mind that he led the league with five fourth-quarter comeback wins in 2014.)The Stafford weve seen over the past 16 games has been another quarterback entirely. And hes not the first play

OXNARD, Calif. -- Former Baylor coach Art Briles is confident he will get another chance and says he has learned some lessons after losing his job over allegations that his program mishandled complaints of sexual assault.In his most extensive public comments since leaving Baylor, Briles said Tuesday while visiting the Dallas Cowboys training camp that the circumstances leading to his departure were unfortunate for a lot of people, victims first and foremost.Things happen and that happened and its unfortunate for a lot of people, not myself, being at the last, a lot of other people involved, victims first and foremost, Briles said.Then when you break down, assistant coaches that are involved, support staff, players, recruits, its unfortunate but thats the path that was taken so well all learn from it and be better for it. Thats going to be my goal.The 60-year-old Briles said he hadnt thought about whether his former school treated him fairly, but expressed confidence that he would get another job.I know who I am, I know what Ive been for 60 years. People may doubt what you say, but theyll always believe what you do, Briles said. Ive always lived my life in a righteous manner.Asked what he had learned, Briles said in his next job that he is going to make sure I have policies in place that are going to protect everybody, students first and foremost, and then administrators, coaches. He didnt elaborate on what those would be.Briles was immediately suspended in May after the Pepper Hamilton law firm released a 13-page report that accused football coaches and staff of interfering with investigations into sexual assault complaints against some players, and even impeding potential criminal proceedings.Baylor President Ken Starr was demoted and athletic director Ian McCaw resigned before Briles reached a settlement with the school over his departure about a month after the report was released. Briles, who had eight seasons left on his contract, said he is still shocked at how everything happened.Yeah, Im dumbfounded and trying to process everything as it goes, Briles said. It is what it is, reality is reality, so what Ive got to do is redefine myself and start a new chapter and thats what Im doing.Asked if he will have more of a chance to explain his side of the story before getting back into coaching, Briles said, That day will come.While Briles is gone, all of his assistant coaches remain at Baylor with acting head coach Jim Grobe. That group includes Briles son, Kendal, Baylors offensive coordinator, and his son-in-law, Jeff Lebby, also an offensive assistant.The visit with the Cowboys, who include former Baylor receiver Terrance Williams, was the fifth NFL camp Briles has been to this summer. He has also been to Tennessee, Cincinnati and Cleveland, and also watched the Los Angeles Rams work out while in California.Ive never had the chance to get out and make the rounds, you know, so its been really refreshing to me, Briles said. Im getting ready for the next adventure and this gives me a great opportunity to come see a lot of guys that Ive had the privilege to coach.Among some other questions Briles addressed:- About his son and son-in-law still at Baylor: Theyll coach their tail off. Theyll do great. Theyre professionals. Theyll coach hard for Baylor. ... Im thankful for them and hopefully theyll have a great year.- Briles said he has known Grobe, the 64-year-old former Wake Forest coach, for seven or eight years. Great guy. Perfect situation for him cause hes just a real good man. And no ego. So hes going to come in and let those guys go to work and let it be as it is.- He hopes to be in a new job by the end of the year, knowing that positions are certain to come open as they do every season. He left open the possibility of an NFL position. Swell Marble Bottle Australia . Bryant, who signed a five-year, $34 million contract as a free agent with Cleveland in March, reported symptoms on Monday morning, a team spokesman said. Cheap Swell Bottles . William Carrier opened the scoring for Cape Breton (6-4-2), but Andrew Ryan tied the game and Brent Andrews put the Mooseheads (8-6-0) in front for good with a short-handed goal at 13:49 of the second period. http://www.swellbottleaustralia.com/ . It was just business as usual for the Thunder at home. Durant scored 32 points and the Thunder beat the Bulls 107-95 on Thursday night for their eighth straight win. Cheap Swell Bottles Australia . He just needed to be his best twisting, turning acrobatic self. "I didnt need to be anybody else, I just needed to be myself and be aggressive," said Burks, who scored a career-high 34 points to spark the Utah Jazz to a 118-103 victory over the Denver Nuggets on Monday night. Swell Bottle Sale Australia . "I dont know that were close," said general manager Alex Anthopoulos. "I just think, right now, the acquisition cost just doesnt work for us right now. I dont know if I can quantify how far off or things like that that they might be but I would say we continue to have dialogue. Who is the best quarterback in the NFL