A recent poll conducted by Zone Coverage shows that Minnesota Vikings fans are pretty confident in Mike Zimmer, their team’s head coach. They still, however, need to be convinced about quarterback Kirk Cousins.
At the halfway point of Cousins’ lucrative three-year contract, Zone Coverage polled 150 random Vikings fans to get their take on the highly-paid quarterback, the defensive-minded head coach and the team’s general manager Rick Spielman.
Cousins signed a three-year, $84 million guaranteed contract in 2018 which was supposed to propel the Vikings to a Super Bowl. But in his first season they didn’t make huge leaps. The former Washington quarterback came up short in big games, as the Minnesota Vikings finished the year 8-7-1 to keep them out of the playoffs.
Even after a fast start to the 2019 season where Cousins looked comfortable in Minnesota’s new offensive system, only 42 percent of fans believed his contract was justified, according to the poll.
At the time of the signing in 2018, Cousins’ 100 percent guaranteed contract contained the largest annual average salary in football at $28 million per year. He’s since been passed by six other quarterbacks.
NFL betting enthusiasts may have often come across the term ‘covering
the spread’. Not many people would be aware of the concept behind the term.
Also due to assumptions and misconceptions, the concept gets re-defined the
wrong way. As a result, you may place a wrong bet and then stand a chance of
losing your hard- earned money due to your misconceptions around such terms.
This is why it is crucial to have a clear understand of this term, and augment
your chances of winning with strategic bets.
When there is a face-off between a stronger team and a weaker team,
bettors usually spread the point so that there is betting in favor of both
teams at equal odds. The general tendency will be to prefer the stronger team
and not bet on the weaker one. However, with a handicap or a virtual
‘headstart’, betting in favor of the weaker team can be made more appealing and
attractive.
In today’s NFL, the most valuable asset for any NFL team is
their starting quarterback. Finding a “franchise”
quarterback is often the difference between a successful team and a team
floundering with mediocrity.
Over the last three years, 11 quarterbacks have been
selected in the first round of the NFL Draft. One interesting bet for New Online Casinos would
be which of these young quarterbacks will be the next NFL Superstars and which
will eventually be considered as draft misses.
Certainly, the young gun who has made the biggest early
impression is Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs.
After playing in just one game as a rookie, Mahomes became
the starter in 2018 and responded with an MVP season. His 50 touchdown passes
were the most ever for a second year player and tied for the second most in a
season all-time. He nearly led the Chiefs to the Super Bowl as they lost in
overtime to the New England Patriots in the AFC title game.
He is on pace for another big season with 10 touchdown
passes in his first three games of 2019 as the Chiefs are undefeated and
looking like a Super Bowl contender.
Their victory last week was over another team with a dynamic
young quarterback.
Lamar Jackson was named the Heisman Trophy winner in 2016
and during his rookie season with the Baltimore Ravens in 2018 he dethroned a
Super Bowl winning quarterback in Joe Flacco.
The New England Patriots dynasty is the most successful in NFL history, eclipsing the past feats of the Green Bay Packers, Pittsburgh Steelers, San Francisco 49ers and Dallas Cowboys. Since 2000, the franchise have won six Super Bowls, appearing in nine in total in the period.
New England have dominated the AFC East, winning their division 15 out of
the 18 seasons following the arrival of Bill Belichick and Tom Brady. The duo
have been the source of their imperious hold over the rest of the league,
morphing from plucky underdogs in Super Bowl XXXVI to comparisons of the evil
empire from the Star Wars movie series. Their reputation and their excellence
has seen them backed as a leading contender for Super Bowl LIV, although
the Kansas City Chiefs are the favorites in the Betfair betting tips for the 2019
season. New England are perhaps the safest bet for the title given that they
have appeared in the AFC Championship game every year since 2011.
As the National Football League prepares for its 100th
season, the top NFL betting sites
are making predictions for which team will lift the Lombardi Trophy at the end
of Super Bowl LIV.
At 42-years old, Tom Brady is still one of the elite quarterbacks in the NFL.
Given that they have appeared in each of the last three
Super Bowls (winning two), you can never go wrong putting your money on the New
England Patriots.
Conventional wisdom tells us that at some point the amazing
reign of the Patriots will end, but every time it looks like the magic run is
over, Tom Brady and Bill Belichick pull another rabbit out of the hat. In a
league where parody and volatility from year-to-year is the norm, New England
has posted double digits victories for 16 straight years and won 10 straight
division titles.
Even though Brady is 41-years old and will be without one of
his favorite targets in recently retiree Rob Gronkowski, there is little reason
to doubt that the Patriots offense will again be among the best in the NFL.
Last year they scored the fourth most points in the league and ranked in the
top 10 in both passing and rushing yards.
Solid defense is typically a key to the success of the
Patriots. Last year they were seventh in the league in points allowed, but
ranked 22nd in passing yards allowed. In a conference that boasts
some great quarterbacks, the Patriots have to improve their pass defense this
season.
Most prognosticators are jumping on the band wagon of the
team guided by one of those young quarterbacks, the Kansas City Chiefs. Pat
Mahomes nearly led the Chiefs past the Patriots in the AFC title game last
season and appear to be positioned to make another run in 2019.
Joe Namath dominated the attention prior to Super Bowl III, but few expected his team to win.
With apologies to boxing legend Muhammad Ali, the most shocking sports victory of the 1960s took place 50 years ago on January 12, 1969 when the underdog New York Jets lifted the fortunes of an entire league by defeating the heavily favored Baltimore Colts in Super Bowl III.
Though the American Football League (AFL) was completing its ninth season and the champions of the AFL and National Football League (NFL) were meeting for the third straight year, most people did not consider the two leagues to be equal. In fact, it is reported that NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle believed it might be another decade before the AFL would be an equal to the NFL and that a new format for the Super Bowl might be needed.
In hindsight, we know that the two leagues were indeed much closer in competitiveness than Rozelle believed, but at the time his reasoning was hard to argue against. The NFL Champion Green Bay Packers had claimed the first two Super Bowls by a combined margin of 68-24 and the current NFL Champion Baltimore Colts were perhaps an even more dominant champion than Green Bay.
While the Colts were an established NFL power, the New York Jets were an AFL upstart that had just completed the second winning season in franchise history and were making their first-ever trip to the playoffs.
However, one “ace in the hole” for the Jets was roaming their sidelines. Head Coach Week Ewbank had won two NFL Championships during his nine year tenure as coach of the Baltimore Colts. After moving to the Jets, he had taken the team from a basement dweller to league champions.
During both his time with the Colts and the Jets, Ewbank had the benefit of having an elite franchise quarterback leading the offense.
In Baltimore, he turned Johnny Unitas into an all-time great. Though New York Jets quarterback Joe Namath had not yet reached that status level, in 1967 he did become the first quarterback in pro football history to pass for more than 4,000 yards in a season. Read the rest of this entry →
The Sports Then and Now Vintage Athlete of the Month is a former major league baseball player who came into the game as a teenager and stayed until he was in his 40s. In between, Rusty Staub put up a solid career that was primarily spent on expansion or rebuilding teams.
Originally signed by the Colt .45s at age 17, he made his major league debut as a 19-year old rookie and became only the second player in the modern era to play in more than 150 games as a teenager.
Though he hit only .224 splitting time between first base and rightfield, Staub did start building a foundation that would turn him into an All-Star by 1967 when he finished fifth in the league with a .333 batting average.
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