6 comments MMQB Review: Other Than All of His Success, Peter Wonders What He's Missing That's So Great About Dave Dombrowski Edition

Peter King mentioned how "lithe" and "penetrating" Caraun Reid looked this year in last week's MMQB. Peter also talked about how Blake Bortles threw a really good pass and this means something, just like Sam Bradford hasn't blown his ACL out in the past week, so that means something too. What does it mean? Probably nothing because Peter says that preseason games don't mean much, but certainly enough for Peter to begin writing about how Bradford and Bortles look good. So what Peter wrote may or may not mean much. Good to know. This week Peter talks about Cris Carter's "fall guy" comment, gives us six things to know about Peyton Manning (wait, there are six things we don't already know about him?), and apparently Peter's sources are lying to him again. I get part of reporting is having sources who you need to rely on in order to write a story, but I've always felt that many of Peter's sources play him for a fool and use him to get misinformation out there to benefit themselves. The whole Ray Rice debacle sort of confirmed it for me, but I routinely can't shake the feeling Peter is used as a conduit for misinformation or is a naive person who disseminates information the sources wants out there. Of course, as we have learned from "SI's" own media guy lack of comments on mistakes made by "SI" employees, as long as Peter apologizes for his mistakes in meek fashion then there is nothing to see here. Now if someone from ESPN used two sources that gave him bad information, this "SI" media guy would crush this ESPN reporter. It's how it goes.

I’d planned to lead this column with Sunday night’s compelling return to the field of San Francisco all-pro linebacker NaVorro Bowman after 19 months away, and to so much else from the final week of my training camp tour—including how Peyton Manning has no feeling in the fingertips of his throwing hand to this day, after his 2011 surgeries. (Which stunned me.)

So many inappropriate sexual jokes I could include here as to why Peter would be shocked that Peyton didn't have feeling in the fingertips of his throwing hand. I will refrain. 

But Sunday was one of those hurricane-of-news days you don’t get very often in the preseason, so let me get to all things Jordy and Maurkice and Cris Carter and, well, here goes … 

THIS WAS THE CRAZIEST PRESEASON DAY SINCE AT LEAST ONE PRESEASON DAY LAST YEAR!

NFL Network's Ian Rapoport reported the initial diagnosis for wideout Jordy Nelson was a torn ACL, after the wideout landed awkwardly Sunday. Nelson last year set a Packer record with 1,519 receiving yards and is Aaron Rodgers’ favorite target, and his loss would make the Packers significantly less multiple in the deep-receiving game.

Oh no, I guess Aaron Rodgers will have to rely on the 3-4 other high draft picks the Packers have used on offense in order to score points. However will he manage to do it?

• There has to be a common-sense approach to the preseason. It’s easy to say, “Just napalm the damn thing.” After days like Sunday—the two-injury debacle in Pittsburgh, the Cowboys worried about playing on a field with a terrible reputation in Santa Clara, the Giants reeling over losing six of the nine safeties on the roster in the first two preseason weeks—it makes sense to ask this question: When is the NFL going to come to its senses and reduce the preseason from four to two games?

Yes, will this happen? What could stop the NFL from caring about the risk of injury to their players and cause the league to reduce the number of preseason games? Roger Goodell certainly can't think of a single reason. 

The exhibition games are fan-cheaters; charging full price for the games is robbery, which is the most no-duh statement in the NFL today.

Yes, if it was the mid-90's then this would be a "no-duh" statement for sure.

They should now follow by cutting out two more chances of injury. Do the math: If Jordy Nelson suits up 17 or 18 times instead of 19 or 20, it follows that he’d have less exposure to the kind of injury that can kill a team’s season in a totally meaningless exercise. 

Usually, Peter's math can be a little shaky, but he is in fact correct about his math this time. Though, Kelvin Benjamin just tore his ACL while practicing, so there is only so much the NFL and their teams can do to reduce the chance of injury. Cutting the number of preseason games will certainly help of course. Players still get injured in practices though.

• You are kidding me, Cris Carter—and you are kidding me, NFL. My first reaction to the story of Carter telling NFL rookies at the 2014 Rookie Symposium that they have to find a “fall guy” in a player’s “crew” who will take the blame when the player commits a crime: My jaw dropped.

Yes, how dare Cris Carter encourage that NFL players do something that has thus far remained unspoken. Everyone was shocked when Mike Scott of the Hawks admitted some drugs were his, because that's not how it's done. But it's better to pretend this shit doesn't go on rather than the NFL just admit it, right? I love how Robert Klemko was present for this comment, yet refrained from commenting on it. I see he's learned from Peter King that it's best to withhold information in order to gain or keep access. Be a reporter when it doesn't risk your access.

Precisely. Carter apologized, and though the NFL tried to distance itself from Carter’s idiotic remarks, how could the league have placed the offending video of his talk on NFL.com until yanking it Sunday? This is so offensive it boggles the mind that some person with the NFL would say, Let’s show the world this great advice about obstructing justice from a Hall of Fame hero to impressionable rookies.

I don't think Carter should have said this, but NFL players find a "fall guy" all the time when they get in trouble. It's not advice Carter should be giving obviously, but why would Peter's jaw hit the floor? He doesn't think this type of stuff goes on?

Carter, by the way, was in his yellow Pro Football Hall of Fame blazer. In all ways, this is the biggest example of inmates running the NFL asylum that I’ve seen in years. 

It's terrible advice, but again, it happens. The only shocking thing is that Carter said aloud what actually happens in secret. I think it's more funny than shocking.

• The fallout over Terrell Suggs’ hit on Sam Bradford continued. I side with Suggs, who dove at Bradford because he wasn’t sure if Bradford was going to hand off or keep a read-option-appearing play in Saturday night’s Ravens-Eagles game. Suggs said if you’re going to call such a play for a quarterback with ACL reconstructions the past two seasons, you do it at your own peril.

This is very true, but I think it's also important to note that the defender shouldn't be simply going for only the QB's legs when trying to make a tackle. I don't believe Suggs did only go for Bradford's legs, but it would be nice if the defender hit the QB and didn't try to only take his legs out in another situations.

Chip Kelly shouldn’t be putting Bradford in such a position to be hit violently anyway—and certainly not in a dumb preseason game. 

For a smart guy, leaving Bradford out there to run a read-option play wasn't the smartest move that Kelly could have called. I get that they want to practice these read-option plays, but in a preseason game that is simply setting your QB up for an injury in a pointless preseason game. What kind of dumbassery is that to call this read-option play?

SANTA CLARA, Calif. — Lots of reasons to say ‘Wow’ about NaVorro Bowman this morning.

Question to Bowman on Friday: “How long does it take you to get ready to practice or play right now?”

Bowman: “About two hours. The massaging and the bending, the flexing of the knee. Once I do that I have a five-minute period where it just needs to relax and then I’m ready to go.”

Peter knows how Bowman feels because he used to roll out of bed and then go to a team's training camp with his notebook, but now he has to roll out of bed, take a shower and then go to a team's training camp with his notebook. It's just so hot out these days that Peter must prepare more to stand out in the heat than he used to. So Peter completely empathizes with Bowman.

Question: “Before the injury, how long would it take you to be ready?”

Bowman: “Nothing. No time.”

So Bowman didn't stretch all before practice in order to be prepared to practice? He threw an uniform on and just started to play football with zero stretching or bending of his body?

Look what happened to San Francisco’s D this offseason. No Justin Smith; retired. No Patrick Willis; retired. No Aldon Smith; cut. No Chris Borland to train as the next great inside ‘backer; retired, shockingly.

Peter's jaw hit the floor when he heard that Borland retired. It made him lose all feeling in his heart.

Bowman sure knows how to make an entrance. Until Sunday night against Dallas, Bowman hadn’t played in a game since shredding multiple left knee ligaments on the ugly goal-line play in the NFC Championship Game in Seattle in January 2014. He played three plays against the Cowboys. From his spot in the nerve center of the Niner defense, Bowman stoned Darren McFadden up the middle for a one-yard gain on first down. He stoned McFadden over right tackle on second down; loss of one. He stopped running back Lance Dunbar on a dumpoff pass from Tony Romo on third down; loss of one. Three plays, three tackles, two of them for losses. That was an impressive three minutes of football right there.

Or really shitty blocking from the Cowboys offensive line that probably wasn't trying too hard for fear the horrendous turf on the 49ers field would swallow up their legs and tear ligaments doctors didn't know existed in the human body.

“I thought I ended my career,” Bowman said Friday afternoon in the bowels of Levi’s Stadium.

Given the condition of the field, "the bowels of Levi's Stadium" could very well pertain to a few locations in the stadium or on the field.

Two hours of prep work, daily. Just to be able to practice. Seventeen months of arduous, painful work to try to be NaVorro Bowman, all-pro linebacker, again … while so much of the team is crashing and burning around him.

Has it been worth it?

Peter King asks the tough questions which he knows will result in an obvious answer. Like, what does Peter think Bowman will say? "No, it's hasn't been worth it. I retire, effective immediately."

“I don’t play this game for money,” he said. “I play it for respect and ultimately to make it to the Hall of Fame. That’s what drives me. In order to be the best, this work comes with it, and I’m willing to fight through it.”

This is the answer I would expect to hear from Bowman. It's remarkably easy to say you don't play football for the money when you are sitting on a contract worth almost $26 million guaranteed. At that point, saying you play the game for respect sounds more noble than it probably is. I'd like to hear Bowman say he doesn't play football for money and then back it up by taking less money and gain the respect of his teammates by allowing them to get paid. It's always about the money. Always, even when he claims it's not about it right now for Bowman, the game of football was about the money before he got paid.

He said he doesn’t think he’ll feel that way all season, and he’s not sure exactly how to describe the difference in the knee; he just knows it’s not the same as it was two summers ago.

Well, that doesn't sound positive at all.

I find one thing about the Niner dynamic fascinating right now. Bowman and Borland, health permitting, were set to be the next great combo platter of inside linebacker for the next three or four years. Bowman’s injury was one of the factors that made Borland play so much last year—and, it turns out, he played very well.

Ah yes, Peter is lightly treading down the "NaVorro Bowman is playing despite fighting back from a very traumatic knee injury, while Chris Borland is being a pussy and retiring before he gets hurt" road right now. Again, Peter is lightly treading down this road, but I know he wants to hammer this point home a harder than ends up hammering the point home.

So here’s Bowman, who stones people, playing. And Borland isn’t. Bowman, a Harry Carson block-of-granite type, and Willis keyed a defense that went 14 straight games in 2011 without allowing a rushing touchdown. Three times he was first-team all-pro, the classic kind of run-stuffer who also had the ability to turn and run with tight ends. Bowman's fought through it all, and Borland chose another path.

"Chose another path." Come on Peter, you know you want to go there, just like you wanted to go there last week and complain about the "Black Lives Matter" protesters blocking the street. Go full heel on us. Bowman has chosen to stick around and play through injuries, while Borland is retiring before he can get injured. You know you want to write this point of view. Just do it.

Concerned about the impact of football on his long-term health—a rising tide among current players—Borland walked away from the game after one starry season.

Peter describes the guy who fought back from injury as "a Harry Carson block-of-granite type" and states the other guy "chose another path." It's like saying, "My oldest son is running his own company and is successful, but my youngest son chose a different path and hasn't found his calling yet." It's on the edge of judging, but trying to do so in a polite way. 

That’s one of the things that makes this comeback compelling. There’s nothing dramatic about the way Bowman says this. It’s simply his ethos. He’s a man making a choice, the way Borland made his. And the 49ers, in this seismic season, need Bowman desperately, and he knows it.

Bowman has an ethos. Chris Borland has no ethos. One chose a compelling comeback and the other tapped-out through "walking away." Regardless of what Peter says, the wording he uses says what he really thinks. At least I think I think I know what Peter thinks.

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — ​Six things you need to know about Peyton Manning, at 39.

Again, at this point there is very little I don't know about Peyton Manning, but I'm sure learning six more things won't hurt.
 
1. He still doesn’t have feeling in the fingertips on his right hand.

Peter is still stunned upon hearing this. 

“I can’t feel anything in my fingertips,” Manning said Thursday. “It’s crazy. I’ve talked to a doctor recently who said, Don’t count on the feeling coming back. It was hard for me for about two years, because one doctor told me I could wake up any morning and it might come back. So you wake up every day thinking, Today’s the day! Then it’s not.” I find his production all the more impressive since four neck procedures caused him to miss the 2011 season, and caused him to lose—maybe forever—the comfortable grip on the football.

