Page 22 - Florida Sentinel 11-16-18

Sports
‘Foregone Conclusion’
Bucs To Start
NFL Moving
Ryan Fitzpatrick Vs.
Chiefs-Rams
That Todd Bowles
Giants, Waive PK
Mexico City To LA
Chandler Catanzaro
The field surface at Estadio Azteca in Mexico City has been deemed unsafe for an NFL game to be played, and Monday night’s game between the Kansas City Chiefs and Los An- geles Rams is being relocated as a result.
The NFL announced that league officials and field experts examined the stadium and de- termined that it does not meet the league’s “standards for playability and consistency.” The game will now be played at the Memorial Coliseum in Los Angeles, which is where the Rams play their home games.
The stadium had recently hosted a concert as well as a heavy slate of soccer matches that had caused significant damage to a hybrid surface of both synthetic and natural grass that was installed earlier this year.
The New York Jets are not expected to make a head coaching change before the end of the 2018 season, but that does not mean Todd Bowles has a chance of stick- ing around with the team next year.
It is reportedly “a foregone conclusion” that Bowles and the Jets will part ways follow- ing the season. The team’s cur- rent ownership group, the Johnson family, has not fired a coach in the middle of a sea- son since buying the Jets in 2000, and they believe dis- missing Bowles now could potentially do more harm than good.
Despite their 3-7 record, there have not been indica- tions that Bowles has lost the locker room. Sunday’s 41-10 loss to the Buffalo Bills was as
Game From
Will Be Fired By Jets
The Tampa Bay Bucca- neers will be sticking with backup quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick on Sunday against the New York Giants but will have a different kicker. The game starts at 1 p.m. on FOX.
The Buccaneers waived kicker Chandler Catan- zaro on Monday and signed veteran kicker Cairo San- tos to replace him, the team announced.
Coach Dirk Koetter an- nounced his unbelievable de- cision to stick with Fitzpatrick during his day- after-game news conference.
"We're gonna go with Fitz this week ... and that's how it's gonna stay," said Koetter. When asked for how long, he responded, "Until we change."
For the rest of the sea- son? This decision has fans wondering that the Bucca- neers are planning to trade Jameis Winston next year. A decision that would be a mistake. The teams who are interested in Winston are the New York Giants and the Jacksonville Jaguars.
Fitzpatrick led the Bucs to a 2-1 record the first three weeks of the season, throw-
RYAN FITZPATRICK AND CHANDLER CATANZARO
ing for a league-high 1,230 passing yards, 11 touch- downs and four intercep- tions."I don't know. A guy could get hurt at any time," Koetter said.
The past two games, how- ever, with Fitzpatrick re- placing a struggling Jameis Winston, he has thrown four touchdowns and four interceptions -- including two picks Sunday against the Redskins, forcing Koetter to contemplate a switch.
"I just think he still gives us the best opportunity right now," said Koetter, who is also weighing his options for playcalling. Offensive coordi- nator Todd Monken called plays until Week 10, before Koetter decided to reclaim that role.
TODD BOWLES
embarrassing as it gets, but Mehta notes that there are still Jets players — particularly the young ones — that still be- lieve in Bowles. The John- sons also don’t want to make a major change like firing Bowles or offensive coordina- tor Jeremy Bates in the mid- dle of rookie quarterback Sam Darnold’s first year in the NFL.
Le'Veon Bell Will Sit Out The Season. Now What?
Le’Veon Bell’s 4 p.m. deadline to report to the Steelers came and went, which means Bell cannot play at all during the 2018 season. It also means Bell has forfeited the entirety of the $14.54M salary he was scheduled to make on the franchise tag, plus a reported $200,000 more in benefits. He had already given up $8.55M in salary by having avoided the Steelers during the season’s first 10 weeks. Now what? Glad you asked.
For the Steelers, nothing changes, at least for this year. They’ve played the entire season with James Conner serving as Bell’s dual-threat replacement, and they haven’t missed a beat. Con- ner’s production through nine games is comparable to Bell’s, and the Steelers are 6-2-1 and riding a five-game winning streak. The Steelers also get to save that $14.54M on their salary cap. I’m not sure anyone outside of the most homerific Pittsburgh fan—Conner was a home- town college star at Pitt who has also survived cancer— could have foreseen this. The Steelers, however, will cer- tainly take it—especially with Conner on a rookie contract that pays him just $578,000
LE’VEON BELL
this year, with two years to go. Conner is also 23 years old. Bell will turn 27 in Feb- ruary.
This is the part that’s going to be fascinating. A big part of the reason the Steel- ers tagged him in 2017 and again this season is because of how replaceable running backs have become in recent years. The league increas- ingly emphasizes the passing game, the rookie-wage scale has driven down costs at the position, there’s a general ef- ficiency teams have found by using multiple backs, and most of the league’s elite backs haven’t yet reached next-contract status in their careers. The Rams’ Todd Gurley is one of only two backs in the top 10 in rushing yards to be playing on a vet- eran contract. The other is Washington’s Adrian Pe- terson, who signed for the
veteran minimum because he was still on the street in mid-August. The Steelers drafted Conner in the 2017 third round.
The season Conner is having doesn’t seem to help Bell’s cause much, since teams are more likely to as- sume they can find a cheaper option in the draft on a cost- controlled contract. There was never much Bell was going to be able to do to get the Steelers to budge any- way.
After a deadline that passed in mid-July, the tag rules prohibited the two sides from bargaining toward a long-term deal until after the season. The Steelers could have offered more than the stipulated tag figure for this year, but they were never going to do that—why would they? They can’t talk again until after the season. But there’s still a hand for the Steelers to play here, too.
They can franchise him again, but a loophole in the CBA would mean they’d have to pay him $25M if they did that, which isn’t likely. They also could put the transition tag on him for next year, which is an option that has been a “focus” for the Steel- ers.
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