NFC East: NFC East chat

Get your chat here

May, 22, 2012
May 22
10:00
AM ET
We're going to chat at noon ET, because it's Tuesday and chatting at noon ET on Tuesdays is one of the things we do here on the NFC East blog. Way it works is you click on these little blue letters right here, any time between noon and 1 p.m. ET on Tuesday (which is today), and your computer brings you to a chat room in which I am picking through questions and deciding which ones to answer and which ones to make fun of strategically ignore. It's fun. As an experience, most people would tend to rank it somewhere on the vast spectrum in between mindless diversion and life-changing phenomenon, and that's fine. We're happy in our little corner of that spectrum. Please come and join us.

Drop by for a Tuesday chat

May, 15, 2012
May 15
11:30
AM ET
Each week we do our chat. At noon ET on each Tuesday, I set up a little chat room over at SportsNation and folks from the NFC East blog come and ask questions. I answer as many as I can. We have a little fun. We might talk about baseball or HBO series every now and then, but the focus remains on the four teams in the NFC East, and for the most part I do my very best to offer what insight I have and continue the ongoing discussion that is this blog.

So if you're a regular, you know the drill. You click on these little blue letters right here any time between noon at 1 p.m. ET, and you are magically transported to the chat room, where you will find me sorting through questions and picking the ones I find most interesting and most answerable. I truly do hope to see you there.
So every Tuesday at noon ET we open up a SportsNation chat room and we do this thing where you guys ask me questions and I answer them. We call it the weekly NFC East chat, and it's oodles of fun. Those who don't come and join in... well, they're beyond hope at this point. So rather than fill them in with the highlights, I present these chat highlights for those of you were there, so you can relive all the fun we had together.

Wesley from Woodstock, Va. believes that, due to his lofty draft position and the attendant hype, Robert Griffin III will be targeted by defensive players in 2012 for "welcome to the NFL" hits. Considering this, Wesley wanted to know if I thought the Washington Redskins' current backup plan of Rex Grossman and Kirk Cousins was sufficient.

Dan Graziano: I don't know how much better a backup QB situation can get, actually. Grossman is the exact right guy to be backing up RG3 right away -- a QB who knows the offense and can help with the new guy's education (as long as the rookie ignores the parts about throwing it to the other team 20 times a year). And Cousins is a well-regarded young guy who'll be learning along with the starter. I think they've backed him up just fine.

St8prop from Atlanta saw a rumor that the Baltimore Ravens had offered the New York Giants a third-round draft pick for disgruntled defensive end Osi Umenyiora and wondered, if the Giants don't trade him, whether it would be because they believed they could do better in compensation picks for losing him to free agency next year.

DG: I think if they don't move him it's because they determined the value of keeping him on their roster outweighed what was offered. They don't NEED to move him. They're not worried about his discontent affecting what they do, and he showed last year that he can still make a major impact when he does play. And he's cheap.

(Ed. note: Please also remember that, if the Giants lose Umenyiora in free agency next year, their compensation pick wouldn't come until the 2014 draft, and it would depend on who else they lost in 2013 free agency and which players they signed as well.)

DAN FAN from Florida asked who would lead the division in touchdowns in 2012 and offered Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo as a guess.

DG: You mean passing TDs? I'd go with Eli Manning there, taking everything into consideration including his weapons and the relative states of the Giants' and Cowboys' running games.

So then Talon from Muncie, Ind. asked me to "elaborate on the state of NYG & DAL running games."

DG: Well, the Giants were last in the league, Ahmad Bradshaw has chronic foot injuries and Brandon Jacobs had 40 percent of their carries and is now gone. I think it's fair to say the state of the Giants' run game is questionable.

Mark from Los Angeles said he thought Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick "started getting a little lazy" after signing his big contract last offseason and wondered what his state of mind is going into this season.

DG: I don't agree with "lazy" as a characterization of Vick from what I saw last year. I felt all along that the Eagles needed to see some development and maturation from him as a leader, and while he showed some of it late in the year, I don't think he showed enough of it early. I do not ascribe that to laziness, though. I think he works very hard. I just didn't feel that he showed enough improvement in his specific areas of weakness. That could be because he doesn't identify those areas correctly, or because more work needs to be done in them than he or we are willing to admit, or any number of reasons.

And Gavin from Maryland asked how much of an upgrade new Dallas Cowboys fullback Lawrence Vickers would be over Tony Fiammetta, who got a lot of press last year for his role in the run game once DeMarco Murray got hot.

DG: The folks I talked to around the time of that signing all liked Vickers a lot better than they liked Fiammetta. I think by the end of the year, the consensus was that the midseason success of the Dallas' run game was much more Murray than it was Fiammetta, in spite of what some believed while it was happening.

