Fozzy4

So if it's legal you don't consider it cheap... yet calling a timeout like that is legal, and you do consider it cheap? Way to go contradicting yourself in the same post. And, for the record, nailing your opponent in the head with a punch absolutely is not legal whether you have the ball or not. He should be routinely getting flagged for personal fouls.

Can you read at all? I mean seriously. I said he shouldn't be allowed to punch people in the head under the guise of a stiff arm, because that in fact is not stiff arming, it is punching your opponent in the head. GET IT? I also am not arguing on the grounds of violence, I am arguing on fair treatment. If defenders can't go to the head because the NFL deems it dangerous, offensive players shouldn't be allowed to either. If you want to let MB3 punch people in the head and then get pounded in the head himself too I'd be fine with that, but he can't be protected while still allowed to do it to everyone else, that's just bull.

Just giving an update on Chambers, per Rotowire.com: "On Thursday, head coach Norv Turner said that Chambers is already up to speed with the playbook and is ready to contribute immediately, the San Diego North County Times reports." This shouldn't be unexpected as we were already hearing what a great fit he was in their offense due to his previous experience in it, but those of you considering starting him this week should be happy to hear Norv confirming his excellent progress directly. It will likely take some time for Rivers and Chambers to develop a high level of comfort with each other, but he has a good shot to make a respectable contribution to the team in the meantime with the playbook already under his belt.

So your solution is to not address the problem at all, and instead tell the tacklers to stay away from MB3's problematic behavior? WOW. That's like saying shooting someone shouldn't be illegal because the people getting shot at should just dodge the bullets. Gee thanks for all the insight. Ridiculous. My solution is to put limits on what constitutes a stiff arm. Grabbing face masks and giving blows to opponent's heads are not necessary to stiff arm effectively, and should not be allowed. You can stiff arm just fine without doing either one, and avoiding them avoids a lot of potential for injury. Done deal.

LOL, I have no interest at all in the New England Patriots, just pulled Thomas' name out because he's been in the news for talking smack about his ex-teammates in Baltimore. On illegal hands to the face, AFAIK it is a defense-only penalty, and a normal stiff arm is definitely allowed to contact the head area of the opponent. However, many things MB3 has done ought not count only as that, but also as various personal fouls which the refs are supposed to call if a player does something that could injure another player, or something that is unsportsmanlike. In this case I've seen him grab and hold a face mask and definitely punch at someone's helmet, either of which easily falls under the area of a personal foul. In fact if he did some of this stuff after a play, he'd get ejected for taking a swing at another player. So all I'm saying is that the fact he has the football can't change the substance of his act, which the officials should be penalizing as appropriate. Either no one can do that stuff, or everyone can, but this "this guy can do whatever he wants because he has the ball" stuff has got to go. The rule supposedly exists for safety, so it should be enforced evenly since it's become obvious that the defense needs as much protection from MB3 as he does from them.

I'd be fine with that if it was consistent. Can Adalius Thomas go up to Romo and clock him in the face as he's sacking him? If he can, then you have a point. Problem is he can't because he'll get flagged, and all we're doing is demanding equal treatment of MB3 when he does the same thing to a tackler. It's illegal and must be called against everyone regardless of their position or the situation. Either all players are allowed to get clocked in the head, or none are, and that's just the way it has to be: MB3 can't be exempt from the rule.

Right, it's not illegal for RBs to deliver blows to the head to opposing tacklers... it's illegal for ANYONE to deliver blows to the head of ANYONE, not just RBs against tacklers. Stiff arming is not a BLOW to the head, it is supposed to be a passive method of avoiding the man - keeping him at arm's length by locking your arm. If it's a blow, it's illegal, and MB3 definitely delivers blows, not just extends his arm to avoid the tackler (which is what a stiff arm is, hence the term STIFF ARM and not STIFF PUNCH).

See, the problem is you don't necessarily get LT spied and Gates doubled. The defense gets to dictate who it is that has the chance to get open. In theory the offense is supposed to present more threats than the defense can effectively cover, but it is the choice of defense that determines which offensive player gets the benefit of that. They could as easily play cover 2 all day to neutralize the receivers, letting Gates get all the catches he wants from mis-matches on linebackers. In fact I expect this move to benefit Gates: where he was drawing better coverage before, he should be more free now as the defense will have to divert more effort to the improved WR corp. LT2 could benefit too if the Chargers' offense starts to force opposing defenses into more DB-heavy sets. Nearly every SD package should have 3 credible receiving threats on the field now, which IMO may often force the defense into nickel to match up, and that means the running game gets easier. Overall, though, the value of every player on a team goes up as the team is upgraded. Chambers should get more opportunities to shine with a more talented RB and TE as distractions, just like those guys will benefit from Chambers sometimes drawing the D's attention. I don't anticipate a big jump in his yardage since there are other bigger cogs in SD's offense, but I expect him to find the endzone a lot more often with SD because the team fields big offensive threats at each other major position that will give him more chances to go unnoticed. Those TDs should turn what was a #3 Fantasy WR season in MIA into more of a #2 fantasy WR year. Just what the doctor ordered. In short, Chris Chambers will snap his horrible TD-less streak (14 games in a row) now that he's a Charger, and it will be sooner rather than later. I'm seriously considering starting him this week because he could have a lot of surprise value - I think he'll be much more adjusted than anyone is giving credit for, and a less depressing team has to count for something - just look at the Randy Moss comeback.

