Democratic War

The NYTimes has a story about the grassroots demanding Democratic officeholders opt for "total war" on Trump and his administration. But here's a key point the article misses entirely.

The anger and confrontation being demanded by Democratic voters is partly a reaction to Trump and an all GOP Congress. But that hostility and frustration is also aimed at lackey Democratic officials who showed an in ability and, indeed a passivity, to Republican opposition and intransigence to Obama during his administration (and of Obama's passivity itself, too).

Unspoken in the Times article is any mention of Merrick Garland that was the most recent but perfect example of GOP efforts to block, delegitimize, and derail Democratic initiatives - all with barely a peep of objection by Democratic lawmakers.

Indeed, having seen their Supreme Court nomination summarily ignored in unprecedented fashion, a nationalistic bigoted buffooon in the White House, and sweeping efforts to repeal swaths of the progressive progress during the Obama years, congressional Democrats - the surrender wing of the party - were fully prepared to play ball with Trump, Ryan, and McConnell before the grassroots rose in deafening protest.

That crying need for a backbone - so conspicuously absent from the Democratic posture for the past eight years - is as as much of the story about the grassroots uprising as it is about protesting Trump.

Immigration

Interesting article by Thomas Edsall. A couple of thoughts:

1 - First time I've seen mentioned that Clinton's pro-immigration stance hurt her among African-americans.

2 - For a Democratic subset, the blurring of legal immigration and illegal immigration by the party and liberal media can be infuriating.

3 - You can't underestimate the law and order component of immigration.

4 - Just because you are uncomfortable about growing numbers of people in your local community that don't speak any English doesn't make you a bigot or a racist.

5 - Illegal immigration is the physical manifestation of free trade. I don't think many people understand or appreciate this.

Mob Men

Philadelphia in the 80s was filled with stories of hits and rackets and made men. Good riddance Little Nicky.

http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/real-time/Tyrannical-Philly-Mafia-boss-Nicodemo-Little-Nicky-Scarfo-dies-in-prison-hospital.html

3 for 3

Has there been another team before the Packers that have played thee straight teams in the playoffs that they also played in the regular season?

Hard to Believe

Hard to believe that Jason Witten and Dez Bryant scored their first career post-season TDs yesterday. Especially Witten.

Chargers

Fascinating that the media reaction to the Chargers move to LA is that it's a sign of weakness for the NFL: that San Diego voters overwhelmingly rejected a stadium referendum and that now the Chargers will be the second team in a city that has not wholeheartedly embraced the first team that just moved there. See here, and here especially.

Admittedly, I haven't been paying too close attention to all the machinations in the league office and in San Diego - only that Spanos got screwed by his fellow owners when he proposed moving to LA last year (with the Raiders), only to have his fellow billionaires award the Rams the LA franchise (and giving Spanos a year to decide if he wanted to play second fiddle in LA (and get San Diego voters to pony up for a new stadium)).

Now we have our answer. Spanos is going to LA. What I didn't realize is that the Chargers have to pay a $650 million re-location fee to the other owners. Which got me thinking. How the hell couldn't Spanos pay for his own stadium for less than $650 million?!!?? You're telling me a replacement to Jack Murphy Stadium might be a lot more than that? In other words, Spanos won't pay for his own stadium in San Diego but will pay $650 million to the NFL to be a tenant in Stan Kroenke's pleasure palace. And that doesn't even take into account the rent Spanos will have to pay Kroenke.

Bizarre.

Doubtful

This story in the Sun this week says the Ravens are possibly raising ticket prices. 

Tthis quote from the team president caught my eye.

"Also since we last raised prices, we've spent about $45 million improving the stadium and over the next 2½ years, we're going to spend an additional $120 million, and that will include putting in some escalators and elevators to the top level, which will make a lot of our PSL holders up there happy," he said during the franchise's annual season review at its training facility in Owings Mills. "So we're seriously considering a price increase."