I don't know how it usually works with a quarterback, but I would think it would be a much bigger deal for a wide receiver to not be able to feel the ball with his fingertips than it would be for a quarterback. Maybe not, but this still sounds like a semi-serious medical issue. A medical issue that Peter King thinks NaVorro Bowman would fight back from, but Chris Borland would choose his own path and walk away if faced with this fingertip condition. 

2. He traces the physically crummy end to last season not to age but to a vomitous December night in San Diego.

Now I'm the one whose jaw is on the floor. You mean Peyton Manning isn't attributing his poor ending to the season to getting older? He isn't saying, "Oh sure, I'm really old and can't play an entire season at a high level anymore"? What an unexpected thing for Peyton to attribute his crummy ending last season to, as opposed to acknowledging he's getting older.

Before the Broncos’ 14th game, in San Diego, Manning says a bug he caught from his sick daughter made him violently ill. “I threw up all night,” he said. “Then, in the game, I moved to the right on a simple scramble and my quad cramped on me. It lingered. I couldn’t shake it the rest of the year. I really studied it hard this offseason, whether it could linger into this year or whether it was isolated. I just think I got dehydrated, and that caused it. I don’t think you can blame it on my age. It was just an isolated thing.

Manning was just dehydrated for an entire month. It's not that he is older or anything. It's just one of those things that happened as a result of being dehydrated for a few weeks. No big deal, let's all move on and just accept this reason.

4. Manning got advice from Derek Jeter on the contract thing. His wife Ashley weighed in too, importantly. “I talked about it with Ashley, about what I wanted to do, and I wanted to be here,” he said. And Jeter told him: “Do what you want—not what they want.”

Ah, the Jeter always has such great advice. "Use your leverage as an icon to engage in a battle over your contract, fully knowing you have the media on your side and it's going to be hard for you to look like the bad guy." I mean, it's true though, so I'm not sure I can mock it.

6. The Broncos will likely do the Romo thing this year, and give Manning every Wednesday off. Just for insurance—and so the Broncos can see a little more of Brock Osweiler getting quality time with the first unit. “I think that’s the plan right now,” Elway said. “I think he’d feel better right now if he takes Wednesday off. His health is not a concern. His freshness is a concern.”

Absolutely. The Broncos know Manning can play a full season with no problem, even though he can't feel his fingertips and his arm strength seems to have slowed as the season progresses. So no worries from them here. They just don't want Manning to get dehydrated for an entire month again.

And yes, the whole "The Broncos are resting Manning just for insurance and not because they are concerned about his health/arm strength" is one of those things I think NFL teams and other sources tell Peter that he buys hook, line and sinker because he likes Manning and wants to believe it.

OXNARD, Calif. — You think this team doesn’t have one foot out the door to L.A.?

What a scene here Monday and Tuesday, when the Rams, after a Friday night preseason game in Oakland, scheduled a couple of days of work against the Cowboys at their training complex here. It was enough to see the fans, who outnumbered the Dallas fans by 2-to-1 (my estimate) Tuesday, be nuts for the Rams; one even had a huge flat-head cutout of owner Stan Kroenke in the crowd. Imagine fans cheering for Stan Kroenke. Amazing. He’s not exactly a fan favorite in St. Louis.

Well, if California wasn't trying to lure the Rams to their state through flattery than I imagine there would be zero fat-head (not flat-head) cutouts of Stan Kroenke. I mean, of course St. Louis isn't going to love Kroenke. He's trying to take the NFL team away from the city. What the fuck does Peter expect?

On Monday and Tuesday, the Rams did a morning walk-through practice near their hotel between Los Angeles and Oxnard. In one of those sessions, coach Jeff Fisher stuck his head into the offensive huddle and said, “Guys, I’m putting Eric Dickerson in the backfield, and you’re going to block power for Eric Dickerson.” Hall of Fame running back Eric Dickerson, he meant. And Dickerson took a handoff in this walkthrough practice, ran through a hole, and folks cheered.

Jeff "8-8" Fisher sure knows how to pump the team up. But hey, if I were an NFL head coach who so far had gotten paid over a million dollar for every victory then I'd be in a good mood too. I don't know what Peter expects though. Everything will be all sunshines and rainbows for the Rams in California. They want the Rams to move from St. Louis to their state.

RENTON, Wash. — Nothing changes for Russell Wilson.

Not really, but I guess it's more fun to go with this story than to check whether it's realistic or not. He just got a huge new contract and is dating a famous pop star. Things have changed, regardless of whether he wants to acknowledge it or not. 

Ten minutes before the official start of Seahawks practice, on a pristine field a short spiral east of Lake Washington, Russell Wilson is throwing to the tight ends. Fast. Snap, set up, throw, over and over. I’m guessing before practice even started he’s thrown 30 or 40 passes in anger. I’ve seen this movie before: last year, and the year before. Super Bowl win, Super Bowl loss.

Wait, so Russell Wilson hasn't stopped practicing entirely now that he has a new contract? I completely expected him to stop practicing now that he's really wealthy and focus on baseball. Perhaps God spoke to Wilson as he signed his new contract and decided that Wilson should focus on football-only, thereby closing the door on a possible baseball career.

The quarterback who threw the interception heard ’round the world in the Super Bowl last February and made Malcolm Butler a household name doesn’t seem much worse for wear.

He's dating a singer and he got a huge new contract. He's been to two straight Super Bowls. I'm trying to figure out why Peter would think Wilson would be down in the dumps and worse for wear.

The interception might be in a place deep inside him, burrowing a hole he’ll always feel. But if it is, Wilson’s doing a good job hiding it. Or pretending it’s not there.

That's sort of what he has to do in order to move on isn't it? Being able to forget about a bad play that cost his team the game is how he can avoid allowing one play to ruin the next football season.

Wilson said it took about a week before he got over it. Since then, his off-season has been pretty much the same as his others work-wise—just a bit more spotlighted because he’s dating a celebrity.

It's also a bit more spotlighted because Wilson and his agent took his fight for a new contract to any media outlet who was willing to listen to them, while pretending that Wilson totally had complete interest in playing baseball again so that was a fallback option if the Seahawks don't give Wilson exactly what he wants. Of course, Peter won't question Wilson's insistence the spotlight is on him more because of his dating Ciara. Peter isn't here to question. He is here to get quotes and write them down word-for-word as they were told to him, which is why he can be used by some members of the NFL and NFL organizations to disseminate the information they want disseminated. Breathlessly writing down quotes is how Peter gets his sources and how his sources use him from time-to-time.

No matter what the circumstances are, can you stay laser focused on the idea of what can you do for the next moment? That’s the trick. If you ask any great players—and I’ve had the fortune to be around a lot of great players—Derek Jeter to Michael Jordan to other quarterbacks who have played the game—

(Bengoodfella makes wanking motion with his hand)

My mental coach, Trevor Moawad, has this idea: conscious competence. 

Not to be confused with conscious uncoupling of course. Speaking of conscious uncoupling, how smart was Russell to divorce his wife before he got paid? He knows what he's doing, even if he tries to act like he doesn't.

Seattle's quarterback coach, Carl Smith, and offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell both said Wilson’s the exact same guy this summer, post-contract and post-calamitous interception.

Wilson got the new contract like a month ago. It's not like an athlete gets paid and then always immediately starts to turn evil and lazy, refusing to show up for practice and hanging out with Justin Bieber. Sometimes it takes a year or so for a player to change after he has gotten paid, once he has faced tough situations and realizes he is rich so the motivation to dig himself out isn't as great. I'm not saying this is the case for Wilson, and I don't believe it would be, but it's been a month since he signed a new contract. It's a bit early for the whole "HE'S THE SAME GUY!" talk.

When you go on the road to training camps, there are some days you know fun things might happen.

Tickle contest between Peter and Klemko every night before bed!

Last Tuesday, I walked into Cowboys PR VP Rich Dalrymple’s office at camp—a converted Marriott Residence Inn room, right by the practice fields—and who was sitting there chewing the fat with Dalrymple? Tommy Lasorda.

"Chewing the fat" and then Peter mentions Tommy Lasorda. I see what you did there Peter.  
 
The conversation was so good I thought the best way to relay it was to give you a seat in one of the chairs in the room, across from Dalrymple’s desk, and let you just listen to Lasorda, 87, tell his tales.

I won't cover this much except to show you the contributions (or lack thereof) Peter made to the conversation.

Garrett: “Did you come to the playoff game against Detroit?”

Lasorda: “I was there! And we should have won. What about that catch?”

King: “The Dez Bryant catch that wasn’t a catch?”

Lasorda: “That was the greatest catch I ever saw in my life, and they took it away from them. Otherwise they’d have been playing Seattle.”

King: “For the NFC Championship Game.”

No Peter, the Cowboys would have been playing in Seattle against the Sounders, because the winner of the Dallas-Green Bay game got to play a soccer match against the Sounders for the right to play in the NBA Finals against the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Yes, for the NFC Championship Game. That's what Lasorda meant. No need to interject.

Lasorda: “That’s right, yeah. 

Tommy Lasorda is like, "Aren't you supposed to be the one who covers the NFL?"

King: “Seems like the rivalry is missing from baseball now. Football too. Guys are pretty friendly.”

Dalrymple: “Our guys pray with the other team on the field after the game.”
 
Lasorda: “If I saw my players ever talking to the other players, I would chew their ass out.

Brilliant observation from Peter. Of course, Peter is the same guy who loves to relay stories on how Peyton Manning and Tom Brady run into each other at exclusive restaurants and golf clubs and then marvel at how these two players are such good friends and run in the same circles. I guess it's okay for Manning and Brady to be friends and still have a rivalry, but Peter thinks guys are pretty friendly in sports and it takes away from the rivalry. That is unless Peter thinks it's cool two superstars get along well.

“It’s intoxicating. It’s a drug, a drug that gives you the most incredible feeling there is. Outside of sexual intercourse, there's probably nothing like it. But fun is the wrong word for it. I don't consider football fun. It's not like a water park, or a baseball game.”

—Former 49ers linebacker Chris Borland, on football, in a terrific longform story on ESPN.com by Mark Fainaru-Wada and Steve Fainaru about the post-football life of Borland

Hey, he made his choice according to his ethos.

“When you run the read option, you have to know the rules. If you want to run the read option with a starting quarterback that’s had two knee surgeries, that’s on you. It’s not my responsibility to update you on the rule. I could have hit him harder on that. I didn’t.”
 
—Ravens pass rusher Terrell Suggs, after hitting quarterback Sam Bradford in the left knee in Saturday night’s preseason game against the Eagles.

It seems Suggs sort of went at Bradford's knee, though it's hard to tell. He may not have and I can't figure it out. Either way, I don't know why the hell the Eagles would run the read-option with Sam Bradford in a preseason game. Many teams who actually have quarterbacks who run the read-option aren't running it in preseason, mostly because it's preseason and it's stupid to expose a quarterback to an injury risk. 

Whether Suggs had malice on the play, I don’t know. I don’t know why he would. But I don’t know how Suggs said he could have hit him harder. He lunged quite hard into Bradford’s knee.

I think overall it is a cheap play to dive into a player's knee. I don't know if Suggs meant to or not, but it's never cool to dive into a player's knee, no matter if he's the quarterback, kicker, punter or a wide receiver.

“L-A-RAMS! L-A-RAMS! L-A-RAMS!”

—Thousands of fans chanting at a practice between the St. Louis Rams and Dallas Cowboys on Tuesday at the Cowboys’ training camp field in Oxnard, Calif.

What made the display interesting was that at least two-thirds of the fans on hand that day identified as Ram fans. You don't often see a road team in a practice or game setting dominate the local crowd, but that’s what the Rams fans did in Oxnard.

Yet again, these are fans of football who want an NFL team in California. Of course they are going to put on a good show in order to convince the Rams to come out there. It's not really remarkable if you know these fans want a chance to prove they can support the Rams once they move to California.

MLB Payrolls We Have Loved Dept.:

Los Angeles Dodgers (14 games over .500) payroll: $298.5 million.

Combined payroll of Pittsburgh, Houston, Kansas City (61 over .500): $300.6 million.

This statistic just makes me roll my eyes. It's interesting I guess, but the Astros have a low payroll because they essentially disintegrated their entire team a few years ago to rebuild the organization from top to bottom. They have players working under cheap contracts who are producing at a high level.

Mr. Starwood Preferred Member Travel Notes of the Week

On the later flight, a Japanese boy, about 5 or 6, sat in the middle seat of our row, with me on the aisle. He was exceedingly polite. He had to get up twice to use the restroom, and each time he said he was sorry. While seated, he devoured a large picture book about dinosaurs, and pulled out a folder of dinosaur drawings that I am assuming he made.

