For years now, some in the media have been complaining about Rajon Rondo. He didn’t always play nice with the media (though the beat guys generally got along fine with him), his unorthodox playing style offended some of their sensibilities, and his uneven levels of play were infuriating to some. When he would come up huge in a playoff game against LeBron James they would wonder why he couldn’t play at that level all the time.

I’ll admit I’ve had some frustrations with the guy, though less in the last few years. But I recognized the things he could do – things which not many NBA players of his size and position can do. In the end, I’m sad to see him go, for many reasons. When on, he was great to watch, his final game in a Celtics uniform the other night showed that. He was the last vestige of the championship team of 2007-08, and his trade signals that this rebuilding process with the Celtics is much more of a long-term project that we had hoped for. On the plus side, I’m looking forward to seeing him on a good team again and see him go against the top level talent in the postseason.

Meanwhile, we’ll have plenty of media bashing Rondo, we’ll have the same ones bashing Rondo and saying that he’s not an “elite” (UNIQUE ISN’T ELITE!) player criticizing Danny Ainge for not getting more for him, and then you’ll have idiotic trolls like Dan Shaughnessy posting things like this:

That’s the Boston sports media experience in a nutshell right there.  It’s all about how you treat the media.

How about the perspective of someone who was actually around Rondo a lot:

Trading Rajon Rondo was only solution – Steve Bulpett, as usual, has the best look at why the Celtics had to trade Rondo now, and why this was the trade they had to make.

Rebuild reset: Analyzing the Rondo trade and where Boston goes from here – Chris Forsberg breaks down the trade and what’s next for Danny Ainge and the Celtics.

It was finally time for the Celtics to trade Rajon Rondo – Paul Flannery is always worth your time when it comes to the Celtics.

Goodbye Rondo, hello rebuild – Rich Levine – as good as a columnist as there is in Boston – says that at least now we know the path this franchise is taking.

The Complicated, But Unforgettable, 8 1/2 Years Of Rajon Rondo – Sean Grande with an outstanding look back at the Boston career of Rondo.

Farewell, Rajon Rondo: Analyzing Boston Celtics’ blockbuster trade with Dallas Mavericks – Jay King offers his thoughts on the deal.

Will Rondo trade make Celtics better or worse? – The answer from A. Sherrod Blakely might surprise you.

******

A few other links/thoughts:

Sports-talk negativity can be aggravating – Chad Finn isn’t as annoyed with the Felger and Mazz show as he is with fans who speculate ahead of time what the duo is going to say on their show.

I don’t agree. I’m venturing that many of those who are mocking Felger and Mazz – and that is what they are doing – are not spending a whole lot of time listening to that show. By now they know the angles that are going to be taken, and it’s an exercise in showing just how pathetic and predictable that the show really is. I also don’t think that group is as big as Chad thinks it is. A few hundred people would not be representative of any bit of Felger and Mazz’s loyal lapdog audience.

Wes Welker Will Not Be Denied – This ESPN longread on the former Patriot has Welker insisting that he is not putting his future at risk with his multiple concussions.

If you’ve watched the Broncos this season, you can see that Welker is not what he was even two years ago during his final season with the Patriots. Yet you still have people writing to the mailbags asking if the Patriots can re-sign Welker this offseason. They can’t see the giant concussion helmet he’s wearing and the fork sticking out of his back? (and I like Wes)

Matt Patricia: WINNING – Matt Chatham tells you more about the Patriots defensive coordinator than you ever heard before, and why he deserves as much credit as anyone for the Patriots defensive revival.

Published by Bruce Allen

Automattician.

57 thoughts on “Rondo Gone. Media Happy.”

  1. That’s rich. Shaughnessy ripping people for being “disrespectful of others jobs.” Um, isn’t that exactly what CHB does on a regular basis? Bash athletes and coaches for their job on the court/field? #toolbag

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  2. Hate to be a person working in the Celtics season ticket department.

