Random NFL comments/thoughts

[gehringer_2]

3 hours ago, Motor City Sonics said:

So the Commanders can't copyright their name because someone else in sports uses Commanders for something else?   

How many teams out there are named Tigers or Eagles?    

Plus some guy copyrighted hundred of potential names that the team could change to when they had no name, so that's hanging things up too?   He has no use for the name, he's just copyrighting them to try to hamstring someone.   How does that hold up in court?    You can't do something like that out of spite.  If you're not actually using it for anything legit, how could that hold up?   I hate the name Commanders, but apparently every possible name they can change to has had a copyright filed by someone.   This is so stupid.     Who had Tigers first, our baseball team or Clemson?  If it's us, we should sue Clemson, right?    Come on man.      Just name it whatever you want and site the Tigers or Eagles as examples.   Or name the team The Washington RedHawks of the NFL and just call 'em Red Hawks for short.     I liked Red Tails as a nod to the Tuskegee Airmen.  But they won't have Jason Aldean sing the anthem at a Red Tails game, he'll lose all his racist fans. 

I don't think this kind of stuff actually holds up very often. I used to know a little CW/Patent law but it's been so many years since I worked in those areas I've forgotten most of it. But be that as it may (), Trademarking a single common word like "Tiger" is actually complicated. To protect your use of such a word against a competitor depends on there actually being some possibility of product confusion. The classic case being that Apple Records could not prevent Apple computer from using 'apple' because computer products are not music. (LOL - at least not in the days when that case was brought!). Another would be that the Domino's sugar people could not prevent Domino's pizza from using their name when they went national. So even with both being food products, bagged sugar and a pizza were too far apart for the court to recognize overlap. I can even see a Court ruling that there is no market confusion between an MLB team and a college football team or maybe even at the limit between two college football teams in conferences that don't intersect. Of course what you can usually do is trademark any unique logo design.

OTOH, you can't Trademark "Apple" for your particular new species of MacIntosh fruit at all, because you can't trademark a word already in common usage for *that* particular thing. For instance, Kimberly-Clark could not trademark the word "tissue", for a tissues in a dispenser box, they had to invent the word "Kleenex"

Edited August 1, 2023 by gehringer_2

[RedRamage]

I always thought it was a combo of the city/region and the name. Like "Detroit" can't be trademarked and "Tigers" can't be trademarked, but "Detroit Tigers" can. The individual words by themselves are just too common, but together it's something different. But I have ZERO expertise in this area, so take that for what it's worth.

[gehringer_2]

38 minutes ago, RedRamage said:

combo of the city/region and the name.

I think this is one strategy. You accept that you are trademarking in a narrow piece of a market in return for protection that is harder to attack. 

Edited August 2, 2023 by gehringer_2

[Tigeraholic1]

Crazy…

 

[MichiganCardinal]

Maybe they’ll prove me wrong, but I don’t think Chicago is nearly as good as they seem to think they are. They aren’t one piece away. Lots of patchwork across the roster.

 

[RatkoVarda]

ugh

 

 

[buddha]

poor kid just cant buy any luck.

[RandyMarsh]

Yeah you got to feel for him, we'll never know the answer but I wonder how he would've turned out if he never got injured and didnt get saddled with the terrible coaching/culture his rookie season.

[MichiganCardinal]

He deserved better than Patricia. I don't think he ever would have been a Darrelle Revis or Sauce Gardner (... or worth the 3rd overall pick), but he could have been better than he was with a real coach at the helm.

[buddha]

i dont think its coaching.  he had spurts where he was good under aaron glenn and then he became awful again.  that isnt because patricia was mean.

he should be a safety.  his best time as a lion was when he was close to the line of scrimmage, that dallas game.

[Mr.TaterSalad]

You have to feel for Jeff Okudah with this injury and all the bad luck he's had in his career. Hopefully the injury isn't too serious and he can continue his NFL career at some point. All the best to Jeff Okudah.

[Mr.TaterSalad]

18 hours ago, MichiganCardinal said:

Maybe they’ll prove me wrong, but I don’t think Chicago is nearly as good as they seem to think they are. They aren’t one piece away. Lots of patchwork across the roster.

