The NFL Thread

I want to know how many people watched the Super Bowl this year and if it was any different from the previous years.

Weird halftime show

I feel bad for Drew Bledsoe. The Pats were a terrible team when he was drafted and he took them to the Super Bowl in just his 4th year, but now he's remembered as the guy who got replaced by Tom Brady. Weirdly enough, Brady was in a similar situation in reverse when he was in college, in that Michigan did well with him as QB but the year before he became the starter they went 12-0 and shared the national title.

Edited by MFLuder on Feb 8th 2021 at 12:45:57 PM

I guess it's a mark of how quickly time passes that Nineties era Patriots fans have been sort of swept up in immense bandwagon around Brady's success, but those that remember those days love and revere Bledsoe's contribution to the team. His epic overtime victory against Miami in Week 18 of the 1993 season basically kept the team in New England. Old Foxboro Stadium was sold out for the first time in years and all the people, or so I've heard my dad say, were screaming "Drew! Drew! Drew!" and "Don't take our team!" Robert Kraft bought the team in the following off-season. We were relevant for the first time because we had Bledsoe, but Brady and Belichick were hand-in-glove basically from day one, in a way Belichick and Bledsoe never were.

He's not quite Wally Pipp, but his Patriots days are very much a "you had to have been there" kind of thing, the same way Nineties Red Sox fans love Nomar, even though he was never on a World Series team; if you were here in 1998, you know why.

Edited by CrimsonZephyr on Feb 8th 2021 at 5:11:29 AM

[Checking in even though I'm not a football fan and never have been]

No-mar curse! No-mar curse!

Sadly, the curse would not be reversed until Nomar was No-mar with the Sox.

He did get a ring though. The lads voted to send him one, as well as 3/4s of a playoff pay share.

Which, while not the same as being on the team as they won it, is still as much of an acknowledgement as they could possibly give the guy.

The NFL just approved a change from 16 games to 17, which kinda bums me out because 16 is a power of 2 and 17 is a prime number.

Let's talk about the latest NFL tv deal. You can read the full thing yourself, but here's the highlights:

Monday Night Football will be simulcast on ABC & ESPN.

ABC is once again in the Super Bowl rotation.

Thursday Night Football does a Channel Hop to Prime Video.

All the networks in this deal can stream the games on their streaming networks.

I think it can work out. Remember that this deal doesn't start until 2023.

Edited by electricbean on Apr 3rd 2021 at 12:44:45 PM

Will all the MNF games be simulcast or just a few? I don't think it would make sense to air every MNF game on ESPN if they're also gonna be on ABC.

Edited by MFLuder on Apr 3rd 2021 at 3:18:42 AM

They said all of the games will be simulcast.

Sam Darnold has been traded to the Panthers.

Here's a fact that puzzles me: the year that had the highest-rated Super Bowl ever was 1982. I know network TV ratings are a lot lower than back then, but the Super Bowl's only gotten bigger and bigger since then(for one thing, the commercials and the halftime show weren't big draws back then). What gives?

There's more to do today than there was back then. Back then you might watch the Super Bowl even if you weren't a football fan because there was nothing better to do. These days you can spend that whole day playing video games because you're sick of Tom Brady.

EDIT: Nevermind, I had a question for a story but I found my answers on Google.

EDIT 2: Now I have another question.

As far as I know, nowadays offensive players don't play defense and vice-versa. But in the older days and under one-platoon system, there were many two-way players.

In such system, what positions would defensive tackles play in offense and fullback in defense?

Edited by dRoy on May 2nd 2021 at 11:34:16 PM

DTs would probably play on the offensive line (maybe interior?) since they would have engaged with them the most. Fullbacks would likely have been linebackers or D-line (Patrick Ricard played both FB and DE for the Ravens in 2017, though how much of that is that fact that dedicated fullbacks are a dying breed now ought to be considered).

Ah, I see. Thanks!

Man, I should've at least tried out for football during my short stay an American high school.

Question for a writing, the one mentioned before.

So, the year is 1903 and the main character is a 3rd year (2nd class) naval cadet who is a football player (DT). In the Army-Navy Game that year, I am trying to have a 4th year (1st class) fullback scoring an epic touchdown.

And I two questions regarding touchdown.

One, Can a touchdown end a game?

Two, is a 100 yard touchdown worth more points than a shorter touchdown or are they all the same?

Edited by dRoy on Jun 25th 2021 at 12:48:33 AM

A touchdown could end the game if the clock expires during the scoring play and said scoring play is what puts the team on top. Overtime wasn't a thing back then.

And a touchdown is worth six points regards of how many yards from scrimmage you had to go to score it. Officially, the only way one could score a 100-yard touchdown (or really anything above 99 yards) is on a kickoff or punt return that was caught in one's own end zone and ran all the way down the field for a touchdown. If you somehow start with the nose of the ball just past your own goal line, you're officially on your own 1-yard line and have 99 yards to go for the TD — you legally cannot start any farther back because if the ball is downed in your own end zone it's a safety or a touchback depending on the situation.

Edited by megarockman on Jun 24th 2021 at 12:37:01 PM

So that explains why all the 100 yard touchdowns I've seen on You Tube start with the runner catching a ball thrown from somewhere...I see.

Welp, gotta revise the scene a little bit, thanks for the answer!

Don't want to add to your woes, but you've picked an interesting period of the history of American Football to set your story in. Football had a growing reputation issue in the early 20C due to the violence of the sport and the number of on field fatalities.

Wikipedia tells me that whilst Roosevelt never threatened to ban the sport he did lecture the sport's administrators to get them to make changes to reduce the risk of injuries. This resulted in the defining reforms of 1905 which legalised the forward pass, and banned mass formations such as the flying wedge.

Since you are setting your story in 1903 this would be before those reforms so a solo run to glory would be unlikely - but a team effort where your character is the person whom everyone is protecting as they escort him to the end zone is more plausible.

I'd also be careful around things such as helmets and equipment. They weren't mandatory and if people did wear them they would have been made of soft materials like leather as opposed to the hard Kevlar helmets we see today.

First of all, thanks for the detailed answer!

Well, I picked this period simply because this is around where all the five star generals and admirals attended military/naval academy, with two of them actually being MC's classmates. I just wanted to spice up the school life a bit and since one of them was a football player I figured, what the hell, let's have him enter the football team.

As for the match, I went with MC's team winning with the 'hide the midget' play. And I must say, I don't even play football (I'm more of a combat sports fan), writing football scenes were surprisingly fun.

John Madden has passed at 85.

Edited by tclittle on Dec 28th 2021 at 6:25:44 AM

RIP John.

RIP.

Per ESPN, Washington is going to announce its new name on Feb 2. I'm hoping they keep Washington Football Team as a Permanent Placeholder, but I suspect that won't happen.

I hope it's Washington Natives, or Warriors, or Chiefs.