Sports

[gardenman]

Things don't sound a lot better in Dallas. They cut Nolan Carroll who was their starting cornerback earlier in the year. Stephen Paea has decided to retire. The players held a player's only meeting that reporters lurking outside said had lots of angry shouting. Jerry Jones has apparently annoyed his players with his statement after last week's game about benching any player who protests. I'm not sure how it's happened, but the Giants and Cowboys are now the NFC East's most dysfunctional teams.

[Drythe]

@gardenman

Truth is, parsing the time, place, mode, format, or deciding for someone else what is the wrong thing to do at the wrong time, etc., to exercise their right to free speech is a slippery slope.  I personally won't go there.

I think we've recently hashed over your notion that - "any player in the league can call a press conference at any time to make any statement they want to make" and we know that is just not so.

The National Anthem was not hijacked it went right on.  As for the "truth" you mention "that protests of the National Anthem have never really done anything but drive a bigger wedge between the sides", I believe that is your opinion, but have not seen your facts so will hang on to my own judgement. You obviously don't approve which is, of course, your prerogative.

The fact that something has been done before and failed is not a good reason in my book not to try again.  If that were the case there would be no 19th amendment, which I hold dear.

You think I'm wrong, I think you are wrong, we disagree.  I responded to a post you made here, but I do not want to pursue this any longer on the Sports thread. I've pretty much said what I have to say on the subject.  

If you desire further convo please page me over in Community.

And Now Back to sports:

WR Devin Funchess - knee walk through today, likely to play.

TE Greg Olsen Olsen - broken right foot, surgery Tuesday, out for 6 to 8 weeks. Cam’s go to man.

RB Jonathan Stewart - ankle, soft sideline only practice, likely playing.
He’s worked so hard to rehab that dang ankle.

All good news for the Eagles, who've been dropping some yardage.

Roar Panthers !!

[gardenman]

And it's game day for the Eagles! They take on the Panthers tonight in Carolina for a big game that could have playoff implications way, way down the road. Both teams appear to be evenly matched. Las Vegas has the Panthers as three point favorites but that's due to the home field advantage more than an edge in talent.

By the stats this should be a pretty good matchup. The Eagles lead by a bit in every offensive category, but the Panthers lead by a bit in every defensive category except for yards rushing and third down conversion percentage. Neither team seems to have a clear advantage. The Eagles offense is a tick better and the Panthers defense is a tick better.

The Panthers have gotten out to big leads only to see them slip away in the fourth quarter in games. They tend to take their foot off the gas once they get ahead which can be a problem for them. The Eagles however keep playing hard no matter what. (Last week Eagles' safety Rodney McLeod raced across the field and laid out to knock away a ball very late in the game with the Eagles ahead by 27. It was a meaningless score in such a game, but he didn't care. He was going to stop them and he did.)

I suspect the Eagles will come out running early and often pounding away with LeGarrette Blount who's been averaging a ridiculous 4.1 yards after contact. That's more than most backs average period, and that's what he's been getting after he gets hit. He's averaging 5.8 yards per carry and has been very impressive. Normally you run the ball to lure the safeties up to the line of scrimmage, but with Blount being around 250 lbs, most safeties prefer to let the bigger guys up front deal with him while they stay deep. He's embarrassed a few DB's already this year by just shoving them to the turf as he rumbles past and they prefer to avoid that whenever possible.

A big thing to watch for the Eagles will be the play of the right offensive tackle Vaitai. He's filling in for Lane Johnson who's out with the concussion. Vaitai has a good bit of experience but can start out a bit shaky early on. Once he's had a fair number of plays under his belt he tends to firm up and play well, but early on he can be a bit of a liability.

This should be a good game to watch for the action on the field. Two teams to keep an eye on for the off the field stuff are the Cowboys and Giants. Both seem to be having some fairly dramatic internal issues.

The Cowboys reportedly had a players only meeting and then the usually cooperative players refused to talk to the media afterwards. Reporters in the hallway outside the players only meeting reportedly heard loud shouting and lots of angry voices. Ezekiel Eliott and Dak Prescott were both scheduled to talk to the media yesterday, but refused and Jason Witten just disappeared without saying anything. The Cowboys have a bye this week so they've got time to get things calmed down and pulled back together before their next game against the Niners on the 22nd. That Cowboy locker room was due for chaos this year with suspended players coming back and reclaiming roster spots and chaos is what they've got. Stephen Paea, one of their starting defensive tackles has now retired and they cut Nolan Carroll who was their starting cornerback for part of the season. Jerry Jones statement about sitting any player who protested has also riled up things a tad.

If anything, things are worse in New York with the Giants. They lost pretty much their entire wide receiving corp last week. They have no running game. Their offensive line is porous (at best.) Their defensive players are at war with the head coach. He suspended Dominique Rodgers-Cromartie after a shouting match with him that may or may not have included a physical altercation, and other defensive players are not at all happy and have mentioned it in the media. I would not be shocked to see Ben McAdoo get fired late in the season and Steve Spagnuolo appointed as the interim head coach. The Giants tend not to do impulsive stuff, but the Ben McAdoo experiment is not going well. The Giants have gone from a team that many had picked as a Super Bowl contender to a team that's now possibly going 0-16. Generally speaking, such a turn of events is not good the for the head coach.

[Lipstickdiva]

I won a whopping 4 games last week in my football pool.  It was quite an embarrassing display.  I'm blindly picking some games this week. There are a few I'm stuck on but I have to send it off today so wish me luck.  ROFLOL 

[gardenman]

Ezekiel Elliott's suspension is back on again. No real surprise there. Had he served it upfront he'd be about ready to come back now.