I do NOT think for a second that the Ravens actually spent $45 million in stadium improvements since 2013 (the last time they won the super bowl). Nor do I think they will be spending $120 million over the next two years in further stadium improvements. $60 million per year?!? Maybe by "they" they mean "the city of Baltimore" but the assertion is so absurd and the numbers so outlandish and obviously false that I hope somebody calls them on it.

Baseball HOF

I've been complaining about this for a while. How can Tony LaRussa and Joe Torre be inducted into the Hall of Fame but not the players who helped LaRussa and Torre accumulate all those wins that got them elected in the first place.

The list of tainted players is impressive: McGwire, Clemens, A-Rod, Giambi, Pettite.

Forget about the hapless Bud Selig getting into the Hall all the while looking the other day while McGwire grew biceps the size of watermelons and Clemens exhibited roid rage in the 2001 World Series while confronting Mike Piazza.

Joe Torre is a MLB exectuive for gosh sakes. He, LaRussa, and Davey Johnson for that matter should have to come clean about what they knew and when they knew it with respect to PEDs in their clubhouses and on their rosters.

Deja Vu

Oh, man.

This article about Doug Pederson's desire to run the ball more...only to call more pass plays is an uncomfortable replay of the Andy Reid years.

As the article notes about the unprecedented number of passes Wentz is attempting:

 Wentz averaged 30.8 passes the first six games, when the Eagles were 4-2.
The last seven games, he's averaged an astonishing 44.7 passes per game – the most in NFL history over any seven-game stretch by a rookie, according to figures from Pro Football Reference and the most in any seven-game stretch by any Eagle quarterback...
So Wentz has thrown more passes the last seven weeks than Donovan McNabb ever threw in any seven-game stretch in his career.
In fact, only nine quarterbacks in NFL history have thrown more passes in any seven-game stretch than Wentz since the Dallas game – Matt Stafford, Drew Bledsoe, Warren Moon, Philip Rivers, Erik Kramer, Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers, Drew Brees and Rich Gannon.
So Pederson has called more pass plays the last seven weeks than Andy Reid - owner of the highest pass-run ratio by any NFL head coach in history -- ever called in any seven-week span in his 18 seasons as an NFL head coach.

The Eagles pass/run ratio is 61/39 - which is better than Andy Reid's ungodly 65/35 - but not by much. And at least Reid had a pro bowl QB that was often in conversations about MVP when he did it.

But most disconcerting is Frank Reich's explanation of the unbalanced play calling.

"I know when (Pederson) and I are sitting up there talking about the plan, and the plan of attack in the game, you go in with the idea that we're going to run it 30 to 35 times a game," Reich said Tuesday. "That's what you want to do. But you have to make the calls at the time that you think are necessary to win the game. 

That is scarily similar to Andy Reid's lame weekly explanations as to why, despite expressing a desire for a more balanced pass/run ratio, his team wound up with a 65/35 or - at times a 70/30 (un)balance. Reid would say something nearly exactly like Reich - that they had intended to run the ball more, but gosh darn it, the game situations just forced them to call more pass plays. What's most amazing is that those very same game situations occurred week after endless week.

Like Reid, so like Pederson and Reich. Hello again 65/35

Ugh.

Eagles Town

Really? 

Philadelphia really is a football town. And by football, I mean Eagles.

How else to explain the list of biggest sports stories in Philadelphia this year that has the encouraging but 6-9 play of QB Carson Wentz ranked above Villanova winning the national championship with the only buzzer beater in championship game history. Imagine where Wentz will be ranked next year if he gets a decent receiving corps!

Wentz's return

Carson Wentz may be the only NFL player I can recall who actually went into the locker room after an initial concussion diagnosis on the sideline and then returned to the game.

And Doug Pederson's decision to re-insert Wentz into the second half of the penultimate game - a meaningless contest for the Eagles - was inexplicable. Just because Wentz was "cleared" to return to play doesn't mean you actually have to put him in. He's the franchise QB for chrissakes. Hopefully he plays for 12 years for the Eagles. Why risk that bright future on a middling, pointless game now?

Even more inexplicable was the Eagles' decision to run a double reverse after Wentz returned in which your recently concussed QB became the lead blocker?!?!?! That play calling is downright negligent.

