#another one from the draft vault i gotta let these guys free

[taravangians-storming-balls]

Shallan merges with Veil at the end of RoW and is like "why do I want to kiss women so much suddenly"

[junker-town]

Which NFL replacement quarterback would you want?

Brad Penner-USA TODAY Sports

Daniel Jones? Gardner Minshew? Teddy Bridgewater? uh ... Colt McCoy?

2019 has been the year of the backup quarterback.

Nine different starting passers have been sidelined either by injury or ineffective play through just four weeks of the regular season — and that doesn’t count Jacoby Brissett’s ascent following Andrew Luck’s abrupt retirement. That’s been a crisis for some teams and an opportunity for others.

Some of these starters-by-necessity have exceeded expectations, like Gardner Minshew in Jacksonville or Daniel Jones in New York — each of whom is riding a two-game winning streak. Others, like Chase Daniel or Teddy Bridgewater, have failed to dazzle but have still done enough to lead their teams to victory.

So given what we know through four weeks, which backup passer who’s been pressed into a starting role would you build a team around?

Daniel Jones

I know, I know. I was probably very, very wrong about Jones when the Giants made him the sixth overall pick of last spring’s draft. I looked at him and saw a player whose measurables and collegiate production were separated by a gulf as wide as the Pacific Ocean. But after averaging 6.2 adjusted yards per pass over three seasons as a zero-time All-ACC honoree at Duke, Jones has revived the Giants, averaging 7.9 adjusted yards per attempt in his two starts.

More importantly, he’s looked like he’s belonged behind center as an NFL quarterback. Jones wasn’t overwhelmed in the pocket while leading New York back from an 18-point second half deficit against the Buccaneers in his first pro start, even without Saquon Barkley in the lineup.

His second start, which saw him throw a pair of interceptions in an easy win over a bad Washington team, wasn’t as strong statistically but was still somehow similarly inspiring. Jones looked light years better than Dwayne Haskins, the former Ohio State QB selected nine slots after him in April. While Haskins struggled under pressure and failed to get his timing right, Jones remained composed in the pocket, mostly made the right decisions, and used his legs to avoid pressure — he ran for 33 yards while not taking a sack all afternoon.

Jones seems to have a better innate feel for the NFL game than he did at the college level, and he’s used that to inspire hope in New York and potentially save head coach Pat Shurmur’s job. If I’m building an offense from scratch around one player who didn’t start in Week 1, the former Blue Devil is my guy.

I’m not the only one that feels this way, though there’s more than one correct answer (helllooooo, Mr. Minshew).

Danny Dimes is the best replacement QB that's starting right now, according to our readers. Do you agree? pic.twitter.com/SHb0tb3RK9

— SB Nation (@SBNation) October 3, 2019

— Christian D’Andrea

Gardner Minshew

There’s something to be said for anyone who fully embraces the idea that playing football for a living should be fun. Minshew Mania isn’t just about the mustache or the NSFW workout anecdotes, though. He’s a competitor who takes his job seriously (sometimes, maybe a little too seriously), while also approaching life off the field with a carpe diem attitude. Minshew is someone who can go hang out with Uncle Rico and then turn around the next day and march his team down the field for a game-winning drive.

That last part is important, too. A quarterback can’t just be a Cool Dude. He’s gotta wins games. Everything he’s done so far in his career suggests he’s up for that task.

When Minshew was called into duty in the first half of his first NFL game, he completed 13 straight passes and went toe-for-toe, at least for a little while, with Patrick Mahomes. In a game he wasn’t even supposed to play in, Minshew completed 22 of 25 passes for 275 yards, two touchdowns, and an interception that wasn’t in fault.

The next week, he put the Jaguars in a position to beat the Texans at home. With just over three minutes to go and down 13-6, Minshew came alive on a 14-play drive that included his pivotal 18-yard scramble on fourth-and-10. Two plays later, he hit DJ Chark with a touchdown pass. Despite Minshew’s clutchness, Doug Marrone opted to take the ball out of his hands on the two-point conversion attempt and it failed.

The next week, Minshew easily handled the Titans, a team the Jags had only one win against in their previous seven tries. The following week, he was instrumental in Jacksonville digging out of a 17-3 hole in Denver.

His most impressive moment of the day, and probably his career, was all the dancing he did to keep a play alive, with Von Miller and Bradley Chubb up in his business, until he found an open Ryquell Armstead for the touchdown:

TOP 3 PLAYS FROM TODAY PLAY #1: #Jaguars QB @GardnerMinshew5 ➡️ RB @track_chaser. Fantastic pocket presence. Evades pass rush. Finds open man in the end zone. pic.twitter.com/12hUK74JVh

— Big Cat Country (@BigCatCountry) September 30, 2019

The Broncos took a one-point lead with a 1:32 remaining, but Minshew didn’t bat an eye. He helped get the Jaguars into field goal territory with two big passes: 32 yards to Dede Westbrook and 17 yards to Chris Conley.