Enjoyed it, as always. Though we didn't hear back from our old buddy Jack from Raleigh. I hope we didn't scare him off.
That's right. We do it every single solitary Tuesday, at the stroke of noon ET. It's the weekly NFC East chat, where you ask questions (sometimes over and over and over again) and I do what I can to answer them (while deleting the ones that are annoyingly asked over and over and over again). You get to the chat by clicking on these little blue letters right here, and while you can do so now, I recommend waiting until noon because otherwise that's two hours spent staring at a Web page that's not doing anything yet. Sure, from noon to 1 p.m. ET, it's a beehive of activity, entertainment, insight and information. And that may well be worth spending your next two hours in breathless anticipation. Your call, really. Me, I'm going to go get some coffee.
We had our regular weekly chat Tuesday, and it was awesome as always. But I'm kind of done selling the chat after almost a full year of doing it. If you don't come chat with us on Tuesdays, I'm not sure what hope there still is for you. Here are some highlights of what you missed this week.

Damien from Philadelphia asked which of the NFC East first-round picks I believe will have the most 2012 impact.

Dan Graziano: Morris Claiborne, because I think the learning curve is less steep for a cornerback at this level than it is for a quarterback.

Well, this really upset Jack from Raleigh, who called it "a ridiculous answer," said something along the lines of "learning curve, shmurning curve" and insisted that it's completely impossible for a cornerback to affect a football game to the same extent that a quarterback (presumably he's suggesting Robert Griffin III) does.

DG: Ok then.

But Jack from Raleigh wasn't done. He came back with this bit of furious grammatical genius: "Who impacts a game more Revis or Brady, Brees, Mannings, Big Ben, etc..... its just ridiculous, the Eagles had the best collection of corners in the league and because Vick got hurt there season was a whiff....if you want to say RGIII is overrated fine, but don't tell me a corner can have a bigger impact than a QB...so is that what your saying? that RGIII is going to bust?"

DG: Holy hell, Jack. Calm down. The question was, "Which first-round pick do you think has the biggest impact next year?" I think, given how much harder it is to learn QB at the NFL level than it is to learn CB, Claiborne is the right answer. That's no insult to Griffin, who I believe will be great as I have written many times. But to think Griffin won't struggle this year, or that they won't lean on the run to help him out, is kind of silly.

Honey Badger from DC later asked what was up with Jack from Raleigh.

DG: He seems very upset. I felt like giving him a Snickers bar. Jack from Raleigh, you're not you when you're hungry.

Anyway, I think Claiborne's going to be great. And I think Griffin probably will too, but that it'll take longer. And we did talk about other things Tuesday. On the rookie-impact topic, Kyle from Lock Haven, PA asked whether the Giants' Rueben Randle could be the best rookie receiver in the league this year with the help of the Giants' outstanding quarterback.

DG: Don't underestimate the impact Eli Manning has on Randle's chances to develop quickly. He's certainly a better quarterback than that of any WR who was drafted ahead of Randle. Only one who has a case, for me, is Ryan Broyles' QB in Detroit.

Garrett from Wilmington asked how much longer the Eagles will stick with Michael Vick at quarterback, given the way in which his annual injury issues limit how far his rare talent can taken them.

DG: This is the proverbial make-or-break year for Vick in Philly. They can get out of his contract after this year with very little pain, I believe. If it all bottoms out, I imagine they'll look elsewhere.

Scott from VB, VA noted that Mel Kiper says he'd have given the Washington Redskins an "A" for their draft if they'd picked Zebrie Sanders in the third round instead of Josh LeRibeus and wondered what I thought about that.

DG: I'm sure the case can be made for Sanders as a better offensive lineman than Josh LeRibeus. But it's important to remember that the Redskins lean hard on a zone-blocking run game and draft and sign linemen they believe are well suited to that scheme. They likely see something in LeRibeus that they believe fits the unique kind of blocking schemes they like to run, so it's not as simple as saying, "This guy was rated better, so he'd have been a better pick there."

And finally, Z from P, SD (feel like I'm watching Sesame Street there) wonders whether we're safe to assume the Cowboys' Claiborne pick automatically means Mike Jenkins can't be a starting cornerback anymore, since Jason Garrett is always preaching the value of competition at every spot.

DG: Sure, but moving up to pick Claiborne certainly indicates that Jenkins isn't beginning the competition from an especially strong position in the minds of the coaching staff.

So yeah. Fun chat, as always. If you weren't there, drop by next week.
I may be a little bit late for today's chat. When I dropped my kids off at school this morning, I didn't like the way one of those fire extinguishers was looking at me, so I'm going to go back and beat the crap out of it.

That's a basketball joke that my Giants readers are, I think, more likely to get this morning than my other readers are. In truth, I wouldn't dream of being late for our weekly NFC East chat, which will start promptly at noon ET as it does every Tuesday. Click on these here little blue letters and you'll be able to ask anything you want about the NFC East until about 1 p.m., when I need to go teach the smoke detector in the family room a lesson.

Chat? Shall we say, noonish?

April, 24, 2012
Apr 24
11:30
AM ET
Gonna fire up our weekly NFC East chat today at our regular weekly time -- noon ET. You click these blue letters right here and you arrive, magically, in our chat room, where you can ask me anything you want and there's about an 11.4 percent chance I'll answer it.*

I'll try and take some Giants questions early this week, since we have Jason Pierre-Paul trampling all over the back end of my chat and starting his own at 12:45, and I imagine I'll lose some Giants fans because how often does JPP stop by for a chat? But I'll roll until 1 p.m. with the rest of you if you'll have me.

