2021-2 NFL Pro Football (pls, no other sports!)

A dozen QBs are worthy of next year’s Super Bowl. The 49ers don’t have one but the Raiders do
With the 2022 NFL QB carousel slowing down, a look at 12 QBs that give their teams a chance at the Super Bowl
San Francisco Bay Area News Group: March 22, 2022

There are a dozen teams with a QB that can deliver a win in Super Bowl LVII in Glendale, Ariz., and just as important, have the supporting cast to help make it happen a year from now, based on their championship status:

1. Josh Allen, Buffalo
Had one of the truly great under-the-radar seasons in NFL history a year ago and the gold standard in terms of a passer who can also run (4,407 yds passing, 36 TDs, 763 yds rushing, six TDs). Solid offseason acquisitions for the Bills included guard Rodger Saffold, TE O.J. Howard and pass rusher Von Miller.

2. Patrick Mahomes, KC
The Chiefs added JuJu Smith-Schuster to an offense that already has Tyreek HIll and Travis Kelce. Still trying to figure out what happened to Mahomes in the second half of the AFC title game loss to the Bengals, but am going to assume it was just a bad day.

3. Tom Brady, TBay
Had the Bucs on the verge of a miraculous comeback in the title game against the Rams until they got Cooper Kupp-ed. One concern — Brady lost both of his starting guards, Ali Marpet to a surprise retirement and Alex Cappa to free agency.

4. Matthew Stafford, L.A. Rams
You’ll notice the Nos. 3 and 4 QBs on this list were acquired specifically with the idea of making a good team a great one by their mere presence and both delivered Super Bowl championships. Why draft and develop when you can fill football’s most important position with a trade?

5. Joe Burrow, Cincinnati
The Bengals signed La’el Collins and Cappa to upgrade the line that saw Burrow get sacked 51 times take a beating in the postseason. If Cincinnati gets its protection shored up, Burrow can put up much bigger numbers than last year’s 4,611 yds and 34 TDs. He’s that good.

6. Justin Herbert, L.A. Chargers
WR Mike Williams was retained with a three-year contract extension, but offense wasn’t the Chargers’ problem. Watch how much better Herbert gets in terms of the bottom line if free agent CB J.C. Jackson lives up to his contract and with Khalil Mack as a bookend pass rusher to go along with Joey Bosa.

7. Aaron Rodgers, GBay
Rodgers played poorly in the playoff loss to the 49ers and his penchant for being overly dramatic is wearing thin. He’s also without Davante Adams, dealt to the Raiders. But he’s won back-to-back MVP awards and he’s going to the Hall of Fame, so he can’t be counted out.

8. Russell Wilson, Denver
This one could go either way. But the guess here is Wilson regains his touch with HC Nathaniel Hackett (formerly with GBay) running the offense and makes the Broncos a viable playoff contender in the QB-rich AFC West.

9. Derek Carr, Raiders
Helped coax his longtime Fresno State friend Davante Adams to LVegas in a deal that instantly makes the Raiders potentially something special on offense. With Adams, Darren Waller and Hunter Renfrow, Carr’s red zone issues should be a thing of the past if the Raiders can protect him.

10. Deshaun Watson, Cleveland
Yes, he could be suspended and it’s more than a little distasteful so many teams were willing to overlook 22 civil suits to throw bags of money at one of the NFL’s dynamic talents. But if the guy is getting $230 million guaranteed, a lot of people will overlook his indiscretions and he’ll be the biggest thing in Cleveland since LeBron James.

11. Dak Prescott, Dallas
Should be good for another 4,449 yds passing and 37 TDs for the Cowboys. Still perplexed by the sight of Prescott running the ball up the middle and running out the clock against the 49ers in the playoffs, but that doesn’t change the fact he’s among the elite of the suddenly QB-thin NFC.

12. Matt Ryan, Indianapolis
Atlanta’s whiff with Watson turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to Ryan. He joins a far superior Colts team that has a great lead back in Jonathan Taylor, solid receivers and a good defense. In terms of decision-making and stability, a huge upgrade over Carson Wentz on a team that’s ready to win.
 