I have the possibility of starting him, given my really goofy RB situation at the moment. It all depends on what I know at noon when lineups are due. I have Westy out on bye, and Addai, Portis, and Jacobs all have some sort of injury questions going on. I am counting Addai out already due to his status, and assume I won't hear one way or the other by noon. I've got Jacobs and Portis slotted in as of right now since both are probable and appear ready to go, but if either situation brings bad news by noon then I'll be starting good ole Selvin Young. So I'm not really expecting to start him... but my hand may be forced. I probably would start him if I knew Henry wouldn't play at all... but that's another 4:15 game, so it seems unlikely that I can get any useful information in time. It seems funny that I acquired him on Wednesday this week just on a hunch from his performance filling in for Henry... and a day later, news comes that he might become the team's starter for the duration! It feels really weird, because usually my luck doesn't run like that...

So... you think every 2nd post on the board should have to be a post that asks if the previous one was just opinion, or was actually fact? This board would immediately become useless if more than a few people chose to lazily post as misleadingly as TheGiantJets, for the simple fact that it would force obscene amounts of lame questions like the one you proposed. Even worse is your second option, to simply ignore "unfounded statements." How do you determine whether a statement in a post here is founded or not? Ha, you'd have to ask that same question from your first suggestion, so they both amount to the same pathetic solution. You'd either spend all your time asking everyone else to verify their posts as fact or fiction, or you'd simply ignore every post that you saw (without any way to know whether it was unfounded or not). Neither one is even remotely acceptable, which is why everyone is insisting that people have to clearly qualify their remarks as opinion or fact. It's not out of concern for convenience as you seem to suggest, but rather out of necessity, as the alternative would make the board many times more difficult to use quickly, accurately, and effectively, undoubtedly making it so difficult to use that nearly no one would be able to tolerate it. If you prefer a completely impotent board, though, feel free to stick up for a poster's right to loudly proclaim factual that which is merely conjecture. FWIW Henry was right to drop the hammer here, the post in question was a really bad one. You can't just go around and post your opinion as fact, it makes the board nigh impossible to use. What really gets me is that so many people apparently can't comprehend why it might be a problem.

They're on bye next week, which is another good reason he can play this Sunday. He'll have an extra week to recover, which IMO means if he's able to play w/o dying, he will be out there. As other folks have said this is a very important game, and I'm really beginning to wonder if they're not just trying to play games with the Giants. It's entirely possible he's better than they're letting anyone know, and the Eagles are just trying to catch the Giants off guard on game day. It certainly wouldn't be the first time a team has done it. My opinion is he will be in some pain, but he will play through it - it's not the sort of injury that should be able to actually keep him out of the game, especially not with the pain killers and whatnot that professional sports players have access to. He may be hopped up on something, but come game time I don't see how he could be prevented from going. Also I saw someone earlier drew a parallel to how the Giants are treating Ward... it's sorta funny, but Jacobs has actually been back practicing some this week and could be available. They seem to be playing down that idea, but again that could just be a slick subterfuge. It would be a pretty sick surprise if Jacobs was full strength and started this week. All in all I'm getting a somewhat insane delight from entertaining all the possibilities here. Maybe that's why the Pats roll out this routine all the time - it's just a hilarious amount of fun to do it, though admittedly frustrating beyond belief to all us fantasy types.

There's a difference here - commercials don't outright lie, they simply give you a chance to make incorrect conclusions. A hot babe appears on a beer add, implying that you get women if you drink this beer. No one says it, or even anything close, but many people make that connection when seeing the commercial. It isn't said, because it would be fraud if they say it and it isn't actually true! In this case, though, the NFL has strict rules under which games must be played, and in buying a ticket to a game we expect to see a game played under those precise rules. If it isn't, then you weren't mislead, you were outright lied to - what you bought is simply not what you got. The NFL has already said the Pats breached the rules, so there is plenty of legal footing for the notion of fraud. A similar example might be if you bought a movie ticket, but were shown a movie other than what you paid to see. It's still a movie, and in that sense is quite like what you paid to see... and yet it isn't what you paid to see. Same thing here - The Pats breaching the rules makes the show something other than what the people all paid to see, and that makes it fraud. Yet another example is if you discovered a casino you frequented using loaded dice. The casino has gained an unfair advantage! You would cry foul and demand your money back, plus you might seriously consider suing them, b/c you paid to play a fair game of craps. Why, then, shouldn't you also demand your money back when you discover an NFL team has gained an illegal advantage??? Amen, someone gets it. As far as I know stealing signs in baseball is not against the rules of the game. Provided that is the case, you are trying to compare apples and oranges. A substantial portion of this suit rests on the fact that the Patriots violated the rules of the game, not simply that they gained a competitive edge by stealing signals. We expect teams to try to get an edge, but it's the violation of the game rules in that process that they are suggesting makes this fraud. "Actual damages?" What the heck is that supposed to mean? People sue for mental anguish, and you certainly can't label that an "actual damage" under any reasonable way to measure it. If you are thinking property damage then no that is not what is implied, and in this case we are talking more than likely about the degradation of the performances during those Patriot-Jet games. One direction could be to suggest that the Patriots' actions caused the Jets to not perform as well in those games (due to the Jets having unfair knowledge of their communications, and thus advance knowledge of calls). From there, it is easy to say that Jets fans have been slighted as a result because their team would have performed better (and thus they would've enjoyed the games more) had the Patriots stayed within the rules. From that line of reasoning it is easy to suggest that all affected games have been detracted from by the Patriots' cheating, and that clearly goes to fraud. It's also worth noting that civil cases have much more lax requirements on evidence. A criminal suit needs to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt - a civil suit, though, must only establish liability through a preponderance of evidence. 50% likelihood is all that's required, which basically means the court is asked if it seems likely that the Patriots are responsible for fraud against Jets ticket holders. So while it is not likely this case could win in any sort of criminal proceeding, it needs only to establish that fraud is likely, which is something that definitely could happen.