Peter is like, "Of course it makes sense this little boy likes dinosaurs. All Japanese people love Godzilla and he is pretty much a dinosaur, so the fact this child devoured a book on dinosaurs did not stun me or make my jaw drop to the floor."

"I feel like the Altuve here," Astros shortstop Carlos Correa at #Texans practice.

— Tania Ganguli (@taniaganguli) August 18, 2015

We get it. Pretty good jo---

The Astros shortstop was commenting how small he felt (a la 5-7 shortstop Jose Altuve) while visiting the city’s NFL team.

And of course Peter has to explain the joke to his readers, because he believes his MMQB readers to be too stupid to figure out the joke for themselves. Not everyone can be as smart about baseball as Peter King, but give him credit for trying. One day, maybe one day, he can educate his readers to where they are close to his level.

Ten Things I Think I Think

1. I think if you wanted to tell me that San Diego pass-rusher Melvin Ingram will lead the NFL in sacks this year, I would not argue with you.

Oh, thank God. I was very worried Peter would argue with me if I said Melvin Ingram would lead the NFL in sacks this year. That's a load off my mind knowing I have Peter's approval should I hold this opinion.

2. I think it feels very much like you can see the end for Robert Griffin III in Washington. It started last year, with the blunt criticism of Griffin from his head coach, and it continues with subpar play this summer, and another mini-controversy last week, when he said he thought he was the best quarterback in the NFL. Which would be hilarious if it wasn’t so ridiculous.

I just can't believe a professional athlete had an unrealistic perspective of his true athletic ability. This never happens.

3. I think you’re owed an explanation from me, in the wake of Ben Volin of the Boston Globe writing Sunday that it wasn’t just Chris Mortensen who got a bum steer from someone in the NFL about the deflated footballs in the AFC title game. Volin said it was me, too. I reported after Mortensen’s story that 11 of the 12 footballs were at least two pounds per square inch under the minimum limit of 12.5 psi when tested by the league at halftime. I reported that I’d heard “reliably” that the story of the footballs being at least two psi under the minimum limit was correct.

Being not an employee of ESPN, I won't copy work that others have done. Here is how I feel about this apology from Peter. I agree with what is written there and I think it undermines the credibility of THE MMQB that Robert Klemko also held back the comments Cris Carter made at the rookie symposium about finding a "fall guy." But hey, he learned from Peter King. Hold back information when you are asked. It's how you best gather sources who eventually mislead you. Peter criticized Chris Mortensen a few weeks ago for not taking back his report, yet I forgot that Peter didn't take his report back either. Peter seems to have forgotten as well. No one cares. The "SI" media guy who eviscerated Cris Carter for his comments had very little to say except "You judge yourself" when confronted with the idea Klemko covered up the "fall guy" comment and Peter flip-flopped. Why? I'm guessing because he can't go as hard against "SI" employees as he can employees of other organizations. So, Peter is excused from receiving the type of criticism others would get in this situation. What a world.

As I said on Twitter on Sunday, I believe the person who told me this believed the story was accurate when, obviously, it clearly was not. So, were we used by someone to get a storyline out in public? Maybe … 

No, pretty clearly "yes."

but the reason I’m skeptical about this is because with the knowledge that there would be a full investigation and clearly the air pressure in the footballs would be publicized at some point, the league would look stupid for putting out false information that would eventually come back to embarrass it.

Great take, Peter. Because the NFL is always so worried about it's image and looking like they are giving out false information that they may eventually have to take back. We all know the NFL is deeply worried about being seen as hypocritical and willing to mislead. The NFL knows that fans will still watch, while the reporters who reported this false information would look stupid.

Clearly, this story, along with the Ray Rice story from last fall, has made me question sources and sourcing in general, and in a story as inflammatory as this one, you can’t just take the story of a person whose word you trust as gospel. It’s my error.

Again. You said this same thing last year. The two biggest NFL scandals of the last two years and Peter fumbled the ball on reporting both of them. It's almost like it's a trend. But hey, "SI's" media guy is cool with an apology, so I should be too.

I need to be better than that. Readers, and the Patriots, deserve better than that.

Which is also something Peter said last year. He said he needed to be better. Then when the next big scandal pops up, Peter gets his sourcing and reports wrong again. Readers do deserve better. Can Peter do better?

6. I think this is bad news for the future of Chris Cooley in Washington: New tight end Derek Carrier, acquired in trade with San Francisco on Friday, will be wearing number 47. For all either outside the Beltway or just casual fans of tight-end numbers in recent NFL seasons, that was Cooley’s number. He wants to play again, badly, and his old team sent him a message with that news Saturday.

This is an update for those worried about retired tight ends like Cooley and his ability to make it back into the NFL. So, this is an update for like five people.

7. I think this was a first: I interviewed Tony Romo the other night at Cowboys camp, and he brought his own soundtrack: a boom box with Bruce Springsteen playing at a moderate volume. During our chat, he interrupted his football chatter when “Wrecking Ball” came on.

I don't want to spoil the ending, but Romo and Peter bonded over how great Bruce Springsteen is live. Which is something we already know. I do like how both Peter and Romo pretend like seeing Springsteen live is some secret they both share, instead of something that probably millions of people have in common with them.

9. I think the Cowboys deserve credit for recruiting La’el Collins hard and signing him as a rookie free-agent after the draft … but 31 other teams deserve blame for not using a sixth- or seventh-round pick to take him on draft day. Pro Football Focus named him the top-rated rookie of the first full weekend of the preseason, and people in camp told me last week he’s been terrific in all phases with the second unit. I don’t expect him to stay second-team for the season.

Hey revisionist history, this is Peter King on the line wanting to speak with you. If Peter recalls correctly, and maybe he needs one of his sources to confirm this, Collins was a part of a murder investigation prior to the draft. If it turns out Collins had a part in this murder then I imagine Peter would be writing, "I can't believe Team X spent a draft pick on a player they knew had no chance of playing this season or even in the NFL at any point."

Peter seems to not be able to recall his own words. I'll help him. Here is what he said about Collins prior to the draft:

1. I think La’el Collins, the LSU tackle projected to be a first-round draft choice, has a problem. A pregnant woman Collins apparently knew was murdered last week in Louisiana, and police want to speak with Collins. Police say he is not a suspect. But one team I talked to that is interested in drafting a tackle in the first round is now re-thinking whether Collins will even be on its board on Thursday night. This team’s thinking goes: How can you draft a guy who’s being sought in connection with the death of a woman, even if police are saying now he isn’t a suspect? He needs to be exonerated by Thursday. Fair or unfair, Collins needs to address this today, and with finality.

But now that Peter has revisionist history on his side he thinks some NFL team should have drafted Collins because he's so talented. Peter does an excellent job of forgetting that Collins' status was very much up in the air when the draft occurred. What a farce for Peter to act like 31 teams (and the Cowboys, they didn't draft Collins either, dumbass) dropped the ball in not spending a pick on Collins.

10. I think these are my non-football thoughts of the week:

b. I think having a The MMQB-style site for covering the 2016 election would be an awful lot of fun right now. I think I’d have Klemko writing a daily Trump story, and Vrentas doing a what’s-wrong-with-Hillary’s-campaign takeout right about now.

Peter always has the pulse on what his readers want. He thinks his readers want MORE coverage of Donald Trump, as if the wall-to-wall coverage he gets every evening on FOX and CNN isn't enough. It's like when Peter writes about Tim Tebow, because that's what his readers want to read about. Peter knows us better than we do it seems. 

e. In the midst of this bizarro-world bad Red Sox season, I note that, in the span of eight-and-a-third innings last week, Boston got 25 hits and 18 runs off King Felix and Johnny Cueto.

f. You just can’t predict baseball, Suzyn. You really can’t.

It's not like the Red Sox have a team full of shitty hitters or anything. They are 3rd in the majors in runs scored, 4th in OBP, and 3rd in the majors in hits. Scoring runs isn't their issue. So you can't predict baseball, but you can know the strengths of your own favorite team.

g. Not saying Dave Dombrowski wasn’t a good hire by the Red Sox.

And we all know that Peter will basically now say Dave Dombrowski wasn't a good hire by the Red Sox. Peter does this all the time. "I don't want to do this..." and then Peter proceeds to do that thing.

But just for the record: Boston made a change because the current franchise architect spent huge money on players (Sandoval, Porcello, Hanley) who are not huge-money players. And the franchise now has hired an architect who spent huge money on players (other than Miguel Cabrera and maybe Victor Martinez) who didn’t produce enough to win big.

Yes, other than the players who Dombrowski spent big money on that have so far worked out well, he's really signed some huge busts. Just ignore all the good signings he made and his record looks pretty bleak. 

What am I missing? 

You mean other than the two World Series champions Dombrowski built in Florida, the fact he took a Tigers team that was the worst in the majors and built them into a team that made two World Series, and drafted guys like Rick Porcello, who he then traded so the Red Sox could give him a huge contract? Other than all the success Dombrowski has had? Other than that, you are missing nothing.

I see the division titles, and it’s important to get in the derby every year, so maybe I’m being too hard on Dombrowski. But the Tigers are 12 over .500 since opening day 2014 (including the playoff three-game sweep last year by the Orioles). Going forward, I’d like Boston to be more of a farm-system team and less of a free-agent team. Too many Crawford/Hanley mistakes in big-money land.

You mean draft good players like Curtis Granderson, Justin Verlander, Andrew Miller, Rick Porcello, Alex Avila, and Drew Smyly? Or do you mean the part where he used prospects he drafted to land guys like Miguel Cabrera, Austin Jackson, Max Scherzer, Anibal Sanchez, and David Price?

The funny part is Peter is bemoaning the Red Sox re-signing Rick Porcello, yet he can't seem to make the connection that Dombrowski is the guy who traded Porcello to the Red Sox before he wanted a big contract the Red Sox eventually gave him.

j. Coffeenerdness: This was a first, driving from the airport in Denver to the Broncos’ practice facility last Thursday: a standalone drive-through Starbucks. No store. Just a skinny little drive-through, on the southeast side of town. No idea such a place existed. Some of their stores could take a lesson from said drive-through: From time of order (three drinks) to pickup of drinks: less than 90 seconds.

One minute Peter wants to have a discussion with the barista and talk about how kind everyone is when having conversation, the next minute he wants everyone at Starbucks to shut the fuck up and just hand him his coffee. I guess it just depends on Peter's mood whether he wants conversation and kindness or a quick drink without any talk.

l. Took Greg Bishop of SI to Coors Field for his first trip there on a lovely night for baseball (Nats/Scherzer-Rockies) Thursday. Good to be joined by one of America’s bright young sportswriting lights, Tim Rohan of the New York Times. Coors has one of the best concession stands in all of sports: a salad bar on the lower concourse between first base and right field. Romaine, cucumber, cherry tomatoes, red onion, with balsamic vinaigrette, topped with chicken, for about $8.

Yeah, Max Scherzer. Which MLB GM traded for him before he flourished again? I can't remember. 

m. Uh, no line in the sixth inning Thursday night. There should have been.

Because I know when I go to a baseball game I'm thinking, "I'm hungry as hell, where is the nearest salad bar at? All I can think about is devouring a delicious house salad with my beer while watching some baseball."

The Adieu Haiku

So L.A. beckons.
My best guess: Rams in ’16,
Chargers close behind.

I only include the Adieu Haiku now because I want everyone who reads this blog to suffer through the inanity of it along with me. 

5 comments MMQB Review: Peter Notices How Lithe and Penetrating a Lions Player Is Edition

Peter King thought a 64.3% completion percentage was less than a 63.1% completion percentage in last week's MMQB. He also described selfie-policeman J.J. Watt as the new star of "Hard Knocks" and has given Marcus Mariota the official "precocious" tag, which has to be a great feat for Mariota to achieve. Any time Peter uses a word in the wrong context to describe an NFL player then it has to be flattering. The world may implode if he ever states as a "factoid" that an NFL player is precocious. This week Peter talks about Tim Tebow because he's only responding to what everyone wants him to write about and obviously everyone wants to hear more about Tebow (Tebow has improved, we've heard this before...Peter only mentions it because "the people" want to hear about Tebow of course), probably pissed off J.J. Watt by taking a selfie, has many thoughts on Geno Smith getting punched in the face and the aftermath, and and now black lives mattering is inconveniencing Peter King on his cab ride home. Okay, Peter doesn't say this but after you hear the story you KNOW Peter was upset by being inconvenienced, but just doesn't mention it in MMQB for obvious reasons.