 

The Bears success is all entirely on Justin Fields. If he breaks out and is a Lamar Jackson type of player then I think they can give us a run for our money because he'll be a superstar QB. But that requires him to be a much better passer, displaying much more accuracy, awareness, and ability to breakdown a defense than he's ever displayed at any point in his young career. While I think Fields can be a nice player, I don't know that I've seen anything from him yet as a passer and a QB, not just an athlete with the ball in his hands, that really scares me. It also requires their offense to have more balance on the whole and not just him running 40 times per game. They have no running game without Montgomery as Roschon Johnson is an unproven, 4th round rookie and they added no one else in free agency of note. I like DJ Moore as a WR, but am not sold that he'll be a stud playmaker with Fields throwing to him. Both Mooney and Claypool are below average #2 WRs in my view too.  Their success is predicated on Fields being some sort of breakout star and being their offense with Moore. 

While I think their defense improved, it did so at one of the least important positions on the D, the LB spot. While I think Edwards and Edmunds are both really nice players, neither are players that will get after the QB or be lockdowns in coverage. The Bears defense had 20 total sacks as a unit last season. Ngakoue comes in and is instantly their best pass rusher and he had a down year last season himself. They have no one else on their roster even sniff double-digit sack totals. I'm just not afraid of their front 4 and don't think they have much ability to get after or sustain pressure on opposing QBs. I think Goff and other QBs should get decent in the pocket against the Bears. If they had drafted Will Anderson instead of trading back, that would be a different story. But they did not.

[gehringer_2]

12 minutes ago, Mr.TaterSalad said:

The Bears success is all entirely on Justin Fields.

Coaching can be key here. If you have QB with lots of physical talent and not much else, your offensive coaches may have to swallow their pride and just redesign an offense the QB can run instead of the one they want to run.

Edited August 4, 2023 by gehringer_2

[buddha]

16 minutes ago, gehringer_2 said:

Coaching can be key here. If you have QB with lots of physical talent and not much else, your offensive coaches may have to swallow their pride and just redesign an offense the QB can run instead of the one they want to run.

they did that last year.  but at some point you have to pass and if justin fields takes too long to throw the ball and only throws it when the guy is open (rather than "throwing him open"), then he'll never be lamar jackson.

which was the concern coming out of college with him.

[buddha]

22 minutes ago, Mr.TaterSalad said:

The Bears success is all entirely on Justin Fields. If he breaks out and is a Lamar Jackson type of player then I think they can give us a run for our money because he'll be a superstar QB. But that requires him to be a much better passer, displaying much more accuracy, awareness, and ability to breakdown a defense than he's ever displayed at any point in his young career. While I think Fields can be a nice player, I don't know that I've seen anything from him yet as a passer and a QB, not just an athlete with the ball in his hands, that really scares me. It also requires their offense to have more balance on the whole and not just him running 40 times per game. They have no running game without Montgomery as Roschon Johnson is an unproven, 4th round rookie and they added no one else in free agency of note. I like DJ Moore as a WR, but am not sold that he'll be a stud playmaker with Fields throwing to him. Both Mooney and Claypool are below average #2 WRs in my view too.  Their success is predicated on Fields being some sort of breakout star and being their offense with Moore. 

While I think their defense improved, it did so at one of the least important positions on the D, the LB spot. While I think Edwards and Edmunds are both really nice players, neither are players that will get after the QB or be lockdowns in coverage. The Bears defense had 20 total sacks as a unit last season. Ngakoue comes in and is instantly their best pass rusher and he had a down year last season himself. They have no one else on their roster even sniff double-digit sack totals. I'm just not afraid of their front 4 and don't think they have much ability to get after or sustain pressure on opposing QBs. I think Goff and other QBs should get decent in the pocket against the Bears. If they had drafted Will Anderson instead of trading back, that would be a different story. But they did not.

those bears linebackers will be great tackling guys 5 and 6 yards downfield...

[Hongbit]

3 hours ago, buddha said:

those bears linebackers will be great tackling guys 5 and 6 yards downfield...

They are Anzalonian.  

[Motor City Sonics]

On 8/4/2023 at 8:42 PM, Hongbit said:

They are Anzalonian.  

Hey, he got a lot better once they got rid of Jamie Collins and the defensive backs coach.     

[MichiganCardinal]

Methinks this is a bad decision. Even if he's a better QB talent wise than Gardner Minshew, you're just asking for disaster to strike his career by throwing him to the defensive line wolves like this. Have some recognition that your roster sucks and that you're not going to win 9+ games. Take your lumps and prep him for 2024.