It will be interesting to watch Joe Burrow's this year.
That AFC North is the roughest conference in the NFL.
The Pirates and and the Ravens are capable of giving the Bengals four losses, and Cleveland with Watson?
This conference will be another dog fight.................
(see # 5 above, the Bengals front office is not noted for their intellect)

Where is Carson Wentz?
Counting his millions while he waits for another team to pick him up?
 
Chargers, Dolphins or Colts? Which team has won the NFL offseason so far?
The last few weeks have seen a wild round of trades and signings. But which team has improved the most as we eye the 2022 campaign?
London Guardian U.S. 24 Mar 2022

The NFL has had its wildest offseason in recent memory. The quarterback carousel has been spinning. Record contracts have been inked. And it feels like just yesterday that Aaron Rodgers was getting intimate with oils. Here are the winners of the offseason so far – the teams that have improved their chances the most for next season.

Denver Broncos
When you move on from Drew Lock and land Russell Wilson, you know you’ve had a good offseason. There are fair questions about the fit between Wilson and the Broncos’ new head coach, Nathaniel Hackett. It isn’t a seamless melding of minds. And you can point, too, to the possibility that Wilson’s game may not age well. He still relies on his mobility as much as any of the game’s upper-tier quarterbacks. What will a Wilson offense look like once his legs start to go?

But that’s tomorrow’s problem! The AFC West is now a year-to-year gauntlet. If you’re bringing anything other than a top-eight quarterback to the proceedings, then there is no chance that you’re making the playoffs.

The Broncos started the offseason with a bottom-three quarterback situation and catapulted themselves into that small cluster of teams who can conceivably claim to have one of the five best in the game (two others happen to be in the same division). And all for a quartet of draft picks and a trio of peripheral players Denver will soon forget about.

Los Angeles Chargers
Having a top-five quarterback on a rookie-scale contract is the sport’s top market inefficiency. The Chargers took full advantage of their situation early in the offseason, investing aggressively, both in terms of cash and draft capital, in an attempt to improve their obvious flaws.

First up: A historically awful run defense. Brandon Staley, the team’s head coach, is a proponent of what is known as the ‘Light Box’ theory, which essentially involves his team vacating the box in order to invite the run – the idea being that the run-game is, in general, less efficient than the pass.

It’s a philosophy that garners talk of genius when a coach is working with Aaron Donald and Sebastian Joseph-Day. Line-up with Jerry Tillery, Justin Jones, and the group Staley was working with last season? Gulp. The Chargers finished dead last in the NFL in EPA per play against the run, a measure of a unit’s down-to-down efficiency.

Chargers general manager Tom Telesco wasted no time in trying to turn things around, trading for former NFL defensive player of the year Khalil Mack and reuniting his coach with Joseph-Day, one of the league’s most underrated nose tackles. A reinforced front with Mack alongside Joey Bosa gives Staley the bookends he needs to run his idiosyncratic early-down defense, and offers the Chargers a formidable one-two pass-rush punch on later downs.

Things have shifted on the back end, too. One element to the Staley orthodoxy is how few coverages the coach likes to run within a single game. Staley’s grand plan is to have as dynamic a defense over the entire season as possible – bouncing from one thing to another on a week-to-week basis. But in each individual game, Staley and his defense lean all the way into their chosen style. It’s not unusual to see the Chargers run the same coverage concept on nine or 10 successive plays, typically a no-no in the NFL.

Handing former Patriots cornerback JC Jackson a $16m-a-year deal is a bid by the Chargers to diversify their coverage packages. Staley likes to play zone; Jackson is a best as a man-to-man corner. The majority of NFL teams now run fancy coverages that pair both principles together. The Chargers were lacking that complexity last year, but by dropping in Jackson alongside safeties Nasir Adderley and Derwin James, Staley now has a malleable secondary that will allow him to get more adventurous in coverage.

Miami Dolphins
Over the span of a week, the Dolphins signed Terron Armstead, one of the league’s best left tackles (when healthy), and traded for Tyreek Hill, the league’s most impactful wide receiver.