Prologue to a column, with a point about not taking preseason results seriously:
 
In the past 11 regular seasons, the Patriots are 136-40.
In the past 11 preseasons, the Patriots are 20-24.
(Iverson voice: “We talkin’ bout practice!”)

This type of thing continuously makes me laugh. Peter does training camp tours, speaks to players, and makes comments based on preseason games...then in MMQB he is basically like, "All of this probably doesn't mean very much." So it's all wasted time then? 

I asked Eagles coach Chip Kelly if he felt frustrated with the perception that he can’t get along with players, and isn’t a good communicator, even though those who’ve been around the Eagles for years will tell you the door to his office is mostly open, while Andy Reid’s office door was mostly closed.

What side of this issue does Peter King fall on? I can't tell by the way this sentence was structured. He's so vague in his description of Kelly's open door policy compared to Andy Reid's closed door policy.

“Yeah,” Kelly said with that smile the other day, after a training-camp practice in south Philly. “But there’s nothing you can do about it. I think we do a really good job with communicating with our players.

I'm shocked, SHOCKED, that Peter King falls on the side of the NFL coach who is a quote machine. I did not see this coming.

Then he quoted two people. He said Phil Jackson once said that if you want to be liked, don’t get into coaching. “Then there’s the Mike Schmidt quote,” Kelly said. 

Which one? 

I wish Chip Kelly had told Peter to do an internet search to find this quote, just like Peter would do to his readers. Alas, he did not.

“He said, ‘Philadelphia is the only town where you can experience the thrill of victory, then the agony of reading about it the next day,’” Kelly said. “It’s part of the territory and rightly so. These people [media people] are awesome. It’s an unbelievably competitive market. New York has two teams so they gotta go to the Giants and the Jets. Here, there’s one team.”

That makes sense. It's why every other city with one NFL team has a competitive market like Philadelphia does. Either that or Chip Kelly doesn't want to tell an entire city's media to "fuck off."

My favorite story here? It’s about badminton—Sam Bradford becoming the first quarterback in NFL to rehab a torn ACL by playing badminton. More about that in a few paragraphs.

I can't even begin to pretend to care enough about this to be sarcastic. "The first quarterback to rehab by playing badminton..."

There’s where I’ll start—in Philadelphia, the last stop on our East/South/Midwest tour. This stuff about Kelly and his relations with players reminds me of a coach who left Cleveland in 1995. Bill Belichick was a bad communicator. Ran Bernie Kosar out of town. Too dictatorial. Players hated him. Had one winning season and won one playoff game in five years. Finished a lousy tenure eight below .500. Left Cleveland and the perception around the league was he’d only be a coordinator the rest of his career. When Robert Kraft hired him in 2000 to coach the Patriots, Kraft got comments like, “Are you nuts? Belichick’s not a head coach.” In 15 seasons with the Patriots, Belichick has averaged 13 wins a year (including postseason wins).

Not saying Kelly will be Belichick.

But Peter is saying that they are somewhat similar and if Chip Kelly ends up being like Bill Belichick then he will mention that he totally called it.

When he traded nickel back Brandon Boykin to Pittsburgh last month (for a fifth-round pick in 2016 that becomes a fourth if Boykin plays 60 percent of the defensive snaps for the Steelers in 2015), Boykin decried the lack of communication with Kelly, later saying he did not mean Kelly was racist.

It’s fairly fruitless to ask a man to defend himself against charges that he is racist. 

It's difficult for me to find something that I agree with that Peter King has said, but I believe I can agree with this statement.

I simply think it’s an unfair question if people might think there’s something to it when there’s no supporting evidence to say there is. Think of it: He traded a white quarterback for a white quarterback in the offseason. He jettisoned two white veteran linemen with big pricetags—Todd Herremans and Evan Mathis. He dealt an African-American running back whose running style he didn’t like and who would soon be due a big contract for a white middle linebacker. He signed two African-American running backs in free -agency. His first five draft choices were black. His top six imports from other teams in veteran free agency were African-Americans (Byron Maxwell, Mathews and Murray were the big ones, with E.J. Biggers, Brad Jones and Walter Thurmond the complementary ones). In other words, next story please.

Those who argue Peter is wrong would state that Kelly HAS to sign an African American running back because there aren't white running backs and would also state just because he signs African American free agent only means he cares to win games, not that he isn't a racist. So he gets criticized for getting rid of African American players, who then call him a racist, but when Kelly chooses to sign African American players it's simply seen as him doing it because there aren't better options. I mean, I guess that makes sense, but it feels a bit like trying to have it both ways.

The next story here is Bradford. Four notable things as he tries to rebound from an ACL tear of the same left knee in 2013 and again in 2014:

He threw the ball well and with accuracy in the two hours I watched him, and those in camp say his arm’s looked very good.

It's not been Bradford's arm that is the question of late is it? So if Bradford had both legs amputated then I don't see (okay, I do see, but you get my exaggerated point) what this has to do with how well he throws the football with his arm. He tore his ACL twice, so the knees are the issue. Yes, the knees have to do with throwing the football, but whether Bradford is accurate throwing or not doesn't really answer questions about his knees' health. 

And the badminton thing. One of Bradford’s big rehab practices was playing badminton without a net, with a doctor and athletic rehab specialist he’d just met, Bill Knowles, from Wayne, Pa.

“There’s standard rehab, where you have a sheet of what you have to accomplish every day in terms of exercise and rehab. Bill Knowles’ deal is, ‘Let’s play games.’ One day he said, ‘Let’s play badminton.’ We warmed up playing badminton. And then every day we were out here playing badminton. No net. He would hit it high and make me change directions and run. He throws all these PE games at you. You don’t think about it being rehab until you look and see the positions your body’s been in, and you think, That’s pretty close to the positions and movements you’ve got to make as a quarterback. I’m sure people up in the offices are looking out and wondering what in the world are they doing playing badminton? But, you know, you spend a year and a half doing the same exercises, and you get so tired of doing the same thing over and over,

Jeff Fisher is totally kicking himself now for trading Bradford. Bradford played badminton during his rehab sessions! Fisher should have counted on Bradford to stay healthy for one more year and then had no real viable backup option if Bradford got injured again. If Fisher had known Bradford playing badminton during his rehab, then it would have changed everything.

Bradford spoke on the field post-practice. He’s always been a sort of flatline optimist, a que sera, sera type. Asked about having any fear of it happening a third time, he said, “None. If it happens again, it’s just meant to be.

Bradford has pocketed a lot of money already playing in the NFL. If he tears an ACL again, then he can just retire, sit on his huge pile of cash from his rookie year and get some sympathy for being too injured in order to continue his career. It almost beats continuing to play and possibly being seen as a disappointment, doesn't it?

“What I’ve seen in Sam is what I thought we were going to get when I traded for him,” Kelly said. “Extremely accurate—he makes really good decisions with the football.  He has as good an arm as there is in this league. He’s everything you want in a quarterback and he was before he was injured. He just has to stay healthy.”

Bradford has been in the NFL for five years now and started 49 games. Staying healthy has been his issue since he got into the NFL and don't forget he missed all of his senior year at Oklahoma with an injury. So that means out of the last six seasons he's played football, he has missed all but 49 games.

We have some really great leaders here—Malcolm Jenkins, DeMeco Ryans and now Byron Maxwell, who came over from Seattle; he’s been outstanding. I think everyone was concerned when you add this many people. But the guys we’ve added have been awesome. I like what I see.”

Clearly, Chip Kelly doesn't know these players are not white or else he wouldn't be saying this about them.

“I’ve got to show you something,” said GM David Caldwell, putting practice tape on the screen in his office. It was from a night practice that would get mostly rained out in Jacksonville. “This is the kind of play that makes us feel pretty good about Blake Bortles.”

So the GM whose tenure with his current team will be judged on whether the quarterback he handpicked will be successful is talking up said quarterback? I can't believe this would occur. Sure, Bortles has improved from his first to his second year, but sometimes I wonder if Peter remembers that GM's have a vested interest in talking up certain players. Picking the wrong quarterback in the first round of the draft is how GM's get fired.

Split right, free-agent wideout Tony Washington lines up head-up on prize free-agent cornerback Davon House. At the snap, Washington burrows into the inside shoulder of House and runs upfield. At about 13 yards, he pivots and cuts to the post. Just as he cuts, and four strides before he turns to look for the ball, Bortles releases the ball. At the split second Washington turns his head to the quarterback, the ball explodes into his hands. He doesn’t have to move his hands. It’s just there.

“The ball just hit my hands,” Washington said. “I didn’t do anything but catch it.”

“That throw reminded me of a throw Aaron would make,” said House, the ex-Packer. “I saw that same throw in Green Bay. No defending it.”

Oh, so the guy who got burnt by the throw states that there was no way to defend this pass? What else is he going to say? "It was a shitty throw, but I'm incompetent and couldn't prevent the completion. By the way, I can't believe how much money I received in free agency from the Jaguars."

I'm just saying that the two people attesting to Bortles' greatness are the GM who drafted him and the cornerback who just got a big free agent contract and got burnt by an undrafted wide receiver. Vested interests in talking Bortles up can be seen everywhere.

I still say Bortles isn't going to be a franchise quarterback. I could be wrong. My opinion is just my opinion, but it's hard to look at the opinion of the Jaguars' GM and the cornerback who got burnt on a good throw in practice and see them as neutral observations of Bortles' ability.

I asked Bortles what he was thinking when he made the throw on the field. Exhilaration, maybe? Satisfaction? Or maybe that he finally was arriving at the place where good quarterbacks were?

“I thought, Good throw. Onto the next one now.”

Good answer.

Remember Blake, Peter is on the lookout for a gritty, white quarterback to fall in love with and endear himself to by using words like "precocious" and other language that indicates you play the quarterback position like a kid would. So this quarterback could be YOU and YOU could find Peter waiting on your porch in the offseason ready to talk about how life is going. Just keeping feeding Peter the answers he wants. That's what you need to do.

Since the two teams met in that memorable 2010 NFC title game at Soldier Field—Packers 21, Bears 14—the Bears have had three coaches (Lovie Smith, Marc Trestman, John Fox) and three general managers (Jerry Angelo, Phil Emery, Ryan Pace). Green Bay has had one coach, Mike McCarthy, and one GM, Ted Thompson.

Since that game, Jay Cutler has been involved in more melodrama than any quarterback in the NFL.

I think that Tim Tebow and Tom Brady would like to have a word with Peter about the accuracy of this statement.

The only drama Aaron Rodger has been involved? I can’t think of it, unless appearing on Page Six of the New York Post because he’s been seen canoodling with Olivia Munn around North America counts as drama.

UNLESS YOU WANT TO COUNT BEING SEEN AROUND THE UNITED STATES WITH A FAMOUS ACTRESS AND HAVING IT POINTED OUT BY TABLOIDS, CAMERAS AND NEWSPAPERS THAT YOU ARE DATING THIS FAMOUS ACTRESS AS "DRAMA" THEN PETER GUESSES THIS WOULD COUNT.

“We’re going to do things to help the quarterback,” GM Ryan Pace said at Bears camp in Bourbonnais. “We have a major commitment to the run, and that will take pressure off Jay. We have extreme confidence in the coaching staff, and we think Adam Gase can do a lot of things to help Jay.

Look, Pace is doing the right thing for his guy in propping up Cutler when the rest of the city wants him gone. I’d do the exact same thing.

Notice that David Caldwell showing Peter a great pass by Blake Bortles in practice isn't seen as Caldwell "propping up" Bortles after he had a fairly crappy rookie season. Notice that Chip Kelly talking about how Sam Bradford is looking good and is everything he thought he would be after Bradford has played in 49 games over his 5 NFL seasons isn't seen by Peter as "propping up" Bradford. When Ryan Pace talks positively about Jay Cutler, a quarterback who is working with the same offensive coordinator that Peyton Manning gave credit to for helping him in Denver, well this is just Ryan Pace "propping up" Cutler. Forget all that positive shit Peter wrote about Gase when he worked with Manning, forget Bortles hasn't even proven he can be a below-average starter, and forget that Bradford can't even get on the field on a consistent basis, it's Cutler who has positive words directed at him by his GM who is getting "propped up." Got it.

Say what you want, but if you were Pace, would you have fired Cutler and gone out and signed, say, Brian Hoyer? Or Ryan Fitzpatrick? No. You’d stick with Cutler and see if a third Chicago coaching staff could right the ship.