Or learn nothing from Justin Fields and hope that AR15 is the anomaly that can overcome being a rookie signal caller surrounded by a dog **** roster.

 

Edited August 15, 2023 by MichiganCardinal

[Tigeraholic1]

20 hours ago, MichiganCardinal said:

Methinks this is a bad decision. Even if he's a better QB talent wise than Gardner Minshew, you're just asking for disaster to strike his career by throwing him to the defensive line wolves like this. Have some recognition that your roster sucks and that you're not going to win 9+ games. Take your lumps and prep him for 2024.

Or learn nothing from Justin Fields and hope that AR15 is the anomaly that can overcome being a rookie signal caller surrounded by a dog **** roster.

 

Just Irsay being Irsay. He thinks if they have the next Payton Manning all their other problems will fix themselves.

[RedRamage]

22 hours ago, MichiganCardinal said:

Methinks this is a bad decision. Even if he's a better QB talent wise than Gardner Minshew, you're just asking for disaster to strike his career by throwing him to the defensive line wolves like this. Have some recognition that your roster sucks and that you're not going to win 9+ games. Take your lumps and prep him for 2024.

Or learn nothing from Justin Fields and hope that AR15 is the anomaly that can overcome being a rookie signal caller surrounded by a dog **** roster.

I've always been a firm believer that a QB that's allowed to sit a year or two will be a much better starter than one thrown the to the wolves in his rookie year. But... I do wonder how much of that is statistically provable? There's obvious examples of Aaron Rodgers to support the claim, but then of course you've got Payton Manning who started all 16 games his rookie year and turned out just fine.

I'm not sure it's possible to isolate enough variables to really figure out if sitting a year or two makes a difference or not.  I mean generally if a highly rated QB is sitting a year that means the team is a pretty good team with established staffs and proven track record. A team that is questionable in talent and leadership isn't going to take a shiny new QB and sit him cause that coaching staff may see itself fired. And then there's the very imperfect science of trying to project how a QB should look at a pro and if he doesn't look as projected, why did he under/over perform?

This is just really long winded way of saying: I have no idea if this is really a bad thing or not... with the possible exception of a team with a really bad OL. An OL that makes a QB run for his life and get hit often would be bad for a rookie.

[Mr.TaterSalad]

On 8/16/2023 at 12:06 PM, RedRamage said:

I've always been a firm believer that a QB that's allowed to sit a year or two will be a much better starter than one thrown the to the wolves in his rookie year. But... I do wonder how much of that is statistically provable? There's obvious examples of Aaron Rodgers to support the claim, but then of course you've got Payton Manning who started all 16 games his rookie year and turned out just fine.

Brett Farve, Steve Young, Brock Purdy (lol maybe not) are also QBs who sat early in their careers and then flourished after having some seasoning. Kurt Warner sat for a decade before flourishing.

[casimir]

So let me see if I get this straight.  MLB has its Southern California teams (both Los Angeles teams and San Diego) move Sunday’s games up to Saturday due to Hilary slamming into the region.  The NFL decides to keep its preseason Chargers game on Sunday night in Los Angeles as scheduled.  Am I getting the right?

[Dan Gilmore]

Sofi looks to be pretty protected. I have family in San Diego and they say it’s raining pretty steadily, but not very concerning.

[MichiganCardinal]

1 hour ago, casimir said:

So let me see if I get this straight.  MLB has its Southern California teams (both Los Angeles teams and San Diego) move Sunday’s games up to Saturday due to Hilary slamming into the region.  The NFL decides to keep its preseason Chargers game on Sunday night in Los Angeles as scheduled.  Am I getting the right?

Moving the game might be more trouble than it’s worth. If the weather is bad they could just cancel the game and it doesn’t really matter.

[casimir]

9 hours ago, Dan Gilmore said:

Sofi looks to be pretty protected. I have family in San Diego and they say it’s raining pretty steadily, but not very concerning.

Its not the field conditions.  Its the infrastructure and resources involved in holding a game event there.

8 hours ago, MichiganCardinal said:

Moving the game might be more trouble than it’s worth. If the weather is bad they could just cancel the game and it doesn’t really matter.

I don't know.  Its a preseason game, so there are some details to take care of, but I wouldn't think it'd be as much as a regular season game.  They could have shuffled this off to New Orleans.