Game Preview
What will fans see from the Bears and Ravens in Canton tonight? Here's what you should watch for during the very first preseason game of 2018.
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Like there was any chance Shaquem Griffin wouldn't be on this list.
Griffin was an accomplished outside linebacker for an undefeated UCF team in 2017. He was also the star of the 2018 NFL Scouting Combine, putting on a show that included a 4.38-second 40-yard dash—the fastest by a linebacker since 2003.
Given that, some might be surprised Griffin is a "project" player. Like all young linebackers, Griffin has a lot to learn as he makes the jump to the NFL. After all, getting caught out of position in college isn't a big deal for someone as quick as Griffin. But even with his wheels, if he misses his spot in the NFL, it's over. The offensive player is past him. Per Zierlein, broken tackles were an issue last year as well.
Griffin is not only the most intriguing player in Seahawks camp because of his talent, but he's also trying do something that's never been done: play linebacker at the game's highest level with one hand after losing his right one at age four because of amniotic band syndrome.
Griffin was the AAC Defensive Player of the Year as a redshirt junior in 2016. In his final collegiate game, he was named the Peach Bowl's defensive MVP in UCF's upset of Auburn.
Now the fifth-round pick is attempting to make an impact at football's highest level. Show that he belongs on the field with the likes of KJ Wright and Bobby Wagner. Perhaps even make one of those veterans expendable for a Seahawks team that is transitioning on defense.
Per the Associated Press (via USA Today), all Griffin wants is a chance.
"It's not a disability until you make it one," he said.
There's still a ways to go, but so far, Griffin's making the most of that chance in camp.
Apparently, the young man has a knack for creating turnovers...with regularity.
Drew Magary prepares for the inevitable shitshow of bad football this fall.
There are two freight trains. They share a track, and they are headed straight toward each other, destined to collide at full speed, with great concussive force, at a single convergence point. Here is the first train: an NFL rulebook that has been redacted and redlined and run through a Babel Fish translator until it looks like little more than a series of construction-paper scribbles drawn by a bored child.
Earlier this week the Philadelphia Eagles met with NFL referees to learn about the league's new rules, particularly the new zero-tolerance rule for helmet lowering. This is all standard operating procedure in the NFL. The league tweaks its rules in the offseason in a futile attempt to appease both viewers and their lawyers, and then refs go on a whistle-stop tour and explain to each team what they can and cannot do, and then the Patriots win thirteen games because they are the only team that manages to stay awake during the PowerPoint presentation. Anyway, the Eagles presentation was notable because, as Tim McManus at ESPN reported, players came out of the meeting still awake but unsure as to what they just sat through:
"We were trying to ask questions to get a better understanding, and yet they couldn't really give us an answer," linebacker Nigel Bradham said. "They couldn't give us what we were looking for." During the presentation, which lasted close to an hour according to Bradham, players were shown clips of what are now considered illegal hits—some of which appeared to them as routine tackles.
The Eagles, who just won the Super Bowl, are far from the only team left scratching their heads at the rule. Falcons coach Dan Quinn asked the league to provide video examples of illegal hits and still came away confused. In fact, the finalized formal language about the new helmet rule in the NFL rulebook was only sent out at the end of June, and the wording was noticeably different from how the NFL initially framed the rule change earlier in the spring. I promise you this won’t be the last time they tinker.
This rule change represents the NFL’s latest token attempt to make an inherently unsafe game safe enough for critics, class-action lawyers, and potentially skittish Pee-Wee moms. It won’t work, but you already knew that. You also know that this kind of semantic torture has invaded nearly every part of the NFL GameDay experience, from illegal hits to video replays to the formerly simple act of catching the ball, and it’s only going to get worse once Week 1 rolls around and players actually try to abide by these mealy-mouthed edicts.
If you’ve ever played football—hell, if you’ve ever played any sport—you know that not knowing what to do is very bad. If you don’t know your assignment, and if you aren’t quite sure as to what’s legal and what’s not, you’re probably going to fuck up. Many times. Take it from someone who never fully grasped the Colby College offensive playbook: It adversely affects your performance. Football is perhaps the sport that suffers the most from this kind of tactical ignorance. Sometimes you can wing it on a basketball court, but football is a hideously violent sport that not only demands that you know what you’re doing, but also demands that you drill that knowledge into your mind and bones until it becomes a simple reflex. But with these constant rule changes, the NFL has left essentially every player, coach, and team in the dark. The new helmet rule is especially tricky, because offensive players and linemen have been allowed to lower their helmets since forever, and it’s nearly impossible to take that protective reflex away from them over the course of a single offseason.
You can probably guess what that’s going to look like when September comes around. It’s gonna look like absolute shit. Not only is this rule (or lack thereof) going to result in low-quality play, it’s not gonna protect ANYONE from getting hurt. You already saw scores of talented QBs get sidelined last season. Save for the Super Bowl, the on-field product was often unwatchable. The measures the NFL put in place prior to 2017 to protect players did pretty much nothing except create an increase in penalty flags commensurate with rising sea levels, flags that no one wants to see gum up a telecast.
