BigbadB

After reading this game thread after the fact, I feel like maybe next time you should relax a little bit more when it starts raining. That was one of the most painful reads I've ever put myself through, and the Cubs kicked the Dodgers asses.

Tell your lame friend that if he was a true fan of any/or all 5 California teams, he'd get himself a nice motor boat and some season tickets. Some of those stadiums are right on the damn water.

Buffalo isn't moving into the top 8 from 28. No one will want to slide down that far in the draft. There will still be 1st round talent at WR at pick #28. I'm not sure why people think there is a story about Buffalo stealing a Bears WR candidate at 9. All you have to do is look at the year Justin Jefferson got drafted and ask if it's really a smart thing to do to give up draft capital to move up in the draft when there are so many talented WR's available this year.

He had time to set and throw on that play, which is what he should have done. Throwing on the run and off balance should be saved for the players that don't make a lot of errors.

They actually interviewed the coach at the half or during a time out and he said they weren't going to change anything. Gonna keep challenging the big guy. Great plan!

So you should remember that storm debris. I'd never seen anything like it and still haven't. Short and funny story at U of I. A buddy of mine from Peoria came to Champaign for a concert at Mabel's. To get there, we drive down Green through campustown. My buddy has a jeep with no doors and he has me drive since I know where I'm going. Lots of gorgeous girls walking around, but one is walking away from us, and we see one of the nicest butts on a girl we have ever seen. As we pass, we both do the slow head turn so we can get a front view, and it's actually my ex wife. While doing the head turn, I guess my arms did the turn at the same time, because the Jeep veered to the right started to climb the curb. I quickly corrected myself, but my ex knows that Jeep and I think we got her attention enough to make that a bit embarrassing. Oh well. Damn near crashed a car to get a better look at something I was once married to. Classic.

I wasn't even thinking of the betting aspect of win probability. I just figured these guys aren't prepared enough during the telecast to talk about the actual game and the actual players in the short 2+ hour time frame it's on. It makes me even more disappointed that it has something to do with gambling. I've lost tons of money in my life gambling. I've had some big wins. Overall, I'm down a lot. I've never bet on baseball, outside of personal bets with friends over whose team finishes higher in the standings and such. I've learned in my time of gambling that the house always wins in the end. I'm not the house, so I'm not doing it anymore. There's a reason these sites offer you 10x the amount of your initial investment when you first sign up. They are going to get it all anyway, so who cares if they donate that much to rope you in, get you to download that app and make it a regular thing to click a couple buttons in a couple of seconds and lose a few hundred weekly. If gambling will be front and center going forward, and more important than appreciating the sport for what it is, I'm out. And so will a lot of other people.

I was already a fan since they aired all of the Illini games in Peoria. But, I moved to Champaign on February 14th, 1989. The roadsides were 3-4 feet tall with tree branches from the ice storm that came through the day before. The mood was Illinois was going to win it all. I never got to a game that year unfortunately.

I almost picked up my tv and threw it across the room. I've never heard or seen a more worthless waste of time than showing/talking win probability. I literally yelled 5 different times that win probability is meaningless. What happened in the past doesn't mean squat to the present. I'm done with ESPN games this year. Congratulations ESPN!

This one reminds me of 1989 when the Illini with Nick Robinson, Kendall Gill, Kenny Battle, Marcus Liberty and Lowell Hamilton faced off against Michigan in a final 4 matchup vs. Michigan with Glen Rice and Rumeal Robinson. Close, but Michigan made their free throws to win it at the end.

NFL exec and ESPN analyst Mike Tannenbaum has put out a mock that has the Bears getting Harrison Jr. That's pretty outlandish. But, it gets better. He also has the Vikings trading the 11th pick to AZ for Kyler Murray while AZ takes McCarthy at #4. The Vikings currently have 11m in cap surplus, but rookie cap will eat into most of that, even after trading the 11th pick. So, please tell me, Mr. Tannenbaum, how exactly you expect the Vikings to squeeze Murray's 50m a year contract for the next 5 years onto their roster?

It's the perfect time to snooze all of those pages for the next 30 days and block those that you aren't actively following, but show up in your feed anyway. The draft is still 30 days away and we know who the Bears are drafting first.

The Cubs are going with Assad, the guy with an ERA of 3.05 in 109 innings pitched last year. What teams in the major leagues had better stats than that from their backup 5th starter? I feel like they have good enough pitching to go into the season, and then save whatever money they have left below that tax threshold for improvements to the roster at the trade deadline to gear up for a playoff run. They have the talent in the minors to get cheaper arms or bats than what Montgomery will cost, and they wouldn't need to be one year rentals.

