Jakuvious

Luckily, the Chargers schedule is really rough in December. At Pittsburgh, Cincy, at KC, Baltimore, and at Denver is a really rough stretch to finish the season.

I think it will stay as KC and NE. They're the front runners as is, KC has a pretty strong history of success against the Chargers under Reid, and the same is true for the Pats against the Steelers under Belichek. 2013 was the last time the Chargers beat the Chiefs, and 2011 was the last time the Steelers beat the Pats, so the history is there in the head to head matchups, and LAC losing to KC and/or Pit losing to NE would pretty much ice things there. If LAC and/or PIT can pull the upset in those games, it gets more interesting, but still not guaranteed. 13-3 almost looks like a borderline pessimistic outlook for KC, as things stand, and the Pats only have two games left that look loseable. So you could have a situation where LAC needs to win out to take the division from KC, and Pittsburgh also has several tough opponents left on the schedule. So even if LAC and Pit beat KC and NE respectively, it could be a tough road. Add in that LAC plays Pittsburgh, and it makes it even less likely that both teams overthrow the current #1 and #2.

Personally, I think he should've taken it to the next level and announced his retirement in the huddle. Or just ran a route through the tunnel to the lockerroom mid-play.

How will you find the time to blame the refs when you're already making injury excuses? Kupp is a big loss, but if we're still starting backups across our interior line, Donald is going to feast.

A team is rebuilding anytime that they're not really concerned with what their record is at the end of the year. When the staff and front office is more concerned with progress than production. If you're going to end the season at 2-14 and say okay, that was fine, and not fire anyone over it, you're probably rebuilding. Common things that go along with this would be rookie QBs, new head coaches/front offices, and a recent history of bad results. Typically comes with high roster turnover, because the roster is bad so more rookies are able to win starting jobs, and with no one on second/third contracts you can dabble more in free agency. It might include a tear down like the Raiders, or it might be a team that just never got it like the Browns. But if you look at a team like the Jets, for instance, I don't think anyone is particularly surprised that they aren't all that competitive right now. It'd be nice to be taking the league by storm, but you're really just trying to get the rookie QB and the rest of the recently drafted players some playing time and reps without them getting killed. Even the Cardinals, despite being solid in 2017, were clearly committed. Turnover at coach and QB. Including a rookie at QB. You won't be firing Wilks if the team ends up 4-12 because that's kind of what you planned for. And then you can have teams that are sort of forced to accept that they're still or will be rebuilding. I think the Bills and the Giants hoped to be a little more competitive this year than they have been, but have now had to accept that that's not the case and either have or will make large scale changes as a result to embrace the rebuild (Buffalo benching Peterman and New York presumably moving on from Eli at some point.) And then the Raiders are just a rare and special case, where the whole franchise committed to blowing it up and starting from scratch. That you don't see as often just because the worst case scenario is really bad.

After thinking on this for a bit, for KC I'd say Steven Nelson. Our pass defense looks atrocious at a glance, but a lot of the issues have been from S and ILB play. Our CB play has actually been solid, and Nelson has been the best of them. His personal coverage stats might not even reflect that, due to volume and a lack of S support on go routes (so many go routes thrown his way), but he has been very reliable most of the season. He did have a rough first like 2 or 3 games though, which hurts. But there was a stretch after that where he was allowing like a 33% completion percentage over 4 or 5 games. Was like 10th in passer rating against, last I saw. And ended the game against Cleveland with a clever INT.

He isn't doubled. It's cover 1. So you have 4 rushing, 5 guys in man coverage, 1 S in a deep zone, and 1 S in a shallow zone. Call it a hook zone or a curl zone or a robber or whatever. So he isn't really doubled, he has one guy in man coverage on him, and the play design just means that S in the shallow zone doesn't really have anybody else to cover, so he supports against Kamara. Kamara could've been off the field for a different player and that defense would've covered that play the same way. On the flip side, had Thomas run a deep crossing route instead of a go route, it may well have looked like they doubled Thomas instead. Two players covering one due to the nature of the play call on O and the zone responsibilities on D isn't the same as straight double coverage.

As always, has more to do with formation and personnel than anything else. Gurley rarely sees 8+ in the box because the Rams are in 11 personnel almost the entire season. Can't put 8 in the box against 3 WRs.

Weren't you trashing him earlier in the year?

You're never depleted enough to need Phillip Gaines.

Thank god for this. I was worried Sutton would try to push for KC to resign him.

Really, that's just a silly premise for an article. If you go to overthecap and click to 2020 on any team's roster, you'll see it get depleted. We actually have more players under contract at that point than any of the other top tier teams this year (NE, LAR, LAC, NO, etc.) I actually can't find a team so far with more guys under roster in 2020 than us.

If any game was going to be a trap, it would've been the Browns game. The talent gap is waaaaaaay too big for this one. The Cardinals have so little going for them right now. They've scored over 20 points once all season, and that involved their defense scoring a TD and securing 5 turnovers. And their offense still barely broke 200 yards that day. Last week was their first game with over 300 yards. And both of the above games were against the same team.

I don't think the biggest threat to Mahomes MVP contention will be the INTs, I think it would be losing the wrong games. KC has two huge games left on the schedule, against the Rams and the Chargers. The Rams game doesn't actually matter that much for team standings, but it will be a very high profile matchup. The Chargers game could well decide the division depending on how each team takes care of business elsewhere. And that one is a Thursday night game, if I remember right. So two primetime games against great teams with potential MVP candidates of their own. Wins and good showings in those two games could practically cement his status. On the flip side, losses could do the opposite, and could even lose the division race, which would really take him out. I only think the INTs weigh him down if they get memorable or significant. Something game losing would hurt. But most of his INTs have just been insignificant. Either in games too comfortable to matter, or as long last play of the first half kind of situations. New England had the only INT that really mattered to the game result in a negative way, but he played so well after it that it kind of washed it away in terms of public perception.

There's a vital difference between a defensive slugfest and offensive incompetence. This isn't the 2000s Steelers/Ravens matchup. This was a rookie QB versus Brock Osweiler.