And memo to Cris Collinsworth. The NFL concussion process didn't "work exactly like it was supposed to." The spotter missed Wentz's head slamming to the turn on the roughing the passer penalty. In fact, it took the intervention of pro bowl left tackle Jason Peters to tell both Wentz and the coaching staff that the rookie QB needed to leave the game. That's how this system is supposed to work? It was an utter failure but for a teammate's concern. And once again made a joke out of the league's concussion protocols and of an individual team's coaching staff's concern for the long-term health of one of their players.

But other than that, the win and preventing the Giants from clinching a playoff berth at the Linc was great.

Cam Newtown

Glad to see there was widespread outrage and condemnation of the ridiculous no call on Cam Newton being hit in the head last night. Walt Coleman's crew even seemed to go out of its way to insult Newton by not only not calling a penalty on Washington but calling a 15 yarder on Newton?!

There's been some complaint about the inability of the Washington player to avoid hitting the sliding (feet first) Newton.

Whatever the intent of the defender, the fact is he hit a QB that was sliding. 9 times out of 10 that gets called as a penalty. To add insult to injury, the defender also delivered a blow to the QB's head. In the league's efforts to protect the quarterbacks and prevent hits to the head, it should have been called a penalty. In fact, most people on the field and in the broadcast booth thought the flag was initially on the Redskins. 

Even more egregiously, contrast it with the "late hit" that was called on the Panthers when they shoved Cousins out of bounds later in the game. Replays showed Cousins wasn't actually out of bounds when the defender made contact with him. As such (and Gruden made this point), there shouldn't have been a penalty called.

But the larger point is that  one QB got the benefit of a questionable call and one didn't.  And the one that didn't - Cam Newton - hasn't been getting them all year. After a while, it adds up.

Forgoing Bowl Games

After the disastrous knee injury Notre Dame LB Jaylon Smith suffered in last year's bowl game - that dropped his draft projection as a top 5 pick to the end of the first round - costing him approximately $20 million, it's no surprise that top NFL prospects are deciding that the risk of playing in a meaningless exhibition bowl simply isn't worth it. Especially since the players are the only ones not making any money off of the bowl game.

Now the number of players renouncing their bowl game has risen to 3 and Arizona Bruce Arians has said he would have "concerns" if a player didn't want to play in a bowl game. (To which profootballtalk pointed out that Arians wasn't so concerned about a player being suspended for smoking marijuana and missing a bowl game that he didn't draft Robert Nkemdiche.

This is a long-awaited development that's the direct result of the national championship playoff. The already extraneous college bowl system is even more meaningless except for the 3 games and 4 teams vying for the championship. 

Make no mistake - the decisions of Leonard Fournette, Christian McCaffrey (the son of a former NFL pro) and Shock Linwood are only the tip of the iceberg. I would expectx more college stars to choose the same route and those decisions could have serious repercussions in undermining the whole NCAA football slave labor system.  

Look for other NFL coaches to come out against the college players in the very near future and I wouldn't be surprised if the NCAA got involved in some way to try to stop the trend in the near future.

NFL Fines Giants for Walkie Talkies

It's not the violation of game operation rules that has the NFL so fired up. No. In Roger Goodell's NFL, Ben McAdoo's sin was undermining the sponsorship deal the league has with official communications partner, Bose, whose equipment only works occasionally on the sidelines of MetLife Stadium

Wussification

Could  there be any more stark contrasts between the intestinal fortitude of our two political parties as it relates to power and action than what we saw this weekend in Washington, DC and North Carolina.

President Obama gave a calm, reasoned, milquetoast explanation about how Russia helped influence the presidential election and that the US government hasn't really responded to this unprecedented attack on American democracy. At the end of the day, Donald Trump will become president on January 20th and there isn't a damn thing Obama or the Democrats can or will do about it.

Juxtapose that with the Republican North Carolina legislature who called a special legislative session to enact a new set of wide-ranging policies specifically crafted to emasculate the powers of the incoming Democratic governor. 

Republicans at seemingly every level of government now have completely abandoned any pretense of abiding by the traditional norms and customs of politics while the Democrats are helpless to stop these moves and are themselves incapable of copying them for their own benefit.