(*percentage chances based on number of questions answered in average one-hour chat divided by number of questions asked in average one-hour chat.)

Yes, it is chat day

April, 17, 2012
Apr 17
10:00
AM ET
Reader Joseph Maietta (@jmaietta96) suggested on Twitter that we move our regularly scheduled Tuesday chat to Wednesday this week so that we could use it to discuss the schedule after it's announced Tuesday night. Interesting idea, but no, we're not going to do that. We will deal with the schedule release in-depth tonight when it happens, with a post on each team and its schedule, and you're all more than welcome to discuss the schedule there. If questions remain next Tuesday, I'll be happy to take them. But surely, while the schedule release is the "news" of the day in the NFL, we can find other things to discuss during our regular Tuesday chat. The draft is nine days away, after all.

So join me at noon ET, today, for the chat. Click on these blue letters, and you'll be transported to the chat room, where you can ask me anything at all that you want about the NFC East. We sometimes stray into other topics, too, but we'll try to keep it this week to the NFC East as much as possible. Some people get grumpy otherwise.

What a day for a chat

April, 10, 2012
Apr 10
10:30
AM ET
Every Tuesday at noon ET we all get together over on SportsNation for our weekly NFC East chat. It's a hoot and a half, and if you've never attended one, why not make today the day? All you have to do is click on these here blue letters at around noon or any time in the hour that follows, and you'll be spirited away to a lively chat room in which I answer questions on any and all topics that remotely touch on the NFC East. I highly recommend that you join us. Whatever baseball game you're going to watch doesn't start until 1 p.m. at the earliest anyway, so what do you have to lose?

One shining chat

April, 3, 2012
Apr 3
10:18
AM ET
Yeah, I stayed up late watching a dud of a basketball game. But that doesn't mean I won't be fired up to talk football with you guys at noon ET, as we do every Tuesday. It's our weekly NFC East chat, and it's back today and better than ever. Well, I don't know about that, but it'll be good. I promise.

What you do is you click on these here blue letters at around noon ET (or anytime in the hour that follows), and you arrive in our chat room, where you can ask me anything you want. I scroll through the questions, reading each and every one and taking note of the name of the person asking it, and I choose which ones I want to answer based on how much I like that person. Sometimes I get sarcastic. Actually, that happened like two sentences ago. Anyway, drop by. We'll have ourselves a time.

Chat by the beach

March, 27, 2012
Mar 27
10:00
AM ET
PALM BEACH, Fla. -- All right, I can't actually see the beach or the ocean from inside the media workroom here at the NFL owners meetings. But I know they're only a few feet away, on the other side of the walls of The Breakers. So you'll have to take my word for it as I sit and answer questions for you in our weekly NFC East chat. It starts at noon ET, as it does every Tuesday, and will last about an hour unless I get word that Jerry Jones is in the lobby publicly ripping John Mara and Roger Goodell over the salary-cap penalties. If that's going on, I'm going to go listen. And maybe egg him on.

Other than that, though, I'm all yours. Just click on these blue letters right here at noon and we'll have ourselves a time.

Don't forget the chat

March, 20, 2012
Mar 20
10:19
AM ET
I know you have questions. And by now you know I don't have all of the answers. But it will be my great pleasure to share what answers I do have in our weekly chat, which comes your way at noon ET and lasts for about an hour. You get there by clicking on these blue letters right here. Once you do, you'll be in the chat room and can ask me anything you want about anything going on (or not going on) in the NFC East. We always have fun, and every now and then we even learn something. I do hope you'll drop by.

The chat before the storm

March, 13, 2012
Mar 13
10:45
AM ET
Before the free-agent madness descends upon us this afternoon and evening, we're going to have our weekly Tuesday chat. It's at noon ET, as it always is, and you get there by clicking on these blue letters right here at around that time (or anytime in the hour that follows). I'll answer your questions about NFL free agency, the Redskins-Cowboys salary cap fiasco, what I think's going to happen with London Fletcher, who I like to come out of the Midwest Region ... whatever you want, really. I'm all yours for an hour. Please come join in.

Oh yeah, the chat

March, 6, 2012
Mar 6
10:17
AM ET
The things you forget when you take a week off...

We chat every week (except last week) at noon ET on Tuesday. You click on these blue letters right here and the computer whisks you away to a fabulous place where you can ask me anything you want about the NFC East while I watch the Big East tournament on television. Wait. What? Did I say that out loud? Never mind.

Drop by at noon. I promise you'll have my nearly undivided attention.

Pardon me, boys, is that the Chat ...

February, 21, 2012
Feb 21
11:20
AM ET
... tanooga Choo-Choo? No, it's just the weekly NFC East chat, coming to you live at noon ET as it does every Tuesday. You click on these here blue letters and the magic of the Internet whisks you away to our chat room, in which you can ask me anything you want about the Cowboys, Giants, Eagles, Redskins, the Oscars, Big East basketball, fantasy baseball ... Well, let's at least try and keep it to those first four topics. I do my best to answer as many as possible, and we have a little fun along the way. Try it. What else were you going to do? Work? Hahahahahahaha ...
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