Let's chat about the National Football League. This week's schedule (all times Eastern):
Sun 2024-11-17 1:00PM Green Bay Packers @ Chicago Bears
Sun 2024-11-17 1:00PM Jacksonville Jaguars @ Detroit Lions
Sun 2024-11-17 1:00PM Minnesota Vikings @ Tennessee Titans
Sun 2024-11-17 1:00PM Las Vegas Raiders @ Miami Dolphins
Sun 2024-11-17 1:00PM Los Angeles Rams @ New England Patriots
Sun 2024-11-17 1:00PM Baltimore Ravens @ Pittsburgh Steelers
Sun 2024-11-17 4:05PM Atlanta Falcons @ Denver Broncos
Sun 2024-11-17 4:05PM Seattle Seahawks @ San Francisco 49ers
Sun 2024-11-17 4:25PM Cincinnati Bengals @ Los Angeles Chargers
Sun 2024-11-17 4:25PM Kansas City Chiefs @ Buffalo Bills
Sun 2024-11-17 8:20PM Indianapolis Colts @ New York Jets
Mon 2024-11-18 8:15PM Houston Texans @ Dallas Cowboys
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Notes -
I managed to snag $66 tickets for me and my buddies to see the Chargers play on Sunday night (the game got flexed to 5:20 PST) at SoFi Stadium. (There are a ton of tickets still available, to the point where the team is apparently all but begging people to purchase them, despite it being a primetime game.) It won’t be my first NFL game - I saw the Chargers play the Titans at the old Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego pretty much right before it got demolished - but it’ll be my first time at a proper modern NFL venue. I’ve heard SoFi is an absolute beauty.
I’m ready to fully pull the plug on my decade-long sojourn as a Jaguars fan, and go all-in on the team of my childhood; the vibes around the Bolts are just too immaculate, while the Jags have revealed themselves to be exactly as rudderless as their worst detractors have always claimed. Having an owner that just doesn’t understand American football on any level opens the organization up to be run by incompetent silver-tongued sycophants like Trent Baalke, long after a competent owner would have fired him. Not that the Chargers ownership has any great record of competence and football sense either, but I have to trust in Harbaugh and Hortiz to steady the ship; certainly they’ve given me no reason to doubt them thus far.
Much to my chagrin as a Raider fan, Harbaugh really does seem to be doing an admirable job of turning the Chargers around. It's infuriating that all three of our division rivals (even the Broncos are much improved) have had the good fortune and sense to hire known quantity, "can't go wrong" coaches and should be set for the next decade while we're going to have to undergo a total rebuild.
On the bright side, seeing the Charger turnaround at least leads me to believe that Tom Telesco can drastically improve the talent level on the Raider roster, assuming he can get us an at least decent quarterback. The Chargers have always had a talented, if underachieving roster while the Raider roster has been chronically talent-poor such that it's hard to tell where the roster problems end and coaching problems begin. The two feed each other given that only risky young coaches or known mediocre retreads will touch our current roster. Unfortunately nothing about his Chargers tenure or what we're doing this year leads me to believe that he can find the right coaching staff. We wasted Carr's prime years on a rebuild that never produced even an average defense and I'm afraid that we're going to run Maxx Crosby into the ground before we get an offense worthy of his effort.
As much as I don't want to blame Mark Davis for everything (IMO JDR and Gruden were probably the best coaches available in those given years, even though he overpaid for Gruden by giving him GM powers.), hiring Josh McDaniels (He really must have a silver tongue.) was so monumentally stupid that I'm at a loss for words, especially after we had a front row seat to his wrecking of the Broncos.
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