South San Francisco, CA June 28, 2022 by Ms. Dale (Brown) Amann (daughter)

Russell is pictured here with his Kindergarten Class in front of what we now call Spruce Elementary. Russell is in the top row, 3rd from the left. Who else might you recognize from this photo?

My Dad, Russell Dale Brown, was born in Grand Rapids MN. on 17 June 1925 When he was a little over a year old the family, (Dad-Albert, Mom-Margaret, and 2 years older sister, Allegra), moved to California and bought a home at 1609 B Street in San Mateo.

At that time my grandfather sold insurance. In early 1930, my grandfather changed jobs and became a Prohibition Agent. Unfortunately, in June 1930, he was murdered while trying to close down an illegal bar. Within a couple of months, my grandmother sold the home and they moved into a rental at 657 Baden Ave. in South City, just blocks from my grandmother’s sister, Anna St. Louis, and her husband, Frank. (They lived at 209 Acacia Ave.)

So, my dad went all through school in South San Francisco, and his sister, who was 2 years older, started 2nd grade in South City and graduated with the class of ’41 there. SSF high school was called a junior-senior school when my dad attended. It was grades 7 & 8 in one part, and grades 9 through 12 in another part of the building. Dad was with the class of ’43.

Charles Sellick was the bank instructor. His brother was a barber. His sister was an opera singer who was murdered. Charles was killed when his boat exploded at Sausalito harbor in 1965.

Some of Dad’s high school classmates were Florabele Nelson Powers, Ray Angeli, Jim Franklin, Robert Arrendiell, Emilio Petrocchi, John Noonan, Dante Lombardi, and Mary Louise Newton Bloom. and Dorothy Gabbani Elliott.

The South San Francisco High School basketball team, 1941

DePrado was a teacher in grammar school. Charles Zipfel was one of his teachers. They called him “Zip”. Guthrie was his gym teacher. Laverne __?_ was his 1st-grade teacher, Mr. Gavin in 2nd grade. O’Malley was his Latin teacher. (*Russell attended the 60th reunion of SSFHS Class on 1945 years ago)

Dad couldn’t remember his kindergarten teacher but remembered she was related to my Welte family and was married to a McMills (Al Welte’s daughter, Evelyn, married Wallace McMills; Uncle Al’s first wife, Gladys, was the step-daughter of Dan McSweeney, who was mayor of SSF and an inspector for the Western Meat Company).

When in the 8th or 9th grade a new kid, George Ramsell, moved to SSF from San Jose and he and his family became friends with dad, and then our families were friends as well.

SSFHS Basketball Team photo 1939 –

Elbert “Whitey” Smith was 2 years older than dad but he and dad and our families became lifelong friends. They hunted all over the San Bruno hills as kids. When Whitey married Jane Adler, they and their 2 boys used to go camping and hunting with us. Probably his best friend was Aldo Padreddii. Aldo was a year behind dad in school. They would go fishing and hunting together and just hang out doing what boys did in the late thirties and early forties.

{Dad recently was in touch with Laura Padreddi, who’s 99 and living in Fremont. It was good for both of them to be able to remember about the “old days”, and especially about Aldo. He had to have been a very special person in my Dad’s life because I grew up hearing stories about him, how he was killed in the war, how they hung out as kids, drove around in my Dad’s car, that kind of thing}

Aldo joined the army in Aug. 1944; he was with the 411th infantry and was killed in action in march 1945. His brother, Leo was also a friend of the family as I was growing up. Dad and Aldo used to go across the bay to Niles (Fremont) and shovel manure on the Pessagno property. Aldo and Leo’s sister, Laura, married Gene Pessagno in 1940. Laura is living in Fremont. She was in my Aunt Allegra’s high school class of 1941.

When Dad moved to Baden Ave. a kid down the block on the corner of Orange Ave. and Baden Ave. (123 Orange Ave) that became good friends with dad was Roy Parenti. Roy and his wife Mary were lifelong friends. Another friend was Julio Malone.

Russell pictured in 1939. He played clarinet and was in the SSFHS Marching Band.

My dad played the clarinet in grammar school and was in the band throughout his schooling. He played basketball in school. He bought a 1929 Model A when he was 16 for $49; he turned around and sold it for $50 and bought a 1938 Buick straight 8, which he says was a beautiful vehicle.