It’s hard to overstate the significance of the Hill trade. Few trades really have the potential to transform an organization. The Hill-to-Miami deal does. Hill is one of the few non-quarterbacks whose skill-set completely shifts the geometry of the field. His ability to outpace anyone on the defensive side of the ball forces opposing defensive coordinators to commit two pieces – at a minimum – to securing leverage on his position at all times, and to back up as far from the line of scrimmage as possible, for fear of being left in the dust.

There will be no more excuses for Tua Tagovailoa moving forward. The Dolphins have secured a run-game guru at head coach, reinforced the offensive line, and added Hill to a receiving corps featuring Jaylen Waddle and Mike Gesicki. Good luck to anyone trying to slow that offense down.

Cincinnati Bengals
Like the Chargers, the Bengals had an obvious weakness and set to work remapping their weakest area: The offensive line. Cincy’s group gifted a historic amount of pressure on Joe Burrow last season, finishing with the league’s worst pressure rate and conceding 70 sacks, an NFL record.

The Bengals focused less on chucking money at their problem and more on changing the profile of their offensive line altogether. Burrow’s bobbing, weaving, create-on-the-fly style pushed the Bengals into investing in a series of latch-and-shuffle linemen early in the quarterback’s career – men who would fight and scrap throughout a play as Burrow looked to move and create.

No more. The Bengals moved to bring in Ted Karras, Alex Cappa, and La’el Collins. All three are maulers. All three play a more proactive style than the Bengals have opted for during the Burrow era. All three want to stun defenders early on, win with an initial jolt, and then hope for the best. The Bengals’ plan is clear: Win early in the rep, and then if Joe needs to make a play, he’ll figure it out.

It’s a smart change, and they’re probably not done. The Bengals are likely to explore the trade market or look to add another lineman early in the draft. Protecting Burrow is all that matters, and the typically slow-moving (read: cheap) Bengals have shown a commitment to protecting their franchise quarterback for the long term.

Buffalo Bills
Buffalo were 12 seconds of chaos away from beating the Chiefs in the playoffs last season. If they had advanced, they would probably have beaten the Bengals in the AFC title game – from there, who knows?

They have added strength on strength this offseason, signing Von Miller to a six-year mega-deal that effectively functions as a three-year, please-push-us-over-the-top plea for help. The Bills didn’t desperately need extra pass-rushing juice, but adding a future Hall of Famer who totaled 80-odd pressures last year (his best return since 2017) and delivered defining plays throughout the Rams’ run to the Super Bowl is the kind of move that shifts a team from being great into an out-and-out juggernaut.

Don’t overlook the addition of Rodger Saffold to the offensive line, either. The Titans released Saffold due to a decline in play, his advancing age, and some injury concerns. But if he’s healthy and good to go he will bring a tenacity to the Bills’ run game that has been sorely lacking over the last couple of seasons.

Indianapolis Colts
Think about this:
  • The Colts entered the offseason with Carson Wentz, a bad quarterback
  • They leave the offseason with Matt Ryan, a good quarterback, one who comfortably outperformed the surrounding tire-fire in Atlanta last season.
  • They did so without adding any extra money to their cap, with Atlanta absorbing a $40m (!) dead cap hit.
  • Ryan’s cap hold is lower in Indy than Wentz’s would have been.
  • They did it all for the cost of a third-round pick … and they brought in two third-round picks by dealing Wentz to Washington.
Chris Ballard has made some funky decisions over the past 12 months. But his handling of the offseason quarterback shuffle should earn him executive of the year nods already.

The Colts roster is far from complete. But unlike other sides staring down the AFC’s quarterback standoff, the Colts need only worry about contending in their own division: win 10 games, pip the Titans to the division title, and they will make the playoffs. With Ryan offering competent quarterback play and a defense laden with talent, 10 wins should be the floor.

Ryan will be the Colts’ fifth starting quarterback in five years. And it’s likely that within two years he will hit the wall and Indianapolis will once again be in the market for a quarterback. But Ryan is an undoubted upgrade over Wentz, and adding him offers more wiggle room with the cap to add other impactful pieces. An offseason doesn’t get much better than that.
 

Just a 'homer' take on the home team.

