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These are excerpts. To read the whole article click the link below. Now that Peter King is back, does the Patriots butt-kissing continue? You bet! The man can't help himself. Because he missed a week, he doubles down on his insane man-crush.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sJqTDaOrTg
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http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2017/06/12/carson-wentz-philadelphia-eagles-fathers-day-books-peter-king
The Hunt for Carson Wentz
After a roller-coaster rookie season, the Eagles quarterback still feels confident and ready to stalk his prey in Year 2
By Peter King
Photo: Rich Schultz/Getty Images
I don’t know if Carson Wentz is going to be a good player or not. It’s more likely than not he’ll have a successful career, but as Bill Parcells has said about 1,600 players in his life, they don’t sell insurance for that stuff.
But I talked to Wentz for awhile the other day, as he drove home from an offseason practice, and I came away thinking he’s got a good chance. He reminds me of Eli Manning in terms of mentality and confidence—I’ll explain that in a few moments—and I don’t think the game’s too big for him, which I’ll explain too.
I don’t believe Eli Manning’s ever been hunting for Himalayan Tahr (a wild goat) and Chamois (a goat-antelope species) and red deer in New Zealand, though. And that’s one of the things that’s got Wentz particularly excited these days. “I went with my brother to New Zealand for a week [in late March], on what I know would be a bucket-list hunt for so many hunters,” Wentz told me.
“It’s probably the most exhilarating hunt I’ve been on. I got my Tahr with a bow from about 40 yards, and boy, that was rewarding. It’s addicting.”
“What would be more rewarding from 40 yards—getting a Tahr with a bow and arrow, or throwing a touchdown pass from that distance in the Super Bowl?” I asked.
Pause. “God willing, playing in the Super Bowl one day, and making that pass like you say, would be a blessing—that’s what I’m working for right now,” Wentz said.
A bit of a game-rewind on Wentz, the phenom who grew up in North Dakota, starred at North Dakota State, and was fed to the Philadelphia wolves with the second pick in the 2016 draft. He was supposed to wilt. He didn’t.
Wentz was an early sensation, ripping off three wins to start his career and sending the normally skeptical Philly fans into a Wentz-for-Canton tizzy. But it was too good to be true, as these number illustrate:
.....................................W-L...Comp. %.......... TD-INT........... Rating
The Good Start..... 4-2..... .638...................... 8-3......................... 92.7
The Rough End.... 3-7...... .616.......................8-11........................ 73.4
Odd: Wentz’s only three wins in the last two months of the season came against NFC playoff teams—the Falcons, Giants and Cowboys. So the most famous athletic North Dakotan since Roger Maris entered a long off-season with more question marks than exclamation points.
Mostly this: As the season went on, Wentz never got a crisis of confidence or questioned that he should be playing as a rookie from North Dakota State. Basically, his confidence occasionally signed checks his arm couldn’t cash.
To start a five-game Eagles’ losing streak, Wentz threw a laser into a forest of four Seahawks just before halftime, down nine points, that was picked by Kam Chancellor and killed an important drive. There were more where that came from.
Wentz didn’t have a crisis of confidence. If anything, he had a crisis of decision-making.
“The thing is, I never pressed last year,” Wentz said. “I learned a lot. Windows are smaller, I have to make decisions faster … athletes, obviously, are better. But my motto was, ‘It’s just football.’ I didn’t make anything bigger than it was. I made some mistakes, but I didn’t get shaken by them.”
“Did anything last year, making that jump from North Dakota to the NFL, bug you?” I wondered.
“Never,” he said. “Definitely never.”
That’s where the Eli comparison is appropriate. I’ll always remember after the February 2012 Super Bowl win over New England, an emotional-less Manning was being shuttled through the Giants’ locker room to a media obligation by a phalanx of yellow-coated security people.
Looking at the scene, Justin Tuck of the Giants said, “That’s Eli—he’d look the same whether we just won or lost this game.” Manning felt if he left everything in preparation and performance on the field, no sense crying about a bad loss. And he never got very high after his biggest wins.
Photo: Al Bello/Getty Images
It’s early, but that’s Wentz’s way. He went to work with Tom House’s quarterback-mechanics protégé, Adam Dedeaux, in southern California for two weeks after the season to polish footwork, the timing between arm and legs, and learn the kind of shoulder exercises and “prehab” work that will prevent his shoulder from aching during heavy throwing periods.
(Dedeaux recently took over House’s business tutoring quarterbacks.) “What made me go there?” Wentz said. “Knowing so many good players went there and it helped them. I never want to stop learning. There are so many little things about playing this position that to the naked eye you won’t see when you watch me. But I do feel I am improved mechanically.”