He worked at the Associated Gas Station, which was located down by the Bayshore Highway and Baden Ave. He also worked at the California Golf and Country Club cleaning the swimming pool. When old enough his sister, Allegra, worked at the Sanitary Bakery on Grand Ave. (Sad to see they sold after so many decades. I stop there any time I’m in the Bay Area).

South City was a town of about 5000 people when my dad was growing up there. It was a close-knit community and like all small towns, everyone knew everyone else. It’s probably still that way for the core part of town. Many were Italian immigrants who took advantage of the fertile soil and raised various crops on what was called truck farms.

There were also the Swift Western Meat packing plants, a steel plant, and a lumber company where people were employed. The month before Dad was to graduate high school he quit and joined the Army Air Corps. That was in May 1943. He did go back and finish his schooling and got his diploma from South City High in 1947.

Russell is pictured here with SSFHS friends in 1939.
Who can identify this group?

Because it was the depression and my family was in perilous circumstances, what with my grandfather being killed, my grandmother went to work as a domestic for the Henry Haaker family for a while. Henry was VP at the local bank (Bank of South San Francisco I believe) and later had an insurance agency.

Henry Haaker’s son Lee was a friend of my Dad’s and the family insurance agent (Lee’s son lives in Gilroy I believe). Henry’s brother, George, worked in the meat packing industry and he and his wife Maude were best friends with my mother’s parents. My grandfather worked in the meat packing industry with George for years. George’s son, George Jr. was a friend of my mother’s. He died of a stroke in 1963.

Ross and Jack Meyer were related to the Haaker family. Ross was older than dad, was a navy pilot and instructor. After the war he flew for Pan Am. His brother Jack, who was a year older than my dad, was a medic in the service. He died of cancer years ago. He owned a cement business and had 2 daughters..

Other family names that my dad knew, his sister and mother were: Ted Pretzer, Aldo Minucciani, and Robin Castonia married my dad’s cousin Anna Rose St. Louis. Ted was a very dear friend of the family and is very missed.

The South San Francisco High School basketball team, 1941

Ed Kaufman was head of the bank. She then worked at the Tasty Bakery on Grand Ave. The hospital was located on Grand Ave. Pete Linn had a meat market on Grand Avenue and used to deliver meat in a wagon to people’s homes.

There was also a fish monger who used to honk his horn and sell fish up and down the streets in his cart. And there were fruit and vegetable trucks who sold that way also. It was like having Amazon Fresh without the internet.

The dentist they used was Bacigalupi. He knew the Hickey family, WL Hickey & son Jack had a plumbing shop at 369 Grand Ave. There was an Inks Company and a paint company in town too.

The Valencia family were friends of ours. Tony dated my Aunt Allegra at one time, and she became best friends with his sister, Isabel, who was also my mother’s best friend.

After the war, my dad was working at a Shell gas station where my mother always got gas. Mom’s cousin, Homer Gibbs, set up a blind date for my dad at the Claremont Hotel in Oakland and it turned out to be my mother. After 6 weeks he proposed and 6 weeks later they married in South City (Mom was 5 years older than dad and said she wouldn’t marry him until he was 21. He had to get his mother’s permission to marry because in those days you had to be 21 without permission).

My mother was related to the Welte Family; her mother, Marie was sister to Al Welte, the Fire Chief, and Carl “Jazz” Welte, the owner of Welte’s Bar downtown.) After they married they moved to 5th Ave in San Mateo, where we lived until 1964.

###

Today Russell calls Nampa Idaho home and celebrated his 97th birthday on June 17th

We greatly appreciate Russell’s daughter, Ms. Dale L Amann, for the email conversations and her compiling this incredible wealth of the lives and times of her father, and those who lived in South City, in the 30’s and 40’s.

The post Russell Dale Brown Shares 1930-40’s Reminiscences of South San Francisco appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Bay Area restaurant managers and food truck owners cite the high costs of shipping ingredients by road and air, paired with warmer ocean temperatures, as the culprits behind the recent price hikes of those delectable lobster rolls across lunchtime menus.