Titans have been pretty quiet during the free agent moves.
Added Robert Woods (WR) from the Rams and Austin Hooper (TE) from the Browns to replace exiting players.
Both are good moves IMO.
Resigned some key players.

Defense seems set and I'm hoping to shore up the Offensive Line further.

The Draft is coming up and I'll be watching every pick, from start to finish.
As the wife will say, 'You have no life...'
 
NFL to Change Postseason OT Rule After Bills’ Playoff Loss
Each team will now get at least one OT possession in playoff games.
NY Times March 29, 2022

PALM BEACH, Fla. — The NFL’s 32 clubs passed a rule change on Tuesday to ensure that both teams would possess the ball at least once in OT of postseason games. The measure comes months after KC won a divisional round playoff game against the Buffalo Bills, who were not given a chance to score in OT.

The change in the league’s OT rules was their first since 2010, when clubs voted to allow teams that scored a TD on the opening possession of OT in a playoff game to win. (Before that, the team that scored first in any way in OT won.) The rule, which by its nature gave an advantage to the team that won the OT coin toss, was extended to the regular season in 2012.

Since 2010, there have been 12 postseason OT games, and the team that won the coin toss preceding OT went on to win 10 of those 12 games. Seven of those 10 wins came on a first-drive TD.

The game between KC and Buffalo in January might have been the most dramatic of all such games. The two teams’ high-powered offenses scored a total of four TDs in the final two minutes of regulation, and KC won, 42-36, by scoring a TD on the first possession of OT.

In the aftermath, commentators, fans and football executives lamented that viewers did not get to see the Bills and QB Josh Allen try to score in OT, too, a furor that catalyzed the league to adopt the new rule.

“There has to be the latest example for change, and that was the last straw that now, hey, we need to move forward and do this,” said Bills Coach Sean McDermott, who called the rule change “bittersweet.” “It’s the right thing for the game.”

Both teams will now be guaranteed at least one possession, regardless of the clock. If both teams score a TD on their opening drives, then the team that scores next wins.

The proposal for the rule change, which was made by staff members of the Indianapolis Colts and Philadelphia Eagles, would have affected both the 2021 regular season and postseason. McDermott said there was strong support for making this change only for the postseason, explaining, “That is where we were going to start.”

The rule change, however, will extend games. Some coaches, including John Harbaugh of the Baltimore Ravens, flagged it as a player safety concern, a reason for limiting it to the postseason, when teams’ seasons are on the line.

KC proposed OT changes after the 2018 season that would have given both teams a possession, after it lost the AFC championship game to the NE Patriots, who scored on a first-drive TD.

McDermott said the Bills’ playoff game against KC was cited several times in the meeting as teams discussed the rule change.

“It’s potentially the greatest 20 to 30 minutes of football that I’ve ever seen,” said Rich McKay, the Atlanta Falcons’ president and the chairman of the NFL’s competition committee. “And to think it ended that way definitely brought up the idea of, hey, does that work for everybody?”
 
Feelslikefar said:
Just a 'homer' take on the home team.

Titans have been pretty quiet during the free agent moves.
Added Robert Woods (WR) from the Rams and Austin Hooper (TE) from the Browns to replace exiting players.
Both are good moves IMO.
Resigned some key players.

Defense seems set and I'm hoping to shore up the Offensive Line further.

The Draft is coming up and I'll be watching every pick, from start to finish.
As the wife will say, 'You have no life...'
Click to expand...
It'll be interesting to see if Woods comes back 100% after his serious injury. He was an important piece of the Rams offense, an excellent blocker on the sweeps as well as having good hands. Acknowledged as one of their leaders in the locker room, as well.

He'll be a great addition to your Titans if the trade works out!
 
"The Colts roster is far from complete. But unlike other sides staring down the AFC’s quarterback standoff, the Colts need only worry about contending in their own division: win 10 games, pip the Titans to the division title, and they will make the playoffs. With Ryan offering competent quarterback play and a defense laden with talent, 10 wins should be the floor."

The NFL has achieved parity, BUT the conferences-no way.
THe AFC North will beat you, repeatedly.
The teams in the NFC West will beat you repeatedly.
 