Wentz has confidence he can play faster, he said, because he’s not thinking as much. In the Eagles’ OTA workouts—important not just for Wentz, but also for his chemistry with new receivers Alshon Jeffery and Torrey Smith—he said he feels faster and more comfortable in his second year under offensive coordinator Frank Reich. “Way more comfortable,” he said.
“It’s OTAs, I know. But things have slowed down. I’m not thinking about everything anymore—last year I was. Now I can feel the important things early in the play—where’s my answer, what are my options, what will work? It’s a different game when you can dial it down and feel you know what’s important to look for, and you’re not looking at every little thing out there. I mean, cover-2 is cover-2.”
On the topic of hunting, Wentz, who turns 25 this year, did a lot of it with American League MVP and Eagles season-ticket holder Mike Trout, 26. “Ducks, geese, sometimes just shooting boxes of shells and getting nothing. But there’s nothing like laying in a field, waiting for a shot. He’s a ridiculous fan of ours, but we don’t talk sports, really. Just life. We’ve got a lot of common ground.”
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2JUm9UfhiY
Eagles fans certainly hope so. Executive VP of football operations Howie Roseman dealt two starting defenders (Kiko Alonso, Byron Maxwell), plus first-, second-, third- and fourth-round picks to move from 15 to eight, then eight to two, in the draft to pick Wentz. So he’d better be the guy.
One of the things Wentz needs to be significantly better doing is throwing downfield. His 6.2 yards-per-attempt was 31st in the league—and Wentz has a good arm. There’s no way Trevor Siemian and Case Keenum should be better downfield throwers than the second pick in the draft, with a good arm and a load of confidence.
The Eagles got the speedy Smith and the productive deep weapon Jeffery to make Wentz better intermediate and down the field. Now he’s just got to do it.
For now, you’re not shaking Wentz’s confidence. Reich and coach Doug Pederson have emphasized smarter throws when diagnosing some of his 2016 mistakes. Wentz understands.
“I never found myself pressing last year, and I won’t this year,’’ he said. “Losing bugs me. But I’m a very optimistic person. I continue to refine what I do. I’m loving working with these new guys. The attitude here is very good, very positive. Going into this year, I’m really happy where we’re at.”
* * *
Photo: Jim Rogash/Getty Images
“Brady is unbelievable—the greatest quarterback I’ve ever seen … He’s the greatest football player of all time.”
—LeBron James, in a video posted by Def Pen Hoops, debating the greatness of the Patriots and Tom Brady and Bill Belichick. Very interesting.
And then …
“But he [Brady] affects the game one way, and that’s by throwing the ball. And it’s great. And it’s great … But as a basketball player, the pounding that you take, and running both sides. I gotta get back on offense, I gotta get back on defense … Belichick has done a great job of implementing those five guys up front, to protect that asset. That’s Belichick, that’s not Brady … [But] I’m not saying Brady’s not great.”
—James, in the same video.
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http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co...om-brady-people-for-some-reason-seem-to-care/
LeBron James says things about Tom Brady, people for some reason seem to care
Posted by Mike Florio on June 11, 2017
Getty Images
I’ve resisted for two days posting this item, because my primary compass for determining what is or is relevant to be posted is whether I’m interested in a story as a football fan. And, frankly, I’m not interested in what anyone who plays any other sport thinks about any football player, regardless of how good or not good said player in some other sport may be.
But I keep getting emails from readers sending links to NBA superstar LeBron James with his views on Patriots quarterback Tom Brady as an overall athlete in comparison, apparently, to basketball players. So I need to write something or the emails will continue.
“Brady is unbelievable,” LeBron said in a video in which he was at a barber shop getting his real and/or not real hair cut, via NFL.com. “Brady is the greatest quarterback I’ve ever seen but he affects the game one way. Just as a basketball player, and the pounding that you take and running both sides — ‘OK, I gotta do offense. Oh sh-t, I gotta get back on defense. Oh sh-t, I gotta get back on offense. Oh sh-t, I gotta get back on defense.’
As physical as football is — and to the body, I know it’s crazy to the body — but for a quarterback, [Bill] Belichick has done a great job of implementing those five guys in front to protect that asset. For us [as basketball players], every single night, you gotta know both sides.”
It’s a meaningless comparison, naturally skewed toward making basketball players seem in some way better than football players. Greatness in any given sport, however, is measured by achievement relative to one’s peers. Brady, with five Super Bowl championships and two other Super Bowl appearances, has emerged as the greatest quarterback of all time. James hasn’t even reached that pinnacle in his chosen sport. Once he does, we can argue whether Brady or James is the greater overall athlete.