And as the average retail gas price in California soared to $5.92 on Monday, according to the American Automobile Association, the costs of some of the area’s trendier lunch choices won’t likely see a dip in price any time soon. It’s all making that brown bag lunch look that much more delicious during the work week grind.

“What really drove our prices was COVID, because our shacks closed. We had to depend on other means, mainly online direct shipping orders out of Maine,” said Jason Olvera, general manager of Luke’s Lobster in the SoMa neighborhood, through text message. “We also expanded to Whole Foods and many other grocery stores. That was good and bad for us, as we had a lot of other competitors.”

Luke’s Lobster currently has one location in San Francisco and 25 other shacks from Chicago to Boston and even Tokyo. A Luke’s Lobster menu found on Yelp in 2018 listed a 4-ounce lobster roll at $16. It now sits at $24, an $8 price jump. Its 6-ounce lobster roll, however, for those with a larger appetite and wallet, is now priced at $35. Each roll, big or small, boasts chilled, wild-caught Maine lobster that’s tossed in mayo, lemon-butter and house seasoning before packed into toasted, buttery bread.

“It’s not cheap by any means. But we try our best to make it [as] affordable as possible by taking out the middleman [in a] completely transparent way,” Olvera wrote. “From the fisherman to our shacks, we complete every step ourselves.”

From its appearance on ABC’s “Shark Tank” in 2012, Cousins ​​Maine Lobster started with a single food truck in Los Angeles and grew its fleet to nearly 40, which also includes a handful of brick-and-mortar eateries throughout the United States. A decade later, Cousins ​​is one of the top players in the lobster roll business.

Bay Area franchise co-owners Raj and Rahul Mohan, operate three Cousins ​​Maine Lobster food trucks that cover the entire region, reaching anywhere from Martinez to Danville, and often setting up shop in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and Marina Green.

Raj Mohan told SFGATE that warmer ocean temperatures are causing the lobsters to migrate further north, while rising gas prices and even a decrease in fisherfolk actively working the Atlantic due to the coronavirus, are all key factors for the $2 increase found on Cousins’ menu. Their lobster roll currently costs $21.

“The Maine lobster is definitely sweeter than other forms of lobster, better than in Hawaii, and it gets imported a lot into Asian countries. As a result of that, there is a lot of competition,” Mohan said. “Maine lobster is very, very sustainable in terms of their practices. So, literally one out of 15 lobsters that comes into the trap, one is kept and the rest are thrown back.”

Mohan added if the lobsters are not fully grown, or they’re egg-bearing, they must be thrown back until they reach a larger size. He also said the lobster traps are designed to allow juvenile crustaceans to easily escape.

“It’s not about the weight of the lobster. It’s about the size. And they need to be at least 5-and-a-half inches from the back of the head from where the eyes are to where the tail starts,” he said. (Editor’s note: Cousins ​​Maine Lobster later clarified the lobsters are in fact 3.25 to 5 inches in length.)

Despite the price increase, Mohan said business remains consistent with food trucks parked in various locations throughout the Bay Area seven days a week.

“Most people have accepted the fact that everything in general is higher,” Mohan said. “We have a following. I think what people appreciate is how we’ve kept the recipes really original without mixing mayo, without mixing celery, without playing around too much with it. So people appreciate that, and we are busy.”

The post San Francisco lobster rolls attain $35, making that brown bag lunch extra appetizing appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

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‘Brown Friday’: Thanksgiving meals trigger nightmares in the bathroom

– YouTube channel video with the logo in the top left corner of the video. OaklandNewsNow.com is the original blog post for this type of video blog content.

Plumbers in northeast Ohio prepare for Brown Friday as they anticipate a surge in plumbing nightmares for Thanksgiving.

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Note from Zennie62Media and OaklandNewsNow.com: This video blog post demonstrates the full and live operation of the latest updated version of an experimental Zennie62Media, Inc. network for video blogging systems for mobile media that was launched in June 2018 by Zennie62Media, Inc .s new and innovative approach to news media production. What we call “The Third Wave of Media”. The uploaded video is from a YouTube channel. When the YouTube video channel News 5 Cleveland uploads a video, it is automatically uploaded to the Oakland News Now site and Zennie62’s own social media pages and formatted automatically. The overall goal here is, in addition to our smartphone-enabled real-time reporting of news, interviews, observations and events anywhere in the world and within seconds, not hours – the use of the existing YouTube social graphic on any topic in the world. Now messages are reported with the smartphone and also by advertising current content on YouTube: There is no need for heavy and expensive cameras or even a laptop or a camera team to film what is already on YouTube. The secondary goal is faster and very inexpensive production and distribution of media content. We found that there is a discrepancy between post length and time to product and revenue generated. This means that the problem is much smaller, but by no means solved. Zennie62Media is constantly working to improve the system’s network coding and is looking for interested content and media technology partners.