Lethe200

PALM BEACH, Fla. — The NFL’s 32 clubs passed a rule change on Tuesday to ensure that both teams would possess the ball at least once in OT of postseason games. The measure comes months after KC won a divisional round playoff game against the Buffalo Bills, who were not given a chance to score in OT.

The old rule was bizarre, unfair-I''m glad they changed the rule.
 
The NFL's record on Latino HCs is almost as bad: 4 teams total, but only 2 guys. Tom Flores was HC of both Raiders and Seahawks, and Ron Rivera of Panthers and Commanders.

Bruce Arians Gave the NFL a Diversity Blueprint It Shouldn’t Ignore
His tactical retirement plan as the TBay Buccaneers coach created an opportunity for Todd Bowles and left a pipeline of experienced Black assistant coaches and coordinators.
NY Times April 1, 2022

Rooney Rule? Maybe the NFL should forget the Rooney Rule, which the league leans on in a halfhearted effort to increase diversity among its head coaches. What the NFL needs are more leaders like Bruce Arians.

A profound American truth was on display this week in Tampa, Fla. When it comes to racial progress, it often takes one person in a position of power — emboldened, unafraid and, because of systemic inequity, usually white — to break through the logjam.

Over a year after coaching the TBay Buccaneers to Super Bowl victory, and two weeks after learning Tom Brady would return from what may be the shortest superstar retirement in sports history — Arians shocked football by announcing his retirement this week, elevating his handpicked successor, Todd Bowles, to the job.

Bowles, TBay’s highly regarded defensive coordinator, is one in a wide cast of Black assistants whom Arians entrusted with significant power in his time helming the Buccaneers and the Arizona Cardinals. Despite the stockpile of experienced coaches Arians has loaded into the NFL’s talent pipeline, Bowles, 58, is just the fourth Black head coach in the league.

“A number of people have already asked, why are you stepping away from a chance to go to the Hall of Fame and win another Super Bowl?” Arians, who will move into a consultant role with the team’s front office, said this week. “Succession is way more important to me. This has been my dream for a long time.

“I wanted one of my guys to take over,” he added. “That’s more important to me than anything.”

TBay coaches are positioned to take over other big jobs around the league. Last season, Arians’s team had the only staff with three minority coordinators — Bowles, along with Byron Leftwich and Keith Armstrong, who led the team’s offense and special teams. Add to that assistant head coach Harold Goodwin. With Bowles’s promotion, the Buccaneers elevated two Black assistants, Larry Foote and Kacy Rodgers, to coordinate the defense this season. In 2021, the TBay staff was the only one in the NFL to have two women in assistant coaching roles.

Consider how mightily the league has struggled with diversifying its hires. This week, with the discrimination lawsuit brought by Brian Flores, the former head coach of the Miami Dolphins, casting a pall over the annual meeting of team owners and coaches, the NFL announced that it would expand the Rooney Rule. It will now include women in its count of minority interviews for head coach candidates (never mind that, as written, the expansion could allow a team to interview no candidates of color). The league also named a six-member committee to review its diversity practices.

But the NFL’s scant number of nonwhite head coaches reflects the way a segregated society works. Friends hire friends. Jobs don’t always go to the most qualified candidate but to whomever employers are familiar and comfortable with. Coaching staffs reflect their leaders in a league in which roughly 60 percent of the players are Black and the number of Black head coaches is usually mired in the low single digits.

At 69, with a championship ring and an ocean of respect for his football acumen from his peers, Arians leaves the coaching ranks having created an opportunity for Black talent to rise. That’s just as important to his legacy as the accolades.

Arians has been called “the coolest damn coach in the NFL” partly for his swagger — his love for Kangol derby caps and his adopting a kind of old-school Black cultural style born of an intimate familiarity.

Arians grew up in a multiracial community in York, Pa. As a QB in the early 1970s at Virginia Tech, a school that long resisted integrating its football team, he was the first white player to live with a Black roommate — James Barber, the father of the NFL stars Tiki and Ronde Barber. Arians and Barber cheekily called themselves “Salt and Pepper” and were loyal friends.