    Also, Chad’s article is good but the “lets guess what will be said” is better reserved for here. And, I agree with you, Bruce. The # of fans who do this, like us here, are a small minority. Casual fans I know around here, who don’t pay attention to media matters and gossip, still listen to F&M.

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    1. I know several people that say they don’t watch games (except for maybe the Patriots), but love F & M all year round.

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      1. Well, what Chad’s crux is: and people on here + SoSH have pointed out, is “ok if it drives you nuts, then why do you watch?”

        It reminds me of the people who do the same with cable news. They flip on the network(s) that are diametric to their own views and foam at the mouth slamming their keys down on whatever is said because they disagree with it.

        (My bigger problem is that any of these networks are considered ‘news’.)

        I don’t care what it is but I think his point is, and I’d resonate it, is why not turn it off?

        If you lack a journal or PPM, you don’t count, but its still easy to gauge the impact of any show or person in the market. Someone on SoSH put it best, “isn’t it amazing how many people run to a thread predicting what F+M are going to say?” (pointing out that nobody does it with Dale or Holley). Felger is brilliant there. He’s a great entertainer and host.

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        1. The show is in a market where people are crazy about sports and don’t like listening to something that isn’t a local show. The show is very entertaining. Its on the drive time slot when everyone listens. And it is superior to the alternative. It deserves the success it gets. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t deserve to get criticized. Especially during the NFL season whey they spend 4 hours a day crapping all over what has been the most successful team in the league over the past 14 years. I want the show to do better and criticize what I view as its faults. I wouldn’t even discuss it at all if I didn’t want to listen and didn’t want it to do better. I’d do what I do with Benz, did with Salk, etc… never discuss them because I never listen to them.

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          1. Isn’t that why many of us are here? We can have good discussions about the media and shows. I’m in the same boat. I’m no longer a listener since switching to BSUNF, but just by reading the stuff here and on SoSH, it’s the same exact thing it always was, which will continue to power the ratings.

            To me, even if WEEI tries to go 1:1 with F+M and puts a similar setup, I am not sure that F+M’s #’s would dip that much, and you’d have a similar battle between the stations as the morning shows are.

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  3. Bruce – I disagree when you say most of those mocking Felger and Mazz don’t listen to their show. I can guarantee anybody who gets that annoyed or frustrated with F&M is tuning in regularly. I always get a good laugh when commenters on this site start a criticism with something like “I caught 20 second of so-and-so show today and this is what upset me about it. That’s why I don’t listen to sports radio”. I think people are embarrassed to admit to how much sports radio they actually listen to.

    F&M have days (a LOT of days) where they annoy me to no end. Do I listen to the show almost every day? Yes I do. I am able to criticize their show because I listen. I do the same things Chad mentions (try and mock their angles before I hear them). I admit they annoy me but they do have days I enjoy the show as well. It’s tough for me to criticize a show I have never listened to. For example, I see a ton of Benz bashing on twitter and other websites. From what I read, he sounds like a complete toolbag and someone I would not want to waste my time listening to. So I never have. Never. Being completely honest, I have not listed to one minute of the WEEI mid day show. So I really don’t have strong feelings towards it, one way or the other.

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    1. I have led off a paragraph several times with “I caught 20 seconds of so and so today” and it’s always been a true statement. The radio nitwits preview their shows in the first minute of the first segment. What is so hard for you to understand about this? I have also gone cold turkey in December. No more Nitwit Radio.

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      1. same here, why would I be ” embarrassed” to admit to how much talk radio I listen to on a message board where none of us even know each other?… it’s very simple, it’s called CHANNEL SURFING. Yes, I check the COMCAST TV Shows to get a “feel” for what’s going on and it’s the same crap every time Some kind of negativity or “concern”.. 10- 20 seconds is all I can handle.

        Felger & company ain’t all that “deep” you don’t have to listen to all 4 hours to offer an opinion of them. I’ve been hearing that from people like “Patrick” for YEARS on this site. “you MUST listen all the time!!”… I look at it the other way, people like Patrick WHO DO listen to these clowns 4 hours a day for some reason are butt hurt that the rest of us don’t.