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The post ‘Brown Friday’: Thanksgiving Meals Spark Plumbing Nightmares | Cleveland Information – Oakland Information Now appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Many fans agreed with the Las Vegas Raiders’ decision to part ways with Right Tackle Trent Brown. He’s been called anything from “lazy” to “injury prone”, but will there be serious consequences if he walks away from him?

Brown’s stay with the Raiders was at least colorful. It seemed like there were constant drama and problems around the duel, and not for the best either. Much of it, however, was beyond his control, such as the near medical disaster when an IV accident caused air to enter his bloodstream. Even so, Brown’s advancement has the potential to come back and bite the Raiders in the rear.

The Raiders have completely revamped their offensive line this offseason, hoping to get faster and more athletic. This could end up restoring the team’s running game, which began to slide in 2020. Regardless of how you hold the trains, this unit has potential, but replacing Brown ends up on the shoulders of a rookie, Alex Leatherwood. In essence, the Raiders designed Browns replacements rather than spending on the vacant agency position. This is risky to say the least, so much so that some are calling it the worst move to organize this off-season.

The Raiders will keep their fingers crossed and hope …

The Athletic recently surveyed the NFL and tallied the worst off-season decisions of all 32 teams. Lo and behold, the raiders who made the real tackle were the intended move for Las Vegas. Vic Tafur shared his thoughts on the move, it is essentially a gamble for the Raiders.

Given how motivated Brown looked this off-season, trading doesn’t seem to have made much sense, Tafur pointed out.

“You should have kept him and paid him the $ 14 million he was due this season because Brown, 28, had already lost a ton this spring and is motivated for another big payday.”

Yeah, the man is playing for money so what, the NFL is a business. Fans saying they didn’t want Brown because he didn’t want to be a Raider is ridiculous in retrospect. If Brown was ready to dominate again in search of another big deal, why wouldn’t you milk that?

Leatherwood is now in a difficult position as a newcomer. He’ll have big footsteps to fill because let’s face it, when Brown was on the field he was one of the best.

Fair or not, the Alabama product is judged from the start, luckily it has Tom Cable running it. As for Brown, he’s likely to have a stellar season under Bill Belichick as the Raiders put their hopes in a rookie. Either the team will look like a genius or it could have dire consequences this season.

The post Will Transferring Away From Trent Brown Have Ramifications For Raiders? appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

1a. I believe in second chances. And third and fourth chances. Folks will argue that playing in the NFL is a privilege and not a right, but for some players it is their only marketable skill; taking it away indefinitely is draconian (not to mention, the kind of power Roger Goodell should not—and, legally, cannot—exercise). People change, especially in their 20s and 30s, and every one of them deserves a pathway to redemption.

However, the pathway must involve some baseline effort at rehabilitation. Right? A hint of contrition? Even just a show that he is making the slightest effort to maybe think about possibly making amends for his actions? With that in mind: Did Antonio Brown do that?

You could do some mental gymnastics and convince yourself he did the absolute bare minimum. There were some apologies—under a markedly different writing style than we usually get from him—posted on his social media accounts. He took cuts at a few softballs last winter and dispensed the type of reflexive, mealy-mouthed, non-specific apology I wouldn’t accept from my preschooler. And when it came to his abhorrent treatment of women, he played the victim card. I mean, this is an actual quote from February:

“I feel like I never really got in a conflict with no woman. I just feel like I’m a target so, anybody can come against me and say anything and I’m going to have to face it. There’s no support, there’s no egos, there’s no rules in it, anyone can come after me for anything. No proof or whatever. ‘He said, she’s saying.’ The media will run with it, so even if I’m not guilty, I already guilty because they already wrote it, put it on TV and put that in people minds. So for me to have to sit here and hear those the allegations of me is just unfair to me every time.”

