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You don’t go losing to the butthole Saints twice and get a victory Monday.

If it isnt rigged it sure appears to be. Not so much the total number or yards per call but when calls are made. It almost seems refs try to make up for calling too many calls one way or another as games go on to make the total seem more fair but they call them at times when the penalty doesnt matter. Would love to see some kinda study done looking at just calls that directly effect scoring or turnovers or points compared to vegas lines.

Dan Morgan earned his job this offseason. Best draft class in probably 10 years.

The NFL is an entertainment product. The games being fixed, or moreso nudged towards preferred outcomes, doesn’t change the fact that NFL football is still entertaining.

Absolutely not. Go out and pound Seattle into dust and get some playoff caliber energy. If the Bucs take a dump and lose to the Dolphins then it’s all wrapped up by Week 18.

Benching Icky was a wise choice based on the referee crew assignment. Shawn Smith’s crew had a heavy tendency to call false starts on the home team. I have a feeling the Panthers are using AI analytics for game planning, for better or for worse. This was one of the “gotchas” that came up in the AI analysis of the game taking into account the ref assignment.

Princely is just too small, I think he'll be fine once he puts on weight. Its all on him to do the hard work in the offseason to get in a position to be very good.

Yes and 22 fumbles losing 12. and looking at just this year he is 20th in yards , 16th in passing tds, 21st QBR. 16th is middle of the nfl , with several big name qbs injured most of the year that would normally be above him. He has had horrible games this season and better games this season . His last few weeks he has been trending in the right direction. He shows out and wins next 2 games for the panthers and wins a playoff game I will eat my words and return to say you are correct he is a great nfl qb, but at this point in time he has had probably 6 really good games in his 3 year career.

I have done some research into this subject. Clete Blakeman’s crew called the most penalties in the NFL in 2024. When Blakeman is assigned, the outcome becomes high-variance. The sheer volume of penalties means the referees have an outsized impact on the result. This is ideal for "trap games" where the league might want to introduce chaos into a matchup that looks like a guaranteed blowout on paper. The assignment makes perfect sense in hindsight for a usually high powered Chiefs offense going against the lowly Titans. But in the end the variance of Blakeman’s crew calling a high volume of penalties allowed the game to be influenced by the officials and yes, have Vegas’s preferred outcome occur. It happens very often.

Going from the 32nd to 27th ranked QB is a huge achievement indeed.

I do expect the offense to fall back to earth next year if everything stays the same. It is kinda like how the Panthers and even now the Chiefs won in the past. Winning many close, coin flip games. It never lasts from season to season usually.

Biased is one way of putting it. The NFL is an entertainment product in the strictest legal sense. Although I might yell it out on game days, I do not believe the games are outright “rigged” meaning there is one team that is going to win no matter what happens. It’s impossible. There’s too much variance in the game that can prevent a truly rigged game from happening unless there was cooperation from many parties involved. What I am thoroughly convinced happens is that the NFL and referees “manage” the games towards certain outcomes. And that is done primarily through referee crew choice however I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s more going on behind the curtain. The NFL uses the officials statistical tendencies to call penalties is to keep games close to drive user engagement. For example, If a crew tends to call more false start penalties, and there’s a game between a heavy pass offense where the NFL would like to manufacture a close game where it might have potential to be a blowout, then they’ll assign a crew that will slow that offense down and keep the game close. There is an insane amount of marketing and now sports betting money that is married to the NFL economic ecosystem. To think this whole system is fair when the referee union has no outward accountability structure for poor performance is just naive. It’s closer to the WWE than outward appearances suggest, but it’s not a fully scripted outcome either. So for those who say “stop watching” if you don’t want to watch a “rigged” game, it’s an entertainment product. You can still be entertained by it, even if it’s not as fair as a truly merit based sporting event.

Jeanty? He's barely in the conversation

And the saints, we wont have to worry about playing them in the playoffs though.

I'd give it to Jeanty, Tmac 2nd.

Hey....KOOL AID! I haven't seen one of those commercials since the 80's!

Charles Johnson

I’m surprised Harvey has that long of odds, he has quietly put up a real nice rookie season that I didn’t even realize until last night. He has 787 yards from scrimmage and 11 TDs so far this year, if he ends up with 1k total yards and 12 or 13 TDs, he might be a real contender for the award.

All I wanted was meaningful games in December. It's exciting to look forward to games again.

It would be interesting if we could sign Willis to backup Young, but I have a feeling he could end up on a team that might be willing to roll the dice on him or at least give him a chance in a QB competition (perhaps Miami when they cut Tua?).

Pivoting away from our game for a minute and putting on my tin foil hat, our good friend Clete Blakeman from SB50 made news this past Sunday. https://www.outkick.com/sports/chiefs-titans-ending-rigged-nfl-penalty-flag-sports-betting Essentially, the refs called a BS flag to prevent the game from going over the total, which interestingly enough, had the majority of the public money. I'd love for someone to deep dive how often the public wins with Clete officiating.

Not to mention, only Lamar played on his 5th year. The other recent drafted QBs with the same team were given an extension around this time during the offseason. Bryce playing on the 5th year is not the likely scenario based on recent history.

Consistently

One thing I didn’t consider is how thin this draft is at quarterback. That’s going to drive up the market for backups and borderline starters like Willis, Jones, and Jameis Winston. Because of that, we’ll most likely be priced out of the market for this tier of backup.