John Fox had success with Jake Delhomme and Tim Tebow, plus Adam Gase has worked with Peyton Manning. Sticking with Cutler and his contract is probably the only option the Bears had.

At Packers camp I became convinced that McCarthy decided to give up play-calling as much because he implicitly trusts Rodgers to be a coach on the field and trusts the knowledge of Tom Clements in the offensive system.

Yes Peter, I'm sure that Mike McCarthy trusts the best quarterback in the NFL to know the offensive system and be a coach on the field. Now he can focus on other issues the Packers team has because he doesn't have to call plays. Very intuitive of you to point this out.

Detroit: Better than I thought.

Pizza: More cheese than I imagined.

Meerkats: More self-sufficient than I believed them to be.

I like how Peter's own incorrect perception of the Lions is supposed to change his reader's perception of the Lions.

"Wait, Peter King thinks the Lions are better than he thought they were? This must be something he thought he thought he knew, but it turns out he didn't know it. I must adjust my expectations for the Lions as well!"

The irony of Suh leaving? And taking his incredible run defense and sacking (a team-high 8.5 sacks) with him to Miami? In the off-season, he tutored Reid, working out with the second-year Princeton kid, and all in Detroit camp say Reid came back this summer a different player.

He started stepping on opposing players and generally acting like an asshole on the field?

More stout. Stronger, with a better interior rushing presence. At 6-2 and 306 pounds, Reid looks more lithe and penetrating than he did last year.

Peter thinks Reid looks more lithe with his luscious rippling muscles glistening in the sun as the sweat pores down from his chin to his stomach, leaving little patches of sweat on the Lions workout gear he has on, his precocious smile providing all the sunlight that's needed on this beautiful day.

You have a few options when you make a mistake in life. You can own up to it and totally admit it and take your medicine; or you can do something less; or you can lie your way through it.

How many people have you killed, Peter? Or is it that mental health issues are a character flaw? Either way, losing your daughter for five minutes in a grocery store is like having your child disappear and presumed dead.

OR you can keep saying stupid and insensitive shit and nobody calls you on it because you apologized and ARE SO DEFINITELY SORRY...until you say the same type of insensitive thing again. At that point, the media guy at your company, the same guy who eviscerates at any opportunity media members for other organizations for the slightest misstep, will just state you have apologized and he no longer sees the big deal in an effort to toe the company line and not make a big deal out of your comments as he normally would do otherwise. That's an option too.

Cleveland GM Ray Farmer wishes he’d never texted an assistant coach in the upstairs coaches' booth with suggestions/prompts/ideas/whatever during games last year. 

But desperate times call for desperate measures, and he just thought he should throw in his thoughts about what the Browns were doing on offense during the games. 

I just want to know what he was texting down that the Browns offense should do. Perhaps the coaching staff should have texted back a suggestion that Farmer find the Browns a good quarterback for the offense.

I expected Farmer to either no-comment this when we spoke at Browns camp last week, or maybe say he stands by whatever vanilla statement he issued when the sanction came down. But he didn’t.

You know, "whatever vanilla statement" that was issued when the sanction came down. Peter doesn't have time to go back and find it, but he's sure the statement was vanilla. That much he doesn't think that he thinks. He thinks he knows what he thinks about Farmer's statement.

“My mom and dad taught me a long time ago to take responsibility for my actions,” Farmer said, a little uneasy talking about it, on the side of the team’s practice field in Berea, Ohio. “That’s what I have done. As the time gets closer, I continue to reflect on what I did, and the cost of it. I made a mistake, and this is my penalty, and I am going to serve it.”

Yeah, but Johnny Manziel is the one who makes mistakes and should know better than to make them. He should be held to a higher standard than the Browns GM.

I’m not sure this is the most noteworthy thing coming out of Browns camp. I’ll be writing some about other things I learned there.

Hopefully Peter is writing about other things he learned at Browns camp. Otherwise, Browns fans could look to Peter for even less information than usual. Usually Browns just look to Peter for information on how their restricted free agents can be signed other NFL teams without the Browns matching the offer.

Last December, Kansas City safety Eric Berry was diagnosed with non-Hodgkins lymphoma, a dangerous but treatable form of cancer.

Peter knows how Eric Berry feels because one time right before Christmas he had a vicious head cold that made it tough to get any work done.

Some words from Berry that you should hear:

Apparently Peter is under the impression that MMQB is an audio column and not a written column. Perhaps Peter has an audio version of MMQB that I'm not aware of where his readers can actually hear, not just read, the words that Eric Berry has to say. Otherwise, it's hard to hear written words.

The words from Berry are nice to hear and inspirational at times, but I can't be snarky about his situation so I will move on to tearing into Peter King. It's why we are all here anyway.

While I watched practice Thursday at the Eagles’ complex, there was this scene: Sam Bradford, his receiver covered in a seven-on-seven drill, tossed a ball harmlessly out of bounds, into the large bushes on the edge of the practice field. A few snaps later, Tim Tebow, the fourth-string quarterback battling Matt Barkley for the number three job, took a shotgun snap, looked at his options, saw none, and threw the ball into the exact same area of bushes.

TEBOW CAN THROW THE BALL AWAY AS EFFICIENTLY AS ANY OTHER QUARTERBACK! 

“There’s Tebow’s intended receiver,” said a fan I was standing next to on the sidelines of practice. “The bushes.” He and his buddies got a good laugh out of that one.

This is a great example of Tebow being bullied by fans. When will the fans stop bullying poor Tim Tebow? When will jokes about his inaccuracy stop being made, despite how funny they are? Hopefully never.

No comment on Bradford’s throwaway, of course. He’s an accurate passer and deserves the benefit of the doubt. But not so Tebow. He has been so inaccurate in his brief career (47.9 percent) that when he makes a throw like that, it’s: same old Tebow.

Let's all not forget that Tim Tebow was a first round pick and should be treated like other first round picks who are quarterbacks. Before feeling sorry for him, remember that this is the fourth team who has given Tebow an opportunity to prove he's worth spending a roster spot on.

In fact, it’s not the same Tebow.

And of course Peter is only bringing up a 3rd/4th string quarterback because that's what the people want to hear about. "The people" need more Tebow, so it's totally not Peter's doing that he keeps talking about him in MMQB.

On Sunday, in his first preseason test, Tebow was marginally good, completing six of 12 passes for 69 yards while being sacked three times. He was hurried on almost every dropback behind a makeshift—and struggling—offensive line.

Peter remembers to bring up that the Eagles' offensive line was struggling, while avoiding the whole part about Tebow being a first round pick going against the 3rd/4th string defenders from the opposing team.

But the bad thing for Tebow was he showed very happy feet at times, probably because of the intense pressure. He won’t make it, though, unless he can set his feet, look over his options and make a good throw. In the off-season, he got Tom House, noted mechanics-fixer, to help him with his footwork and his arm slot, and both looked better Thursday at practice.

Not to come off as anti-Tebow, but this is pressure from 3rd/4th string pass rushers coming at him, which is different when it comes to another NFL team's starting defense rushing him. I think Tebow will work best as a change-of-pace quarterback who can present issues for the defense, but that also entails pulling the regular quarterback in order to have special "Tebow packages" and I don't think any starting quarterback ever really likes this.

“Tim’s sequencing has really improved,” Kelly said. “Not just his throw motion, but how his arm is following his legs in the right order. I’m not too worried about his arm slot; you see a guy like Philip Rivers throw from different angles and be effective. Tim’s better at the overall throw now.”

"Tim's better at the overall throw now." I'm not sure what else needs to be said.

The debut of the new PAT rules—the extra point now is snapped from the 15-yard line, making it a 33-yard attempt; the two-point conversion is attempted from the 2-yard line—has been uneventful. Except for the two-point tries. Last year, 59 two-point conversions were attempted in 256 regular-season games. This preseason, 12 have been attempted in the first 17 games. Too early to sense a trend, but teams have made five of 12 (.417).

Not only is it too early to sense a trend, but teams will more likely go for two in the preseason so they can practice the plays they run in that area during the season. I would look for the percentage of two-point conversions to fall from the 71% of preseason games that have had a two-point conversion attempted.

Checking out the 33-yard PAT after the Hall of Fame game and the full preseason schedule this weekend:

PATs attempted: 57. PATs made: 55. Percentage: .965

So the PAT has been attempted at six times the rate of the two-point conversion, even in the preseason, and almost 97% of them have been made. I wasn't against the extra point being pushed back, but I also didn't think it would make the dramatic difference that Peter seems to believe it will make.

“What is it, a 4 percent less chance you’ll make the extra point?’ Chip Kelly said. “That’s not going to be enough to make a huge change, in my opinion, in what coaches do.” 

We’ll see. A couple of coaches I’ve spoken with for a story I’m working on concerning the PAT shift think there’s going to be more of a change than Kelly thinks.

Chip Kelly isn't such a genius when he disagrees with Peter King on one of Peter's pet project rule changes.

“They’ll have to get a tractor to move me outside to tackle. I’d rather get in a fist fight in a phone booth [at guard] any day. Those guys outside, there’s too much space. Too scary out there.”

—Chicago Pro Bowl guard Kyle Long, on off-season talk that the Bears may move him to tackle eventually because of his strength and athleticism.

Way to be a team player there, Kyle. Not that Long should necessarily be moved to tackle, but it sounds like Long wouldn't even be willing to consider a position change to tackle, even if it helped the team.

“I came home to find out that my boys received two trophies for nothing, participation trophies! While I am very proud of my boys for everything they do and will encourage them till the day I die, these trophies will be given back until they EARN a real trophy. I'm sorry I'm not sorry for believing that everything in life should be earned and I'm not about to raise two boys to be men by making them believe that they are entitled to something just because they tried their best.”

—Steelers linebacker James Harrison, in an Instagram post next to the two athletic trophies his sons received—and that he sent back.

Apparently the act of a parent sending a participation trophy back is enough to cause a several day discussion online about whether Harrison's actions are correct or not. Who cares? If he wants to send his son's trophies back, that's his choice. No need to legislate whether he is a good or bad parent.

Now that San Diego has signed Philip Rivers long-term, two of the three franchise quarterbacks from the 2004 draft class are tied up through the 2019 season—when Ben Roethlisberger will be 37 in Pittsburgh and Rivers 38 with the Chargers. Now it’s Eli Manning’s turn.

Manning wants to be the highest-paid quarterback in the NFL. I think every NFL quarterback wants to be the highest-paid quarterback in the NFL, so Eli's wishes are probably not news.

It’s fascinating to look at how similar the three quarterbacks have been, for the most part. Rivers’ numbers are down, slightly, because he didn’t start his first two years in San Diego, sitting behind Drew Brees. Manning has started an eye-popping 178 games in a row. Roethlisberger started early in Pittsburgh. But the fact that all three could have such similar numbers—look at the touchdowns here: all are between 251 and 259 in their regular-season careers—is amazing.

I'll spare you the chart, but the biggest difference is the QB rating and number of interceptions. Roethlisberger's QB rating is 93.9, Rivers 95.7, and Manning 82.4. Eli also has 54 more interceptions than Roethlisberger and 63 more interceptions than Rivers. So, they are similar, except Manning is a bit more of a turnover machine than Rivers and Roesthlisberger.

The guess here: Manning ends up very close to Roethlisberger. Super Bowl wins trump all. I’m sure Jerry Reese and the Giants will try to hold the line on anything north of Roethlisberger, because Aaron Rodgers is the gold standard at $22 million per year. But Tom Condon, Manning’s agent, surely will argue that because the Rodgers deal was signed two-and-a-third years ago, and the cap in 2015 has increased $20.8 million over 2013, the Rodgers deal can’t be held up as unbeatable.

I'm sure the Giants would counter with "Hey, Rodgers is the best quarterback in the NFL and we aren't paying Manning more than him."

Factoid of the Week That May Interest Only Me

Here is a little factoid that has never interested Peter. A "factoid" isn't a tiny fact, but a short statement with dubious accuracy. Fuck the dictionary though, Peter makes up his own definitions. 

So … our team at The MMQB had a good and informative trip on the road. We also had some fun. See our selfie-stick photo from the last day on the Eagles’ sideline? Videographer John DePetro (white T-shirt) took it, and you can see, from left, Robert Klemko, Kalyn Kahler, Emily Kaplan (front), me, and Jenny Vrentas.

J.J. Watt does not approve of this selfie. None of the THE MMQB team members were posing while showing off their arms in a sleeveless shirt nor were any of them grinding and working hard trying to make themselves better. That's the only time selfies can be taken according to the "J.J. Watt Book of How Everyone Should Act."

