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FMIA Week 7: A Strange Day in NFL, and Why Bucs Signed Antonio Brown - Peter King, NBC - NBCSports.com

FMIA Week 7: A Strange Day in NFL, and Why Bucs Signed Antonio Brown - Peter King, NBC - NBCSports.com

FMIA Week 7: A Strange Day in NFL, and Why Bucs Signed Antonio Brown - Peter King, NBC - NBCSports.com
Oct 26, 2020 18 mins, 20 secs

These are strange days in the NFL, and not just because of COVID-19.

Play of the week in the NFL’s COVID season: a wide receiver sprinting 114 yards to catch a safety sprinting 90 yards.

Baker, a 4.45 sprinter in the 40-, was off the races up the left sideline.

DK Metcalf of Seattle, a 4.33 sprinter who was about seven yards to the inside of Baker and a couple of yards behind, just started running at him, trying to cut down the angle.

— Sunday Night Football (@SNFonNBC) October 26, 2020.

Game respects game.

They played close to a perfect game in dismantling Green Bay last week, then went to Las Vegas on Sunday and put up 45 on the men of Gruden.

The last two weeks the Bucs of 2020 look like the in-stride Patriots of 2007, the team that clobbered good teams every week on the way to 16-0.

And here’s a guy that’s a Pro Bowl type player.

Arians asked all of them before Sunday’s game, “What percent are you physically—what do you think, 90, 95 percent?” Arians said Evans (ankle) said 80, Godwin (hamstring) said 80, and Miller (hip) said 85.

More about the risk in signing Brown later in the column—I’ve seen this movie too often to think Antonio Brown is a smart signing by anyone—but in talking to Arians, he insisted on three things: It wasn’t Tom Brady’s call, his players are on board with it, and he will not allow Brown to derail the good things the Bucs have going.

The Bucs have this harmonious thing going on—you haven’t heard one skill player complain about not getting the ball enough, and Brown is a player who historically has demanded the football.

(Rightfully so, really. He’s a great player.) And Brady fell for the guy in limited exposure to him last year in New England.

Today he didn’t touch the ball till the fourth quarter, but he just wants to win.

I owe it to the rest of my players—if there’s a guy that fits our salary cap cheap, who’s a Pro Bowl-type player, let’s bring him on our squad.

I mean, we just got another Pro Bowl player to put in if one of those guys go down.

“Offensively we’ve been struggling all year with injuries.

We brought him in just in case.

This team’s too good not to make that run and give our guys, our locker room, every chance.

Brown is slated to be eligible to practice before the Saints game.

Sunday night, back home in Pittsburgh, Steelers outside linebacker T.J.

“They just made too many plays on us in the second half, and it definitely should not have come down to them missing a field goal for us to win.”.

Pittsburgh and Tennessee entered Sunday’s top-of-the-AFC showdown game 5-0.

This was a game of so many swings.

. miss, wide right by a foot with 14 seconds left.

I loved the game.

A great game for football, a very good game for Pittsburgh, and a good game for Tennessee too.

Speaking of that, Roethlisberger was fuming with himself after the game for his three picks, and I’m assuming he saves some special steam for the last one.

With a 27-24 lead at the Tennessee 19-yard line with 2:40 left in the game, Roethlisberger had Smith-Schuster on a post route.

I get that—but the line of sight just wasn’t clear enough to take that risk.

So Gostkowski pushed a 45-yard try that would have sent the game to OT.

The breaks of the game, on both sides.

Even with key linebacker Devin Bush going down for the year last week, Pittsburgh has Watt, Cam Heyward, Bud Dupree (sign him, Steelers) and Minkah Fitzpatrick.

My favorite defensive play of the game showed why the Steelers will be a tough out in any game between now and February:.

Late in the second quarter, the Steelers had just kicked a field goal to go up 17-7.

Watt, at left outside linebacker, saw the play.

“Watch my brother’s game last week,” T.J.

I fired up NFL Game Pass to watch Tennessee-Houston last Sunday in Nashville.

Watt was lined up opposite Kelly, at left defensive end, a step or two from where T.J.

“So when I first moved to defense [from tight end, to outside rusher, at Wisconsin in 2015], I knew how to play the game, based on how my brother played.

Coach Tomlin says, ‘We don’t care where good ideas come from.’ So this week, I’m watching my brother rush Derrick Henry, and I get some ideas.”.

Watt said, “I had a really good idea he’d run my way.

That’s the kind of study, and the kind of play, the Steelers will need to stay unbeaten this week.

The Ravens put so much stock in this game that they made sure to acquire defensive end Yannick Ngakoue in time to prepare and practice fully for the game.

Last year, Roethlisberger missed both Ravens games with his injured elbow, and Baltimore ran away with the division.