Until then, Brady has one championship to go to catch Michael Jordan, which then could spark a true debate as to whether Brady or Jordan is the greater overall athlete.
And as to James’ stream of “oh sh-ts” about playing offense and defense, that’s a matter of basic conditioning and “want to” that any basketball player worth a damn must have. It’s wholly related to effort, and unrelated to skill.
But if the number of times a guy says “oh sh-t” in a given game is indeed relevant to greatness, Wayne Gretzky is the guy LeBron James should be putting at the top of the list.
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“It’s a lot better than the Jets Hall of Fame, which is nonexistent.”
—Josh Kraft, son of Patriots owner Robert Kraft, to the Boston Herald, at a community event, commenting on the Patriots Hall of Fame.
There is no proverbial love lost between these two teams.
“Alexa, lights off. Alexa, lights off. Alexa….lights…..off.”
—Sean McVay, commanding his Amazon personal assistant to make it dark in his Encino Hills home, via the latest installment of The MMQB’s 24 Hours series. Writer Andy Benoit spent an all-access day in Los Angeles with the 31-year-old Rams coach—hanging at his house, watching tape at the office, attending an OTA practice and having a sushi dinner on Sunset Boulevard.
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Stat of the Week
I wrote the other day about the NFL and Great Britain and the inevitability of it all… but these numbers really caught my attention:
2016 Games......................... Average Attendance
New England Patriots............. 8 66,829
NFL Games in London............ 3 80,786
Could England do that for eight games a year—sell an average of 13,960 more tickets per game than the Super Bowl champs? I don’t know. But I do know that there are four games in England this year, and they sold out by the end of April, and the market has sold approximately 40,000 season tickets for the four games. And this conservative thought:
The NFL is preparing a stadium to be shared with the Premier League’s Tottenham Hotspur, with the agreement between the league and Tottenham to put a minimum of two games there per year starting in 2018, and with separate entries and locker room and playing surfaces for the two games (grass for soccer, FieldTurf for football).
That stadium has a capacity of 61,000. With the NFL’s two current venues in England seating 84,000 (Wembley Stadium) and 74,000 (Twickenham Stadium), selling 61,000 seats eight times seems pretty manageable.
* * *
This week’s conversations: Atlanta coach Dan Quinn on the meaning of Fathers Day; author Michael MacCambridge, on his book “Chuck Noll: His Life’s Work”; and Lucy Kalanithi, widow of Paul Kalanithi, author of the sobering and inspirational book, “When Breath Becomes Air.”
• MacCambridge on the only interview he couldn’t get for the Noll book: “The only person who said no, out of the three years and 300 interviews, was on several occasions from Terry Bradshaw. I went through Dan Rooney, I went through Fox, and I went directly to Terry's office. I can remember Terry's personal assistant telling me at one point, there's two things Terry doesn't like to talk about. One of them I'm not going to say, and the other is Chuck Noll.
There is a tortured relationship there so I tried to tell as much of the story as I could from Terry's own words, from his books and his interviews, and sometimes as you well know, those words are contradictory. But I thought it was interesting, through all the grievances Terry still has and clearly still feels, the people who are closest to the situation, and the people who I respect most, all said a variation of the same thing.
They all said, Chuck was exactly the kind of coach that Terry Bradshaw needed. He held Terry Bradshaw accountable. He made him into a better quarterback. He made Terry discipline himself in a way that he might not have done if he was playing with the Chargers or the Saints or some other team. And I thought that was meaningful.
And sure, a lot of coaches and quarterbacks tangle. I'm sure that Marino had his own thoughts about Shula, I'm sure that Otto Graham disliked that Paul Brown called the plays, but not many quarterbacks have four Super Bowl rings for the trouble, and to be bitter after that, I believe probably says more about Bradshaw than it does about Noll.”
• MacCambridge on the relationship between Noll and wife Marianne: “She was certainly by Chuck's side at a lot of the social functions to help him and shield him. She was active in art, continuing education, charity work, she was working at their parish, she was somebody who was a person in full on her own and it was neat to hear about their relationship and how it evolved.
Their son Chris said at one point when he was in his early twenties, ‘I don't know if I am ever going to get married because I don't know if I am going to be able to find something that you guys have.’ Which is a nice thing to model for your children when you can.”
• MacCambridge on how the Nolls lived with his Alzheimer’s Disease: “That was his last heroic act, and it was her heroic act too. She didn't leave his side for the rest of his life. The only times they didn't spend the night together was when he was hospitalized a couple times. When I would go visit them, they were always connected, always doing things.
