NFL Football

[Vrede too]

O Really - 0
Lady O - 1
http://scores.nbcsports.com/fb/recap.asp?g=20171203026

[O Really]

Oh, Lady O is a winner, no matter the score.
A happy wife is a happy life.

[Vrede too]

Canadians should stick to curling and hockey.

Epic Patriots comeback means Canadian tennis player must go on date with Twitter guy

"Lesson learned. Never bet against Tom Brady"

Genie Bouchard is still dating the guy from her lost Super Bowl bet

[GoCubsGo]

Canadians should stick to curling and hockey.

Epic Patriots comeback means Canadian tennis player must go on date with Twitter guy

"Lesson learned. Never bet against Tom Brady"

Genie Bouchard is still dating the guy from her lost Super Bowl bet

Lucky dog.

[Vrede too]

Panthers 31, Vikings 24, exciting finish. Complicated game to pick sides. Vikings are vying with Philly for #1 seed, Panthers are vying with Seahawks and Falcons for 2 wild card spots. I rooted for the Vikings, but Cam is a treat to watch.

[Vrede too]

Philly & Steelers clinched their otherwise sucky division with 3 games left! First and only teams to get playoff spots. Seahawks and Ravens both dropped to 3rd for the 2 wild card slots.
http://scores.nbcsports.com/fb/standings.asp?type=conf

[Vrede too]

With 56 seconds left I was all set to post, "Fucking Brady and Gronkowski! " . . . then, "Yay, Big Ben," . . . then crap.

[O Really]

I'm not a hard-core Patriot hater, and actually I admire the way they've built and maintained their organization, but I was rooting for the Steelers yesterday. What a heartbreaker! And in the evening game, Raiders lost to Cowboys on a last-second fumble into the end zone.

And then there were the Seahawks. Third worst drubbing ever. Wilson sacked seven times. Three fumbles. Lady O was not amused.

[Vrede too]

With 2 games left Raiders are now 5th in line for 2 wildcard spots, unlikely. Go Steelers, go Ravens.
Saints and Panthers should take the division and a wildcard spot. Seahawks are now 3rd in line for the remaining wildcard spot, possible. Go Eagles, go Vikings, go Lions or Seahawks.
http://scores.nbcsports.com/fb/standings.asp?type=conf

[Vrede too]

This is unusual: halftime, Panthers 12, TB 9, no offensive or defensive points, 5 FGs, 103 yard TB KO return for a TD, EP blocked. 1st non-special teams points scored by TB 4 1/2 minutes into 3rd quarter.

[Vrede too]

Sweet, Seahawks knock the Cowboys out of the playoffs. If they beat AZ in Seattle and Atlanta gets beaten by the Panthers who are still playing for one or more home games, they will have sneaked in to the last NFC slot.

Go Ravens and Bills, deny the Chargers and Titans.

[Vrede too]

Tony Romo must be smiling, especially since Seattle is kinda rotten:

... The Seahawks are without Kam Chancellor and Richard Sherman in the secondary, Cliff Avril has been out most of the season and linebacker Bobby Wagner is playing through a hamstring injury....

The Seahawks had 136 yards (don’t dare blame the Cowboys defense for this loss) and 142 penalty yards. They became the first team since the 1966 Eagles to win a game with fewer yards gained than penalty yards, according to Fox’s broadcast. You can only do that if you get turnovers, and Prescott helped in that....

[O Really]

So other than the occasional March Madness pool, I don't gamble on sports. Just not an interest of mine. But the issue with the Iggles and their declining to kick an extra point which happened (coincidentally?) to make the difference in their covering the spread really looks like something that would raise the suspicions of anybody with a suspicious sort of mind.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nfl/fu ... &ocid=iehp

Iggles were already leading, and were going to win by 3 until they picked up a fumble during a mad melee lateral-fest on the last play of the game and ran it in. Had they kicked the extra, they would have beat the spread. They chose not to kick it. Could adding the extra really be considered "bad sportsmanship" or rubbing it in in the NFL? Or would it not have been better to do the routine, garden-variety action of kicking the extra?

Matters not to me, but one has to wonder...

[Vrede too]

Not looking very good without Wentz, may not be their year after all.