Our crack tour manager, Kalyn Kahler, loaded up the van with Chipotle, and we set off around 8:45 for Philly. One problem: Robert Klemko couldn’t handle the sour cream in his Chipotle something-or-other, and so about a half-hour out of town he started looking for food on his RoadAhead app. 

 What a country. Dinosaur Bar-B-Que, the famous Syracuse meathouse, was 15 minutes ahead, and Klemko put in an order.

WHAT A COUNTRY! There are restaurants throughout the United States that sell food to people who are willing to use currency, credit card or check to pay for this food. I mean, these restaurants are everywhere and you can even call ahead to get an order ready for pickup. WHAT A FUCKING COUNTRY!

Then Peter talks about "Super Troopers," naturally being over a decade late to the party. I don't really feel like going through his whole story about this right meow.

Blaine Gabbert's passer rating in Preseason Week 1 last year: 1.7. Blaine Gabbert's passer rating tonight: 125.6

— Matt Barrows (@mattbarrows) August 16, 2015

But again, let's not overreact to one preseason game. Here is an implied conclusion on how much Blaine Gabbert has improved though.

This one is a tough pill to swallow. Finally got the opportunity I always wanted since I entered this league. Took me 4 years to get there.

— Niles Paul (@Niles_Paul84) August 14, 2015

You swallowed a pill? Did this pill violate the drug agreement agreed to by the union and the NFL? Doesn't matter. You are suspended four games for violating the drug agreement, pending a review of this violation by Roger Goodell. If you would like to appeal Goodell's reviewed decision then you can appeal to Roger Goodell. If you would like to appeal this appeal then you can bring the case to the Supreme Court where Roger Goodell will decide whether to hear your appeal. If you would like to appeal this decision, then talk to God, who will then consult with Roger Goodell and Russell Wilson on what the decision should be. There is no appeal after this.

Ten Things I Think I Think

1. I think the upshot of the Philip Rivers contract extension—Chris Mortensen reported it as four years and $83.25 million, beginning in 2016; he will play out his final year of the current deal this year at $15 million—is that the Chargers, wherever they play in 2016 and beyond, will be quarterbacked by Rivers. He and his wife, who is pregnant with their eighth child, love San Diego

I read this initially as "He and his wife, who is pregnant with their eighth love child..." Because of course I read it that way.

2. I think Ray Rice will be in some team’s camp by Sept. 15. Just a hunch. The Browns have some interest, and depending on injuries in the preseason, other teams will too. I heard this in three places along my camp tour so far: Teams are concerned about the fallout for picking up a man who decked his fiancée in an elevator, but are as concerned or more concerned with the fact that the last time he was on the field, in 2013, he was a less-than-mediocre back.

So Peter is reporting that NFL teams don't really have a moral compass, they only will choose to sign a player based on how well he can perform on the field? No way. This probably explains why Greg Hardy has a job right now. I'm in shock that NFL teams judge players by how much they can help on the field and not based on what kind of person this player might be. What a twist that I didn't expect.

With thanks to several coaches/GMs on my camp tour, here's my veteran free-agent running back short list in order:

Chris Johnson. Turns 30 in September. Brings baggage. The 2,006-yard season seems 16 years away, not six. But the Cardinals may sign him this week. No one says he can't be a weapon with a good line in front of him.

Nope, I'm saying that Chris Johnson can't be a weapon with a good line in front of him. I don't believe he can be.

Knowshon Moreno will be a good candidate to be signed. The Dolphins still have some scant interest in bringing him back.

Oh man, calm down with the interest you have there Dolphins. "Scant" interest in Moreno. Good thing it's not "miniscule" interest in him. If Moreno came back and played well it would probably help the precocious Dolphins quarterback Ryan Tannehill live up to the potential that I keep hearing he has.

Then Peter updates us on the situation in Los Angeles about which teams could end up relocating.....Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz....

6. I think much has been made of Jet-turned-Bill linebacker IK Enemkpali breaking Geno Smith’s jaw Tuesday, and the subsequent fallout. Several points to make:

a. I was amazed, from the four coaches/players and one highly respected retired player I spoke with in the past few days that the blame for the incident in the eyes of the NFLers should be shared. I mean, almost equally shared. As one active quarterback told me, “You just do not go around owing teammates money—especially a teammate who doesn’t make much money.”

I think that's a good rule in general. You just don't go around owing anybody money. Just anyone. It can be a teammate, a friend, an acquaintance, the IRS, pretty much any/everyone.

c. From the respected retired player (not a Jet): “I can tell you there’d have been a huge problem in the locker rooms I was in if guys thought the quarterback owed money to a guy and didn’t pay—even if it was in dispute whether he owed him money or not. It wouldn’t matter what the reality was. Guys would be pissed.”

You know, if Geno Smith was a better leader then he wouldn't get punched in the face. Why aren't there more hot takes about this position? What are the odds this "respected retired player" is Brett Favre?

e. Has there ever been a more transparent slap at a player than Enemkpali’s apology about the incident when he got to Buffalo, when he apologized to everyone in the Jets’ building except for the one whose jaw he broke in two places? Enemkpali: “I want to apologize to the Jets organization, the fans, my teammates and the coaches. I apologize for what happened. It should have never happened. I should have walked away from the situation. It was never my intentions to hurt anybody.” Then he thanked the Bills for picking him up.

He owed money. You just can't owe people money.

7. I think you shouldn’t blame me for the football locker-room ethos that shifts the blame from the assaulter to the assaultee. I’m the messenger here. I’m just telling you what five people I respect said about the punching in the wake of it. In my opinion, there’s never a good-enough reason for punching another man in the face.

Of course Peter thinks this. I'm not in favor of punching people in the face, but few people have a clue what happened in the locker room and if Geno Smith was being a dipshit about this then he may deserve to be punched in the face. Maybe.

8. I think if you’re wondering about the sanction awaiting Enemkpali by the NFL, well, I wouldn’t count on him being in a Bills uniform for the first couple of weeks. After the punchout, NFL VP Troy Vincent sent a memo to all coaches and general managers reminding them of the prohibition on fighting on the field and off. 

Topics #7 and #8 are part of the same discussion, so they should be with Topic #6. I can't figure out why Peter insists on moving them to a different number of his outline, other than he doesn't really have 10 things he thinks he thinks for the week and needs to stretch it out a bit to cover up for this fact.

10. I think these are my non-football thoughts of the week:

c. Sign of the 2015 times: My wife and I were in a cab on our way home from dinner Friday night, on 56th Street in Manhattan. Traffic between Park and Lexington stopped dead. We waited a minute. We saw a guy get out of a car a few cars ahead of us and start walking. I figured if was a garbage truck or small accident—some New York thing. So we got out and started walking home. Turns out it was five young people, standing in the street, chanting, “Black lives matter!” In between chants, they were screaming at the frustrated drivers screaming at them to get out of the road.

Two things about this comment:

1. I firmly believe that Peter wanted to put this under his "Mr. Starwood Preferred Member Travel Note of the Week," but he often complains about traveling in that space and he doesn't want it to seem like he's complaining about people protesting and chanting "Black lives matter" in the street.

2. I think Peter King did complain and really wants to complain about these people holding up traffic, and more importantly, holding him and his wife up from getting to where they needed to go. I know he complained about it. I just know that was his initial reaction.

g. Coffeenerdness: Twenty-three Starbucks stops in 15 days on the road, as calculated by our videographer, John “Venti Iced Coffee With Skim” DePetro. There might be something wrong with us. (Or just me.)

This is just absolutely ridiculous. Just ridiculous. I can't help but wonder what Peter would do if he had to live on a normal person's budget and couldn't spend $5 each time he goes to Starbucks once or twice a day.

h. Beernerdness: Championship beer of the camp trip—Sweetwater Blue (Sweetwater Brewing Company, Atlanta). Heaven in a bottle.

That's not even one of Sweetwater's top-five beers. Peter and I are not alike at all as it pertains to beer. That's probably not a bad thing for me.

j. Thanks, Runners World, for making me seem much more fit than I really am. But I’m trying—which is more than I can say for the vast majority of my adult life.

This is just a little humblebrag by Peter so that his readers know he was in "Runners World" because he is a runner now. He is embarrassed to point it out, but of course he will anyway.

The Adieu Haiku

Tom Brady in court.
Court. Not a training camp field.
Such a dumb August.

But not as dumb as this Adieu Haiku is of course. Nothing can be. 

3 comments MMQB Review: Peter King Thinks a 64.3% Completion Percentage is Less Than a 63.1% Completion Percentage

Peter King shared Robert Klemko's obsession with Ronda Rousey in last week's MMQB. Peter also detailed how Jay Gruden apparently isn't going to help Robert Griffin succeed this year, Matt Ryan doesn't understand all these games that are on phones, and the Broncos aren't going to make Peyton Manning throw 613 passes per game this year. This week Peter talks about how we forget the Colts were embarrassed again by the Patriots in the playoffs, talks about how FUCKING PRECOCIOUS Marcus Mariota is, something about J.J. Watt that I don't care about since he's quickly entering the "Favre Zone" for me where he goes so far out of the way for attention but nobody cares because he's a great football player (seriously, Watt takes a bunch of selfies and pictures of himself on his Instagram page and then has the gall to mock Mettenberger for taking selfies?), and, of course talks about the ongoing battle between the NFL and Tom Brady over deflated footballs.

Also, Peter played Madden 16. He beat Gerald McCoy at it. So precocious of Peter.

Is it just me, or is there a ridiculous amount of stuff happening in the NFL right now? 

This has been the craziest time around training camp in the history of the NFL...at least until next year.

The Colts have been steamrolled by New England three times in their past 20 games—by scores of 45-7, 42-20 and 43-22—and they curiously haven’t buttressed their run defense, having fallen out of the bidding for Haloti Ngata and Vince Wilfork in the off-season. Tom Brady could have played with Nerf balls and the Colts wouldn’t have anything to complain about. 

This is part of my reasoning why I'm not totally freaking out about the Patriots (allegedly!) using deflated footballs against the Colts. It did not have an effect on the game at all. Not that cheating needs to have an effect on the game to be cheating, but it certainly would help my outrage if I was sure the footballs being deflated by a few tenths of a PSI really gave the Patriots an advantage that was more than mental.

“We got our asses kicked,” Pagano said. “Period. End of story. None of us here will ever forget that day, that final score. We got a damn artery gushing and no sutures to stop the bleeding. You never forget that.” 

But don't worry, the Colts went out and signed Andre Johnson, Frank Gore and drafted Phillip Dorsett. That will totally help prevent the Patriots from scoring 40+ points on the Colts defense again. I'm being snarky of course, the Colts spent six of their eight picks on defense, so consider this defensive problem against the Patriots fixed. Dammit, there's my snark again.

The Colts could have the greatest pass-catching corps in football this year, accompanying the best young quarterback in the game (and Andrew Luck has gone to school on Andrew Luck’s penchant for the big mistake).

Andrew Luck is self-reporting himself for having a penchant for the big mistake. He's accountable to himself, which is probably nice, since I'm sure Peter King certainly wouldn't hold Luck accountable for any big mistakes. Also, the Colts are pretty much re-booting the Manning era in Indianapolis. Not that there isn't anything wrong with this, but at a certain point the Colts have to realize a great quarterback will make his receivers better. A great quarterback can't stop the opposing team from scoring 40 points. I think you get my concern for the Colts. I'll only repeat it 10 more times before the 2015 NFL season is over.

Eight straight practices, eight straight days without an interception for Marcus Mariota, Tennessee wunderkind. You’ll never guess who wants him to throw one.

This isn't difficult. Ken Whisenhunt wants Mariota to throw an INT so he can see how Mariota recovers. I don't have to read MMQB to know this answer.

I played Gerald McCoy of the Bucs in EA Sports’ “Madden 16” game. I am the only male in America who had never played Madden before, and, justifiably, neither McCoy nor teammate Mike Evans, a spectator for the King-McCoy tussle, was impressed with my game. “This is like playing my daughter,’’ said observer Evans. Then, of course, the greatest upset in sports history happened.

You do NOT call Peter King a woman. Women are for cooking and being spied and listened in on while they are walking in Central Park. Peter's fury at being compared to a female obviously drove him to victory.

The Colts scored 458 points last year, which is a lot. And they went out and signed a workhorse back (Frank Gore) and vet receiver Andre Johnson, who has 306 catches over the past three years, and then drafted another receiver, Phillip Dorsett, in the first round. (The Colts will field three wideouts this year who have recorded 40 times under 4.4 seconds.)

