Armadillo Sports
Tuesday’s 6-pack
Chargers’ all-time leaders in passing yardage:
59,271— Philip Rivers
43,040— Dan Fouts
26,938— John Hadl
16,085— Stan Humphries
12,348— Drew Brees
11,359— Justin Herbert
Quote of the Day
“We’re just going to continue to grow. We’re going to grow together. I just told him to keep his head up, stay confident. I want to put the ball back in his hands and just show the trust that we have, that I have, in him and that the team has. He knows that we’ve got to be better in a few situations, but again, those are really good learning opportunities for Trevor (Lawrence).”
Jaguars’ coach Doug Pederson
Tuesday’s quiz
When the Cleveland Browns re-joined the NFL in 1999 after a 3-year absence, what former Kentucky QB was the Browns’ QB?
Monday’s quiz
Buffalo QB Josh Allen played his college football at Wyoming.
Sunday’s quiz
Kurt Warner has a son playing WR for Kansas State, another playing QB for Temple; Kurt Warner played his college football at Northern Iowa.
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Tuesday’s Den: Nobody asked me, but……..
Browns 32, Bengals 13
— Bengals’ first seven drives: 33 plays, 116 yards, 7 first downs, no points.
— Bengals trailed 25-0, finally scored a TD, then missed the PAT.
— Browns outgained Cincinnati, 440-229.
— Browns have now won eight of last nine series games.
— Bengals miss injured WR Ja’Marr Chase, who is out 4-6 weeks (hip)
— Cleveland snaps its 4-game losing streak.
— Browns converted 8-13 third down plays.
— Cleveland averaged 10.7 yards/pass attempt.
— Browns led this game 11-0 at halftime.
— Cleveland’s first three drives in 2nd half: 27 plays, 218 yards, 21 points.
— How much does a quarterback influence the pointspread? Tennessee Titans were -3.5 in Houston last week, until it was announced that rookie QB Malik Willis would be starting in place of Ryan Tannehill. Spread moved to Houston -1, so in this situation, the QB change moved the spread 4.5 points.
Willis wound up throwing only 10 passes the whole game; he was 6-10/55 passing, ran ball five times for 12 times. He handed off 40 times, which is a good idea when Derrick Henry is on your team. Titans won 17-10.
— NFL trading deadline is 4:00 Tuesday; Chicago Bears traded LB Roquan Smith to Baltimore Monday, for 2nd/5th round draft picks. Chicago traded DE Robert Quinn to the Eagles last week, then gave up 49 points to Dallas. Sounds like they’ve given up on this season.
— There will be scapegoats: Detroit Lions have lost five games in a row- they fired their DB’s coach Aubrey Pleasant Monday. It isn’t Pleasant’s fault that in their last three games, Detroit was outscored 48-0 in second half.
— On their first drive of each game this season, Arizona Cardinals have been outscored 41-9; Cardinals haven’t scored a TD on their first drive in their last 13 games.
— Jacksonville Jaguars are 2-6 this season; all six of their losses were by 8 or less points. Their wins were 24-0 against the Colts, 38-10 at the Chargers.
QB Trevor Lawrence has thrown six interceptions this season; all six have come in the red zone or in the final 2:00 of a one-score game.
— If I ran the NFL, we would discourage officials from calling taunting penalties in the 4th quarter; you call those early in the game, to discourage taunting, but to call the first taunting penalty in the 4th quarter, after guys have been jawing at each other for 2.5 hours, it just seems kind of subjective. It is an emotional game; officials need to ignore the BS late in the game.
— Auburn fired football coach Bryan Harsin Monday; he was 9-12 at Auburn, 4-9 in SEC games, replacing Gus Malzahn after he was told to take a hike with a 67-35 record, 38-27 in SEC tilts.
Some of these college football programs are influenced by insanely impatient rich boosters; Auburn is a bad job until Nick Saban retires- Auburn will always be worse than Alabama until the 70-year old Saban goes away, and Auburn boosters don’t seem to understand that.
— Speaking of which, Auburn hired John Cohen as its new athletic director Monday; he leaves his alma mater Mississippi State to join Auburn, where he will bank $1.5M a year.
— Still in the SEC, Lane Kiffin’s Ole Miss Rebels are 8-1 this season, their best start since 1962. Rebels have this week off, host Alabama next week.
— Texas A&M is 3-5, has lost four games in a row, giving up 31.8 ppg in those losses. Read it on the Interweb somewhere this weekend that Jimbo Fisher ain’t getting fired, not now, If A&M fired Fisher now, they’d have to pay him $86M- that’s not an exaggeration. His assistants will be probably be shuffled, but Fisher isn’t going anywhere for now.
— College football games ended around 2am here in the east late Saturday night; NFL had a game from London on at 9:30am Sunday morning. Not a lot of time for sleeping.
If you enjoy college football, I highly endorse ESPN’s wrap-up show late Saturday night, with Matt Barrie, Joey Galloway and a third person, who varies from week to week.
They show ton of highlights; they’re smart, good-natured and they can be critical, if need be. Good way to wrap up the college football day.
Feel bad for people who work in Las Vegas sportsbooks; the London games start at 6:30am in Nevada— the betting windows probably open at 5:30 or so. Luckily most casinos have a Starbucks nearby.
— A sentence I never thought I would type; Arizona State beat North Dakota in hockey last week in Las Vegas, apparently a pretty big upset. Didn’t even know ASU had a hockey team.
— If you care about such things, thru Sunday’s games, NBA teams playing for a 2nd consecutive night are 12-16-1 ATS so far this season.
— Game 3 of the World Series got rained out Monday night, which probably eliminates the travel day for Thursday, should the series get to a Game 6.
— Do kids trick or treat anymore on Halloween? My doorbell rang once Monday night; two little kids, maybe 6-7 years old. Bought three damn bags of candy, gave out two candy bars. Now I have to give the candy away before I eat it all, which I don’t need to do.
