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NFL 2011 Draft Tonight!
Apr 28th
Despite all the uncertainty, the appeals, the grumping and grumbling, one thing was never in doubt is that the NFL Draft would be going ahead. And here we are.
The top prospects have been tweeting all week about their time in NYC and all seem to be looking forward to it. Speculation has been as wild as it always is and I’m sure they’ll be a lot to second guess come tomorrow morning. All eyes are on the main QB targets like Blaine Gabbert, Cam Newton and Jake Locker but expect to see linemen having their names called early and often.
In the UK hours, the Panthers are on the clock at 1am Friday morning. Video overage is on ESPN, radio on Radio 5 Live and text at nfl.com, Yahoo! Sports and several other places that I’m sure you can find.
Craig, Tom and I have completed our own personal draft boards and we’ll be seeing how we got on for the 1st round over the weekend and grading accordingly.
Enjoy the draft!
MacTalksNFL 2011 Mock Draft – 1st Round, picks 21-32
Apr 21st
The home stretch. In this article we finish our first round draft. It was certainly fun, now we play the waiting game to see if we got anywhere near who we think the teams should go for!
21 – Kansas City Chiefs: Gabe Carimi, OT, Wisconsin
Easiest pick so far – the Chiefs need to address right tackle. They should really have addressed this last year, but with a selection of good tackles available they’ll take Carimi as the best of the lot and probably with the biggest upside too.
22 – Indianapolis Colts: Nate Solder, OT, Colorado
Solder is a former tight end, so has good atheleticism for the tackle position. A bit raw, however he has the natural skills to succeed as a left tackle in the NFL. The Colts’ current LT, Charlie Johnson, is set to be a free agent, so they need to upgrade the OT position. DT was a possibility here, but the Colts franchise revolves around Peyton Manning, so protecting him is a must. More >
MacTalksNFL 2011 Mock Draft – 1st Round, picks 11-20
Apr 20th
Carrying on from the first article, we’ll now take a look at the 1st round draft with picks 11 through 20.
11 – Houston Texans: Prince Amukamara, CB, Nebraska
The Texans need secondary help, and if Prince is available come their pick I don’t doubt that they would take him. He seems to be the complete package. His size of strength, speed and size make him the perfect press-cover corner, he has a great read of the game and excellent closing speed. He would definitely help the Texans, who last year finished last in the pass defence rankings. More >
MacTalksNFL 2011 Mock Draft – 1st Round, picks 1-10
Apr 19th
With the NFL draft just around the corner, here at Mac we decided we would take it into our own hands and take a look at how WE think things will pan out over the first round. Andrew, Tom and myself arranged an order and took it in turns drafting and made a brief comment about why we thought our team would go in that direction. Tom got the first pick, I got the second and Andrew got the third. It then went in the same sequence until all our picks had been made. Without further ado, this is how things panned out…
1 – Carolina Panthers: Marcel Dareus, DT, Alabama
While the Panthers don’t have a great QB, I just have too many questions about the top QBs in the draft for them to warrant the No.1 overall pick. Newton is the consensus choice here, but Newton isn’t like Sam Bradford or Matt Ryan, he was never as good as a passer as them in college. Dareus will be a force inside from the get go, and while he won’t be as dominant as Suh, he is a quality player.
The Panthers used to have a dominant D Line, with Kris Jenkins, Mike Rucker and of course Julius Peppers, but these have now all left or retired. The current DT depth chart is headed by Nick Hayden and Derek Landri, and I believe Landri is a free agent. DT is position of big need for the Panthers, and Dareus can be a player to build around for the future.
International Series 2011: Chicago Bears @ Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Apr 19th
Vote For The Madden 12 Coverstar
Mar 22nd
So we all know that it’ll be Aaron Rodgers, but it’s still quite cool to get involved and feel like you’re making a difference.
The vote is in round 1 at the moment and gives you 16 match-ups to vote on, complete with a little Madden clip of each player.