Alzheimer’s is always a losing fight and the only way you can minimize that is to keep your mind as active as possible and they would be doing jigsaw puzzles and crosswords, and he would be helping her with dinner. He never did forget who she was. If you've known people with Alzheimer’s, you know how difficult that is. It was like this heroic act on both of their parts, and that story touched me as well.”
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View: https://twitter.com/MarkCannizzaro/status/872292554749988866?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fmmqb.si.com%2Fmmqb%2F2017%2F06%2F12%2Fcarson-wentz-philadelphia-eagles-fathers-day-books-peter-king
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Things I Think I Think
1. I think the Chargers, in ensuring that one of the best bookend pass-rush tandems will play together for at least the next four years (assuming the fifth-year option of Joey Bosa is exercised at the end of the 2018 season), now have something to build around on defense in their new home. Bosa plays this season at 22.
Melvin Ingram, who signed a four-year, $66-million deal over the weekend, according to Adam Schefter, plays the year at 28. Both are healthy. So now the Philip Rivers-led offense doesn’t have to worry about scoring 34 a game if the relocated Chargers hope to win.
2. I think the league made a really good hire in Dawn Aponte for its chief football administrative officer (per Dan Kaplan of Sports Business Daily). I think that because of the respect Aponte has earned around the league with the Browns and Dolphins in football administration since 2009. “She should be a GM,” said one front-office veteran Sunday via text Sunday night. “Hope this gets her closer to that.” Amy Trask served as CEO of the Raiders under Al Davis.
But a woman has not been a general manager in the NFL. Aponte has been a strong negotiator, and the argument I’ve heard for her as a GM is that not all GMs climb the ladder the traditional way, beating the bushes as a scout for years before having a chance to run a front office. She’s strong-willed and very smart. It’ll be interesting to see her fate working under Troy Vincent in the league office in the near future—and whether a team would at least interview her for a GM opening.
3. I think not much happens in June that you can say truly impacts the regular season. But that’s exactly what happened when the Lions lost their best offensive lineman at the most integral position, left tackle Taylor Decker, with a shoulder injury and surgery last week.
Decker's value is not just his fine play; Pro Football Focus recorded that, in his 1,037 snaps played in 2016, only nine times did he allow his quarterback to be sacked or hit significantly. The Lions will miss Decker’s leadership on a changing line, where at least two starters will be new.
4. I think the truest words of the week belong to longtime and well-respected football writer Rick Gosselin, who Tweeted the other day: “Everything I see, hear and read out of NFL OTAs in May and June is fake news.” Twenty-nine teams are making the playoffs as of this morning. Haven't you heard? Read the clips, day by day.
The only teams I hear zero playoff talk about are the Niners and Browns and Jets. So 17 fan bases are going to be bitterly disappointed at some point this season. Optimism is fine. Nothing but optimism is misleading. That’s the slippery slope of having media cover football every day in May and June and July, when nothing but instruction is happening.
5. I think a pretty good example of that is what Colts owner Jim Irsay said, according to Zak Keefer of the Indianapolis Starvia an event with fans the other day. The offensive line is fine, Irsay said, and line guru Howard Mudd, the former Colts assistant, told Irsay so. Now, one of the reasons the Colts fired GM Ryan Grigson was because the quarterbacks were getting hit too much, and the line was leaky and a constant issue in the past couple of years.
Grigson gets whacked, Chris Ballard takes over, doesn’t address the line much in the off-season, and now all of a sudden the line’s no problem? I’ll believe it when I see it. But there was Irsay saying all’s well. “If Howard Mudd tells you it’s fixed, trust me, it’s fixed,” Irsay told the fans. We’ll see.
6. I think I had this reaction when I saw a headline on Pro Football Talk Saturday about the Saints exploring a trade for running back Travaris Cadet: For what? An eighth-rounder? Any team looking at the Saints sees Mark Ingram, Adrian Peterson and Alvin Kamara certainly ahead of Cadet, and sees the mildly used Cadet with 128 touches in five years, and has to wonder why it would give a draft choice for him.
7. I think I’ll be very interested to see which NFL team, if any, makes some offer to retired Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops to consult. He’s a very popular coach in NFL circles.
8. I think Odell Beckham Jr. will be at Giants’ mandatory practices this week—the first ones for the full squad this off-season. He hadn’t been at voluntary ones. Of all non-Kaepernick stories since the draft, the Beckham no-show to voluntary practices has gotten more attention than anything in the league. Which just goes to show you that May, June and July, truly, comprise the NFL’s silly season.