right now? The list of names is pretty familiar, even if each player has some flaws. Cam Newton?is the defending MVP, although his play has dropped off dramatically in 2016. Russell Wilson was phenomenal during the second half of 2015, but likewise, he has suffered a bit this year with a coalescing offensive line and a knee injury. Ben Roethlisberger is injured. Tom Brady is, you know, Tom Brady, but he was suspended for four games after the Deflategate scandal. Aaron Rodgers is struggling.I named Matt Ryan as my quarter-season MVP, and think you can make a case for Ryan, Drew Brees, Philip Rivers, Andrew Luck?or Derek Carr as being worthy of consideration, if not necessarily the honor itself. I am going to throw another name out there, though: What Matthew Stafford has done over the past season of football deserves to put him in the discussion.The phrase under the radar is always silly when it comes to the NFL because nothing about football is underreported, but Stafford has hit a new level over the past 16 games, a stretch that coincides with the promotion of Lions quarterback coach Jim Bob Cooter to offensive coordinator after Joe Lombardi was fired. Staffords previous offensive coordinators, in awe of his prototypical arm strength, had built offenses designed to stretch teams downfield with throws to Calvin Johnson. With Megatron taking a step backward thanks to injuries and the Detroit offensive line undergoing construction, Lombardi began to build a scheme designed to get the ball out quicker and create throws that utilized Staffords arm strength for short-distance accuracy. Cooter has taken those concepts to another level.You can see the difference between what Stafford has done under Lombardi and Cooter in two GIFs. Thanks to TruMedia, here are the plots of every Stafford pass under Lombardi (from 2014 until his firing in 2015) and Cooter (in the 16 games since). They look reasonably similar:Now, lets look at those same plots again in terms of efficiency with a pass grid showing his passer rating in various quadrants of the field. Red means Stafford was better than league average (hot) in the respective zone, while blue means Stafford was worse. This one makes Staffords improvements under Cooter quite obvious:The difference is staggering. And the results have been noticeable. Stafford has put together an All-Pro caliber season over his past 16 games. He has completed nearly 69 percent of his passes, while throwing for 4,310 yards, with 35 touchdowns against just eight picks. The shorter passes have crucially cut into Staffords interception rate, which had been his biggest problem. Through the end of the 2014 season, Staffords career interception rate was 2.7 percent. Since Cooters promotion, Staffords INT rate has been nearly halved, dropping to 1.4 percent.In terms of rate statistics, Staffords résumé is as good as anybody elses in football. Comparing him to the other qualifying passers (224 attempts or more) since Week 8 of last season, Stafford ranks near the league leaders in most categories:QBR rewards passers who throw passes farther downfield, but likely underestimates just how hyper-efficient Stafford has been throwing a steady diet of shorter throws. The only quarterback throwing shorter passes than Stafford over the past year has been Teddy Bridgewater, and the only quarterback who has put a higher percentage of his passes on target has been Sam Bradford. Other quarterbacks have similar passing profiles, but Stafford has been more accurate than just about anybody else in the league.Check out that drop percentage, too. Despite throwing a ton of short passes on target, Stafford hasnt gotten a lot of help from his receivers. Theyre dropping 5.6 percent of his passes, which is absurd; the only passer with a higher drop percentage over the same time frame is Blaine Gabbert. The league-average drop rate is 3.9 percent. Give Stafford a league-average drop rate, turn those drops into his typical completed pass (which generates a little over 11 yards), and hes completing 70.3 percent of his throws and averaging 7.7 yards per attempt. His passer rating hops up to 107.6, leapfrogging Brees and trailing only Wilson, both of whom have drop rates below the league average.Its important to bring up his teammates, of course, because Staffords career has often been defined or analyzed through the lens of his best teammate, Johnson. Even when Stafford played well, there was a perception (and at times a reality) that he was being bailed out by one of the greatest receivers ever. Golden Tates success on arrival helped matters, but the specter of Megatron still loomed over everything Stafford accomplished.Now, though, Johnson is gone. Stafford is doing this with Tate, Marvin Jones, the 36-year-old Anquan Boldin, and Theo Riddick. Hell get Eric Ebron back eventually, and the tight end the Lions famously chose over Odell Beckham Jr. and Aaron Donald may be a useful weapon, but nobody in this group is a Hall of Famer. Riddick was a sixth-round pick. Tate, Jones and Boldin all arrived in town and have been more productive and impactful than they were in their previous stops. The Lions havent skipped a beat despite losing Johnson to retirement and seeing both Ebron and their top two