Feels like the Packers will basically never win in Pink Taco Stadium. I'll sort of be halfway rooting for them for hypothetical "if Seattle wins" purposes since they're clearly the lesser team than Arizona, though that will be hedged a bit by a distinct lack of desire to see Russell Wilson return to another frigid upper Midwest city with an outdoor stadium, since he clearly just could not deal with the elements today. Part of me almost prefers the idea of our offense getting to play indoors against the better team, especially since we beat the **** out of them a week ago.

I like Cam quite a bit. For the second straight week, my team has an enemy that I don't actually hate, and if the Panthers eliminate us then I'll jump on their bandwagon as the team I hope ships the whole thing.

The Packers will be huge dogs but I always give a team with a great QB some chance of winning even without a complete fluke. Rodgers stats are really weird this year with 31 TDs/8 picks but well less than 7 yards per attempt, a combo that is very rarely seen. I'm not ready to consider the Green Geek less than a great QB quite yet though.

I really want to see Peyton vs Brady (with his manager Bill Belichick) one last time. Passing rating is far from a perfect stat but Peyton's is 96.5 regular season, 88.5 playoffs for his career. Brady's is 96.4 regular season, 89.0 playoffs. BB has been the deciding factor so often in big games.

Yeah, one elite QB in the matchup has rolled out Dungy/Fox/Kubiak while the other has Billy B. I'm not surprised Brady wins overall in those matchups.

I like to think how careers woulda played out in alternate universes sometimes.

1. 49ers draft Rodgers like initially thought and Alex Smith falls to Green Bay. Rodgers is thrown behind a garbage OLine instantly, rifles through multiple OC's in his first few years. Smith sits behind and learns from Favre. What are each considered today?

2. It's Peyton on the Pats and Brady on the Colts all those years. Peyton gets Moss for a year. How's that matchup look now?

3. Miami signs Dru Bree rather than Lolpepper. How's that franchise? Is Saban still in NFL? Does Les Miles have more RANGZ with his luckbox?



The world will never know

I do agree that an elite QB can make some weird **** happen. That 2006 Cardinals team was legitimately a sub-average team, they shipped a really bad NFC West at 9-7 and should have just been fodder in the playoffs. But Kurt Warner chose that playoff season to get hot, and suddenly they had rattled off three straight wins, and nearly won that Super Bowl. But even with all of that acknowledged, it's really hard to see that game going any way but one.

If Ben can't go then the Steelers lose to Denver almost every time, and I say that as someone with zero belief in this edition of the Broncos. Even as a hater of the Steelers I'm hoping he can play just to keep that game interesting.

I do give the Chiefs a puncher's chance at Foxboro even if I wouldn't outright pick them to win, and I don't think that it's just my inner homer that sees real reason to believe that Seattle can win in Carolina.

I'm not sure that anything was ever actually learned from Favre. By all accounts Favre was selfish and just froze Rodgers out, saying he had no interest in mentoring his eventual replacement, all while doing a public dog-and-pony show each offseason where he would entertain retirement.

If anyone thinks I'm hard on Rodgers, my contempt for Favre was considerably greater. It's not even an anti-Packer thing at its foundation; when the Packers finally told Favre to go away, I actually decided I liked them, and really hoped that Rodgers would just shatter everything that Favre ever did, because **** Brett Favre. Fast forward a bit of time until I went, "Ah, this one's a douchebag too." But I would create a glowing shrine in my home to Rodgers before I would ever say anything nice about Favre.

So anyway, I don't think that Alex Smith ends up any better in Green Bay, except that he has fewer years of toiling away in the hopeless organization that SF was until renowned social defect Jim Harbaugh came along and improved things for a bit.

makes sense. didnt realize favre was such an unhelpful dick about it

And I can't know that to any certainty, but the stories are consistent enough that I believe them.

I suppose counterpoint is that some other good NFL QBs came up behind Favre. Matt Hasselbeck, Mark Brunell. That backup spot was a fruitful one.

Hopefully Washington cuts DeSean so he can comeback to Philadelphia.

I've seen a lot of complaints that this weekend's games sucked and honestly, I don't get it. Sure, there was plenty of sloppiness, but aside from the opening game, I enjoyed every single one of games.

Happy to see Washington out, but I wanted the Vikings to win because my good buddy is a Vikes fan, so I wanted to see his team do well. Side note, he still wears his Favre Viking jersey.

Really looking forward to seeing Manning get owned by the Steelers' blitz next week. It will surely be a debacle of epic proportions, but I don't think there is any chance it tops the Bungles.

Seems as good as any place to write this. One of my favorite pastimes online is to read articles and first hand accounts of people who have successfully cut cable, aka cord-cutters, etc.

I am currently have comcast and the bill just went up 30 dollars unexpectedly because a promotional period ran out. I was A. Never aware I was under any kind of promotion, and B. Never told my bill was going to go up. To me, it's just that it's a new year and they decided to bump the prices, as I'm pretty sure I would have noticed one of these things. Additionally, I joined comcast like 8 months ago, and I've never heard of promotions running for 8 months, lol.

