Saturday, November 4, 2017

10 Things

The Minnesota Vikings are rarely far from my thoughts. With their bye this week it was a little easier to think about football things that aren't Minnesota Vikings things. Here are 10 football things that have been on my mind.

1. Congratulations to the San Francisco 49ers on their acquisition of quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo. He's yet to play a snap for the 49ers so it's way, way too early to put him with the likes of Y.A. Tittle, Joe Montana and Steve Young. Hell, it's way too early to put him with the likes of Frankie Albert and John Brodie. Garoppolo has a lot of the tools to be a top notch quarterback in the NFL. He's learned from Tom Brady and played in the Bill Belichick/Josh McDaniels system. Now he's playing for one of the best play-callers in the league, Kyle Shanahan. He's in a sweet situation. So are the 49ers. 

2. It was a sad day for the NFL and their fans, especially the fans of the Houston Texans, when DeShaun Watson was lost to a non-contact knee injury in practice. Non-contact. In practice. A sad day. 

3. More injuries. Sports Illustrated's Connor Orr did a dive into the injury numbers for a fine article on the Monday Morning Quarterback website. He found that over the past five years the following number of players have found their way to the various injury lists through November 1 of each season.
2017: 295
2016: 277
2015: 233
2014: 263
2013: 252
This year wins.

4. No offense to the NFL players that have been lost for the season, and there have been many, but there are a lot of great NFL players still playing and thrilling. That being said. Get well soon. Everyone. 

5.. The on-off-on-off-on-off again nonsense of Ezekiel Elliott's suspension is getting so damn tiresome. He's going to serve that suspension at some point. That's the power that the players gave the Commissioner in the CBA. Get it over with and move on. Many other teams have had to deal with Goodell's punishment roulette system. No one benefits from dragging out. Didn't anyone learn anything from the Brady vs. Goodell nightmare?

6. The powers that be that make such decisions have decided that the College Football Championship Game will be played in the following cities over the next few years.
2018: Atlanta
2019: Santa Clara
2020: New Orleans
2021: Miami
2022: Indianapolis
2023: Los Angeles
2024: Houston
So, other than Indianapolis it's the usual cast of cities that are routinely part of the Super Bowl rotation. I find it amusing that the national media always refers to Santa Clara as the S.F. Bay Area. It's most certainly because I'm from northern California but when someone mentions the Bay Area it's San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley, etc. Cities that can actually see the Bay. Saying that the San Francisco 49ers still play in the Bay Area is like saying that the New York Jets and Giants still play in New York.

7. Taking a look at the Texans' new quarterback room, and a few other quarterback rooms, it's real easy to say that Colin Kaepernick should be on an NFL roster. Something ain't right.

8. Mock Drafts in the middle of the season are so silly. It's tough to argue that mock drafts at any time aren't silly. But it's still difficult to stay away from them.

9. If your team has to have a bye week it's best if it's preceded by at least four straight wins. Everything just feels a little nicer.

10a. Every single episode of A Football Life is fantastic. The people at NFL Films are tremendous and the work that they do is beautiful. Ed and Steve Sabol changed and enhanced the way we view football. They introduced many of us to the game. They gave the NFL so much. Perhaps their biggest gift was the people and the place that they left for us.

10b. Steve Sabol should be with his father in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. 

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