This year, the Steelers have the weaponry to compete with Lamar Jackson and his tools.

“That was a miserable experience in Baltimore last year, and it left a bad taste in our mouths,” Watt said.

For three years, this day hung in the back of Jimmy Garoppolo’s head—through a torn ACL in 2018, through a sky-high start to a healthy 2019, through a slumping Super Bowl run, through rumors that his team might be interested in Tom Brady supplanting him, through the weirdest offseason a modern football player could have, and through another injured month off in 2020.

Important game.

“I tried to tell myself all week that it was just gonna be a normal game,” Garoppolo told me after the game.

I don’t know, just seeing familiar sights.

“Yeah, just brought back a ton of memories,” he said.

It was a really fun night.

just very weird for a sentimental guy like Garoppolo.

Garoppolo hugged Patriots owner Robert Kraft before the game and had a fairly mortal game full of short passes: 20 of 25, for 277 yards, no TDs and two interceptions.

Which is good, considering the Niners embark on a killer 15 days this weekend: at Seattle, Green Bay, at New Orleans.

It was just.

I mean, talk about just an emotional roller coaster.

Then the game happens—it just seemed like it flew by.

It was everything I could’ve asked for to come back here, really just get back to where it all started3

But you’re right—it’ll be good to be all football now.”.

A few notes on why the trade deadline matters this year, and why I think teams will pursue deals hard:.

When Yannick Ngakoue went from Minnesota to Baltimore for a third-round pick and a conditional fifth, Baltimore insisted on the deal getting done so Ngakoue would be in Maryland by last Thursday night.

Because under the current COVID rules, a player needs to test negative five straight days and be bubbled in his new city before he can take part fully in team activities.

The Ravens, who were on their bye over the weekend, wanted Ngakoue to have a full week of participation and practice before they faced division rival Pittsburgh for the AFC North lead next Sunday.

So the deal got done Thursday, Ngakoue flew to Baltimore that night, and he had his first COVID test Friday.

Test four is today, test five Tuesday, and if he passes all tests, he could walk into the Ravens facility for the first time Wednesday morning and be part of the game plan for the big Steeler game next Sunday.

But if a team wants a player to get in a full week of work and be available to play in Week 9, the deadline is really Oct.

That would give a hustling team time to get the player his five consecutive daily COVID tests and be with the new team for a full practice week before the game in Week 9.

Let’s use Ngakoue as an example for how a team improves its cap situation in what could be a dire year for the cap in 2021.

The cap has been increasing about $10 million a year for the past several seasons, and teams have had built-in expectations to plan future salaries.

But the league and players association agreed this year, because league revenues will be down significantly in the COVID economy, that the cap could drop to $175 million for 2021.

Source close to the situation told me, “Forget it.” Though his next 3.5 years have manageable salaries ($6.58 million to finish this year, then $15.3 million, $11.5 million, $11.5 million), dealing Jones would sink the 2021 cap?

The best one: Minnesota’s Riley Reiff, who would cost an acquiring team $3.5 million for the rest of this season with one more year left on his contract at a reasonable $11.7 million in 2021?

• Best player/best value who I’d pursue if I were the pass-rush-needy Seahawks or Niners or Patriots: Washington outside ’backer Ryan Kerrigan, due $6.8 million for the last 10 weeks of his contract, averages 9.9 sacks a year in his career, always available (four games missed due to injury in 10 seasons), great team guy.

But four years at $62 million for a player of his caliber.

I would’ve done it last year?

Trevor Lawrence is the same kind of player that Patrick Mahomes is7

He’s been good for a long, consistent period of time.

I’m just re-doing Kansas City.

The week after Brown’s last full game as an NFL wide receiver—19 targets, 14 catches, 185 yards, two touchdowns at New Orleans—the Steelers announced JuJu Smith-Schuster as the team’s MVP for the season, which annoyed Brown.

Agent Drew Rosenhaus called Steelers coach Mike Tomlin on the weekend of a playoff-implication game in Week 17, saying Brown was ready to play.

Twice he left camp without permission, filing a grievance with the league when his old helmet got banned for safety reasons.

Maybe he’s gotten good counseling, and he can pull out the old Costanzaism “Serenity now!” Maybe he’ll realize he’s got two strikes on him and one more strike ends his career.

Mike Tomlin and Jon Gruden and Derek Carr did everything they could do to make football with Brown run smoothly too.

I’ve just seen this movie too many times over the past two years.

I’m not saying this game will change Mayfield’s career; one game never does that for a player.

He could be in this space 10 times a year and no one could say anything about it.

Been a tough start for the eighth pick in the draft, but Simmons made a huge leap in overtime to help the Cardinals stun the Seahawks late Sunday night.