9. I think it’s great, and just, that Mike Vick retires as a Falcon today in Georgia.
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sJqTDaOrTg
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http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2017/06/12/carson-wentz-philadelphia-eagles-fathers-day-books-peter-king
The Hunt for Carson Wentz
After a roller-coaster rookie season, the Eagles quarterback still feels confident and ready to stalk his prey in Year 2
By Peter King
Photo: Rich Schultz/Getty Images
I don’t know if Carson Wentz is going to be a good player or not. It’s more likely than not he’ll have a successful career, but as Bill Parcells has said about 1,600 players in his life, they don’t sell insurance for that stuff.
But I talked to Wentz for awhile the other day, as he drove home from an offseason practice, and I came away thinking he’s got a good chance. He reminds me of Eli Manning in terms of mentality and confidence—I’ll explain that in a few moments—and I don’t think the game’s too big for him, which I’ll explain too.
I don’t believe Eli Manning’s ever been hunting for Himalayan Tahr (a wild goat) and Chamois (a goat-antelope species) and red deer in New Zealand, though. And that’s one of the things that’s got Wentz particularly excited these days. “I went with my brother to New Zealand for a week [in late March], on what I know would be a bucket-list hunt for so many hunters,” Wentz told me.
“It’s probably the most exhilarating hunt I’ve been on. I got my Tahr with a bow from about 40 yards, and boy, that was rewarding. It’s addicting.”
“What would be more rewarding from 40 yards—getting a Tahr with a bow and arrow, or throwing a touchdown pass from that distance in the Super Bowl?” I asked.
Pause. “God willing, playing in the Super Bowl one day, and making that pass like you say, would be a blessing—that’s what I’m working for right now,” Wentz said.
A bit of a game-rewind on Wentz, the phenom who grew up in North Dakota, starred at North Dakota State, and was fed to the Philadelphia wolves with the second pick in the 2016 draft. He was supposed to wilt. He didn’t.
Wentz was an early sensation, ripping off three wins to start his career and sending the normally skeptical Philly fans into a Wentz-for-Canton tizzy. But it was too good to be true, as these number illustrate:
.....................................W-L...Comp. %.......... TD-INT........... Rating
The Good Start..... 4-2..... .638...................... 8-3......................... 92.7
The Rough End.... 3-7...... .616.......................8-11........................ 73.4
Odd: Wentz’s only three wins in the last two months of the season came against NFC playoff teams—the Falcons, Giants and Cowboys. So the most famous athletic North Dakotan since Roger Maris entered a long off-season with more question marks than exclamation points.
Mostly this: As the season went on, Wentz never got a crisis of confidence or questioned that he should be playing as a rookie from North Dakota State. Basically, his confidence occasionally signed checks his arm couldn’t cash.
To start a five-game Eagles’ losing streak, Wentz threw a laser into a forest of four Seahawks just before halftime, down nine points, that was picked by Kam Chancellor and killed an important drive. There were more where that came from.
Wentz didn’t have a crisis of confidence. If anything, he had a crisis of decision-making.
“The thing is, I never pressed last year,” Wentz said. “I learned a lot. Windows are smaller, I have to make decisions faster … athletes, obviously, are better. But my motto was, ‘It’s just football.’ I didn’t make anything bigger than it was. I made some mistakes, but I didn’t get shaken by them.”
“Did anything last year, making that jump from North Dakota to the NFL, bug you?” I wondered.
“Never,” he said. “Definitely never.”
That’s where the Eli comparison is appropriate. I’ll always remember after the February 2012 Super Bowl win over New England, an emotional-less Manning was being shuttled through the Giants’ locker room to a media obligation by a phalanx of yellow-coated security people.
Looking at the scene, Justin Tuck of the Giants said, “That’s Eli—he’d look the same whether we just won or lost this game.” Manning felt if he left everything in preparation and performance on the field, no sense crying about a bad loss. And he never got very high after his biggest wins.
Photo: Al Bello/Getty Images
It’s early, but that’s Wentz’s way. He went to work with Tom House’s quarterback-mechanics protégé, Adam Dedeaux, in southern California for two weeks after the season to polish footwork, the timing between arm and legs, and learn the kind of shoulder exercises and “prehab” work that will prevent his shoulder from aching during heavy throwing periods.
(Dedeaux recently took over House’s business tutoring quarterbacks.) “What made me go there?” Wentz said. “Knowing so many good players went there and it helped them. I never want to stop learning. There are so many little things about playing this position that to the naked eye you won’t see when you watch me. But I do feel I am improved mechanically.”