The wussification of the Democratic party continues.

For the Win

I have no problem with Doug Pederson's decision to go for two and the win this afternoon in Baltimore. In fact, I applaud it.

The Eagles aren't going to to the playoffs. They're playing on the road against a better (playoff) team. The weather is a definite factor in the kicking game and thus field position. They have the momentum having 1) forced the Ravens to punt and 2) drove 60 yards for the tying/winning score.

Why not go for it? If you lose the coin flip for the OT quarter you're going to be at a distinct disadvantage for the whole period. And the 2 pointer gives you about the same percentage chance of conversion. In addition, you have to consider kicking the PAT into a swirling wind which is no gimme.

Pederson's been criticized all year for some over-aggressive 4th down decisions, but this one isn't one of them.

Not a "Bang-Bang" Play

Let's dispel the notion that Deshazor Everett's vicious cheap shot on Eagles punt returner Darren Sproles last wee was a "bang-bang" play as Everett has tried to explain.

A bang-bang play would have occurred had Sproles actually caught the ball. He didn't. Thus it was an egregious penalty worthy of the fine imposed by the league. In fact, it was so flagrant that it should have resulted in his ejection. He certainly should have been ejected after committing a second personal foul on a subsequent punt return when he blind sided Brent Celek (with a helmet to helmet hit no less!). It's also worth noting that thanks to Everett, Sproles is out for today's game vs. the Ravens.

Moreover, Everett's excuse-making also suggests he doesn't understand the rules of football. As Everett said, "You have options. You have ways to protect yourself. It's not like the guy called fair catch, and I still took a shot at him because I'm not that type of player."

Yes, you are exactly that kind of dirty player who also doesn't understand the rules. What does Sproles calling a fair catch have to do with anything? The rules clearly state you're not allowed to hit the punt returner when he doesn't have the football. Everett suggests that, in his mind, punt returners are fair game whether they have the ball or not and the ONLY way to prevent them from being hit is to call a fair catch.

Poor Jon Dorenbos

On the day he tied Harold Carmichael for longest consecutive games played streak as an Eagle last week, he injures his wrist so badly it requires surgery and his placement on IR - ending his season.

So Carmichael and Dorenbos will share the consecutive streak record, though honestly Dorenbos only plays like 8 plays a game.

On another point, how is Harold Carmichael's number not retired by the Eagles? Nelson Agoholor's troubles merely highlight the absurdity of still seeing a #17 on the field for the Eagles. That number should and will always belong to Harold Carmichael.

The Real Dem Vote Decision

To me the issue around Democratic support for the Republican alternative to Obamacare down the road isn't the key question confronting the caucus.

The bugger consideration Dems should be making is whether they should support immediate repeal of Obamacare when the votes happen in January and force the issue to create chaos in the insurance markets and blaming Trump and the GOP now for the loss of insurance.  Rather than allowing republicans to reap the reward of the repeal vote and put off the pain of the consequences till after the mid terms (and pressure Dems then to support whatever alternative they come up with). 

Not only would it be a political victory but it would completely derail the legislative agenda of the Trump administration and GOP Congress who would be consumed with coming up with a health care fix on the fly for at least the first 6 months of 2017 instead of pushing tax cuts, and other Paul ryan priorities. 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/12/07/schumer-if-republicans-destroy-our-health-system-we-wont-throw-them-a-lifeline/

Trump’s unpredictable style unnerves biz

Unnerves might not be the right word. How about "intimidated"? I'm guessing that the CEOs of Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Citigroup wouldn't dare miss a meeting with president-elect Trump like Lloyd Blankfein, John Mack, and Dick Parsons did with President Obama back in 2009 (citing weather as an excuse for their absence).

That 2009 meeting was the day after Obama had called Wall Street executives "fat cats." They may have to get used to being called much worse (and penalized) under a Trump administration.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/trumps-unpredictable-style-unnerves-corporate-america/2016/12/06/6e3f3976-bbea-11e6-94ac-3d324840106c_story.html