The Jaguars are now 2-2 and could easily be 3-0 with Minshew as their starter, and they’re right in the thick of things in the AFC South. His performance through the first month has vaulted him to the top of the Rookie of the Year race.

There was a lot of reason to doubt Minshew coming in. He was a sixth-round draft pick. He looked shaky for most of the preseason. What’s the shelf life on a phenomenon like this anyway? But so far, he’s proved he belongs — and that he can enjoy every second of it. Sign me up. — Sarah Hardy

Kyle Allen

Yes, I’m sure you’re surprised that I didn’t pick Gardner Minshew, but someone claimed him before I could, smh. No, but seriously, what Allen has done over two weeks as the Panthers’ starting QB while Cam Newton rehabs a foot injury has been quite impressive.

Before getting into how he did, his backstory is pretty interesting, too. Allen is a former five-star recruit who started his career at Texas A&M. He started in five games as a true freshman, and split time with fellow former Aggie Kyler Murray before transferring to Houston. There, he played in just four games before declaring for the NFL Draft and signing as an undrafted free agent with the Panthers in 2018. He eventually started (and won) their Week 17 game and earned the backup job this preseason.

But back to what Allen has done so far in Carolina this year. In his first start against the Arizona Cardinals, Allen went 19-of-26 passing for 261 yards and a whopping four touchdowns to give the Panthers their first win of the season.

Curtco leaves him in the dust here #CARvsAZ | #KeepPounding pic.twitter.com/GIxlPJcYR4

— Carolina Panthers (@Panthers) September 22, 2019

In Week 4 against the Texans, Allen completed 24 of 34 passes for 232 yards. His best play of the day came when he evaded this sack from J.J. Watt:

Kyle Allen avoided that JJ Watt sack!#KeepPounding pic.twitter.com/vZRfCwDHZk

— Carolina Panthers (@Panthers) September 29, 2019

Not only did that keep the drive alive, but it took some time off the clock and set the Panthers up for an easier field goal. They went ahead 16-10 with 31 seconds remaining, which only left the Texans (who had no timeouts) a chance to get to midfield and throw up a prayer.

Sure, it certainly helps Allen to have weapons like Christian McCaffrey, Greg Olsen, and Curtis Samuel around him, but stepping up like this with not a whole lot of college experience under his belt is really cool to see. — Morgan Moriarty

Teddy Bridgewater

With rookies like Jones, Minshew, and Allen all balling out, it’s hard to argue in favor of other replacement quarterbacks, but the rest of the list isn’t too shabby. One player who seems consistently overlooked is New Orleans Saints backup Teddy Bridgewater, so I’m going to say some words at your face about him and why he’d be good to build around.

First and foremost: Bridgewater has a lot of experience for his age. He’s still just 26 years old, but has played in 38 regular season games, including a full 16 games as starter for the Vikings in 2015. He was thrown into a difficult situation when he severely injured his knee in 2016, but he came out the other end in one piece.

Now, he’s playing for the Saints, who are without Drew Brees, one of the absolute best to ever throw the ball. The Saints are playing smart football with Bridgewater, not asking him to go deep a lot or win the game with scrambling. Some might consider that a lack of faith in Bridgewater’s abilities, but I tend to think it’s that it has more to do with how complete New Orleans is as a team.

In other words: the defense is good, and thus far, Bridgewater doesn’t have to put the team on his back. But he’s doing with the Saints need him to do and he’s now 2-1 as the starter this year. Given he’s played three tough teams — the Cowboys, Seahawks and Rams — with good defenses, that’s nothing to sneeze at.

Other than his experience, he’s also an efficient passer, completing 76.7 and 70.4 percent of his passes in his last two starts. In his full season as a starter for the Vikings, he went 11-5, completed 65.3 percent of his passes, threw for 3,231 yards, and made the Pro Bowl.

Bridgewater hasn’t blown anybody away this season, but he has all the tools of a successful quarterback: a big arm, good pocket presence, no fear, and he can always scramble if need be. I might be projecting a bit of my own expectations and prior feelings about Bridgewater here, but I think there’s still a ton to work with when it comes to the six-year (!) veteran. — James Brady

Those are just our picks. Maybe you prefer another replacement quarterback, like Mason Rudolph or Josh Rosen. Let us know in the comments.