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  4. With a lack of facts, originality and substance in their takes, I predict that in 10 years, all sports media on-air personalities will be replaced with the Hot Take ‘Bot 3000.

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    1. Hey, the AP and others already use bots to have news articles generated, basically indistinguishable between 99% of those in media.

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  5. The Chad Finn article should actually be a wake up call to Felger and the Felger Youth on THAT station. Instead of Chad being annoyed that Felger haters can predict what he and Mazz are going to say with deadly accuracy,Chad and everyone at THAT station should be alarmed at how dead on predictable they have become. They are serving up the McDonald’s assembly line of the same old same old stale contrarian opinions.
    Felger and Ma…zzz were a great antidote to The Big Show back in the day. The Big Show never had a critical opinion on the Patriots…ever. There were countless times when callers were literally shouted at by Smerlas and Deossie for swimming against the tide. While I didn’t always agree with those callers I don’t think it warranted the over the top name calling and yelling because you would dare criticize a play call or a player transaction. It was because of that attitude back then is what gave Felger and Ma…zzz a boost and nice alternative to all the everything is perfect happy talk on the Big Show.
    Now I feel that Felger and Ma…zzz have swung way to far the other way. Instead of balance they have made it almost like a game to find that dark cloud in EVERYTHING. That is when you lose all credibility. And it’s ashamed because both of those guys were much better at the beginning of their run and when they were on WEEI. Somewhere along the line they got drunk with their ratings and became convinced that it was due just to voicing negative opinions when in reality it had more to do with being on FM when WEEI was still on AM and the Big Show getting stale and predictable. Two things THAT station is in danger of now. Stale and predictable.

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    2. Does anyone wonder if Felger gets sick of that squeaky voice screeching next to him? If there’s a Felger lap dog, he’s bald and named Mazz.

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    3. The Big Show, during it’s heydey, was great because it was very funny (the producers, the sound bits, the Whiner Line, Pete being bombastic, everyone making fun of Glenn and Larry Johnson) and impossible to take too seriously. After a while, there was way too much Smerlas, DeAwful and especially Butch Stearns being terribly unfunny and simply telling us how brilliant they were all the time…A preview of what Nitwit Radio morphed into in the post Big Show era.

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    4. I can’t believe I am about to defend Felger and Mazz but their show has not changed at all. They have not changed at all. As an aside, that might be the biggest problem but that is a post for a different day. Their ratings, which are all they care about, have gone up or stayed on top for 3 years now. It is the most influential show in the market. The brilliance of the show, and the reason why I listen, is that Felger has, in his own self deprecating way, tapped into this current that says “we expect more” out of all our sports teams. He and Mazz then point out things they think can be made better. its that simple.

      As a Patriots fan I have argued against his points for years. I think since he left the beat (which he was quite good on) Felger has made a decided turn into stupid…Mazz has made a dumber turn (Jimmy G over Brady)…but the basic point is they find things to discuss and drive conversation. They are well aware that what they are doing with their HOTSPORTZTAKEZ is trolling for calls but the fact they do it in a well researched, self depreciating manner makes it a pretty enjoyable show. Far more enjoyable than the old Big Show was. Far more interesting than the Holley show with Dale is or can ever be as long as Holley is part of it.

      Felger and Mazz would change what they do in a moments notice if some competition came to town and exposed them. It is not going to happen any time soon because Felger is too bright to let it happen. I certainly have problems with how they approach the Patriots. I started pointing them out here as soon as the show when on the air. But I get it. They are in the business of generating conversation. They are open about not being in the cheerleader business. When they are wrong they admit it (which is unique). When they aren’t wrong or better yet when they are astute in the face of media lemmings (BBWA) then they have not only great shows but the right to crow about them.