Place your votes now: http://espn.go.com/sportsnation/feature/madden2012cover
Twitter Feed added for the off-season
Feb 23rd
With moves happening thick and fast, and the combine coming up we’ve added in a Twitter feed on the sidebar –> to help you keep track of everything going on.
Hope that it’s useful, and we’ll try to keep it up to date.
Super Bowl XLV – The Good, The Bad and Christina Aguillera
Feb 9th
There we go, this season is in the bag and before we start worrying about if there will be a 2011 season let’s take a few more moments to look back at the big game’s best and worst bits.
The Good
The Spectacle – Nobody does a show like the NFL and this was great. The stadium was fantastic, the pre-game was great, the presentation and ‘product’ was second-to-none.
Close Game – Although it looked like the Packers would run away with it, the Steelers battled hard to get back into the game with a strong second half showing. Ultimately they would come up short, but it made for an enthralling game.
Steelers’ Running Game – How many times did we see Rashad Mendenhall bump of the pack and then run to the outside for a nice gain? Too many. If the game situation would have allowed for them to keep running, it would have been a long day for the Packers’ front seven.
Packers Passing Defense – Not just the interceptions, but the play all game was – for the most part – excellent. Hines Ward got away in the endzone and there were some other blown coverages, but other than the touchdown Mike Wallace was kept firmly in check and all Ben Roethlisberger could complete were short passes, mainly over the middle. More >
Super Bowl XLV, not to be confused with Fireball XL5
Feb 4th
Yes I know, it’s easy to mix them up. But there are several ways to tell them apart.
First test: Is everyone walking in supermarionation style? (Note, it must be everyone and not just the big guys in the middle of the action. They just walk like that.).
Fireball XL5
Second Test: The character with the big hair, are they wearing a helmet and/or tackling people?
Third Test: Are there a lot of bearded people? The World Space Patrol was generally clean-shaven. The Packers and the Steelers come from a colder place (than space?) and have cultivated manly facial hair to keep the cold winter at bay.
Lastly, is there a moronic voice… oh wait, scratch that one. It might be Joe Buck.
Super Bowl XLV – It’s Prediction Time!
Feb 3rd
It’s a long time since training camps last year, when many (but by no means all!) of the teams though they could go all the way.
Back in August, we took a look at how we thought the divisions might play out. And… well, we were pretty much wrong across the board. In fact in some divisions we got the predictions exactly the opposite way to how it turned out. What can we say? It’s been that sort of season.
Super Bowl Rings
We’ve had some good turnaround stories this season, like the Rams and the Bucs who were both pushing for post-season places going into the final weeks. We’ve had the pre-season optimism of teams like the Redskins and Cowboys be beaten away by the realities of the season. We’ve had coaches fired, replaced, out of contract and just not as good as they should have been. We’ve had players go through bitterly disappointing seasons or moments and we’ve had the same number of triumphs. We had a good game between two not-so-good teams at Wembley.
All teams have overcome adversity and injuries during the long and gruelling season but two teams are left. The Green Bay Packers from the NFC and the Pittsburgh Steelers from the AFC.
The Packers are one of those teams who looked like they were struggling, but have hung in there throughout the season and with a great win in week 16 (against the rival Bears!) booked themselves into the play-offs at the last possible moment.
Rodgers Scrambles
They had big injuries, like losing Ryan Grant for the season in week 1, successive losses in overtime to the lightweight Redskins and Dolphins. Rodgers was concussed and at times they didn’t like championship worthy. But they’ve be playing great football for a while now and their last few games have certainly been championship ball.
The Steelers, as we all know, started the season without their starting quarterback. They traded away a Super Bowl MVP and it looked like the defence was losing a step. For most of the season they were neck and neck with the Ravens but were able to book a first-round bye with their strong showing as the season drew to an end.
Both coaches, Mike McCarthy and Mike Tomlin have both done incredibly jobs this year.
In the past few weeks we’ve looked at both teams in some depth, so we’re not going to do that again. Instead, let’s take a look at each element of the game and see how has the edge. No, it’s not a novel approach. But it works. More >