Sgt Schultz

I'll say this from experience as a St. Louis Blues fan since 1969......fans say they will sell their souls and be happy into eternity if their team wins just one championship. After 50 years, the Blues won the Stanley Cup in 2019. Four seasons later, their eternally happy fans are not. We are probably not as fatalistic as we were prior to 2019, and maybe that is part of the problem. We are now comparing everything to 2019, and with that comes expectations. Panther fans compare everything to 2015. It would not be a lot different had we actually prepared for Denver and won that Superb Owl. Sure, there would be less sting and a smile from winning one, but it would not make change the mood much if the years after that remained the same. When the down years are legitimate wild card berths, then the mood will change.

If they want to use a neutral site for the AFCC, I would suggest a test market. Play the game in Cleveland so they can see if there is support for an NFL team. But then again, by that criteria they could approach Charlotte.

This has been an aggravating morning at work (normal for a Thursday). This wipes away my grimaces. That is great news.

For anybody interested, here is a link to a story with how Hamlin's family feels: https://www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/damar-hamlins-family-frustrated-by-criticism-of-bengals-tee-higgins/ I feel for Tee Higgins. That same situation happens several times every game. People have some strange need to assess blame, and if there is none to be assessed that does not stop them. Then, give them access to social media and relative anonymity and it goes haywire.

No matter what they do, it will not be the right decision, even if it is the right decision. The league has gotten into the situation of trying to keep everybody happy in the last 10-15 years, and that is an impossible task. It usually leads to making everybody unhappy. The problem is they really don't have the luxury of time, due to the logistics involved with the playoffs. The playoff sites and pairings are still up in the air right now. If something is going to change or move, it pretty much needs to happy no later than Sunday. There are basically four teams directly affected by what they decide. They are probably communicating with all of them, as they should. Maybe I'm being stupid here, but I have more faith in their ability to come up with a decent solution than I do them figuring out what constitutes a catch. Then again, the Competition Committee is not involved in this (most likely), so it has a chance of working out for the better.

I was pretty much with you when they shipped CMC off. This was a team that looked like a complete fiasco. In the statement about how much Rhule held this team back is another aspect that needs to be factored in before saying "Wilks set this team back." One of Rhule's major problems was not putting players in a position to succeed, either by playing them out of position or not playing them at all (generally in favor of those who were "OOU.") At least some of that has been corrected, and we have fewer situations where we think somebody ought to be pretty good, but have nothing to base it on. More of our roster is now a known, either for better or worse. Even if we thought they were pretty good and they have not shown it once given the chance, at least we have some idea. Heading into FA and the draft not knowing how good the team is at various positions because the bonehead at the controls never bothered to find out is the worst of all worlds. Just knowing more of those answers, for better or worse, makes it hard to say Wilks has set us back. We may not be drafting 2nd or 3rd, but at least we have a better idea what we need to draft.

A major ditto to both. Although I doubt is Sharpe set Bayless straight, because the guy wanted to double down on what he had said and would have had Shannon not stopped him. As for Hamlin, that is great news. If his doctors see what they had been hoping for and his family is happy, not much more needs to be said.

I can't pie this enough.

When you start out with a discussion about lasagna (implied vs. meat balls) as a mechanism to determine whether a guy should be hired as head football coach, expect some interesting twists and turns. Or uninteresting twists and turns.

I wouldn't know. The closest I come to drinking any milk directly (other than sometimes chocolate milk) is milk stout.

Coffee I usually drink black. If I am drinking a coffee drink that gets a dose of milk, I'm with you on oat or almond milk. Skim does not foam worth a dime. As you are probably aware, elk or bison steaks have to be cooked less than you would do with beef. It is much leaner, so it gets tough quick when overcooked. The best method I have found for any steak I got off a "grillmaster" online.....cook it less than you want, then loosely wrap it in foil for 10 minutes or so, then have at it. Chicken is fine, especially when made beer-can style or spatchcocked, the former with a good rub and the later with a sauce. And for all the healthiness this post acts to have, we love us some good fried chicken, too.

We are bison and elk people around here. I wonder where we sit in the Harbaugh diet pecking order?