In the seesaw game of all seesaw games, Seattle had a game-winning touchdown pass to DK Metcalf nullified by a holding penalty with 1:04 left in overtime.

My favorite play was his last sack when, on fourth-and-one with 5:35 left and the Raiders down 18 points, Derek Carr was running toward the sideline and White blasted him out of bounds—right near the feet of Jon Gruden—for a two-yard loss.

Devin White just crushed Derek Carr on 4th-and-1.

Those days are pretty commonplace for one of the 10 best defensive players in football.

The Bills’ sixth-round rookie from Georgia Southern did miss two field goals in the Meadowlands, but I have a rule in FMIA: If you score all of your team’s points, and you win, and you kick field goals of 53, 48, 46, 37, 29 and 40 yards, you will be my special teams player of the week.

(H/T to Scott Pioli for his Bobby Turner story last week; it reminded me that Turner’s still around, making a major impact on the game and on the 49ers.).

This award is for the entire week, not just Sunday.

Huge point for the plummeting Cowboys in Sunday’s vital road game at Washington: 7:55 left in the second quarter, Dallas down 15-3 to WFT, Cowboys ball, third-and-nine at the Dallas 36.

I don’t know any other way to described what happened next, except Elliott looked totally unprepared to block the hard-charging Holcomb, and the second-year linebacker from North Carolina just blew up Elliott.

The Falcons lost to Detroit by one point on the last play of the game.

With 12 minutes left in the game, and Atlanta up 14-13 with a fourth-and-five at the Detroit 13-yard line, Morris chose to go for it instead of kicking the chip-shot field goal.

Even if the Falcons score a touchdown on this drive, unless they make a two-point conversion, it’s still a one-score game with at least two possessions left for Detroit.

Detroit led 16-14 over Atlanta with 72 seconds left in the game.

Detroit had no timeouts left.

The prescription here was clear: run the ball a couple of times, leave it in the middle of the field, call a timeout with five seconds left and give Younghoe Kim a field goal of around 25 yards to win the game 17-16.

Of course Matthew Stafford led the Lions downfield and won it on a TD pass with :00 left.

Good decision for the fantasy community, Todd.

Bad decision if, you know, you’re trying to win a football game.

“How sh—y this year has been.”.

—Fred Gaudelli, executive producer of NBC’s “Sunday Night Football,” on the NFL decision Thursday to change the Week 7 Sunday night game to Seattle-Arizona for COVID reasons.

My heart just hurt all day.”.

• Clowney has made more than $6 million to play football since his last sack.

From a three-year deal worth up to $54.125M with the Raiders to a one-year deal worth up to $15M with the Patriots to a one-year deal worth up to $2.5M with the Buccaneers for Antonio Brown in a year and a half.

I thought I’d do that because this was a particularly heavy week for the complaints, and I’d just like you to know where I’m coming from.

At the same time, I had some reporting ready on Ryan Tannehill on the one-year anniversary of him taking the Titans’ QB job, and how good he’s been; he played great, as did Derrick Henry, in the wild win over Houston.

But the story of Tannehill, I thought, was richer and better, and I had a good idea what happened on each of the final two drives, to send the game to OT and to win it in OT.

I monitored the Sunday night game but didn’t watch—I find I can write faster and more cogently if I work in quietude—and knew I’d only tear up this idea if something really compelling happened in Niners-Rams.

That just popped up, as newsy things often do on Sundays.

If the Hartman news didn’t happen, there’s a good chance I’d have written a bit about one of the other games—though because I heard about the death in mid-afternoon, digging into another game or story just never was a real possibility.

In order to write anything that’s insightful about the Sunday games means I need to narrow my focus and all but ignore some good stories.

But veteran Dallas scribe Rick Gosselin had a prescient suggestion last week, which seems even smarter this morning with the real possibility that someone named Ben DiNucci of Wexford, Pa., could be the starting quarterback when Dallas (2-5) travels to NFC East-leading Philadelphia (2-4-1) next Sunday.

Patrick Mahomes is not a very fair fight for Denver, and John Elway might have to keep half an eye on the college quarterbacks in the draft next year.

I think the last week of football, from Monday night to Sunday night, has taught me this: I love watching Kyler Murray play football.

Odd to me that there was no official conclusion, and they just left it to reports.” It’s important to spell out what exactly the team did wrong for two reasons—so others can learn from it, and so the wild rumors that made so many people think the team should have gotten an all-time severe sanction could be dispelled.

I think I am dying to know Aaron Rodgers’ first thought when he heard that Tom Brady’s team, which already has receiving weaponry including Mike Evans and Chris Godwin and Scotty Miller and Rob Gronkowski and Cam Brate, agreed to a deal with Antonio Brown on Friday night.

Week 2: New England (Sunday night, NBC).