Brown’s mistreatment of women has been chronicled in police reports, sometimes on his own social media accounts and in the accounts of accusers. If he was referring to our source who, in September 2019, accused Brown of sexual misconduct, a quick refresher: She did not come to us—we found her. Her story and her background held up against exhaustive vetting by our team. And despite what you might have heard on sports radio or seen on social media from the kind of people who have yet to realize you can breathe through your nose, at no point did she ever give an indication that there was financial motivation.

Each of us are, in the simplest terms, the sum of our actions, and our actions are shaped by our circumstances. After spending the summer of 2019 researching Brown’s behavior, I write this with a fair amount of confidence: Superstardom on the football field shaped Antonio Brown, and not in a good way. It made him feel like others—viewed as being beneath his station as a star athlete—could be treated however he saw fit, without consequence. Brown was surrounded by the typical variety of toadies and stooges who encouraged that kind of behavior, but he has also been enabled by coaches and teammates as well. Tom Brady is now chief among them.

Over the past 13 months, Tom Brady has floated the notion that he and his football team’s culture is what Brown needs—apparently ignoring the fact that, while a teammate of Brady’s, Brown saw fit to send threatening texts to a credible accuser. For Brown, football isn’t the solution, it’s part of the problem.

This isn’t about rehabilitating Antonio Brown as a man, because he’s never shown even the slightest interest in being rehabilitated. (And if Brady is interested in helping troubled players, there are many who are more deserving than Brown.) No, this is the opposite of rehabilitation: It reinforces that as long as the greatest receiver of this generation is still in his prime, there are no consequences, especially when it comes to people who don’t have a role in winning football games. And Brady will always be there to fight those consequences—every single one—because there is no greater calling in life than maximizing your chance to win football games.

We can only hope we’ve arrived at the final act of this farce. It will further cement the legacy of Tom Brady the player as a guy who won a lot of football games. And it will further cement the legacy of Tom Brady the man as a guy who won a lot of football games.

1b. Also, congratulations to Russell Wilson, Pete Carroll and the Seahawks organization for lowering themselves into the sewer and not even coming away with their man.

* * *

Whatever. Here’s some analysis of the week’s games and news interspersed with poop jokes…

USA Today Photos (5)

2. Anyone with optic nerves that transmit images to their brain knows that the Steelers defense poses a stiff test for the Titans. But what’s even more worrisome for Tennessee is that this Steelers defense is almost custom-built to deal with their offense.

Pittsburgh has the best run defense in football by just about any metric, but I want to focus in on its defensive line Stuff Percentage (a league-leading 32% according to Football Outsiders) and the fact that Vince Williams—maybe the closest thing to a “weak link” in its defensive front—leads the NFL in tackles for loss (10) while T.J. Watt is tied for second (9) and even slot corner Mike Hilton (5) is top-20. The book on Derrick Henry is that, while he’s superhuman once he gets to the second level, he’s a mere mortal around and behind the line of scrimmage. The Steelers often don’t allow backs to get to the second level, and while I don’t like touting the vague notion of “physicality,” there’s no doubt that the Steelers’ cast of front-seven characters are capable of handling Henry. And, yes, Devin Bush is out, but so is Taylor Lewan, which means Bud Dupree will get to pick on Ty Sambrailo, for whom “functional strength” has been an issue throughout his career (I write while struggling to summon the strength to get off my couch and get more candy corn).

Play-action is the other staple of the Titans offense—one very much aided by the fact that linebackers often get sucked up more than they normally would because everyone is trying to get to Henry before he gets a head of steam. But playing behind-schedule is an issue for anyone’s play-action offense. The average second-down distance for Pittsburgh’s opponents this year has been 9.22 yards, which is a number that has no right existing outside a science-fiction short story about a dystopian future where footballs have been replaced by 600-pound anvils. If the Titans find themselves in a lot of second- or third-and-long, that play-action game becomes less effective. (And we haven’t mentioned the steady diet of Minkah Fitzpatrick in disguised robber coverages the Titans are likely to see.)