I see no new updates on Hamlin's condition, which I think is probably good news. I think we will all breathe a little easier if and when we find out he is responsive and things appear normal. It is a scary situation, with nothing anybody can do but wait.

Might I suggest that instead of spewing nonsense, without knowing the reason this thread started, you do something positive like contributing to the GoFundMe Hamlin set up? Short of that, I might also suggest that you actually figure out what is going on before you decide to hurl insults and BS. It will save you from looking like a fool. This thread has done exactly what it was designed to do.....move the discussion about what's next from a thread discussing our hopes and prayers for Hamlin, so that thread could remain dedicated to its purpose. But don't let any of that stop you from embarrassing yourself. Continue expressing ill-informed opinions and thinking you are actually accomplishing something instead doing something substantive.

That was the reason I was thinking the NFC playoffs start as planned and they take the bye before the NFCC rather than up front. But, that leaves open the possibility that KC winds up with two weeks off if they wind up as the AFC #1 seed. This is one of those situations that the best option is the least bad of the available options. If somehow, somebody can figure out a solution that puts the screws to the Bucs or Cowboys, I am all in.

Yeah, I'm not trying to give them the benefit of the doubt on using that logic, just saying that would be the one reason I could understand. Truth is, if that had been the reason, we would have heard that from the league already. It would be a perfectly valid explanation, to announce that the decision to cancel the game was made moments after the incident after conferring with the game officials who had talked to the coaches, but they first had to ensure the safety of a stadium full of fans. People would get that. It even implies somebody is actually keeping their wits about them in a crisis. My guess? The league office just froze. It was a crisis that required leadership, and unfortunately there is little to be found in the league offices these days. I think the coaches drove the decision. I don't even think the league was scheming how to continue the game, they just froze. If they told the game officials to get the teams warming up, that was most likely by rote. I think we have all seen that sort of leadership before, people that can't go off script. What am I saying...that describes our former HC up until three months ago. Every piece of information they needed to make the decision (other than whether the stadium could orderly get everybody out and on their way home if they announced the game is canceled) they could get from the game officials. They were there, they sense the emotions of the players and most likely shared them, they've talked to the coaches, and they probably had the exact same feeling of dread everybody else had. With seven of them, the odds are pretty good one of them is better at PR than the league office, too. Hell, all they had to do was turn on the telecast and hear nearly dead silence in a stadium still full of 65,000 fans who had been amped up for that game just ten minutes earlier. To borrow a quote attributed to Churchill, the NFL "can always be counted on to do the right thing, after having exhausted all other possibilities."

If that is true, the yellow team is following "the process."

The officials on the field are probably desperate for some sort of direction from the league at that point. There apparently wasn't any for a while and the eventual direction may have come from the realization that nobody was going back on the field, regardless. I was thinking about the delay in making the official decision, and the one rationale I can understand (other than it being complete chaos and the league leadership is just not very strong) is concern about telling 65,000 people to go home over two hours before anybody expected 65,000 people to go home in mass. It would be prudent to ask the stadium officials whether the support is in place to handle that, like traffic cops to control the flow of cars, security to make sure everybody stays safe, etc. Were they there, or nearby, or would they have to be called in early? That said, one would think if that was the reason, somebody would have told the on-field officials and teams that the game was cancelled but it was not going to be announced publicly until they were sure the resources were in place to handle the bedlam. I did not get a whiff that was the flow of the decision, rather the decision flowed from the coaches to the game officials and up to the league. Who knows? Right now, we are all just hoping for encouraging news on Halmin's condition and what his quality of life will be. The ashes can be swept up later. Burning Goodell in effigy can wait until Friday. It is always a good TGIF activity, anyway.

"Past performance is not indicative of future results." Granted, in the case you cited, the guy in question inherited a juggernaut. But, at a minimum, he did not eff it up. His next job, though............