[O Really]

AAAAaaaargh!!
What a shitty way to end the year. Panthers coulda been Division Champs, Seahawks coulda been in the playoffs. Somebody ought to lose their jobs and be flogged for a Super Bowl halftime show.

[Vrede too]

Go Panthers for the NFC South Division (making the Saints a wildcard)!
Go Seahawks for the last NFC wildcard slot!
Go Ravens and Bills for the AFC wildcard slots!

AAAAaaaargh!!
What a shitty way to end the year. Panthers coulda been Division Champs, Seahawks coulda been in the playoffs. Somebody ought to lose their jobs and be flogged for a Super Bowl halftime show.

Panthers at Saints. Saints have beaten them twice this year. Go Panthers, but they look terrible and I don't hate the Saints.
Falcons at Rams. Go Rams.
Bills after 17! year drought at Jags. Go Bills.
Titans at Chiefs. Go Mariota and Titans!

[O Really]

.

Panthers at Saints. Saints have beaten them twice this year. Go Panthers, but they look terrible and I don't hate the Saints.
Falcons at Rams. Go Rams.
Bills after 17! year drought at Jags. Go Bills.
Titans at Chiefs. Go Mariota and Titans!

Bills after 17, but Jags after 10, too. Neither has seen playoffs except on TV since most of their players were in middle school.
Nice to have the LA Rams back. I used to enjoy them back in the day of Deacon Jones, Merlin Olsen, Rosie Grier, et. al.

Panthers can beat Saints, depending on which team shows up. If it's today's team, they're doomed and rightly so.

[Vrede too]

... Nice to have the LA Rams back. I used to enjoy them back in the day of Deacon Jones, Merlin Olsen, Rosie Grier, et. al. ...

Same here, Fearsome Foursome. Rosey Grier is the only surviving member.

This is interesting:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deacon_Jones

... When he was 14 years old, he witnessed a carload of white teenagers laughingly hit an elderly black church woman with a watermelon. The woman died days later from the injury, and there was never a police investigation. "Unlike many black people then, I was determined not to be what society said I was," Jones later recounted. "Thank God I had the ability to play a violent game like football. It gave me an outlet for the anger in my heart."

Jones' college football career consisted of a year at South Carolina State University in 1958, followed by a year of inactivity in 1959 and a final season at Mississippi Vocational College in 1960.

South Carolina State revoked Jones' scholarship after they learned that he participated in a protest during the Civil Rights Movement. However, one of the assistant football coaches at South Carolina State was leaving to coach at Mississippi Vocational, and told Jones and some of the other African-American players that he could get them scholarships at the new school. While he was playing at Mississippi Vocational, he and his African-American teammates had to sleep in cots in the opposing team's gym because motels would not take them on numerous occasions.

Jones was drafted in the 14th round (pick 186) of the 1961 NFL Draft by the Los Angeles Rams....

An extremely durable player, Jones missed only six games of a possible 196 regular-season encounters in his 14 National Football League seasons....

Jones was considered by many to revolutionize the position of defensive end. He was credited with coining the phrase "sacking the quarterback". In 1999, Jones provided an L.A. Times reporter with some detailed imagery about his forte: “You take all the offensive linemen and put them in a burlap bag, and then you take a baseball bat and beat on the bag. You’re sacking them, you’re bagging them. And that’s what you’re doing with a quarterback.”

(Deacon) Jones ("the Secretary of Defense") was a rhythm and blues singer during his football days, and was backed by the band Nightshift, which later became the group War. Jones sang onstage with Ray Charles, performed on The Hollywood Palace in 1967 and 1968, and on The Merv Griffin Show in 1970. Jones was the inspiration for the name of the 1977 song "Deacon Blues" by Steely Dan.

[Vrede too]

Nice TN comeback, including a TD pass from Mariota . . . to Mariota. His first playoff TD completion and reception, on 3rd down.
Too bad the Rams didn't comeback.

[O Really]

So for Saturday - the day I don't really care who wins but will pick teams for sport - I'm oh-fer. Hopefully that isn't a precursor for Sunday. There's Panthers, of course, who could win if the right team shows up, and I'd like to see the Jags win. Whether bad ownership, management, player/coaching choices, bad luck, whatever - Jags fans have had a rough 10 years. It's good to see them have a good year before they depart for London.