Those numbers are poised to skyrocket even higher once they send refs out there with a cobbled-together rulebook and a firm pat on the ass. That means you’re gonna get more stoppages in play, more players running around with their thumbs up their asses, and more players hurt. Given that the franchise values continue to skyrocket, and given that the next round of TV contracts promise to remain lucrative, there’s ample evidence to suggest that the NFL doesn’t give a rat’s ass if these games suck, which I guess is fortunate because they will. Nothing is going to stop these games from being turgid, janky affairs.
Here is the second freight train: the anthem. I know you don’t want to hear about this. I don’t either. I swear to God I am Cris Collinsworth in the booth, ready to heave a gigantic sigh of relief and welcome the return of on-the-field action before presiding over a 6-6 preseason tie. But President Trump has two hobbyhorses that he clings to in this, his dreadful, seemingly endless existence. The first is saying the most racist shit possible about immigrants or about people who, to him, look like immigrants. The other is the national anthem. The man already told Cowboys owner and sun-baked penis lizard Jerry Jones that the anthem was a winning issue for him, and this is a man who has no compunction whatsoever about repeating himself.
Now, the NFL tried to remedy this situation by issuing a new anthem policy during the offseason that pleased no one, in particular the NFLPA, which the NFL didn’t bother to involve in the process. So then they revoked the new policy, went back to the old one, and then Jones said he would make his players stand for the anthem anyway. That was enough to get the president’s flag boner to stir and get him tweeting from the shitter yet again:
It’s painfully clear that the NFL still doesn’t know how to handle all this blowback, because its owners themselves are fiercely divided over whether or not gestures of protest during the anthem are appropriate. Now, they could have gone to the players and offered them something—I dunno, maybe money?—in exchange for getting them onboard with an all-standing policy (something the NBA already has and something few players quibble with), but their greed and their lust for bullying their own players apparently prevented that from happening. As a result, nothing is going to stop these pregame festivities from being a lightning magnet for opportunists, racists, and grandstanding assholes.
So now, here’s what’s gonna happen in September: The games are going to suck and ratings will go down a bit because of it. A few players will demonstrate during the anthem, the Eye of Sauron will fall upon them, and then Trump will hammer the NFL day after day, constructing his own reality in which NFL ratings are down because of the anthem and because he willed them to be, and not because of the game’s much more obvious shortcomings. This will be ALL YOU FUCKING HEAR ABOUT all fall. Whatever brilliant spurts of football happen to occur in between all those flags and all that bloviating will be fleeting…as difficult to recall as your own dreams. The NFL, through its own patriotic machinations, has unwittingly found itself as the main conduit of the culture wars, and it will remain there all season long, with the games themselves serving as an inadequate respite. It’s going to be awful.
And the worst part is that all of this was preventable. The NFL could have a simplified rulebook, and it could have a consistently entertaining on-field product, if it had worked with its players and if it took on SOME liability for the dangers of the sport. And the NFL could have avoided this anthem shit entirely if they had worked with the players to institute an anthem policy everyone could live with (or, better yet, if they ditched the goddamn pageantry altogether).
They have done neither of these things, because the NFL possesses a near-superhuman tone-deafness and because it is terminally incapable of taking away the correct lessons from a PR crisis. And both the players and you, the viewer at home, will bear the brunt of that idiocy. The result is a coming 2018 season that promises to be more divisive and slovenly than any that came before it.
I know that complaining about the NFL has become a national pastime, in the way people enjoyed complaining about Bud Selig back when he was spilling hot coffee from his travel thermos all over the sport of baseball. But, as with virtually every other corrupt sport, baseball managed to survive all of its crises thanks to the timelessness of the game itself. But here, now, with football, we have a sport that is altering its very foundations from year to year. No one knows what a catch is, or what a legal tackle is, or much of anything else. That leaves little opportunity for a corrupt sport to redeem itself on the field. They are willfully disappearing the game, giving endless amounts of oxygen to distractions they claim to abhor, and soon the politicization of the NFL will be all that’s left. And the NFL owners are making too much money to care.
The Minnesota Vikings have much of their core, including Stefon Diggs, in place long-term. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson, File)
The Minnesota Vikings and wide receiver Stefon Diggs agreed on a five-year deal worth $72 million, $40 million in guarantees. The 24-year-old wideout earned the long-term commitment after catching 64 passes for 849 yards and eight touchdowns, ranking first among wideouts in 2017 in NextGen Stats’ tight-window rating in addition to receiving the top rating for contested-catch efficiency by the game charters at Pro Football Focus.
The move also continue’s Minnesota’s trend of locking up good, young players, giving them one of the most-talented rosters both in 2018 and five years from now, insuring they will be a Super Bowl contender for years to come.