While I was walking the dog this morning, I was thinking about how the NFL can handle the whole schedule mess and last night’s Cincy-Buffalo game. Hey, it beats thinking about work when I am walking her. This assumes they don't wedge the game in tomorrow night, and the timeline is getting tight for doing that. There are 13 games in the NFL playoffs, including the Super Bowl. Honestly, the only game that is hard-wired in terms of date and location is the Super Bowl, itself. Most of the playoff venues and times are just now starting to come into focus. As a result, the schedule of who plays where and when are still unknown. So, hold that thought, because we will start at the end and work forward. There is no divine guidance that there must be two weeks between the CC’s and the Owl. In fact, there have been years where there has only been one (generally due to labor issues that disrupted the season). I realize the NFL would prefer two to hype the thing, but, as the Rolling Stones sang, you can’t always get what you want. This is an extraordinary circumstance, both in the gravity of what happened, when it happened, and between two teams that are in the mix for the #1 spot in the conference. I see a couple of reasonable options. Again, we start with the assumption that the Owl is not moving. If everybody is good with just moving forward without playing that game, it gets less complicated but is more controversial. The obvious loser is Baltimore, because without a Bengals loss last night they can not win the division. The potential solution to that is that since the Ravens won the first meeting, if they beat Cincy Sunday give them the AFCN slot and relegate the Bengals to the WC round. I doubt Cincy would go for that. This is really only part of the mess with this plan. The other problem is that Buffalo, Cincy, and KC are all in the running for the AFC’s #1 slot. The only way to correct that if they all finish with records that mean last night would matter is to play the AFCC at a neutral site if more than one of these teams is in it. It is not ideal, but this is not an ideal situation. This plan has the advantage of holding on to whatever logistics already exist, other than a neutral AFCC and that only happens if two of the three teams in contention wind up in the game. If only one advances, they are the home team in their home stadium. None of the three teams play in a dome, so if you decide to make it somewhere between the three cities, it can be outside without penalizing anybody. Now for what would be more work but less controversy. Move BOTH CC games to the Sunday before the Owl. Once that is done, there are more options. The NFC does not need to move anything else. The NFCC should only be moved to make sure both conference winners face the same preparation time. The NFC could hold their first and second rounds as currently scheduled, and then have a bye week before the NFCC. Or they could do the same thing I am suggesting for the AFC, but that gives the #1 seed two weeks off which is less than desirable. For the AFC, assuming the game does mean something, play the Cincy-Buffalo game on the weekend that would have been round one. Then offset round one and two back a week. They get no bye week before the AFCC, but that is the same for both teams involved. And I see @KillerKat has a similar or the same idea as what is behind door #2, which would be my preference. Door #1 is still messy in a few ways.

I figured I would start a new thread for this discussion. Maybe it's me, but the other MNF thread should be reserved for discussion surrounding Hamlin's condition, prognosis, and talk related to last night. I'll post my own ideas on what could be done with the schedule a bit later.

If the Mods have no issue, I am going to start a separate topic for what the NFL can do with the schedule (and I don't mean where they can stick it). Maybe it's me, but I am thinking this one should be reserved for updates and discussion about Hamlin's condition and prognosis. It's just an old-fashioned respect thing for me, I guess. Maybe it's just me, though.

The Denver job is just not that attractive for a few reasons. Not only are Mahomes and Herbert on tap twice a season each, but there is the matter of that Russell Wilson contract and performance. By comparison, our situation looks like a paradise.

I'm old enough to remember Chuck Hughes, a WR of the Lions, collapsing in 1971 (had to look up the season and his position, I was 10 years old at the time). He died of heart failure, essentially a heart attack. According to what I read, he is the only NFL player to die during a game. I sincerely hope that remains true a few days from now. The last death I remember in a professional sports game was when umpire John McSherry collapsed and died on opening day in Cincinnati in 1996. The umpires had the good sense to cancel that game, and I don't think the players were going to take the field, anyway. If anyone thinks Roger Goodell is bad, read Marge Schott's (then owner of the Reds) comments after that. Her and Bayless must share DNA somehow. I'll wait to hear an explanation of what all happened between Hamlin's collapse and the game finally being called off. If the reports of the NFL's response prove to be true, Goodell has to go. Geez, I know this is redundant, but my thoughts are with Damar Hamlin and his family.

Had we hung on to The Process to secure probably a #3-5 draft pick (I doubt we were outsucking the Texans or Bears, probably not the Broncos or Cardinals, either), we would be a friggin mess right now of epic proportions. We honestly would probably be about to hire a Wilks/Rivera type coach just to stop the bleeding.