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      1. Well said. That’s what got me to listen to them in the beginning. …. They were funny to. A big plus also they were respectable to callers and said thank you….. . Alert station bosses. I haven’t listened in weeks. It’s dc in the morning. A little gz in the mid morn. After that it’s all CRAP

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      3. When they are wrong they admit it? They used to. I’m not so sure of that now. Felger structures all of his arguments now on the Pats such that he can bash either the team or its fans no matter what happens. He builds it so he is always right and can always bash, bash and bash some more no matter what happens.

        When has he admitted that his “cap is crap” nonsense is wrong? When has Mazz admitted that he was wrong on the Logan Mankins trade? Or the Mark Teixiera signing?

        And as to whether the show has changed at all, I think it has. Four or five years ago Mark Bertrand would challenge Felger on his extremely negative sports takes (I will admit that Mazz has always bowed down to him). Now he gleefully takes opinions just as negative, such as proclaiming the Pat’s championship window closed.. Four or five years ago Felger would clearly explain why he felt the salary cap wasn’t as big a deal because of the amount of money the cap was going up every year. When the salary cap stopped going up (or hardly went up at all) for several years in a row he dumbed it down to “cap is crap” and doubled down on it such that all he says now is his catch phrase and that the Pats can sign any player for any amount of money and are only not doing so because Robert Kraft is cheap.

        All that said, I fully understand why the show is successful and will continue to listen as it is an entertaining show that is better than the alternatives. But much like with Felger always criticizing the Pats, saying they can do better, I’ll continue to criticize them and others should, because they can and have done better.

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      4. Felger is the most influential sports media member in the market. Felger has tapped into something popular. Felger points out things that could be better. Felger finds things to discuss. Felger is well researched. Felger is bright. Mazz is none of those things and has done nothing. Felger isn’t the driving force of the show. Felger IS the show. Mazz adds nothing to it. Mazz brings nothing to the table. While I don’t like a lot of Felger’s opinions, I respect him because he’s put thought into them. Many local sports media members are trying to do the same thing that Felger is doing. Mazz isn’t. Mazz is a parrot who just agrees and repeats everything that Felger says. Mazz is a useless, no-talent turd.

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  7. ‏via Marc Spears: “(Rondo) wanted out, but he would never say that though,” – Thunder center Kendrick Perkins said about his ex-Celtics teammate to Yahoo.

    Confirms what Jackie Mac said via @NEPD_Loyko)

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  8. Anyone know what happened to Bedard? He didn’t show for his appearance on f&m this week. Felger in a terse way said Bedard bailed. No other mention, no jokes. Wonder if he had enough of their crap.

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  9. Did Felger fall asleep on the 10pm CSNNE show the other night? I kept hearing he did but didn’t see anything posted on Twitter.

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  11. The only tweet from Hector Longo on the game about which he is paid to write at least two stories for tomorrow’s paper:

    I love the “u”, as if channeling his inner Felger.

    He had two tweets on the Texans game via RedZone…

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    1. Seriously, what is this guy Luongo’s problem? He might be the most negative DB covering the Pats in the entire region, and that’s saying a lot. Did Belichick run over his dog a few years ago or something?

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  12. Is it wrong that I want to join twitter just so I can tweet CHB, Felger, Mazz, and Roger Goodell and call them a DB every single day?

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    1. I would say that is a honorable service you would be providing to the unwashed masses that have no voice

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  13. Even if you don’t listen to F&M (or follow other contrived sports media) it affects you. How many times have you heard these lame hottakez parroted by friends, family, co-workers, cab drivers, etc? If you’re a sports fan and are associated with other sports fans you will be subjected – if indirectly – to this sky-is-falling philosophy. To use a business cliche, F&M and the like are “thought leaders” and many people – even some smart, reasonable people – buy their crap.
    While this isn’t new – Shaughnessy has been defining the sports agenda for decades, sadly – we are completely saturated with this messaging through new and expanding media channels. So Chad can say “just don’t listen,” but we will still hear it.

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    1. I spent much of yesterday’s game, at a family party nonetheless, dispelling a lot of the hotsportstakez parroted by family members. It made a difficult game nearly unbearable.