Wentz has confidence he can play faster, he said, because he’s not thinking as much. In the Eagles’ OTA workouts—important not just for Wentz, but also for his chemistry with new receivers Alshon Jeffery and Torrey Smith—he said he feels faster and more comfortable in his second year under offensive coordinator Frank Reich. “Way more comfortable,” he said.
“It’s OTAs, I know. But things have slowed down. I’m not thinking about everything anymore—last year I was. Now I can feel the important things early in the play—where’s my answer, what are my options, what will work? It’s a different game when you can dial it down and feel you know what’s important to look for, and you’re not looking at every little thing out there. I mean, cover-2 is cover-2.”
On the topic of hunting, Wentz, who turns 25 this year, did a lot of it with American League MVP and Eagles season-ticket holder Mike Trout, 26. “Ducks, geese, sometimes just shooting boxes of shells and getting nothing. But there’s nothing like laying in a field, waiting for a shot. He’s a ridiculous fan of ours, but we don’t talk sports, really. Just life. We’ve got a lot of common ground.”
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2JUm9UfhiY
Eagles fans certainly hope so. Executive VP of football operations Howie Roseman dealt two starting defenders (Kiko Alonso, Byron Maxwell), plus first-, second-, third- and fourth-round picks to move from 15 to eight, then eight to two, in the draft to pick Wentz. So he’d better be the guy.
One of the things Wentz needs to be significantly better doing is throwing downfield. His 6.2 yards-per-attempt was 31st in the league—and Wentz has a good arm. There’s no way Trevor Siemian and Case Keenum should be better downfield throwers than the second pick in the draft, with a good arm and a load of confidence.
The Eagles got the speedy Smith and the productive deep weapon Jeffery to make Wentz better intermediate and down the field. Now he’s just got to do it.
For now, you’re not shaking Wentz’s confidence. Reich and coach Doug Pederson have emphasized smarter throws when diagnosing some of his 2016 mistakes. Wentz understands.
“I never found myself pressing last year, and I won’t this year,’’ he said. “Losing bugs me. But I’m a very optimistic person. I continue to refine what I do. I’m loving working with these new guys. The attitude here is very good, very positive. Going into this year, I’m really happy where we’re at.”
* * *
Photo: Jim Rogash/Getty Images
“Brady is unbelievable—the greatest quarterback I’ve ever seen … He’s the greatest football player of all time.”
—LeBron James, in a video posted by Def Pen Hoops, debating the greatness of the Patriots and Tom Brady and Bill Belichick. Very interesting.
And then …
“But he [Brady] affects the game one way, and that’s by throwing the ball. And it’s great. And it’s great … But as a basketball player, the pounding that you take, and running both sides. I gotta get back on offense, I gotta get back on defense … Belichick has done a great job of implementing those five guys up front, to protect that asset. That’s Belichick, that’s not Brady … [But] I’m not saying Brady’s not great.”
—James, in the same video.
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http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.co...om-brady-people-for-some-reason-seem-to-care/
LeBron James says things about Tom Brady, people for some reason seem to care
Posted by Mike Florio on June 11, 2017
I’ve resisted for two days posting this item, because my primary compass for determining what is or is relevant to be posted is whether I’m interested in a story as a football fan. And, frankly, I’m not interested in what anyone who plays any other sport thinks about any football player, regardless of how good or not good said player in some other sport may be.
But I keep getting emails from readers sending links to NBA superstar LeBron James with his views on Patriots quarterback Tom Brady as an overall athlete in comparison, apparently, to basketball players. So I need to write something or the emails will continue.
“Brady is unbelievable,” LeBron said in a video in which he was at a barber shop getting his real and/or not real hair cut, via NFL.com. “Brady is the greatest quarterback I’ve ever seen but he affects the game one way. Just as a basketball player, and the pounding that you take and running both sides — ‘OK, I gotta do offense. Oh sh-t, I gotta get back on defense. Oh sh-t, I gotta get back on offense. Oh sh-t, I gotta get back on defense.’
As physical as football is — and to the body, I know it’s crazy to the body — but for a quarterback, [Bill] Belichick has done a great job of implementing those five guys in front to protect that asset. For us [as basketball players], every single night, you gotta know both sides.”
It’s a meaningless comparison, naturally skewed toward making basketball players seem in some way better than football players. Greatness in any given sport, however, is measured by achievement relative to one’s peers. Brady, with five Super Bowl championships and two other Super Bowl appearances, has emerged as the greatest quarterback of all time. James hasn’t even reached that pinnacle in his chosen sport. Once he does, we can argue whether Brady or James is the greater overall athlete.