Yep, the Colts will have a great offense. That wasn't ever really a question, was it?

In addition, Luck’s big project this offseason was to figure why his interception total rose from nine in 2013 to 16 last year.

Because he threw 7 more interceptions than he did the season before? This is the part where Peter and Chuck Pagano pretend like Andrew Luck isn't going to be a Top-5 quarterback by the end of next season, and possibly a Top-3 quarterback even. It's the part where Luck's 16 interceptions are made a bigger deal than they are, as if he isn't going to learn and be fine.

Okay. Luck’s going to be fine. The offense should average 30 a game. But who’ll stop the reign?

Yes, Luck will be fine. The genius that Ryan Grigson is hasn't done a ton to help Luck out on the defensive side of the ball. At least not in my opinion, but nobody cares what I think.

New England has rushed for 657 yards against the Colts in their past three meetings, which cries out for a fix. Indy hopes 2014 free-agent 3-4 end Arthur Jones (who was hurt half of last season) and 2015 free-agent end Kendall Langford, 650 pounds of run-stopping on the edge, will be the answer.

They may be the answer or the Colts may not even face the Patriots in the playoffs again. Who knows?

GM Ryan Grigson didn’t want to pay $6 million a year to the 33-year-old Wilfork,

I can get that. The Colts are paying 29 year old Kendall Langford $4.5 million this year and Wilfork signed with the Texans on a 2 year $9 million contract, so the idea they would have had to pay Wilfork $6 million per year doesn't seem entirely accurate though. I would pay $9 million for two seasons of Vince Wilfork.

or deal two mid-round picks for Ngata, who might be a one-year Band-aid.

(Insert Trent Richardson joke about Grigson giving up a first round pick for Richardson but not wanting to give up mid-round picks for an actual good NFL player here)

“We have enough here,” said Pagano, meaning enough defensive talent. We’ll see, but perhaps not until the Patriots play in Indy in October … or until they meet again in January.

OR the Colts will end up having to play a different team in the playoffs and the Colts won't meet the Patriots. Either way, the Patriots are not going to be hanging 40+ points on the Colts when they meet in October. They are going to want to hang 60+ points on the Colts.

Two things I hope Frank Gifford is not remembered for:

Having an affair with a flight attendant?

As a football player, being KO’d by Eagles middle linebacker Chuck Bednarik in 1960 on one of the most brutal hits in NFL history.

As a broadcaster, for Howard Cosell, his “Monday Night Football” partner, calling Gifford “the human mannequin.”

I'm not sure why some of these words are in italics.

It was sad to hear about Frank Gifford but "the human mannequin" thing is funny and that hit by Bednarik would have had the media calling him a monster and requesting he be suspended from playing in NFL games for the rest of his natural life. Times have changed.

This Mariota guy’s pretty precocious.

PRETTY FUCKING PRECOCIOUS!

In Nashville the other day, I watched rookie quarterback Marcus Mariota in a team drill do something veteran quarterbacks do in training camp.

He got in a fight with one of the team's starting cornerbacks?

Inside the 10-yard line, from the shotgun, he barked out, “Delta! Delta!” He took a snap and looked left, to a crossing Kendall Wright, closely covered by cornerback Perrish Cox, then quickly scanned to the right, holding cornerback Jason McCourty on his man, and keeping the safety in the middle of the field. “A veteran move,” McCourty said. Then Mariota quickly locked back onto Wright and fired a strike to the outside corner—where Wright could catch the ball but Cox couldn’t reach. Touchdown.

That's not just a veteran move, that's precocious as hell.

Here is the definition of "precocious":

"Of a child; having or showing the qualities or abilities of an adult at an unusually early age."

So here is the biggest issue with Peter calling Mariota "precocious." Mariota is not, because he is an adult. Mariota is 21 years old, so his advanced ability to not throw interceptions and play the quarterback position is impressive, but it's not precocious, because again, MARIOTA IS A FUCKING ADULT HUMAN BEING! I've never understood Peter's weird fascination with calling grown people "precocious" and enjoying adult men who have child-like qualities. It's a little creepy to me. Peter isn't the only one who does this of course, but he loves using the word "precocious" in the context of a grown adult playing football well at a young age. In fact, Peter uses the word "precocious" in as many different contexts as possible.

So Mariota is playing well and developing as a quarterback very nicely, but he's not precocious. He's an adult, not a child, no matter how much Peter creepily would prefer Mariota be more child-like.

Eight practices, no interceptions in team periods or seven-on-seven work. Seriously: Coach Ken Whisenhunt, who doesn’t want the kid fitted for his yellow jacket in Canton just yet, told me: “The hype is getting out of control. I don’t care if he throws an interception out here. Come on—it’s August. It’s camp. I may just have him throw one to get this over with. Just throw one. We gotta get it out of the way.”

Peter said we would never guess who wants Mariota to throw an interception, yet I got it right without actually reading the answer. Probably because it was an obvious answer to an even more obvious little game Peter loves to play. I would have been surprised if the answer was Zach Mettenberger.

“He’s got the ‘it’ factor,’’ said defensive coordinator Ray Horton. “He’s got a sort of je ne sais quoi about him.”

How precocious of Ray Horton to use this phrase!

Now, I’ve covered football for 31 years. I have never heard a coach, or anyone, use “je ne sais quoi” about a player—the indefinable quality, usually in a very good way, used to describe the best of the best. “His poise under pressure looks pretty special,” Horton said.

Maybe the Titans just don't have a very good defense too? Or possibly Mariota is so precocious that he has the abilities of an NFL quarterback while he is still a child at the age of 21.

“The adjustment for me hasn’t been that different,” said Mariota. “The coaches at Oregon really prepared me for this. There’s a lot of similar concepts between Oregon and here. I’m the benefit of so many other people, and that’s helped my transition.”

I'm not sure if it's a good thing or a bad thing that Mariota hasn't had to adjust too much from the offense he ran at Oregon to the offense the Titans run.

“The adjustment for me hasn’t been that different,” said Mariota. “The coaches at Oregon really prepared me for this. There’s a lot of similar concepts between Oregon and here. I’m the benefit of so many other people, and that’s helped my transition.”

Nashville. Hawaii. It's the same thing. I've been been to both the city and the state and can report that they are indeed very, very different.

Guess who’s the “Hard Knocks” star?

I'm guessing it's the guy who loves to criticize others for being too focused on taking social media photos and not being focused enough on football? Probably the same guy who was on a reality television show periodically while in college, though I'm sure he would be happy to criticize an NFL player for being on a reality television show periodically.

"Don't take selfies, unless the selfie you are taking shows just how hard you are grinding to be a better player. Then it's okay."

The first show, in fact, will have the rarest of events: a mistake by Watt, highlighted by coach Bill O’Brien in front of the team. Before a practice, Watt, miked, tells a teammate: “Ever since O-B got here, he’s been trying to get me to jump offsides. And I haven’t jumped offsides one time. Not one single time. He talks to me about it all the time.”

So they go out to practice one day, and O’Brien sing-songs to Watt, “We’re gonna get you!” And Watt, too aggressive in anticipating the snap from center, jumps offside. The offense is jubilant.

You got Watt to jump offsides once, but you will end up paying for it in blood when he destroys the offensive lineman in front of him on the next play.

Then, NFL Films cameras show Watt, post-practice, working alone as the sun goes down on his swim moves past the offensive-lineman dummy.

I'm sure Watt had no idea the camera was there, being as how he is so camera-shy and all, especially when it comes to showing off how hard he works.

I think we can see where this is headed: J.J. Watt, reality TV star, on “Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Houston Texans.” It’s another world for Watt to conquer.

I'm not going to make a snarky comment about this, because it's fine if J.J. Watt embraces becoming a reality star. He's just trying to show everyone how hard he works. When he's taking selfies it's for a purpose more important than just showing himself off. I mean, obviously. He isn't a hypocrite, mostly because I'm guessing he doesn't know what that word means.

Watt is a really, really great player, but the guy shows up in front of a camera every chance he gets, yet he has the gall to call out Mettenberger for taking a selfie. And few in the media will even point this out because they don't want to question him since he's such a fun quote and incredibly talented player.

In Green Bay on Friday, I took some time to do a little math, trying to answer this question:

What’s the best combo platter of quarterbacks in NFL history?

Or, to give it more clarity: What two quarterbacks, back to back, are the best in NFL history?

The answer is obviously Jeff Blake and David Klingler.

I entered into this thinking it would probably be Joe Montana and Steve Young of the 49ers. And maybe it is. Statistics can be twisted a lot of ways, but how do you beat four Super Bowls for Montana and one for Young, and the two-decade greatness they shared under Bill Walsh and George Seifert? But now I am not so sure. I think it’s Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers.

Of course you do, Peter. I love me some Aaron Rodgers, so it's hard for me to vote against him.

In all metrics except Super Bowl victories (Montana/Young 5, Favre/Rodgers 2), the back-to-back champs looks like the Packer duo.

Does it though, Peter? In terms of "metrics," Peter isn't very precocious with numbers.

Montana/Young: 19 seasons, 213 wins, .643 completion percentage, 465-209 TD-INT
 
​Favre/Rodgers: 23 seasons, 248 wins, .631 completion percentage, 668-343 TD-INT

So in "all metrics" which obviously doesn't include wins per season, completion percentage and TD:INT ratio, Favre/Rodgers win. I'm wondering how Peter can write "all" metrics when the numbers very clearly state here that Montana/Young won more games per season, completed passes at a higher percentage and had a better TD:INT ratio than Favre/Rodgers. I understand Peter tends to make up his own definitions of words that contradict the dictionary definition of that word (precocious, factoid), but "all" generally means "everything," not "a few numbers not given context in a comparison to each other."

I’ve found it pretty amazing that if you’re a fan of the Packers, and if you’re, say, 27 right now, you’ve never had a hopeless season because your Packers have always had a top quarterback. We found a big Packers’ fan who is 27: Kevin Sutter, of Blue Mounds, Wis. “We talk about it, me and my brothers,” Sutter said. “We talk about it a lot—just how incredibly crazy it is that for our entire childhood we saw how great Brett Favre was. He was in the top two or three quarterbacks in the league for like 10-12 years,

Was Favre though? Was he in the top two or three quarterbacks in the NFL for 10-12 years? From 1994-2005 Favre was a top-two or top-three quarterback? Might want to think on that for a little bit and then take back some of this exaggeration.

We remember when we were 10 years old and we saw Favre, and now you just appreciate it so much more how good Rodgers is. I can’t even imagine watching a team you love struggle to find a franchise quarterback.”

Well, maybe one day you will get to do it. It's great, you'll love it.

Aside from Sydney Seau’s warm words, the best of the rest of the speeches Saturday night:

Ron Wolf

"At that time there was always a threat to players of other teams that if they didn't shape up, they would be traded to Green Bay. We worked hard to eliminate that stigma. Suddenly players wanted to come and be a part of football's most illustrious franchise and to play in pro football's most storied cathedral, Lambeau Field."

I mean, I guess so. This seems like another exaggeration since the Packers have such a storied history and Wolf calls Lambeau Field "football's most storied cathedral." It was probably not easy to get free agents to Green Bay, but I think the idea there was a huge stigma about playing in Green Bay is slightly overblown by Wolf.

Jerome Bettis

Welp, open the floodgates then...

I am not totally against Bettis being in the Hall of Fame, but I think the fact he was a good quote and smiled a lot helped as much as his career numbers helped him. Bettis is supposed to be one of the best running backs of all-time, but never led the NFL in rushing yards, is 5th all-time in career touches while being 32nd all-time in all-purpose yards. He scored a lot of touchdowns though, even though he never cracked the Top-5 in an NFL season in rushing touchdowns. Bettis was always really good, but I never really considered him one of the best running backs in my opinion. He just doesn't do it for me. If he stays with the Rams for his entire career and doesn't smile a lot, I think he's on the outside looking in.

What you need to know about Brady/Goodell this week.

Nothing. I need to know nothing, yet I will be told a lot of things.

McCann, the founding director of the University of New Hampshire’s Sports and Entertainment Law Institute, has been on top of this story from the start. McCann’s report:

Keep this in mind: The legal question for Judge Berman is not whether Brady “did it.” It’s whether the NFL lawfully followed Article 46 of the collective bargaining agreement and the “law of shop,” which refers to fairness and consistency in arbitration.

I don't ever see how the guy who hands out the punishment can hear the appeal of the punishment, but that's just me probably.