running backs (Riddick and Ameer Abdullah) goo down with injuries.dddddddddddd Stafford is making the guys around him better.Hes also not getting much help from his defense. The Lions D was dead last in DVOA heading into this week. Theyve allowed only 23.2 points per game since Lombardi left, but that has been in part because Staffords offense has been super-efficient. The offense has scored on a higher percentage of its drives than any team outside of the Panthers, turned the ball over less frequently than anyone besides the Bills and Patriots, and has handed the defense the leagues ninth-best average starting field position.The defense has responded with the NFLs eighth-worst three-and-out percentage, the fifth-worst takeaway rate, and the worst touchdown rate in the red zone by far. Detroit has allowed opponents to score touchdowns on 77.1 percent of their red zone drives over the past 16 games, with the league average at 56.4 percent and the 31st-ranked Saints at 70.5 percent. When youre worse than the Saints at something on defense, something has gone horribly wrong.The same unit that cost the Lions a win by failing to properly defend an Aaron Rodgers Hail Mary last season has been dangerously ineffective in the fourth quarter this year. The Lions defense has blown five fourth-quarter leads this season, including three double-digit leads and two separate leads against the Colts in Week 1. Consequently, each of Detroits victories this year has required Stafford to score a touchdown to either reclaim the lead or break a tie in the fourth quarter.On Sunday, Detroit led 13-3 with 13 minutes to go and had a win expectancy of nearly 94 percent, only for the defense to allow consecutive touchdown drives of 75 and 76 yards to Kirk Cousins, who kept the ball on a read-option play for the first time this year and sprinted past Kerry Hyder for a 19-yard score to put Washington up 17-13 with 1:13 left. Washingtons win expectancy there is 99.5 percent, but Stafford promptly drove the Lions 75 yards in 43 seconds for a miraculous victory.The other historic knock on Stafford has been his salary. Stafford entered the league as a first overall pick in the era of the old collective bargaining agreement, which yielded a seven-year, $72 million deal with $41.7 million in guarantees in an era where that was top quarterback money. Thanks to subpar cap management and repeated restructures, Staffords rookie deal accelerated such that the Lions had to offer the former Georgia star a three-year, $53 million extension before 2013 to create more cap room. In part, Staffords salary (and the cap mismanagement, the larger culprit of the two) helped push Ndamukong Suh out of Detroits price range when the defensive tackle left for Miami in free agency.The rest of the league has caught up, and the Lions have done a better job managing their cap in recent years, but Staffords 2016 cap hit is $22.5 million, the fifth-highest figure in football. In years past, it was fair to wonder whether Stafford was actually a net positive for the Lions, given that he was being paid like a top quarterback and performing closer to a league-average starter. Now, though, Stafford is providing return on investment for Detroit. Hes likely to negotiate a new extension this offseason with the final year of his deal coming due in 2018, and on this form, Stafford will deserve the mammoth extension he is sure to receive.Theres a lesson to be learned here: We are almost definitely too confident in how we assess players and their level of play. This is really the third version of Stafford. There was the guy who couldnt stay healthy his first two seasons behind a terrible offensive line. Then there was the Stafford we knew between 2011 and the middle of 2015, the guy who would throw a ton of passes and mix highlight-reel throws with backbreaking interceptions and ill-fated decisions in the fourth quarter, delivering roughly league-average play on the whole. (Never mind that he led the league with five fourth-quarter comeback wins in 2014.)The Stafford weve seen over the past 16 games has been another quarterback entirely. And hes not the first player to take a sudden leap after previously establishing a distinct level of play. Think about Andy Dalton, who was just good enough to be disappointing in Cincinnati before putting together one of the best seasons in football in 2015 and building on it by being just as good in 2016. Or consider Bradford, who might have struggled Sunday against the Eagles but has otherwise excelled during Minnesotas 5-1 start after years of mediocrity.Bradford could go bad -- it has been only four impressive games for him -- and both Dalton and Stafford could regress to their prior selves. At the same time, though, the fact that each has been able to pull this for full seasons is telling in itself. Context and situation is everything in the NFL. Brady can look like a fool for a night in Kansas City behind a terrible offensive line and win a Super Bowl four months later. Rodgers can look unbeatable for a year and turn ordinary overnight. We dont think of Stafford as a superstar because of his past, but with each passing week, the evidence continues to suggest that Cooters promotion has him playing like one. ' ' '