Until then, Brady has one championship to go to catch Michael Jordan, which then could spark a true debate as to whether Brady or Jordan is the greater overall athlete.
And as to James’ stream of “oh sh-ts” about playing offense and defense, that’s a matter of basic conditioning and “want to” that any basketball player worth a damn must have. It’s wholly related to effort, and unrelated to skill.
But if the number of times a guy says “oh sh-t” in a given game is indeed relevant to greatness, Wayne Gretzky is the guy LeBron James should be putting at the top of the list.
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“It’s a lot better than the Jets Hall of Fame, which is nonexistent.”
—Josh Kraft, son of Patriots owner Robert Kraft, to the Boston Herald, at a community event, commenting on the Patriots Hall of Fame.
There is no proverbial love lost between these two teams.
“Alexa, lights off. Alexa, lights off. Alexa….lights…..off.”
—Sean McVay, commanding his Amazon personal assistant to make it dark in his Encino Hills home, via the latest installment of The MMQB’s 24 Hours series. Writer Andy Benoit spent an all-access day in Los Angeles with the 31-year-old Rams coach—hanging at his house, watching tape at the office, attending an OTA practice and having a sushi dinner on Sunset Boulevard.
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Stat of the Week
I wrote the other day about the NFL and Great Britain and the inevitability of it all… but these numbers really caught my attention:
2016 Games......................... Average Attendance
New England Patriots............. 8 66,829
NFL Games in London............ 3 80,786
Could England do that for eight games a year—sell an average of 13,960 more tickets per game than the Super Bowl champs? I don’t know. But I do know that there are four games in England this year, and they sold out by the end of April, and the market has sold approximately 40,000 season tickets for the four games. And this conservative thought:
The NFL is preparing a stadium to be shared with the Premier League’s Tottenham Hotspur, with the agreement between the league and Tottenham to put a minimum of two games there per year starting in 2018, and with separate entries and locker room and playing surfaces for the two games (grass for soccer, FieldTurf for football).
That stadium has a capacity of 61,000. With the NFL’s two current venues in England seating 84,000 (Wembley Stadium) and 74,000 (Twickenham Stadium), selling 61,000 seats eight times seems pretty manageable.
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This week’s conversations: Atlanta coach Dan Quinn on the meaning of Fathers Day; author Michael MacCambridge, on his book “Chuck Noll: His Life’s Work”; and Lucy Kalanithi, widow of Paul Kalanithi, author of the sobering and inspirational book, “When Breath Becomes Air.”
• MacCambridge on the only interview he couldn’t get for the Noll book: “The only person who said no, out of the three years and 300 interviews, was on several occasions from Terry Bradshaw. I went through Dan Rooney, I went through Fox, and I went directly to Terry's office. I can remember Terry's personal assistant telling me at one point, there's two things Terry doesn't like to talk about. One of them I'm not going to say, and the other is Chuck Noll.
There is a tortured relationship there so I tried to tell as much of the story as I could from Terry's own words, from his books and his interviews, and sometimes as you well know, those words are contradictory. But I thought it was interesting, through all the grievances Terry still has and clearly still feels, the people who are closest to the situation, and the people who I respect most, all said a variation of the same thing.
They all said, Chuck was exactly the kind of coach that Terry Bradshaw needed. He held Terry Bradshaw accountable. He made him into a better quarterback. He made Terry discipline himself in a way that he might not have done if he was playing with the Chargers or the Saints or some other team. And I thought that was meaningful.
And sure, a lot of coaches and quarterbacks tangle. I'm sure that Marino had his own thoughts about Shula, I'm sure that Otto Graham disliked that Paul Brown called the plays, but not many quarterbacks have four Super Bowl rings for the trouble, and to be bitter after that, I believe probably says more about Bradshaw than it does about Noll.”
• MacCambridge on the relationship between Noll and wife Marianne: “She was certainly by Chuck's side at a lot of the social functions to help him and shield him. She was active in art, continuing education, charity work, she was working at their parish, she was somebody who was a person in full on her own and it was neat to hear about their relationship and how it evolved.
Their son Chris said at one point when he was in his early twenties, ‘I don't know if I am ever going to get married because I don't know if I am going to be able to find something that you guys have.’ Which is a nice thing to model for your children when you can.”
• MacCambridge on how the Nolls lived with his Alzheimer’s Disease: “That was his last heroic act, and it was her heroic act too. She didn't leave his side for the rest of his life. The only times they didn't spend the night together was when he was hospitalized a couple times. When I would go visit them, they were always connected, always doing things.