Look at what happened to Cleveland against the Steelers last week. The Browns’ system is loosely similar to Tennessee’s (zone running and play-action off it). But with the Steelers’ dominant run defense mitigating that play-action game, Cleveland was utterly doomed. And you could argue that the Browns are better than Tennessee at every offensive position—except quarterback.

And with that, I arrive at the core point of this meandering take. Ryan Tannehill might not be an MVP-type quarterback (yes, I’ve seen the stats). But since arriving in Nashville, he has been an exceptionally good system quarterback who’s an exceptionally good fit in an exceptionally good system. What he hasn’t been is a guy who’s going to make plays off-schedule and have a lot of success on third-and-long. So far this season, the Titans rank 26th in third-and-long (defined as 6-plus yards to gain) at 21.7%. They were 22nd (26.5%) after Tannehill took over as the starter last year.

Carson Wentz and Mayfield are the last two quarterbacks Pittsburgh faced. Wentz, for all the Josh Allen-esque mistakes he’ll make late in the down, also has the ability to create Josh Allen-esque magic. The Eagles went 5-for-7 on third-and-long in Pittsburgh, which is how they put up 29 points and hung around, and it’s a big reason why the Steelers still rank near the bottom of the league in third-and-long defense (28th, at 38.9% allowed). Mayfield, on the other hand, hasn’t shown the ability to make out-of-structure plays this season, and didn’t do so in Pittsburgh, which is why that game was not competitive.

When Tannehill played in Miami, the later in the down it got, the worse off he was. In Tennessee, he’s rarely had to make plays out-of-structure. He’s a 57.0% passer on third-and-long since becoming the Titans starter, which is actually slightly lower than the mark he posted in Miami (57.4%). Sunday is shaping up to be a week where he’s going to have to make a handful of plays outside of the system. Whether or not he rises to the occasion will determine which of these teams stays undefeated.

* * *

3. It seems the Dolphins had circled the bye week for promoting Tua Tagovailoa all along, but doing it now makes plenty of sense. The biggest deterrent to throwing a young quarterback into the fire is an offensive line that can’t protect him—Miami couldn’t do this a year ago. But their young offensive line has improved immensely, to the point that it’s league-average and trending up.

The other factor is that, as good as Ryan Fitzpatrick has been in 2020, they know it’s not going to last for 16 games. Because it’s never lasted for 16 games. Sometimes when you get on a hot streak at the craps table, you just have to walk away.

You likely already know Fitzpatrick’s origin story—no formal education, worked as a chimney sweep, radioactive squirrel bites him and he gains the power to ace the Wonderlic, Rams draft him, etc. etc. etc. He took the demotion as graciously as possible, and mentioned he might have made his final start, which might be true. But, while he’s 38 in November, he has for the most part maintained the physical traits he had when he entered the league. He can move an offense as well as any backup in football, and it seems he did just fine in the mentor role with Tua. Most likely, he bought himself at least one more chance to be someone’s bridge quarterback.

* * *

4. Not sure why, but I’ve been thinking about this clip a lot this weekend:

* * *

5. We’re all furrowing our brows in a vain attempt to understand the Bears’ 5–1 record. We know luck—the same kind of pure, stupid luck that shines on a team or two every season—has something to do with it, and the Vaudevillian nature of their opponents’ fourth-quarter gaffes draws the eye to late-game scenarios. But hey, the points in the first three quarters count the same as the ones in the fourth quarter.

If you really want to understand the one fluke constant with Chicago, look at its outlier defensive performance in the red zone. Red-zone performance on both sides of the ball tends to fluctuate wildly year to year, due to the small sample size and the unique nature of the tight field. To credit the Bears’ red-zone success to some kind of otherworldly situational football play, you’d also be arguing that the Ravens (fourth-worst red-zone defense in 2020) and Titans (third-worst) are bad situational defenses. Or that the Packers were a great situational defense last year (fourth-best red-zone defense) but, with the same staff and roster, forgot how to play situational defense this year (second-worst red-zone defense).

The Bears are allowing a league-leading 36.4% touchdown percentage—they allowed a TD rate over 50% each of the past two seasons, and were 48% or higher each of the last eight years. Only the Cardinals are allowing fewer points per red-zone trip (4.0). And since they’ve played 22 red-zone possessions, if Chicago’s 4.14 number were closer to the league-average (5.13), you’d be talking about a three-point increase in points-per-game allowed.