I too think he'll play. I almost pulled him last week and he went nuts... so there's no way I can bench him this week. I don't think any Westy owner could really bench him... I'll chance the zero to also chance the huge points he's bound to put up against the crappy NYG defense.

Hmm... Reggie acts and moves a lot like Brian Westbrook on the football field, IMO. Just ask Brian how detrimental it is to your fantasy production to be your team's only running back when you're speedy and have moves. Expect Reggie to get dinged up more often, but to post better numbers too as he gets a lot more touches.

See, that's the problem - Gore isn't an upgrade at RB, not with how awful his team is passing, the run-stacked defenses he'll face as a result, and how solid Portis has been. Portis is actually outproducing him by ~2 pts per game, while Wayne is quite a bit better than Mason. This guys' league mates must see the same thing I do: Portis is back to his typical uninjured form, Gore is struggling, and Wayne is obviously lightyears above Mason, which makes this trade pretty unfair. Portis is posting stats about like Gore and doesn't show signs of stopping, while OTOH Mason has Clayton coming back which may hurt his value. The more you think about it, the worse the deal obviously is for the guy who gets Gore and Mason. With the RBs performing so similarly, it boils down to Mason for Wayne, and that seems pretty ridiculous. After analyzing it like that, I would've been running to my computer hurriedly jamming the block button too. If Gore had posted numbers worthy of his ADP thus far that might not be the case, but his lackluster YPC and flailing offense are more than enough to get me (and likely many others) to adjust his value accordingly, and that makes this deal look bad bad bad. Actually, stupid owners (or at least poor decisions) are exactly the reason leagues have rules like this one. Why else would it be there? It's to prevent an owner from making a bad move that wrecks the year (and fun) for everyone. Owners are more than welcome to wreck their own fantasy teams, but when they pick another team to hand top material to, you should expect it will get everyone in an uproar. My take is that this one should have been blocked, because it's quite obvious it is unbalanced with the information we know right now. If you were picking up a sleeper guy, or talent that wasn't obvious to everybody, then your trade would probably go through, and your skill in picking a guy to acquire would benefit (or hinder) you. With a deal like this one, though, there isn't any special skill involved, it's simply that you get the benefit of an owner handing you an unfair deal, and that's something any Joe Blow can do. Fantasy football is supposed to be about your football knowledge getting you an advantage and therefore wins, so I'm all for anything that can stop another owner from handing you an obvious advantage like this one appears to be. Blocking bad trades is in the best interest of fair competition, and promotes winning through knowledge instead of the shortcomings of a single owner who can hand you an advantage against everyone. Everyone else shouldn't have to suffer just because that one owner makes a bad move, ya know? If you want that advantage on your roster, work it so the deal actually looks fair, and earn your reward when the guys you get turn it up a notch like you thought they would. As a side note, if you think your trade was blocked because other owners feel threatened by you, try working something out to get some buy-low guys in exchange for your own sell-high material. Guys will typically let it go through if they perceive you're on the losing end, and the best way to accomplish that is to move some guys you expect to run out of steam (but are currently hot) in exchange for guys who are about to come around. Try to work with possible future successes, as guys who are already producing well can more quickly raise red flags that get your trades blocked. It takes a bit more skill to work it like that successfully, but it's also infinitely more likely to fly under the radar. Note: I had initially assumed (incorrectly) that you were getting the better end of things. I agree with the poster above that I kinda like this deal for you... but take my comments with regard to your commish then. He shouldn't be able to get this much out of you for Gore and Mason at this point, and I wouldn't want him to pick up Portis and Wayne in a deal like this. I understand you're frustrated with having to deal with Portis, but the fact is he is doing as well as Gore, so to everybody else it probably looks like you're getting totally hosed by trying to accept a deal like this one, or perhaps just that the Commish is getting way too much out of this deal. The WR crew you just said the commish would have would be absolutely ridiculous, and is another possible reason for this trade getting vetoed.