[A healthy Deshaun Watson is looking to fulfill the promise of a rookie season cut short]
For example, using approximate value — Doug Drinen’s method of putting a single numerical value on any player’s season, at any position, from any year, with 10 or more AV signifying a truly outstanding performance — the Vikings have seven players who topped the 10 threshold under contract for at least the next four years. The outlier, new quarterback Kirk Cousins, is on a three-year deal.
Minnesota Vikings Position Age Years under contract AV in 2017 Everson Griffen DE 30 4 15 Linval Joseph DT 29 4 13 Adam Thielen WR 27 4 13 Harrison Smith FS 29 5 12 Kirk Cousins QB 29 3 12 Xavier Rhodes CB 28 5 11 Anthony Barr OLB 26 4 11 Eric Kendricks ILB 26 5 10
Three key members of the defensive line, Everson Griffen, Linval Joseph and Danielle Hunter, are signed through 2022, costing the franchise $24.7 million in 2018 and $43 million four years from now. But those three combined for 23.5 sacks, 95 hurries and 27 knockdowns in 2017 per Sports Info Solutions, giving the Vikings top-notch pass rush stability. If you believe defense wins championships, you’ve got to like what Minnesota is doing with its roster.
Another team stockpiling talent — also on the defensive side of the ball — is the Jacksonville Jaguars. The Jags, like the Vikings, have eight players under contract that produced an approximate value of 10 or more in 2017, six on defense and two on offense, with all but one of them, quarterback Blake Bortles, under contract for at least the next four years.
Carolina Panthers Position Age Years under contract AV in 2017 Calais Campbell DE 31 4 16 Telvin Smith OLB 27 4 15 Jalen Ramsey CB 23 4 14 Andrew Norwell G 26 5 14 Blake Bortles QB 26 3 13 Malik Jackson DT 28 6 12 Yannick Ngakoue DE 23 4 12 A.J. Bouye CB 26 5 12
Campbell was rated as the league’s third-best edge rusher in 2017 by the game charters at Pro Football Focus and Smith was ranked as the fourth-best linebacker. Ramsey and Bouye allowed the 9th and 16th fewest yards per cover snap last season, respectively, per data from Sports Info Solutions. Bouye allowed a mere 32.2 passer rating against in coverage, which is lower than the rating a quarterback gets for an incomplete pass (39.6).
2017 Yards allowed per cover snap Passer rating against A.J. Bouye 0.84 32.2 Jalen Ramsey 0.92 55.7 NFL average 1.10 80.6
With so many high-caliber players on the roster, it’s no wonder Minnesota and Jacksonville have such a rosy outlook. The latest odds from the Westgate SuperBook reflect that: the Vikings carry 10-to-1 odds (tied with four other teams as the second choice) to win the next Super Bowl while the Jaguars’ odds are 16-to-1 (fourth-lowest). When we look at how much current approximate value will be available in the year 2020 and beyond, it certainly appears one or both could win a Super Bowl in that time frame.
[Fantasy football draft tips: When to take the top rookies]
At the other end of the spectrum are the Seattle Seahawks, Los Angeles Chargers and New England Patriots.
Seattle has just 10 players signed beyond the year 2021 and the list doesn’t include four-time Pro Bowl quarterback Russell Wilson nor any offensive lineman besides rookie Jamarco Jones. Nor are there any defensive players of note destined to be in a Seahawks uniform at that time, leaving the franchise a narrow window to remain competitive for a title.
The Chargers have $20.9 million committed to nine players by the year 2021, with more than half of that ($14.7 million) earmarked by two players, cornerbacks Casey Hayward and Derwin James. Quarterback Phillip Rivers and star wideout Keenan Allen will be free agents in 2020 and 2021, respectively, making it imperative the teams finds their replacements sooner rather than later. Same for running back Melvin Gordon, who hits the market in 2020 at 27 years old. A contract extension at that time will be paying for years normally past a rusher’s prime.
[The Rams were smart to extend Todd Gurley. The Steelers are smart to pass on Le’Veon Bell.]
At some point the Patriots will have to navigate life without Tom Brady, arguably the best quarterback in the history of the game. And when that happens — perhaps as early as 2019 when his current contract expires — the team’s fortunes should turn for the worse. According to ESPN’s Total Quarterback Rating, a team with Brady’s level of production would be expected to win 67 percent of their games, equivalent to go a 11-5 regular-season record, three wins more than a quarterback with an average QBR rating, such as Kirk Cousins (52.3 QBR in 2017) or Josh McCown (51.9 QBR). Brady’s current contract also expires the same year as four-time All-Pro tight end Rob Gronkowski and two-time Pro Bowl safety Devin McCourty, perhaps forecasting an end to the Patriots’ vise grip on the AFC East. But, assuming he’s still around too, who wants to bet against Bill Belichick?
Fantasy football from The Post:
Your fantasy football league would be much better with these settings
The top 200 players for the 2018 fantasy football season
QB rankings: What to do with Andrew Luck?
RB rankings: It’s Gurley over Bell for No. 1
Draft dilemma: Deshaun Watson probably isn’t worth the risk