However, last week’s win in Carolina was at least a blueprint of how they should be expected to win games: They had constant pressure on Teddy Bridgewater, resulting in four sacks and three takeaways (though one was when Panthers RB Mike Davis forgot he was carrying a football in the open field).

The difference between the 2018 and ’19 Bears was takeaways. They led the league in ’18 (36) but fell to 22nd last season, as the number was almost halved (19). Part of that is luck. Part of it was a down year for Khalil Mack, who very much looks like his all-world self again in 2020. The takeaways weren’t coming during the 4-1 start—just five over those first five games—but pressure creates turnovers, and the pressure has been there this season. A multi-takeaway outing like the one in Charlotte shouldn’t be an outlier.

No matter how good your defense is, you’re walking a tightrope when your offense is this level of inept. However, the Bears could go 4–6 from here on out and still make the playoffs—a 5–5 finish would virtually guarantee postseason football. And once they’re in the tournament, with this defense and with a quarterback with a history of getting very hot in January, anything goes.

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6a. The funny thing about Yannick Ngakoue joining the Ravens is that Baltimore has consistently used overload, fire-zone blitzes to generate pressure in order to make up for the fact that they don’t have a truly dominant edge rusher. And now, in Ngakoue, they’re adding a dominant edge rusher. Though now that I read it I guess that’s not as funny as I originally thought.

Defensive coordinator Don Martindale (or, as many call him, “Mink” Martindale, due to his fondness for the semiaquatic, carnivorous animal) now has a chance to be a little more flexible in his approach. With Ngakoue capable of creating pressure independent of scheme, they could take an approach more along the lines of what the Steelers do: blitz-happy on early downs, four-man rush in front of coverage on third down.

6b. From the Vikings’ perspective, clearly they thought they were going to make a run this year. That just isn’t the case as long as the NFL insists on setting the playoff field based on win-loss record. And considering the fact that they’re in cap heck the next two seasons, it didn’t make sense to commit to Ngakoue long-term—not only would they be paying a premium to Ngakoue, but they’d surely have to adjust Danielle Hunter’s below-market deal if they did. They didn’t get caught up in sunk-cost fallacy, so good on them.

6c. The move also suggests this might be fellow pending free agent Matt Judon’s last year in Baltimore. He’s a very good player, but probably a half-step below Ngakoue talent-wise (not to mention three years older). If Ngakoue works out—and there’s no reason to think he won’t—and gets a long-term deal, the Ravens can play their comp pick game when Judon signs elsewhere this offseason.

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7. Ladies and gentlemen . . . Pixies!

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The post NFL Week 7 Preview: Antonio Brown will get the second likelihood he did not even attempt to earn appeared first on Los Gatos News And Events.

Antonio Brown has been suspended for the first eight games of the 2020 season due to multiple off-field incidents and the veteran recipient is now facing a civil lawsuit regarding one of them.

According to Broward County court documents Matt Baker received from the Tampa Bay Times, Brown was sued by a driving truck driver who was allegedly assaulted by Brown and Brown’s coaches earlier last year. The driver, Anton Tumanov, claims in the lawsuit that he brought Brown’s belongings from California to Hollywood, Florida, last year when he “encountered resistance and violence”.

Tumanov said Brown and Brown’s trainer Glenn Holt attacked his vehicle and broke the key before “verbally and physically assaulting him and causing serious personal injury”. The driver says that as a result of the incident, he “continues to suffer serious physical injuries, financial losses and emotional distress”.

Holt and Brown face assault and battery charges. Tumanov is seeking more than $ 30,000 in damages.

Police were called to Brown’s Hollywood home in January 2020 after he was accused of assaulting a driving truck driver over a payment problem. More details about the incident can be found here.

Brown was arrested not long after the incident and did not advocate a criminal battery charge last June. The 32-year-old avoided jail time and received two years probation, 100 hours of community service and a psychological examination.

Brown is unlikely to receive further discipline from the NFL, as the incident with the moving truck was part of the reason he was suspended last season.

Brown caught 45 passes for 483 yards and four touchdowns with the Bucs last season. He recently signed a one-year contract with the team.

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