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      1. And these examples are why this site exists. But this site and few reporters (Curran, Reiss, Speier) who tell the whole story and/or debunk the BS have become the minority opinion. The truth has become the minority opinion. Felger and his ilk claim to be the contrarians but thanks to his own success now sets the mainstream way of thinking about Boston sports.
        I like Finn as a columnist, but he really needs to drop the whole “media critic” thing. He goes after soft targets (like Gil Santos; though I agreed with him) while pulling his punches on F&M and others. Now the problem is people on Twitter or email predicting F&M takez? What a joke.

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    2. Absolutely. The vast majority of fans are not forming opinions based on what they see in games or hear from actual sports reporters. Their opinions are regurgitations of what they hear from local sports “analysts.” It’s why I almost never get into sports discussions with people. It’s tiresome bringing up facts about a player, team, or game and having the other person respond with, “I didn’t know that.” Or worse, just a blank stare. These are real sports fans, mind you. But they watch the game and then tune into sports talk radio the next day to have the hosts tell them what they saw.

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      1. It’s the old Mark Twain quote (I think it was him): “A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to tie its shoes.” I went through a similar situation with a co-worker after the Pats were shocked by the Jets in the 2010 playoffs. The CHB was gleeful about the loss, of course, and decided to pen a column pinning the loss entirely on Kraft — his mortal enemy who committed the unforgivable sin of denying him a free breakfast in the late 90s — for being cheap and “having the third-lowest payroll in the NFL this year.” Well, someone did a little research and found out that Shank’s “third-lowest payroll” statement was wildly inaccurate, and so the Globe ran a well-hidden retraction deep within the sports section a few days later, never once mentioning the name of the writer who put forth the “inaccurate” statement. About a week or two later, I was discussing the Pats’ with a co-worker, who was shocked at how optimistic I was about the team’s future. I told him that they just had a bad day against the Jets, filled with a lot of uncharacteristic mistakes; that they had been rebuilding the team on the fly over the previous three years (without having a losing season); had just gone 14-2 with essentially a young team; and so the future was indeed looking pretty good as far as I was concerned. He said, “I disagree. Brady’s getting old and they don’t spend any money to help him win –they had the third-lowest payroll in the league this year.” Now, from where do you suppose he got that information? The CHB’s front-page smear was still a “fact” to him; the “retraction” was buried deep inside the sports section, of course, so this guy never saw it.

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        1. Unfortunately it’s a disease that has infected all of corporate media. It’s worse with real issues like politics. It’s all WWE storylines and reporters taking sides and having orchestrated disagreements.

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      2. “The vast majority of fans are not forming opinions based on what they see in games or hear from actual sports reporters.”

        Again, Lie down with Dogs and you will get fleas.

        Anyone that is a regular consumer of opinions of any kind, be it sports, news, ANYTHING, tends to very predictably mirror and regurgitate that which they consume. It’s almost impossible to avoid.

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    3. Right, but then you get into the whole 1st Amendment thing, no? I bring your point up when I’ve discussed the “cap is crap” issue. If I’m at a bar talking with sports fans, I’ve heard it, and they think that its true because Felger says it is.

      None of us can help that.

      If we were only allowed to hear “approved” opinions, it’d be a bit worse. Well, really just look at the stuff inside rather than outside. I’m not the biggest Deadspin fan but I’d much rather they’re around and able to put out there what the “approved media” outlets can’t because they don’t want to hear from the leagues they pay money to. w/o stuff like Deadspin or TMZ, in just the past 2 years, how many stories would have never got out there? Same on the opinion front.

      I’ll take the uninformed fans who don’t research due to media ignorance/#HOTSPORTZTAKEZ, etc over only having ‘approved’ media any day.

      I know “turn them off” doesn’t work for many, but this is why choice is good. You don’t count anyways w/o a journal or PPM for the radio, but on the TV side, you can always disconnect cable. I think all of us exercise our ‘choice’ via the wallet every day. It does work.

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    4. Lie down with dogs and you will get fleas.