Creating the most diverse coaching staff in professional football did not happen by design, Arians said. Instead, he just hired “the best coaches I know.”

“To hear voices in a staff meeting that aren’t the same, that don’t look alike but they all have input, you get better output,” he said.

Arians sees the whole field. What he has done in promoting and clearing the path for Black talent might be called allyship in some corners. Known for his wry saltiness, he would probably snarl at that description. To him, it’s just the right thing to do.

It should be noted that he is following a blueprint similar to that drawn up by Tony Dungy, the first Black head coach in TBay and the first to win a Super Bowl, which he accomplished while leading the Indianapolis Colts in the 2006 season. Mike Tomlin, the Black Super Bowl-winning head coach who is heading into his 16th season with Pittsburgh, just hired his first Black coordinator, Teryl Austin, to run the defense.

Key in any discussion of diverse hiring, which Arians recognized, is addressing an unfortunate truth: Black head coaches must be near perfect. They rarely get the second or even third chances afforded their white peers. And in the infrequent instances when they take over teams, they are usually brought in to oversee squads with meager talent or given little latitude to hire staff to support innovative techniques.

“So many head coaches come into situations where they are set up for failure, and I didn’t want that for Todd,” Arians said, surely thinking of Bowles’s failed tenure leading the talent-thin Jets from 2015 to 2018. Arians added that Brady’s decision to come back, along with the team’s moves to fortify one of the league’s strongest rosters this off-season, “confirmed for me that it was the right time to pass the torch.”

“I wanted to ensure when I walked away that Todd Bowles would have the best opportunity to succeed,” Arians said.

He gets it. So, too, do the Buccaneers. The organization made Bowles the fourth African American head coach in team history, an eye-popping number considering that over one-third of the NFL’s teams have never had a single Black head coach in a noninterim role, by my count.

In the modern era, the NFL didn’t hire an African American head coach until the Raiders did in 1989. Now there are four: Bowles, Mike Tomlin in Pittsburgh, Lovie Smith in Houston and, in Miami, Mike McDaniel, who also identifies as biracial.

The league claims to be pressing hard to remedy an awful track record, even as seven of the nine teams with open head coaching jobs in this hiring cycle offered the roles to white men. Instead of tinkering with rule changes and adding deliberative committees, maybe the NFL should follow the Bruce Arians way.
 
Kind of slow right now.
No block-buster trades, No free agent signings.

So...

Gearing up for the Draft.
Some great Edge Rushers and lots of talented O-Line types.

The big talk around town is the new stadium.
Looks to be a done deal and it's to be a covered one.
Should be ready for the 2026 season.
 
On another thought,

Where to you think Baker Mayfield will end up?

My guess is the Washington Football Team. ( pretty strange typing those words! )
Wentz may not be the answer and I watched Fitzpatrick with his days as a Titan.
They might need some help.
 
Nay, there the 'skins'
Wentz is rapidly becoming only a footnote
Mayfield-who knows, skins look like the best fit. He looks to be a good 700 qb, if he has supporting cast
 
Jerry Jones, owner of Dallas Cowboys has been charged in a paternity suit by a 25 year old single woman.
The case has been dragging on- and- on, Jerry Jones, age 79 denies any responsibility; however, out of the goodness
of his heart ;) he has agreed to support the girl and child.
Specific money amounts were not mentioned, I hope she nailed the old farts hide to the wall.
 
Daryle Lamonica, QB who led Raiders to Super Bowl, dies at 80
Washington Post Sports 22April2022

Daryle Lamonica, the deep-throwing QB who won an AFL Player of the Year award and led the Oakland Raiders to their first Super Bowl appearance, died April 14 of natural causes at his home in Fresno, Calif. He was 80.

Daryle Pasquale Lamonica was born July 17, 1941, in Fresno and played his college ball at Notre Dame. He was drafted in the 12th round by GBay and the 23rd round by the Bills in 1963 and opted to go to the AFL. He was a backup to Jack Kemp in Buffalo before becoming a star in Oakland.

The Raiders acquired Mr. Lamonica in a trade from Buffalo in 1967, when both teams were still in the American Football League before its merger three years later with the National Football League. Nicknamed the “Mad Bomber,” Mr. Lamonica made an immediate impact in Oakland after starting only four games in four seasons with the Bills.