[radramblog]

Every Mono-Black Commander Part 1: Oh right, old magic design

A while back, I did a couple of articles regarding every single (at the time) Boros legend available to helm one’s commander deck. It was a long, slow process, but it’s a color combination I care about a lot, so I think it was worth the while.

I kinda felt like doing this again, so I was wondering what colours would be best to do this about. And it turns out the colour combo I care about the most after Boros is…mono-black. I mean, I have 2 mono-black decks at time of writing with a third half-built, so it stands to reason that I’m clearly an expert in this field.

Now…this might be a mistake. This might take a while. Because as it turns out, there are almost 3 times as many B commanders as RW ones. But, we’ll figure it out as we go. This is: Every Mono Black Commander. Part one. Of I don’t know how many. Once again I’m not including the partners because that’ll take too long, but to be fair, it’ll be a hot minute until we get there.

Baron Sengir (12 decks, 88th most played)

Oh right. Homelands. Part of the upside with doing Boros last was that I got to skip this entire phase of Magic’s design, since Enemy colour pairs weren’t allowed to have cards until, like, Apocalypse. There wasn’t a Boros commander until Ravnica, so the cards I was talking about were at least functional.

Baron Sengir is an old, old classic at this point. The original Vampire tribal commander, it’s an 8-mana flyer with two basically shite abilities and has been pretty heavily outdone by, among other things, himself. But, he’s still Baron fucking Sengir, so you can’t help but appreciate him. Just read that flavour text, it’s so unbelievably edgy but still so cool.

 Grandmother Sengir (4 decks, N/A)

For some reason, EDHREC doesn’t list anything below a card we’ll get to later on the list, so I don’t know how Grandmother Sengir stacks up against such powerful competition. Look, she’s an overcosted creature with a bad ability, I know I love jank but this is just uninteresting. Next.

(Also if she’s part of the Sengir family why is she a Human not a Vampire?)

 Ihsan’s Shade (32 decks, 69th most played)

If I had to guess, Ihsan’s Shade has such a nice position on account of its reprint at Uncommon in Masters 25, letting it be one of the 15 commanders available for the colour identity in Pauper commander- though most of those are fairly new cards, so for a while the Shade was probably one of the better options. And that’s just sad. But hey, still dodges White removal and most of Red’s, so eh. He’s the only Legendary Shade (barring changelings), so I guess he’s got that going for him if you want to build that deck.

 Irini Sengir (6 decks, 102nd most played)

Legendary Creature- Vampire Dwarf is a fun typeline, but that’s about the best Irini has going for her. I guess she’s a Black card that messes with Enchantress, so if you’re really struggling with like, 4 Estrid decks in your meta, why not. Or just play a deck with Fracturing Gust.

 Veldrane of Sengir (9 decks, 94th most played)

…holy shit this card is just awful, isn’t it? Looking at what’s below it on the decks list, some of these cards are a lot more interesting and I have no idea why you’d play this idiot over any of those. I’d rather build Irini, man.

Aight are there any other Sengirs I should know about? No? Good, thank fuck.

 Purraj of Urborg (3 decks, N/A)

Well we’re through Homelands, but it’s still early Magic design. Purraj at least does A Thing, where she gets bigger if you cast black spells. I can actually envision a decklist built around Purraj in a way that I couldn’t with half of these Sengir dorks. She’s still comically underpowered, and I of course understand why people wouldn’t build her, but you could do something here.

 Shauku, Endbringer (16 decks, 83rd most played)

Shauku is the first of these cards that is like, actually kickass. It’s kind of unfortunate that she’s been overshadowed somewhat by similar murder commanders, but she’s still the original. Not only that, but she exiles things too, which is honestly a pretty decent effect in the zone. Shame about that drawback, though, because you’d love to attack with your big flier. Oh well, guess you have to keep exiling things.

Oh right, 7 mana. Yeah ok fair enough moving on.

Spirit of the Night (16 decks, 82nd most played)

Spirit of the Night has the same number of decks as commander as Shauku, but I assume its slightly higher because more people are playing it in the 99? Either way, here’s your first Big Daddy Demon to ramp out. 9 mana, huh? It’s one of the first Keyword Soup cards, and it’s art is absolutely phenomenal- gotta be one of the genuinely scariest pieces of art from that era of Magic, maybe all eras- but it is kinda let down a bit by the statline. Legitimately, if this card had 1 more power (and therefore could 3HKO people with commander damage) it would see so much more play.

 Gallowbraid (5 decks, 106th most played, the bottom of the list)

This is the card I mentioned earlier, the lowest thing that EDHREC has deigned to put on its list. I can see why people wouldn’t want to run it, though. Not only is it basically a French vanilla creature, it also actively hurts you for playing it. No one likes cumulative upkeep, and I cannot imagine wanting it on your Commander. This thing isn’t worth the skin it’s made of, apparently.