[gardenman]

And the Eagles pulled out the win over the Panthers!  We're now 5-1. CarsonWentz did not have one of his best games, but he played well enough to get the win. The Eagles' defense was dominant once again. The offense was good enough to get the win. And we overcame yet another horrifically officiated game.

Pete Morelli's crew officiated the game last night and in the last two Eagles road games they've officiated they've called 24 penalties for 232 yards against the Eagles and only 3 penalties for 19 yards against our opponent. You can say that's just a two game glitch, but over the last four road games he's officiated of the Eagles he's called 40 penalties for 396 yards against the Eagles and only 8 for 72 yards against our opponents. Yeah. Pete Morelli and his crew see anything the Eagles do as a penalty and nothing the other team does as a penalty. It's not even close. Alshon Jeffrey ws manhandled much of the night, but if the Eagles even touched one of their receivers it was pass interference. Beating a good team is a challenge. Beating a good team and the officials is even more complicated, but we got the job done.

The Eagles now have ten days off before the next game which is good as we got beat up a bit in that game. Jordan Hicks our starting middle linebacker left the game with an ankle injury. Mack Hollins our rookie wide receiver went down with a leg injury, likely a hamstring. Our veteran special teamer/backup safety Chris Maragos went out with a knee injury that looked bad. A few other guys got pretty dinged, but with ten days off there's a good chance we'll get a few of those guys back.

The Eagles 5-1 record is pretty impressive when you consider that 4 of the first 6 games were road games in tough places to play. Our next road game isn't until the Sunday before Thanksgiving, so the schedule turns a bit more favorable now.

[teganslaw]

i watched the game last night, The Eagles did have a lot of penalties called on them. I thought it might have been this one game. I wonder why some officials favor certain teams; it isn't right. 

The two point conversion was a gutsy call by Pederson And it worked!  Does he make risky calls often? It shows that he has confidence in his team. 

Are those new uniforms the Eagles were wearing? I thought their uniforms were ususally green or balck and green. 

Anyway, interesting game. Also, Ertz did good for my fantasy team! 

[gardenman]

@teganslaw

Pete Morelli's crew just has some sort of an issue with the Eagles. I'm not sure how much of it is conscious. There was an MLB umpire a few years back named Ron Luciano who wrote a book where he talked about umpiring. He had several players that he unconsciously favored and others that he unconsciously punished. There were hitters who he'd never call a strike on no matter where the pitch was and others who every pitch, no matter how wild would be a strike. He knew he was doing it, but was powerless to stop it. I think Morelli's crew is that way with the Eagles. They just can't stop themselves from flagging anything the Eagles do and ignoring what the opposing team does.

Doug Pederson loves to take chances. He's got a team of statisticians in his headset who tell him the odds of every move and he'll go for it on fourth and eight from his own territory if they tell him the odds are the same or better for doing so.

As to the uniforms, the Eagles are typically some combo of green and white. Sometimes they'll got white on top, green on the bottom or vice versa. Sometimes they'll go all green or all white. They've also got black they'll break out for some games. This year that's the third white on white uniform game for some reason. Hey, it's working so I guess they don't want to change.

Some of the penalties called on the Eagles last night were laughable, and some of the penalties the officials ignored by the Panthers were also amazing. There was a blatant facemask on Kenjon Barner that was ignored. Our defensive linemen were getting held on multiple occasions. A blitzing linebacker was tackled on one play and it wasn't called. Alshon Jeffery had a cornerback hanging all over him on most passes and pass interference was never called. The only penalty called on the Panthers was the one on the extra point where Pederson then decided to go for the two point conversion, so offically that was a one yard penalty.

According to local reporters that was the first time in NFL history that one team had over 120 yards in penalties to less than ten yards in penalties for the other team. Most of the time the officials will try to even things up a bit, but Morelli's crew doesn't when they're handling an Eagles game.

The NFC East can be pretty much wrapped up on the 23rd if things play out right. If the Redskins lose this week to San Francisco and then lose again to the Eagles on the 23rd, there will be a three to four game cushion for the Eagles over every other NFC East team. At this minute they have a three game lead over the Cowboys, and Redskins. The Redskins can cut that to two games with a win on Sunday. The Cowboys are on the bye this week. The Cowboys will likely be without Ezekiel Elliott for the next six games and are having some locker room issues. The Giants are five games back and in free fall. Things are looking pretty good for the Eagles right now.

That Redskins game will be a big one. After that game we've got the Niners, Broncos, Cowboys, and Bears with just the Cowboy game being a road game.  You can't really count on any wins as you may not win another game all year, but right now, things are looking pretty good for the Eagles. Around week ten the Eagles could be five games up on everyone else in the NFC East. That would be kind of neat. Up five with six to play is not a bad spot to be in.

[yellowBeetle]

Congrats to the Eagles!!! Great game! I thought Wentz was brilliant...threw, rushed, even tackled!! Maybe there will be a resurgence of the Wentzlvania shirts!!!

As to those uniforms, Thursday night games since last season often have the teams wearing the Color Rush uniforms which usually are one main color from head to toe! The Panthers had their version on, but the Eagles seemed to be in their monochromatic white that they have worn several other times this season. Read that they prefer the white on hot days, although there was no sunshine last night! Last year their Color Rush uniform was all black and were uniforms worn before . Personally I think most of them worn by other teams look ridiculous! The worst, imo, were a hideous mustard color gold from helmet to shoes worn by the Jaguars last year. Many said they looked like a bunch of Grey Poupon Mustard jars running around!

[Drythe]

Congratulations to the winners.

“Keep On Pounding!”