This is already getting too long...Before that I was with Directv for like 7 years, but had a terrible customer service experience. They have offered me the world - Free NFL Package, 200 Visa Card, pretty cheap rate, to go back to them. However, you have to sign on for 2 years and the promotion is for 1 year. At least they tell you that unlike Comcast.

What I should have led with, is I'm a huge sports fan, especially of my local teams. It's incredibly hard to watch local teams without cable because of blackout rules. I have fiddled with online streams, but I hate watching sports in crappy definition, which is usually the case.

The way too long, didn't read version - Has anyone had any success in cutting cable as a big time sports fan? To get the regional sports channels I need I generally need to get the highest package offered by any cable company...and well, that sucks.

In my area, even if you cut cable and just get internet, Comcast and XFinity just jack up your internet price to $70+/mo (each company has a monopoly on certain neighborhoods, so it's either them or nothing unless you get something like Fios that has much worse speeds).

My father goes down to Comcast and haggles for a new customer deal every 6 months. He ends up getting phone/cable/internet with HBO/Showtime for $80/mo. It takes him the 15 minute drive each way, and maybe 30 min total in waiting/haggling. It's their sales reps jobs to hook you up, so think of it as buying a car.

I just moved a couple of weeks ago to a different part of Tucson. I had never had Comcast before and always had Cox but they don't serve this spot. Comcast is ****ing ****. Nickel and dime to death. Cost me $70 for internet only and $10/mo because I can't sign a 1 year contract as I plan to split from this place within six months. Customer service was **** on phone and at the place. **** them. They can die in a grease fire.

yeah my dads trying to cut the cord

his internet/tv/phone bundle after taxes comes out to like 180 a month which is absurd

he called verizon and if he doesnt get the bundle instead of $55 internet its like $80 which after phone + taxes and fees and stuff still gets to be a ton so it's not worth it (also cant get his baseball games)

He wanted to switch to direct tv because they have cheap deals but you cant get any other internet there because - like you said - verizon and at&t split up neighborhoods so they can have a monopoly on certain areas and charge whatever they want

really sucks



i cannot wait til google overlords just put fiber everywhere, tv makes the full shift to on-deman/online, and all these scumbag corporations get owned.

Problem is that the TV providers are also internet providers.

Have to say, I was pretty sure the Broncos were going to get beat next week, but getting the Steelers minus Roethlisberger and Brown has me slightly optimistic.

Yahoo says Ben and Brown are expected to play

Way far from 100% though. I think we lose by 2 TDs if forced to guess.

oh for sure, thats why i made sure to include google fiber

I am at 195 now for just internet and cable. That is the premier cable package for regional sports channels and the fastest internet which is called Blast. That is just a little bit less than what I was at when I left directv. I look into all these streaming boxes and the like, but none of them seem 100 percent reliable for live sports that promise good definition. Those boxes for shows, movies, etc, seem pretty great though. A lot of them seem to run between 100-300 which would be 1-2 months without cable, but I still feel weird doing it.

A few weeks ago I put Kodi on my amazon first stick, which was a huge pain in the ass and then in one fell swoop I accidentally deleted it all. But, I don't think the fire stick was strong enough to support Kodi, as most things started to buffer or just freeze after about 8 minutes.

There's a lot of info out there and a lot of it is overwhelming.

One comcast tidbit that you can find info about online. They lie about not receiving their equipment when you send it back instead of taking it in yourself. They're all scum, but Comcast may take the **** cake.

So over the last 10 or so days there's been the possibility for some all-time choking franchises to turn the ship around. To finally silence those demons that have turned them into laughing stocks and memes. LOLSPARTY got to the CFB playoff, but they got blown out of the stadium. The bungles almost won a playoff game, but then found a way to bungle. Not to be outdone, the Vikings shanked a 27 yard FG to remind everyone they are the Vikings. And tonight? CLEMPSONING continued to CLEMPSON as they took a 4th quarter lead for a title and found a way to be behind by two scores halfway through the quarter.

Kings stay the kings.
Losers stay losers.
Does not bode well for the future of my rooting interests.

I mean if I was told 14 days ago that Clemson, Sparty, Bengals, and Vikings would all play a playoff football game and was asked - with no further knowledge of opponents or situation - what their record would be combined, 0-4 would be the leading candidate (assuming the 1-4 wasn't considered).

And really it's an interesting situation given there SHOULDN'T really be any long term overlap on this front considering turnover in both teams and management, yet here we are.

Watson deserves better. He is amazing.

This Powerball hype is so stupid.

...obviously it caused me to buy a ticket.

hahahahah
This thing is crazy. I've witnessed a dude buying 1.5k worth of tickets and another one buying $300 worth of tickets over the last week at a gas station. People are losing their minds.

I went to grab a money order for my new place and the line at a grocery store was absurd because of Powerball. Obviously, I didn't grab one. Seems -ev so obviously I bet on Golden State and Dallas to cover the spread tonight

Is that a 1.5 billion dollar parlay?