Official Week 4 NFL Thread: Shooting a Bow and Arrow

Week 4 people and the first slot of bye weeks which is way too early but whatever. Also London game! 9:30 am eastern time zone football! Jags! Colts! Excitement.

Coverage maps: http://506sports.com/

Bye weeks: Green Bay, Philadelphia - What's even the point of having only 2 teams on bye? 4 teams on bye next week, then 2 in week 6 and 2 in week 7. I don't understand.

Thursday Night: Miami at Cincy. Bengals win easy. The Dolphins suck and it's glorious watching them flounder.

Sunday Morning: Indy-Jax in London. Jags in a shootout. London fans appreciation for all things Jacksonville continues to grow.

Buffalo-New England. Clearly Patriots continue to roll. Blow out city and Rex Ryan's seat gets even hotter.

Cleveland-Washington. Washington wins, HTTD rejoices.

Other early games:
Oakland-Baltimore.
Tennessee-Houston.
Denver-Tampa.
Detroit-Chicago

Seattle-New York Jets. This one is going to be painful, and I watched every second of last week's 8 turnover, 6 interception game against Kansas City.

Carolina-Atlanta. Falcons win easy, Panthers thread freaks the f out, the rest of us laugh.

Late games:
Dallas-SF. Fox national game. Awful. Go do yard work or take a nap or something.
LA-Arizona
New Orleans-San Diego

Sunday Night: KC at Pittsburgh. This will be good times as Chris Collinsworth passively aggressively hates on the Steelers.

Monday Night: New York Giants at Minnesota. Vikings continue to roll and look impressive.

The continued awful national coverage by Fox of the NFC East as the late afternoon national game is torture. Too many fans of those dumb teams.

The Miami Flounders. I like it.

BarcaDeac said:

The continued awful national coverage by Fox of the NFC East as the late afternoon national game is torture. Too many fans of those dumb teams.

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But Cowboys-49ers is one of the greatest rivalries of all time!1!

Detroit has won 6 straight over Chicago. I expect #7 on Sunday.

Drew Brees returns to San Diego for the first time since he was a Charger in 2005. He's looking to improve to 3-0 against PhiLLip.

Tampa Bay visits Denver in a vintage divisional rivalry - they were both AFC West members for Tampa's inaugural season (1976) and played each other once before Tampa moved to the NFC.

BarcaDeac said:

The continued awful national coverage by Fox of the NFC East as the late afternoon national game is torture. Too many fans of those dumb teams.

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The number of teams I care about watching is dwindling every year. Maybe it's just me (although the declining ratings suggest others feel the same).

Ayo said:

The number of teams I care about watching is dwindling every year. Maybe it's just me (although the declining ratings suggest others feel the same).

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NFL Redzone the best. Can watch Panthers at 1, flip to RZ at commercials and halftime and then full time for the 4:00 games. It sucks, though, if there's like 2 games--some NFC East national game with like Oakland-Cleveland the other.

I've complained about the bye situation for years as being unfair. You want your bye at the middle of the season. The solution is simple. In week 8, half the teams get a bye and in week nine , the other half get the bye.

Eagles wanna fly, not bye.

Ayo said:

The number of teams I care about watching is dwindling every year. Maybe it's just me (although the declining ratings suggest others feel the same).

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Mark Cuban called it
http://www.espn.com/dallas/nba/stor...cuban-says-greedy-nfl-10-years-away-implosion

I think NFL ticket and RZ are contributing to what Cuban is talking about. Having watched Sunday ticket and RZ, I got spoiled. Now watching commercial broadcasts is harder. I expect to see the game I want to watch, and resent it when it is not on network TV. And I get impatient with the unpiling, huddling, ref reviews, and endless commercial breaks. RZ has made SNF, MNF, TNF harder to watch. It has shortened my attention span.

deacsrus said:

I've complained about the bye situation for years as being unfair. You want your bye at the middle of the season. The solution is simple. In week 8, half the teams get a bye and in week nine , the other half get the bye.

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TV networks would never go for that, would not leave enough compelling games to show in the afternoon windows once the prime time games get taken out.

While I don't like the early season byes (Panthers used to get Week 3/4 byes more often than normal, from what I remember), they have to spread them out in order to placate their broadcast partners.

I mean, look at this week as a prime example....there are 15 games scheduled and FOX figured the best they could come up with for the 4:25pm window was Dallas/San Francisco? Is it 1995 again?

This is one of the toughest weeks I've ever seen to pick. There are only two Sunday games that have spreads over 5 and one of them is the Redskins.

I'm also getting burned out on fantasy football, which has lead to my decrease of caring about random NFL games. I've been playing it for over 20 years, I realize that I just don't care much anymore. No way will I watch the shitshow tonight or the Ben-slobbering on Sunday night.

Official Week 4 NFL Thread: Frickin Bye Weeks Already!?!?!?!

2&2 Slider To Leyritz said:

I'm also getting burned out on fantasy football, which has lead to my decrease of caring about random NFL games. I've been playing it for over 20 years, I realize that I just don't care much anymore. No way will I watch the shitshow tonight or the Ben-slobbering on Sunday night.

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I started playing at Wake too. I got burned out a few years ago but playing in the 20 team Pit 1 League got me back interested. The typical 12 team format was getting old.

I disagree with Cuban. I don't think games on Thursday or Saturday hurt Sunday viewership aside from people being more likely to do something else if their team isn't playing on Sunday. The viewership for any Thursday game is higher than it would be regionally on Sunday at 1:00.

I agree with Cuban's prediction of implosion for the NFL, but I think he's only talking about one of many things that will ultimately negatively impact the league's popularity.

For now, at least, 1pm RedZone is the best thing on TV. But the less games you have on the Sunday schedule, the less enjoyable it is to watch. With only 3 games at 4pm, it isn't nearly as fun. If I didn't gamble and play fantasy football, I would have zero interest in tonight's Miami/Cincy game. And, as it is, I highly doubt I'll be watching the Sunday morning London game (though I realize that isn't done for US TV viewership purposes).

awaken said:

Mark Cuban called it
http://www.espn.com/dallas/nba/stor...cuban-says-greedy-nfl-10-years-away-implosion

I think NFL ticket and RZ are contributing to what Cuban is talking about. Having watched Sunday ticket and RZ, I got spoiled. Now watching commercial broadcasts is harder. I expect to see the game I want to watch, and resent it when it is not on network TV. And I get impatient with the unpiling, huddling, ref reviews, and endless commercial breaks. RZ has made SNF, MNF, TNF harder to watch. It has shortened my attention span.

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RZ is constant action. So much of the game is taken up by commercials now. I find impossible to sit through an entire game.

But how many fans have Red Zone?

PhDeac said:

But how many fans have Red Zone?

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Basically anyone who is paying for a premium sports tier package, which is probably a good portion of serious NFL fans.

I doubt the NFL will distribute it more widely, can't kill off the golden goose. Was wondering if maybe a network would do a Red Zone-style execution during one of the windows at some point (w/ commercial games and still sending full games to the home markets), but I imagine there'd be similar concerns

If we're going to have a 9:30 am game in London can we at least put it on a weekend when the Ryder Cup isn't happening too?