 Morinfen (11 decks, 92nd most played)

It’s Gallowbraid but it traded the Trample and a point of toughness for Flying, making it substantially better and yet still completely useless. Next.

 Commander Greven il-Vec (4 decks, N/A)

I’m… actually surprised to see Greven below Gallowbraid, I’m pretty sure that wasn’t the case a couple years ago. Don’t ask me why I remember these things. Considering, however, that his only real claim to fame is his story presence, and people who like him now have a better card with his face on it, I guess it isn’t much surprise his numbers would drop off a bit. He’s at least got some flavour, I guess, considering he’s apparently a very outlived-your-usefulness kinda leader, but that’s not going to make up for being yet another overpriced card with a downside and a mediocre evasive ability.

 Crovax the Cursed (7 decks, 97th most played)

Hey look, they spent an entire line of text on this guy making sure you know he’s a Vampire because Summon Legend Vampire was to complex a technology for 1998. Wait, 1998? I thought Stronghold was way older than that, huh. Regardless, like a bunch of these cards so far, Crovax pretty much just a dude, except he has to eat other dudes to stay relevant. Can’t relate, frankly.

 Cao Cao, Lord of Wei (33 decks, 66th most played)

Oh fuck, we left the Homelands zone and ended up in the Portal: 3 Kingdoms zone. For the unaware, P3K was the third “starter” set Magic released, this time targeted towards the Asian market- hence the whole set is a reference to the famous historical novel Romance of the Three Kingdoms.  Considering the book in question, a lot of these cards were probably real people at some point, which just makes me feel weird.

Anyway, Cao Cao is actually one of the more interesting ones. He’s the first Discard commander on this list so far, and tapping to Mind Rot is actually pretty solid. Cao Cao walked so Tinybones could run. He’s also one of the less expensive ones, owing to having been reprinted in From the Vault: Legends, but the price tag he commands is still comical for the card you’re getting. It’s fine.

 Cao Ren, Wei Commander (5 decks, 105th most played)

Oh horsemanship. Literally just flying but for the historical fiction set where things aren’t allowed to fly. Cao Ren is literally just a draft common, man. I’m not paying $200 to put a draft common in my deck.

 Sima Yi, Wei Field Marshal (5 decks, 104th most played)

Sigh. Wait, this might have been the biggest Human creature in Magic for a while, that it’s this random old strategist is kinda hilarious.

 Xiahou Dun, the One-Eyed (77 decks, 53rd most played)

Wait, this guy is the most played so far? Xiahou Dun? I mean, I know he was in the MTGO cube for a bit, but really?

Ok alright fine. He’s probably the least bad of the P3K commanders (at least in black) because he can replace himself with a card or just swing in, his stats aren’t completely unreasonable. But still, this is silly, there are some genuinely bonkers cards that are seeing less play than Xiahou. What am I missing here? I just don’t know.

 Xun Yu, Wei Advisor (2 decks, N/A)

I distinctly remember once looking at the total commanders on EDHREC with no decks. I don’t remember if I saw this guy. I do remember actually being able to see the bottom of the list, so what the hell man maybe I want to build Zuo Ci.

…someone has actually built Zuo Ci, now, huh. Anyway point is Xun Yu is both bad and boring so next.

 Zhang He, Wei General (3 decks, N/A)

…he’s better than Xun Yu, at least? He’s still a hundred-ish dollar bad card, but you know. Technically speaking, you could do worse.

 Zhang Liao, Hero of Hefei (1 deck, N/A)

While a lot of P3K cards are just reflavoured vanilla magic cards, in this case they decided to just take flying off Abyssal Specter and…not put Horsemanship back on it. Shoutout to the one guy apparently playing this deck, but I’ve got to ask why.

I don’t know if there even are any 0-deck commanders left at this point. I should look into that…

 Ascendant Evincar (34 decks, 65th most played)

Finally free of P3K, we’re closing off today with yet another meh card that has been overshadowed by newer ones, great. Shrinking your opponents stuff down one is a super good effect in limited, not so much in Commander- two, of course, is nuts, Elesh Norn is a very good card, but -1/-1 just isn’t worth your time most of the time. And you can’t even really abuse it on your own stuff. I guess he’s aight with Heartless Summoning? I’m really grasping at straws here!

 Okay, so, that’s the first 20. Sick. Now at this pace, I’ll be done after another….5 articles? Holy shit, I forgot how many bad magic cards WOTC has put out, didn’t I…

Next time (whenever I continue this series), we enter a substantially more interesting, if longer, zone- the Kamigawa Zone. Ta-ta for now.