Week 3: Dallas (Sunday afternoon, FOX doubleheader, seen by 71 percent of the country).

Week 5: Minnesota (Sunday night, NBC).

Week 7: at Arizona (Sunday night, NBC).

Week 8: San Francisco (Sunday afternoon, FOX doubleheader)*.

Week 11: Arizona (Thursday night, FOX).

Week 12: at Philadelphia (Monday night, ESPN).

• It’s certainly possible that the fourth pick in the 2020 draft, left tackle Andrew Thomas, will recover from the rocky start in the first seven games to have a good career.

He was awful Thursday night against Philadelphia, not adjusting to blitzing wide rushers that were his responsibility, and getting pushed around too much by the kind of physical front NFC East teams produce.

Pro Football Focus numbers make it sound even worse.

Of those 101, one player has allowed more than 25 pressures—which is PFF’s combination of sacks, hits and hurries.

Andrew Thomas is that player, and he has allowed an astounding 37: six sacks, four hits, 27 hurries.

(To be fair, that encompasses seven games, and most other tackles had no more than six.) But however you look at it—totals or average per game, Thomas has been the leakiest tackle in football as we approach midseason, and it’s not close for second place.

I haven’t seen a snap with either player where I said, Game’s too big for him.

That’s got to be the most surprising football event of the weekend.

Most surprising football event of next weekend: Indiana (1-0) at Rutgers (1-0), playing for at least a share of the Big Ten’s East division lead, fittingly on Halloween.

I just kept going to work.

That’s a terrific story, Jeff.

Football Story of the Week: Bo Wulf of The Athletic on Eagles left tackle Jordan Mailata, the Australian Rugby League player who came to the United States in search of the American football life in 2018, knowing nothing about any of the teams or players in the league.

No position player has ever made his way in the league without any prior football experience.

Mailata serves as the poster boy for the pathway program and the global search for talent, but good luck finding someone else like him.

“It’s just insane how everything panned out,” said Mailata.

TV Story of the Week: ABC News’ profile of a homeless college-bound student, Gordon Dean of Virginia, completing a 550-mile walk to college to raise money for the National Alliance to End Homelessness

We’re still capable of very good things

Public Service Story of the Week: “Your local bookstore wants you to know it’s struggling,” by Elizabeth A

According to the American Booksellers Association, which developed the campaign, more than one independent bookstore has closed each week since the pandemic began

Explicatory Story of the Week: How Nick Saban got to coach Alabama last week, by Alan Blinder and Katherine J

A private jet, the crimson “A” of the University of Alabama painted on its tail, lifted off from Tuscaloosa, Ala., around daybreak Saturday with extraordinary cargo: cellular debris collected from the nose of Nick Saban, the football coach

If a laboratory in Mobile, Ala., reported that the sample was negative for the virus, Saban, who had asserted that he had no symptoms and had repeatedly tested negative after his initial result, would be allowed to leave isolation a week early and coach in the prime-time game

Congrats on entering your 20th year doing PTI

Jared Diamond of the Wall Street Journal wrote a really good story about the game I couldn’t stay awake to see the end of

Brett Phillips, Diamond reports, really has a good understanding of his place in the baseball hierarchy, after one of the memorable at-bats in recent baseball history, after not batting in a game for 28 days

However, they get special mention this year for the celebration of our reprieve from horrible air from wild fires. Fresh Air

(This is per Michael MacCambridge in his superb Chuck Noll bio, “His Life’s Work.”) Blair was the safe pick, a great college player with NFL size

Lambert, at 219 pounds, was, as MacCambridge wrote, “worryingly slender.” With less than a minute left to make the pick, Noll asked linebackers coach Woody Widenhofer which player he preferred

Since reading that, I’ve wondered how football history might have been changed if Blair had been the Steelers’ selection—and though Lambert is one of the great linebackers ever, who knows how great Blair would have been in that all-time defense in Pittsburgh

Though cause of death was not announced, Blair said in 2015 that he’d been showing signed of dementia, and that his neurologist said his symptoms could be the result of CTE, the brain disease linked to head trauma, the likes of which football causes

Steve Schoenfeld, beloved Schony, died 20 years ago this week, way before his time

I’ll be MC-ing the virtual gala Wednesday evening, featuring the good works and youth of the program—which teaches middle-school youth how to love writing and reading and other media through exposure to sports—and honoring two local sports heroes: New York Liberty guard Jocelyn Willoughby (Newark) and Buffalo tackle Dion Dawkins (Rahway)

Money generated by an in-person gala has vanished this year, and that gala is the place the majority of our funds are generated every year

From the Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash., comes this story from a northern Idaho regional health board that repealed a local mask ordinance—after hearing the local hospital was at 99-percent capacity, bursting at the seams because of the COVID outbreak

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