Alzheimer’s is always a losing fight and the only way you can minimize that is to keep your mind as active as possible and they would be doing jigsaw puzzles and crosswords, and he would be helping her with dinner. He never did forget who she was. If you've known people with Alzheimer’s, you know how difficult that is. It was like this heroic act on both of their parts, and that story touched me as well.”
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View: https://twitter.com/MarkCannizzaro/status/872292554749988866?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fmmqb.si.com%2Fmmqb%2F2017%2F06%2F12%2Fcarson-wentz-philadelphia-eagles-fathers-day-books-peter-king
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Things I Think I Think
1. I think the Chargers, in ensuring that one of the best bookend pass-rush tandems will play together for at least the next four years (assuming the fifth-year option of Joey Bosa is exercised at the end of the 2018 season), now have something to build around on defense in their new home. Bosa plays this season at 22.
Melvin Ingram, who signed a four-year, $66-million deal over the weekend, according to Adam Schefter, plays the year at 28. Both are healthy. So now the Philip Rivers-led offense doesn’t have to worry about scoring 34 a game if the relocated Chargers hope to win.
2. I think the league made a really good hire in Dawn Aponte for its chief football administrative officer (per Dan Kaplan of Sports Business Daily). I think that because of the respect Aponte has earned around the league with the Browns and Dolphins in football administration since 2009. “She should be a GM,” said one front-office veteran Sunday via text Sunday night. “Hope this gets her closer to that.” Amy Trask served as CEO of the Raiders under Al Davis.
But a woman has not been a general manager in the NFL. Aponte has been a strong negotiator, and the argument I’ve heard for her as a GM is that not all GMs climb the ladder the traditional way, beating the bushes as a scout for years before having a chance to run a front office. She’s strong-willed and very smart. It’ll be interesting to see her fate working under Troy Vincent in the league office in the near future—and whether a team would at least interview her for a GM opening.
3. I think not much happens in June that you can say truly impacts the regular season. But that’s exactly what happened when the Lions lost their best offensive lineman at the most integral position, left tackle Taylor Decker, with a shoulder injury and surgery last week.
Decker's value is not just his fine play; Pro Football Focus recorded that, in his 1,037 snaps played in 2016, only nine times did he allow his quarterback to be sacked or hit significantly. The Lions will miss Decker’s leadership on a changing line, where at least two starters will be new.
4. I think the truest words of the week belong to longtime and well-respected football writer Rick Gosselin, who Tweeted the other day: “Everything I see, hear and read out of NFL OTAs in May and June is fake news.” Twenty-nine teams are making the playoffs as of this morning. Haven't you heard? Read the clips, day by day.
The only teams I hear zero playoff talk about are the Niners and Browns and Jets. So 17 fan bases are going to be bitterly disappointed at some point this season. Optimism is fine. Nothing but optimism is misleading. That’s the slippery slope of having media cover football every day in May and June and July, when nothing but instruction is happening.
5. I think a pretty good example of that is what Colts owner Jim Irsay said, according to Zak Keefer of the Indianapolis Starvia an event with fans the other day. The offensive line is fine, Irsay said, and line guru Howard Mudd, the former Colts assistant, told Irsay so. Now, one of the reasons the Colts fired GM Ryan Grigson was because the quarterbacks were getting hit too much, and the line was leaky and a constant issue in the past couple of years.
Grigson gets whacked, Chris Ballard takes over, doesn’t address the line much in the off-season, and now all of a sudden the line’s no problem? I’ll believe it when I see it. But there was Irsay saying all’s well. “If Howard Mudd tells you it’s fixed, trust me, it’s fixed,” Irsay told the fans. We’ll see.
6. I think I had this reaction when I saw a headline on Pro Football Talk Saturday about the Saints exploring a trade for running back Travaris Cadet: For what? An eighth-rounder? Any team looking at the Saints sees Mark Ingram, Adrian Peterson and Alvin Kamara certainly ahead of Cadet, and sees the mildly used Cadet with 128 touches in five years, and has to wonder why it would give a draft choice for him.
7. I think I’ll be very interested to see which NFL team, if any, makes some offer to retired Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops to consult. He’s a very popular coach in NFL circles.
8. I think Odell Beckham Jr. will be at Giants’ mandatory practices this week—the first ones for the full squad this off-season. He hadn’t been at voluntary ones. Of all non-Kaepernick stories since the draft, the Beckham no-show to voluntary practices has gotten more attention than anything in the league. Which just goes to show you that May, June and July, truly, comprise the NFL’s silly season.
9. I think it’s great, and just, that Mike Vick retires as a Falcon today in Georgia.