It helps when the O-line gives him more than two seconds before allowing the pocket to collapse. They still seem quite inconsistent though. Rodgers has been taking an inordinate amount of punishment tonight. Is it me or do the zebras seem really hot to throw their yellow flags this year... a LOT?
I watched a limited amount of the game, but for a team who's starting units played 0 minutes in the pre-season, the Bears really looked like a team who's starting units played 0 minutes in the pre-season. The kicker was perfect though
I strongly suspect that Brown had similar issues of this behavior with Pittsburgh, but the Steelers--who are no strangers to manipulating the media, as evidenced by their ability to keep negative stories about Roethlisberger quiet--were able to deflect attention. Don't forget, he was sued last year after he roughed up his girlfriend (allegedly about some stolen money) and began throwing her furniture out a 14th-story window, nearly hitting a toddler in the process.
Bears certainly looked like a team that spent the off season obsessing over a blocked/missed field goal.
The Madden 20 people are so fucking lazy. Instead of deleting Andrew Luck because he retired (and his rights still belong to Indianapolis), they just dumped him in the free agent pool. So I ended up facing him in my Cardinals franchise, he's playing for the Broncos with Flacco as his back-up.
Madden hasn't been good since they had to compete in the market. It's not a coincidence the one most people consider the best came out the same year as 2k5. And the Packers and Bears both looked like hot trash. I'm not worried.
Interesting to see how he reacts if Derek Carr misses him a couple times, or chooses to target other receivers more than Brown.
We'll see the first televised shooting during an NFL game. (I kid, but not by much. A lot of Brown's behavior is suggestive of CTE, especially considering he's taken a lot of hits to the head.) Ryan Clark was saying a few days ago that Brown was always super high-strung when they played together with the Steelers, but Brown kept quiet in the early years because he was still making his NFL bona fides. But, for example, let's take the bizarre cryotherapy incident. Because of safety precautions, they make you wear a bunch of thermo-protective gear, including your underwear, two pairs of gloves, two pairs of socks and two pairs of these weirdo slippers / booties, before you even enter the chamber, because it literally gets to below zero in there. You're not even allowed to enter the chamber alone; an attendant goes in there with you to make sure you're situated. So the dumbass literally took off his socks and slippers and then put his bare feet on a floor that was literally more than 32 degrees below freezing. I mean, the cryo incident is just one part of Brown's larger body of work. It takes some major mental gymnastics to look at the last year--the apartment incident, the bizarre behavior to get traded from Pittsburgh, skipping practices just because, threatening to punch his boss in the face--and go, “Yes, this seems like a reasonable person.”
If he starts doing stuff like this,then all bets are off and the Raiders should take stronger measures including releasing him, if appropriate.. The Raiders brought this most recent incident on themselves. They know how volatile the guy is, so why send him that stupid fine letter. The fact that neither Gruden nor Mayock could foresee that AB might have a bad reaction does shake my confidence in their ability to handle the players on their roster. As long as Brown is showing up for work and producing in games, they should just leave him alone and don't do or say stuff that exacerbates the problem.
Because threatening to punch your boss in the face is perfectly reasonable behavior for an employee. And the dude intentionally missed practices and walkthroughs. It's literally in the CBA that a team can fine a player for that. Brown is just being an erratic whackjob. He literally threw a weeks-long tantrum because he wanted to wear a helmet that, after testing, offered ~40 percent less concussion protection and ~30 percent less vision than any of the currently approved models. I mean, it just seems like he doesn't want to even play anymore. (Not that the latter would be a bad thing, football should die.)
The fines are a part of the CBA which the Raiders are bound by as well. It sounds like AB's behaviors has all been self-inflicted and he has been acting rather unprofessional. They have a team to run and a culture to cultivate. By allowing this behavior it sends the message you can get your way by acting out and shouting at your boss, and disregarding your responsibilities. It's a poor precedent for an organization to set. True.
Show me a North American professional sport (we're going to exclude MMA, here) that has experienced more suicides and murder-suicides than the NFL, and and more young players who have retired at the college age or almost immediately post-rookie age due to symptoms of brain damage, and more people who have had their family members say that they've lost their spouses, emotionally and mentally, due to the brain damage incurred due to playing.