Brady is a good listen, here, I think.   He will make a good analyst for Fox.   I dont think he will ever resonate with fans the way, say, Madden did though.   Brady has this weird quiet intensity and knowledge.  Which is great.   But he lacks…oh…humor.  Or somethin.  Somethin he cant get by working hard or studying the ‘craft’ of tv-talking.

Ya either got the humor thing or you dont.

He has high praise for Scarneccia (sp?) here, not surprisingly.   Said Scar coached the practice squad guys as meaningfully as the starters.   “Everybody on the Patriots got coached”

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Consensus among celebrity-punditz iz, the Texans will be awesome next season.      I dunno if they will or not, but i didnt know they accomplished a lot last year despite some serious injury situations:

“….Houston set a new record with 82.1 AGL, which surpassed the previous record set by the Los Angeles Rams in 2022. The Texans shuffled constantly throughout the regular season, starting seven different offensive line combinations. No group up front played more than four consecutive games together.

Texans right guard Shaq Mason was the only lineman to play all 17 regular season games. Green, tackle Tytus Howard, and rookie linemen Jarrett Patterson and Juice Scruggs each accounted for 10 AGL.

The lack of continuity up front likely contributed to the running game struggles. Houston averaged 3.7 yards per carry, tied with the Las Vegas Raiders for fourth-worst in the league. The Texans’ pass blocking was slightly better, with 47 sacks surrendered — just outside the bottom-10 in the league….”

Texans overcame league’s highest injury total in 2023

Awesome.   CJ is right.

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Barkley on the OJ thing, and other stuff.    I dont agree with Charles’ politics;  he often strikes me as a bit of a rightwing libertarian.    But i do find him interesting in many ways.

zn wrote:

Jourdan Rodrigue

They drafted him in the third because they absolutely loved him, he was a Sugarman visit, there is enough injury precedent even before this (recent) issue with Kyren to need a solid 2, and they will not extend running backs…

I didnt think it was that black-and-white.   They ‘will not extend running backs.’

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The McVay vs Shannahan rivalry is a bit normal, typical coach-stuff.

And its a bit pathological and weird.

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Yeah, i imagine purty-much every QB who signed a contract three years-or-so ago is unhappy at this point.

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At about the 3 or 4 minute mark, Snead mentions the ‘content team’ who ‘put together’ the whole phone call thing.

Nothing sez postmodern-spectacle-corporate-sports like ‘the content team.’

Sigh.

I wonder if George Allen had a content team.

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Yeah, the running game was special last year.    I know it wasnt as electrifying as, say, the best Gurley year, but somehow last season seemed more…real.   Nothing gimicky.   Just line up and boom.

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zn wrote:

wv wrote:

i cant think of any sports-writer I thought was better.

I think the reference is to Rams writers. There are other great sports writers (I mentioned Zimmerman), but Rodrigue is the best Rams writer.

Well, i took it to another level.   Is she the best NFL writer ever?

I dunno.    She’s different than Dr Z, but I think i like her better.

Granted Dr Z wrote back before they outlawed the head-slap against writers.

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zn wrote:

That article is getting a lot of buzz. Many “big name” analysts and national sports writers love Jourdan’s work. It gets praised by those types in twitter all the time. And I mean high, high praise. I fear that that means she will sooner or later be moving on to bigger things, which will just be flat offered to her in tempting ways. And then–no longer a Rams reporter. You know, losing both Donald and Jourdan in the same lifetime is a lot to go through.

Yup.  Her watch in LA will be over soon.   And we will never see her like again.

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