      The ancients figured this out thousands of years ago, it’s one of the first know truisms of human nature and contrary to belief, it goes both ways.

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    1. This exchange should prove that Lynch would be a perfect fit with the Patriots way. Hates the media. Jerks them around. Also the guy can ball. He’s going to be a free agent. Bring him in Bill!

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      1. That’s an interesting thought. The money would have to be right and he’d have to accept that he isn’t going to get every carry. He could be Corey Dillon 2.0, but sustain it for a couple years.

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  15. Mark it down…9 minutes into the show, YARM is bringing up Logan Mankins. To be fair, the line sucked yesterday, to to be even fairer, Logan Mankins has sucked and been injury plagued in Tampa. Put let’s keep pretending the Patriots traded away Mankins in his prime, right Mazz? I’m tired of this sh– already. Switching to Dale & Holley for the drive to work.

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    1. I said a few weeks ago that Mankins would be cut by the Bucs this offseason (unless he agrees to a pay cut, which he won’t). Someone else on here said Mankins would be out of football next year. I’m leaning in that direction now myself. The guy isn’t just a liability in the passing game anymore. He looks done to me. And yet fans will be repeating the absurd notion that the Patriots could use him right now because they hear it from the local sports media goons.

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      1. As one of the people who have been arguing since the trade that the reason it was made was not financial but because BB and co thought Mankins was done.

        The reason the Pats had issues on the OL versus the Jets had everything to do with the game plan. They knew they were down Conley. All they had to do is create a similar game plan to what they did with Detroit. 3 step drops, quick passes, draws and plenty of play action. What McDaniels gave us instead was 5 to 7 step drops, long distance plays that took forever to develop, a steady rotation of lineman with no continuity but plenty of players out of position and worst of all, absolutely no commitment to the run. So if I were in charge of the programming the top rated radio show in Boston I would certainly go with the Pats should not have traded Mankins angle rather than look at what the Pats tried to do and why it failed.

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        1. Yup. Curran has an excellent article on csnne.com criticizing the Pats’ offensive game plan and the rotation of linemen yesterday. That’s reporting, Mike. Bringing up the Mankins trade is lazy on so many levels. Not to mention irrelevant and untrue. If Felger were Kurt Cobain, Mazz would be Courtney Love.

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        2. McDaniels is the reason I would never have a young guy who wants a HC job as the playcaller. I’ve seen this with other OC’s through the years. There are games when they get caught up in calling a game a certain way to make a resume tape to prove how innovated they are. Give me the guy in his 50’s who’s settled in his career and calls a solid game according to the talent on the field. It’s not rocket science. I hope the next guy Bill picks is that kind of guy.

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  17. Jones is the worst. Total Felger clone. It was like back in the day when every young guy coming up on the radio was doing their worst Stern impression. Ugh please stop guys with imitating someone else and do your own thing.

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  19. With the Broncos losing last night. It’s Jimmy G time if BB keeps true to his form Tommy boy gets a half and one series

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    1. I’d expect the guys with “questionable” health (Edelman, Connolly, a couple others) to sit, but as you said, BB will play most of the starters at least for the first half and then start taking them out in the 3rd quarter. The cautionary tale about resting starters remains the ’96 Broncos, who sat just about everyone in Week 17, had the first round bye, and then laid a big, fat egg against a 9-7 Jacksonville team in the divisional round three weeks later…….a huge favor that made the Parcells Patriots a Super Bowl team that year (Denver had destroyed them in Foxboro in November and they would have had little chance to win an AFC title game at Denver).

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    2. no doubt, it’s been a HELL OF A LOT of fun watching the Pats this year…of course, the media gasbags (same ones who had em’ dead and buried week 4) couldn’t wait to tell us the season will NOW be a FAILURE if the don’t win the Super Bowl….Obviously given the position the Pats are in all of us Patriot fans have are eyes on the prize but when I think of “Season FAILURES”.. I’m thinking Jets-Raiders-Bucs- Titans-Bears-Jaguars…must be be

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