Among those arguable defects is the confusing role played by attorney Ted Wells, whom the NFL has repeatedly hailed as “independent” yet who testified that he shared drafts of his report in advance with NFL attorneys and who has invoked the attorney-client privilege as a way of trying to not answer questions.

The idea Ted Wells was "independent" was always laughable to the point of absurdity. He's the guy the NFL hired to look into the Patriots deflating footballs. Of course he's not an independent investigator.

Judge Berman vacating the suspension would constitute a victory for Brady, but not necessarily a lasting one. The NFL would appeal the loss to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which has on occasion reversed NFL district court losses into wins. Even without an appellate court reversal, Judge Berman vacating the suspension would remand the matter to Goodell or his designee for “further proceedings…as permitted by the CBA.”  This could set the table for another round of contentious league hearings. Oh, and there’s that lurking possibility that Brady could file a defamation lawsuit in Massachusetts state court at anytime.

This is all over footballs that were deflated by a very small amount. Deflated footballs and now Tom Brady could file a defamation suit, but only after the NFL goes to the Second Circuit court to reverse the decision of a district court judge. Again, the footballs were deflated by a few tenths of a PSI. Does anyone but Roger Goodell, the Patriots organization, Patriots fans and Tom Brady really care that much?

My one question about the NFL’s stance now: In the Wells Report, Brady was found to be “at least generally aware” of the scheme to deflate footballs below the 12.5-psi minimum.

But in the NFL’s 15-page brief submitted to the judge in advance of Wednesday’s conference, the NFL writes: “The commissioner suspended Brady for having ‘approved of, consented to, and provided inducements in support of’ a scheme to tamper with the game balls. And for having ‘willfully obstructed the subsequent investigation.’ 

But how did we get from being at least generally aware of a scheme to deflate game balls to having “approved of, consented to,” and providing inducements to aid a scheme to deflate footballs?

Peter is going to get himself suspended if he keeps daring to ask questions like this. I would give my opinion on this, but that would be parsing this whole story out more than I really care to. The NFL seems like they are making things up as they go along to make their case seem better than it truly is.

Sunday night’s Hall of Fame Game marked the first one with the new point-after-touchdown rule. After a touchdown, a team will have the option to place the ball at the 15-yard line for the one-point conversion kick (the equivalent of a 33-yard field goal); or to place the ball at the 2-yard line if the team chooses to go for a two-point conversion.

When I was in Latrobe, I ran into long-time special-teams coach Danny Smith, and he asked me a question I hadn’t considered: If you choose to kick the extra point, and the defense jumps offside and gets flagged for an offside penalty, can you change your mind and choose to go for two? With the half-the-distance penalty, that would put the ball at the one, and you might have a lot of teams choosing to go for two if you could snap from the one.

Peter was all about asking how many times a field goal kicker missed the extra point as a reason for moving the extra point back, yet how many times has the defense jumped offside on an extra point?

It happened nine times in 2014. It's the penalty that happened on "0" down when looking at the chart. 

Defenders only jumped offside on an extra point nine times during 2014. Yet, Peter acts like this is a game-changing question that makes the new field goal rule even that much more interesting. 

So I checked with the league, and indeed, the answer is yes. After an offside call with the ball at the 15-yard line, a coach could take the penalty and put the ball at the 10-yard line for the PAT, or take the half-the-distance penalty and choose to go for two at the one-yard line.

How many times have you seen Tom Brady take a slight leap from the one-yard line and push the ball over the goal line with extended arms? Or Drew Brees? That, to me, is a huge part of this new rule, and could lead to a lot of changed minds after five-yard penalties on PATs.

What if defenders jump offside 10 times during the 2015 season? Man, what an intriguing scenario for a situation that happens a lot!

Peter, who has been a huge proponent of the new extra point rule, wants to make it seem exciting like this new rule now adds a whole new dimension to an NFL game. Well, there were 8 missed extra points in the NFL last year and 9 times the defense jumped offside. So if Peter thinks a rule should be changed because a missed extra point occurred 8 times, how can he try to make it seem like a defensive offside that happened 9 times is a huge part of the new rule? Of course, Peter didn't do any research before writing MMQB, but I like how 8 missed extra points isn't a significant number, but he gets all excited about how a scenario that only happened 9 times last year will make the new extra point rule that much more thrilling.

One of the interesting things about having a staff of young people is the generation of ideas I’d never have thought of. Robert Klemko had one as we headed south in the first couple of days of the training camp trip.

You should play Madden against a player.

Yes, playing a video game is a brilliant new idea Peter had not quite gotten around to thinking of yet.

Funny thing: Players really care about their rating. Evans was fuming when he saw 20 receivers were rated higher than he was. “The ratings are crazy,” Evans said. “All the years, all the money I’ve been wasting on Madden, the hard work I put in on the field, getting hit in the head, knees hurting, and I still can’t get a 90 rating overall. Twenty other receivers are rated higher than me. It’s crazy, man. It hurts, man. I am a little bitter.”

Yeah, well, Mike there are 20 receivers better than you in the NFL right now. So there's that.

Still 7-7. But I had fourth-and-28 from my 12-yard line. I was going for it. What’s there to lose? Nothing. What’s there to gain? Fun!

I chose a deep pass. I have no idea what McCoy chose to do. All I know is Klemko told me to wait till the last second to throw. ”Hit the green button, wait a little, and then hit the blue button,” Klemko said.

Manziel was getting rushed. I waited … and just as Manziel as about to get leveled, I hit the blue button. Way down the left side, backup wideout Taylor Gabriel was free, his corner having tripped on the play. And the ball nestled into Gabriel’s hands. “Yes! YES! YES!” I screamed. Easy touchdown. Easy 88-yard touchdown. On fourth-and-29.

King wins! King wins!

This is some of the bullshit which explains why I don't enjoy playing video games against other people. I realized a few years ago that it's no fun to lose to someone who has no clue what he's doing on these games. I don't handle it that well.

“Way to go on that Brady thing.”

—New Hall of Fame member Ron Wolf, passing commissioner Roger Goodell at the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s yellow-jacket ceremony Thursday night in Canton.

Wolf did not appear sarcastic.

I can only wonder how many PSI below the appropriate weight some footballs can be at Lambeau Field when it is cold as hell out on the field If the cold in New England can decrease the PSI in a football, how much will the PSI decrease in the freezing cold winters of Wisconsin?

In the off-season, the Chicago Bears’ new coach, John Fox, hired former 49ers defensive coordinator Vic Fangio as his defensive coordinator. Fangio, in his four seasons running the San Francisco defense, had some good games against the Packers—and, well, I’ll be—the Bears host the Packers on the first Sunday of the NFL season.

Yes, I'm sure John Fox hired Fangio simply so he could win two games against the Packers every season.

• Aaron Rodgers versus San Francisco with Fangio as defensive coordinator: 0-4.

• Aaron Rodgers versus every other defensive coordinator: 76-34.

It’s not quite so glaring when you look at the numbers, and it’s probably more an indictment of the Packers defense. Green Bay put up 25.3 points per game on offense against Fangio in those four games, and Rodgers’ passer rating was a slightly below-his-norm 96.0.

Typical Peter King. He uses a statistic and then admits he's providing a misleading statistics, but alas, wants his original point to still stand.

"Here's a statistic about how Aaron Rodgers can't beat a Vic Fangio-led defense and here is a conclusion I've drawn about that. If you really pay attention then you see it isn't really Rodgers' fault that the Packers have lost to a Vic Fangio-led defense four times and the Packers offense probably has nothing to do with Rodgers' 0-4 record against the 49ers, but let's not do that. Let's pretend this statistic from me means something." 

The four Titans’ preseason games will be televised live in Hawaii, birthplace and place of residence and schooling for the first 17 years of the life of Marcus Ardel Taulauniu Mariota.

I mean, Hawaii is pretty much Nashville.

Ten Things I Think I Think

3. I think Seattle safety Kam Chancellor is a heck of a player, obviously. Who doesn’t think so? Likeable guy too. But holding out for a new deal after two years of a five-year contract is simply a non-starter.

This from the guy who thought the Vikings should have paid Adrian Peterson more money in order to negotiate a truce with him and have him show up to training camp. Peter suggested this while Peterson had three more years on his contract with the Vikings. So Peter thinks Chancellor shouldn't be holding out for more money with three years left on his contract, but he's all about Adrian Peterson getting more money with three years left on his contract. Consistency, thy name isn't entirely "Peter King."

In the first two years of the deal, he made $12.55 million, including bonuses. In the last three years, he is slated to make $16.875 million, including bonuses but not including incentives. You might say that $5.6 million a year for a top-five NFL safety is too little, and I might agree … except that the contract, in 2013 dollars, was very much a market-value deal. Chancellor signed it. Seattle has had a practice of working on players’ contract with a year left, or when they reach free agency. Even if it means sacrificing Chancellor for the season (I don’t think that will happen, but it could), Schneider will do more damage with his roster by giving in than by holding firm.

But giving more money to a guy who missed the entire previous season due to suspension and is among the highest-paid players at his position in an effort to get back in this player's good graces and entice him to report to training camp? It's a brilliant idea.

4. I think this is one good reason why it’s harder to play quarterback in New York than in most markets: Geno Smith was booed at the Jets’ open (free) scrimmage at MetLife Stadium on Saturday night. I mean, booed on Aug. 8, in a practice. I’m all for fan freedom to do whatever the heck they want, but that is just stupid. Boo the guy when he stinks in a game. But in his first fortnight of training camp with a new offense? What is wrong with people?

Maybe they thought it was Josh Freeman, Peter. I'm sure booing Freeman is something you can get behind.

7. I think the best thing I heard about Jameis Winston in Tampa is this, from a smart guy in the Bucs’ offices: “Have you seen him in the papers one time since the draft? No.” In other words, he gets that the best thing for a rookie quarterback is to work on his craft and not be this year’s Johnny Manziel.

Wait, the Buccaneers are talking up their rookie quarterback who got compared to Manziel because of his off-the-field issues that he had during college, and in talking him up they are showing he is totally different from Manziel? I don't believe it.

I don't think working on his craft was ever the issue with Winston at Florida State. The issues that others had with him was what he did in the spare time he had when he wasn't working on his craft. So it is good news, but also I wouldn't expect the Buccaneers to say anything different.

10. I think these are my non-football thoughts of the week:

a. Smart column by the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Mike Sielski defending Chip Kelly, and with good reason.

I'm not sure why Peter writes "with good reason," other than he thinks the idea Chip Kelly is racist is ridiculous. It might very well be, but these are the times when I wish Peter had not quit running his "Chip Kelly Wisdom of the Week" section of MMQB where he hung on every word Kelly said as if it were coming from a deity. It would be a really funny section to read right now.

c. Bernie Miklasz’s last column for the St. Louis Post Dispatch on Sunday was in keeping with what Miklasz always does.

Shitty work? Mediocre writing but from a great guy? DON'T HOLD BACK WHAT YOU THINK, PETER! I CAN'T HANDLE THE DRAMA OF YOU WRITING A SENTENCE ONLY TO HOLD BACK ON WHAT YOU THINK!

Which is great work. 

Hey, it's the Cardinals Beat Writer's Way. Expect nothing less.

g. Donald Trump. Filterless.

There is a difference in being filterless and saying stupid shit all the time. Not having a filter involves saying things that you believe which may have some form of the truth behind them. I'm not sure Trump means what he says or is being truthful.

h. Eleven days on the road and counting. I have not turned the TV on in my room one time. It isn’t that I don’t like TV. I do. But there’s something about getting away from it for a while, immersing oneself in a new season and jumping into football full-go.

i. For those who wonder, I was traveling from Chicago to Anderson, Ind., during the Hall of Fame speeches. Watched them on YouTube when I got here.

These days, watching videos on a computer is pretty much the same thing as watching videos on a television. Same difference.

j. Coffeenerdness: You know, in desperate times, six shots of espresso in a grande macchiato is not so bad.

Jesus, it's not all the coffee that Peter drinks, but how much he spends on this coffee that blows my mind. Six shots of espresso? I get pissy when my wife buys some drink that costs $3.50 at Starbucks.

o. Bob Cousy, 87. That snuck up on us.

Yes, it did sneak up on "us." I have really been trying to pay attention to when Bob Cousy turned 87, then BAM, the next thing I know it happened.

The Adieu Haiku

On the road again
We've got the Lions today Bonjour, Haloti

Amazing. Every week Peter makes the Adieu Haiku more pointless, aimless and idiotic than the last week's haiku. I don't know how he does it. In a year or two, the Adieu Haiku will consist just of random words thrown together to form the correct number of syllables on each line.