In case you haven’t heard, Laurence Maroney kicked off free agency by getting arrested. TMZ has obtained his mug shot.
Category: NFL (Page 199 of 1282)
Antrel Rolle had a few interesting things to say about Tom Coughlin during a recent interview with Miami radio station WQAM, including how he feels things are a little too uptight around Giants headquarters.
From ESPN New York:
“As a person I don’t have any problem with coach Coughlin,” Rolle said. “We have a great relationship. When you’re talking about the coaching side of things, do I feel like things are a little too uptight? Yeah, I do.
“I feel like if he just loosened up just a little bit, still run the ship the way you want to run it, still run the program the way you want to run it but let us have a little fun … because at the end of the day that’s what it’s all about.”
“And people like to talk about Rex Ryan and this that and the other. That team is going to war for him,” Rolle added.
Tom Coughlin also has a Super Bowl ring and Rex Ryan doesn’t (at least yet, anyway).
Before sharing his opinion on his head coach, Rolle went out of his way to say a few times how much he likes Coughlin as a person. Rolle has a right to express himself and say what’s on his mind but I’m wondering if he should have said anything at all.
Rolle isn’t the first person to point out that Coughlin is a little rigid. Before the Giants won the Super Bowl in 2007, Michael Strahan said that Coughlin needed to loosen up, too. But Rolle isn’t the player that Strahan was. His play is too inconsistent and considering he’s the highest paid safety in NFL history, he should be more productive than he was last season. (Especially if he’s going to criticize his head coach in the offseason.)
Again, Rolle was somewhat tactful with his comments but he should first look at his own game before questioning someone else’s.
The sight of Braylon Edwards doing back flips after the Jets beat the Patriots on Sunday must have made Brown fans want to puke. He didn’t help their team win anything in Cleveland and now the jagoff is knocking on the door of a Super Bowl appearance.
What makes the situation even tougher for Cleveland fans is that the Browns could have had the quarterback that absolutely shredded the top-seeded Falcons the night before Edwards and the Jets beat the Patriots. Twenty-one slots after the Browns selected Edwards with the third overall pick in the 2005 NFL Draft, the Packers nabbed California quarterback Aaron Rodgers. Where would the Browns be today had they taken Rodgers instead?
Granted, no two situations are ever exactly alike – especially in the NFL. There’s no guarantee that had Cleveland selected Rodgers over Edwards that the Browns would be where the Packers are today. It just doesn’t work that way in sports – or life for that matter. Rodgers could have turned out to be the next Tim Couch for all we know and as I point out below, had the Browns drafted him that year, they may have never acquired feature back Peyton Hillis in 2010.
But for a moment, let’s play the “What if?” game. Let’s pretend that everything would have worked out for Rodgers in Cleveland, just like it has in Green Bay. Let’s assume that the quarterback-needy Browns would have set themselves up by taking Rodgers at No. 3 and with that in mind, what other teams blew it by not selecting the California gunslinger?
Come with me on a journey back to Saturday, April 23, 2005. Below is a list of 10 quarterback-needy teams that passed on Rodgers that fateful day and at what pick in the draft. Also listed are the players those teams took ahead of Rodgers, and a brief look at their current situation.
No. 1 San Francisco 49ers
Who they took instead of Rodgers: Alex Smith, QB
This one probably stings the most. Smith and Rodgers were the only quarterbacks that were worthy of taking at No. 1 and the Niners were set on taking a signal caller. They decided on Smith because they fell in love with his athleticism, which was something Rodgers supposedly didn’t have enough of. Thanks to constant coaching turnover and an unstable situation, Smith hasn’t panned out and Rodgers is running around the Georgia Dome carpet making plays with both his arm and legs. So much for not having any athleticism…
For those of us playing fantasy football (in one form or another) during the NFL playoffs, I thought it would be worthwhile to calculate end-of-year strength of schedule. I won’t be updating the SOS data throughout the playoffs, but I should be able to post a table each week with updated matchups.
What am I looking at?
Below you’ll see a table with a list of team names on the left and a list of positions (including PPR data) along the top. If a square is pink, it means that the matchup is tough. If it’s green, it means it’s a favorable matchup.
It’s important to note that this is NOT straight fantasy points allowed. I removed the bias of schedule by looking at the opponents of each defense and how they fared in their other games. For example, if a particular defense faced a series of great QBs, then that is taken into account in these tables.
For those of us who are going to play fantasy football through the playoffs, I thought it would be worthwhile to calculate strength of schedule for the first week of the playoffs. I’m not going to be updating SOS throughout the playoffs, but I should be able to post an updated table each week with SOS data updated through W17.
How do I use SOS?
Generally speaking, I use strength of schedule as a tiebraker between two similarly ranked players. Let’s say I’m trying to decide between starting BenJarvus Green-Ellis and Cedric Benson. All else being equal, these two players are very close in my mind. But if BGE has a great matchup and Benson has a bad matchup, the choice is clear. In fact, if BGE just has a mediocre matchup while Benson has a bad matchup, I’d probably go with the Law Firm.
Be careful not to read too much into these tables. You aren’t going to bench Chris Johnson in a bad matchup unless you have a bona fide RB1 with a good matchup waiting in the wings.
Ben Roethlisberger has the best matchup of the QBs, but keep in mind that the Jets numbers are inflated due to the stint where Darrelle Revis was out earlier in the season. I’d still start Rodgers ahead of Big Ben despite a so-so matchup with the Bears…James Starks looks like a sleeper at RB this week, while the NYJ wideouts could surprise against the Steelers…Greg Olsen looks like the best play at TE, and seems to have good games against the Packers.
Click on the bracket for a bigger version.
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