He teamed up with receivers such as Warren Wells and Fred Biletnikoff to turn the Raiders into a powerhouse, going 13-1 in his first season. Mr. Lamonica led the league with 30 TD passes and was a first-team All-Pro and Associated Press AFL Player of the Year.

Mr. Lamonica then threw two TD passes in a win over the Houston Oilers in the AFL title game to send the Raiders to their first Super Bowl in January 1968. The Raiders lost to GBay, 33-14.

In his six seasons as a starter for the Raiders, Mr. Lamonica was one of the most prolific passers in the game, leading pro football with 145 TD passes — 24 more than second-place Fran Tarkenton. He had 16,006 passing yds from 1967 to 1972, ranking third among all pro QBs in that time period.

Mr. Lamonica was an All-Pro again in 1969, when he led the AFL with 3,302 yds passing and 34 TDs. His 34 TD passes still stand as the franchise’s single-season record more than a half-century later.

At his best during the playoffs, Mr. Lamonica threw five TD passes in a 41-6 win over KC in 1968 and a record six the following season against Houston. Only Steve Young and Tom Brady have matched his six TD passes in a playoff game.

On Nov. 17, 1968, Mr. Lamonica played a major role in one of football’s most memorable games, throwing four TD passes, including the go-ahead score to Charlie Smith, in a 43-32 win over the NY Jets. The game became known as the “Heidi Game” because NBC cut away from the finish on the East Coast to show the children’s movie “Heidi” late in the game. The Raiders scored two TDs in a comeback that was not seen on the East Coast, triggering an uproar among football fans.

Mr. Lamonica was replaced as Oakland’s starter in 1973 by Ken Stabler and finished his career in the short-lived World Football League.

Mr. Lamonica retired with 19,154 yds passing and 164 TD passes. The Raiders went 62-16-6 in games he started, for the best winning percentage for any starting QB in the Super Bowl era who started at least 75 games.
 

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Al Davis did love the long ball.


Where is Mayfield going, why Seattle -of course

Tom Brady and his boys return to Dallas this year; they will be beat, beat, and beat, i mean beat, yes...
 
Las Vegas did it up last night ... not surprising!
iu



I watched most of the 1st round... I like to see where LSU and Ohio State players end up - the two colleges that I follow.

iu
 
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It surprised me, that 2 teams traded away their proven successful (yet still young and excellent) WR's, for draft picks, last night.

In addition, I had already been surprised when Cinn. recently traded away Tyreek Hill!

OOPS! I am editing, because it was KC that traded away Tyreek Hill, for 5 draft picks, including a first rounder. I guess that explains it, at least partially.
 
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The A.J. Brown trade had something to do with the Cap and maybe something else was going on.

Team Chemistry?

Disappointed, sure I was. Guess time will tell.

On to the next rounds! :)
 
Going into the draft, I was hoping we would use one of our picks for a QB for the future.
We selected Malik Willis from Liberty.
Strong arm, fleet feet, he just needs time to get defense reads down.
Count me as satisfied with the pick.
 
Feelslikefar said:
Going into the draft, I was hoping we would use one of our picks for a QB for the future.
We selected Malik Willis from Liberty.
Strong arm, fleet feet, he just needs time to get defense reads down.
Count me as satisfied with the pick.
Click to expand...
I thought that was a smart pick of theirs. Very promising possible potential for future. Will be interesting to watch him mature.
 
Feelslikefar said:
Going into the draft, I was hoping we would use one of our picks for a QB for the future.
We selected Malik Willis from Liberty.
Strong arm, fleet feet, he just needs time to get defense reads down.
Count me as satisfied with the pick.
Click to expand...

Seems to be a shortage of QBs in the 2022 draft ... Willis was the top choice of the talking heads.
 
That's all true, @Bonnie :geek:
It was just the phrase that caused me to laugh. :D
Talking heads. 🙃😄😁

I would guess that some of these college QB's will be taken as undrafted rookies, to possibly join in helping NFL teams to prepare for games, by being on practice squads, etc.
 

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