Hate early games. Damn 10AM here, hopefully that Chiefs/Jags game is worth it. Have a hunch it might be a bit of a dud (either Mahomes has his first bad game, or bunch of fluke turnovers for either team makes it not very entertaining).
Oh and fuck Seattle. If they'd just have worked a trade for Earl Thomas with the Chiefs, he might've been able to shore up this defense. They're lucky as shit that Mahomes keeps it so that the despite how amazing they make the other team's offense look, its still the 2nd best on the field. Wonder if he'll give Ramsey a first hand look at that deep ball to Tyreek (on the preseason one, Ramsey commented on the NFL's Instagram video of it "DAMN!"; and him and Tyreek were trash talking but praising each other; will be interesting to hear what Ramsey has to say if he goes off about various QBs next offseason).
The thing is, it was a major injury that really did Manning in. 100% the league turned a blind eye and let Manning get away with treatment that...I'm not sure is legal at all in the US, let alone supported by the NFL so that he could get a few more magic years in. Without it he could not have played again (not even kidding, without the stem cell treatments for his neck and then the HGH and who knows what else for his arm/body, his career was over). But I think they realized the heat was on with regards to some of the other (like the HGH) so Manning cut it back (because if it got found out, it'd tarnish his entire career), and then his body went to shit very quickly from there.
I personally think Brady has been doing something. I don't give a shit who you are, you do not improve in athletic performance as you age past your 20s, unless you went from not taking steroids, HGH, and/or some other treatments, to doing that stuff when you're older, which would let you push past what was your prime even in your 20s with more traditional means. Yes the game is safer, but its more than just not getting injured. I'm wondering if some of these guys haven't been doing blood treatments (there's the type that like the cyclists did, but there's others; and there was that research showing how transferring blood from young rats to older ones rejuvenated them).
To be fair, I don't think its just those two doing it. James Harrison was almost certainly juicing on something. And there's some others. Tony Gonzalez is another one that tried to make it seem like it was his diet and changing his workout that helped him stay in such great shape. I wouldn't be surprised if Jerry Rice was as well (and he was another one that I think ran a smokescreen with all this "alternative" medicine and other things to try and cover that maybe the longevity of his career and high level of play wasn't entirely natural). I can't really fault them for it, though, but I don't think we have the whole story and that there's a concerted effort to pass this shit off as people buying into some of these new fad diets or other thing when there's much easier explanations. Its not just the NFL either (remember a couple years back when special diets helped a bunch of NBA players drop like 15-20lbs, and they were going around saying how they felt like they were 10 years younger? And some of them play like it...). And of course baseball, cycling, and various Olympic sports.
Which, a dirty secret that I don't think people really talk about with regards to the early NFL merger era, is how much steroids probably influenced who won. There was a "strength training" coach that was making his way around the NFL, and every team he ended up with had success while he was there. I think later on there was strong evidence this guy was doling out steroids as part of his "method", but then he couldn't do that any more and then the teams he was the strength training coach for stopped seeing the benefits of him as their coach. IIRC, he was with the Chiefs when they won, he was with the Raiders when they won in the mid-70s, he was with the Steelers when they won around the same time. At the time, steroids weren't common (that happened more in the 80s), so it was a major edge for teams that were doing it during that era.
That's not to take things away from these guys, as it takes more than just that to be a great football player for years (and when a good portion of the players are doing stuff like that, just to be able to compete and make a team, let alone when there's potentially millions if not tens of millions of dollars on the line...), and some do just have more natural ability (even steroids won't give a noodle-armed guy the cannon that others have). Honestly, I'd be all for them pushing the boundaries on treatments, as naturally they're pushing the limits of the human body. I just wish we didn't have to have this stupid false cover. Oh its these amazing new diets and some protein shakes and Gatorade (which those latter two alone make a hell of a lot of difference, but think about the accumulative aspect of all these things, its like a completely different realm as far as performance possibilities).
Funny thing is, all the normal assholes I know that got into that stuff (so the ones that went all in on shit like keto or paleo and crossfit), also started using all manner of "supplements" and other shit at the same time, but they try to act like its diet and exercise alone. Although they don't exactly hide it and when pressed they get defensive "well I still have to put the time in the gym in and fuel myself properly by eating right". Which you do have to do that stuff as well, so it absolutely takes hard work, time and effort even, or actually especially when you're using things to push yourself beyond what you'd achieve with just diet and exercise. But, that its pretty blatantly ignored in discussion is fucking ridiculous and bullshit, and its helping fuel other problems (so many of those assholes are the ones pushing this "well if you just eat this diet and do exercise you'd have a body like mine in just a couple of months!"), because people don't know how much of the modern healthy lifestyle is bullshit and isn't just diet and exercise (again, not saying that stuff doesn't matter, but it does not account for all the claims most of them make). I remember reading some of those bodybuilding magazines in high school. All the articles they'd talk up the diet and exercise but rarely really mention the other unless they were specifically plugging it. But then you'd turn the page and see an ad with the person from the article shilling supplements and other shit. Which a lot of the stuff they were shilling wasn't really responsible for it either (they were on full on steroids), which just another layer of bullshit on top of the bullshit.
That's a good question. But then how much of his success was natural? There's an article I saw recently where they talked to Bruce Arians. And he tells a story about how poor Peyton was a throwing deep early in his career. I think Arians said he couldn't hit shit basically past 40 yards, but that they got that up to about 55 over the course of one year. You're not going to extend how far you can accurately throw a pass by just normal throwing work, you have to be able to throw it harder too.
Which that's going to be a very interesting debate in the future, how much have players gotten enhanced, in instances where it was in the past a potentially career ending injury. Look at Brees. Did his shoulder injury actually help him? I think he threw harder after it. Which, that might just be down to the rehab, he basically built the muscle up in a very optimal manner so it was like he rebuilt his shoulder and shaped it into something better than it was before. And knee ligaments used to be devastating to players on field performance, now they almost don't seem to miss a beat (I've speculated before, how long before players get pre-emptive surgery on some of these ligaments that are prone to tearing, to reinforce and/or have them built to be better than they were naturally).
Which, I'm curious if for brain trauma they won't develop some method of jamming a needle (or making like a valve) through your skull, and then kinda doing a "flush" of the cerebral fluid (drain it, filter out the bad stuff, then put it back in, like if they could get it to flush out that buildup. Likely while they're under and/or induced into a short coma (during which they might do other stuff).