-Trade-Value-Chart.asp
Really helps to illustrate the idea of draft picks as currency. If you think of the trade where the Rams moved up from #15 to #1 to grab Jared Goff a couple of years ago, you can see how many 'points' worth of picks they have to give up to make that trade happen, and why they have to give up picks in future years because if the Rams gave the 15th pick in each round, there's just not enough picks in one years' draft to move up that far and be a worthwhile trade for the other team.
You then get other market factors that come into play - If there's only one highly rated QB prospect in the draft and there's a team lurking at #3 who everyone knows is looking for a QB, then the teams at #1 and #2 can get more value out of the teams wanting to trade up as a result.
Something like this happened with the RG3 trade in 2012 - The Rams had the #2 pick, there were supposedly 2 top QBs in the draft, and everyone knew the Colts were taking Andrew Luck at #1 because they had just let Peyton Manning go. Additionally, everyone knew at this point the 2013 QB class looked REALLY bad, and Cleveland at #3 also needed a QB.
Therefore the Rams, not needing a QB as they had Sam Bradford at the time, basically had the ability to name their price for RG3 with several teams needing QBs and the Browns being guaranteed to take him if you didn't trade with the Rams. They got an absolutely ridiculous haul of draft picks for RG3 as a result, then proceeded to swing and miss with most of the picks they gained throughout the next three drafts.