I think it's better that your rookie QB comes into camp with a little swagger. If they take advantage of him, he'll get humbled a little bit, but you still want him to keep that confidence level. I don't care how good you can throw the ball or avoid a pass rush, you also need confidence to make plays. Fields clearly didn't have confidence to stick that ball in tight places or to make the throw to the right place. And it's nice that he'll be competing against a potential top 5 DB unit throughout camp. I also hope he keeps painting his nails for those homophobes out there.

Wait, this baseball announcement on my phone at 5am was for a regular season game?

Should make enough for gas money to California. Smart move.

I saw someone's mock yesterday with no trade downs. He had Caleb, Turner, Van Pran, Brendan Rice. I thought that seemed like a pretty good draft. Should be other WR's there if you don't like Rice. Goony went somewhere in his last post that I thought about when he talked about the 4th QB falling more than we might think. If McCarthy makes it past NYG without being drafted, I'd say there's a good chance one of Denver, Minny, Las Vegas or some other QB needy team tries to slide up to 9. Those first 3 are all within the 13th pick, and could still get you a top EDGE if the top WR's are off the board. The comp for moving from 9 to 13 is only about a 4th rounder, but a more QB needy team might offer more. Vikings only have a 4th after their two first round picks. Minny has Darnold. Denver has Stidham and might sign Tannehill?. Las Vegas has Minshew. Penix and Nix are still there, so maybe it comes down to how much one of those teams likes McCarthy more than the other two. If you aren't getting decent offers to move down from 9, I'd prefer they take either the top EDGE or WR there and call it good. It would seem like Minnesota would want to just draft McCarthy with their 11th pick, but that's pretty risky for them. it almost seemed like their trade to pick up a second first rounder might be to jump up even higher, like 3rd overall.

Exactly. It says a little something when a team pays you nearly 38m dollars to play anywhere else. He also got benched for Jarret Stidham. Pittsburgh isn't going to just dump the season. They have two guys at QB that are likely better than any of the guys they had last season, and they only owe those two guys 4.5m total this year, which is less than Trubisky, Pickett and Rudolph made. If Wilson isn't getting it done at league minimum, I doubt they wait too long on giving Fields a go at it.

Bulls announcers got duped last night on a fake Derrick Rose retirement announcement that they then announced on the air. So much crap out there. That's what I was trying to say earlier in this thread and maybe I shouldn't have included actual journalists/reporters, but there are a lot of people trying to pass themselves off as exactly that.

There were plenty of guys whose numbers spiked during the steroid era. Maybe not to the 60 HR level, but there were guys who had never hit much more than 20 in a season that were hitting 40 and 50 all of a sudden. Bonds, McGuire and Sosa were already prolific HR hitters, so it would make sense that their numbers were still more impressive than the Greg Vaughns and Brady Andersons in the league.

It would probably be more court of public opinion than legal repercussion, but I'd venture to guess that very little of the public would somehow be shocked or dismayed if Sosa finally admitted his guilt. Basically, there really is no reason to hang onto the lie any further. Lying was always the thing I hated most about the steroid era. Sosa, Bonds and Clemens were the guys I hated most about the lying. Andy Pettitte pretty much admitted right away that he took them, and I don't put him in the same group as the liars.

I so wanted Justin Fields to be the guy we've been waiting for all this time. They gave him 3 years to try to be that guy, and he just wasn't. The franchise definitely didn't help him, and I do believe having confidence in yourself to make those hard throws is part of being a good QB, and he didn't possess that, or lost it somewhere along the way. The idea of trading back from 1 again for a historic haul was tempting once again, but I think it's been known by Poles since Lovie Smith engineered that comeback victory that Caleb Williams was destined to be the next Bears QB. Poles has patiently waited 2 previous drafts to get "his" guy to lead his team. And he wants Caleb to be his guy so much, that he's loaded up the weapons room with guys to help him achieve that goal. I'm assuming another WR will be drafted that can possibly help immediately. I have a feeling Poles will try to extend Allen's contract to 3 years. It's a good retirement age for a WR and will help give the Bears more financial flexibility this year to sign some post June cuts and camp casualties for depth instead of counting on non factor free agents and UDFA's.

I was coming around to Goony wanting to just keep him if they didn't find a good deal. But, I was always a bit skeptical that they'd want a distraction of "former starter" always looking over the rookie's shoulder, and that was pressure management didn't want to put on him. I especially liked the idea of possibly moving him at the trade deadline or after a playoff caliber QB went down to injury. Oh well. I can forgive this knowing he's making the right choice in drafting Williams. With that said, it's a very disappointing return. Has anyone seen what kind of playing time will kick in the conditional terms? Russell lost his job to Stidham last year, so maybe Fields will get the necessary playing time. That would be 3 4th's next year if you include the Mooney compensation along with the Carolina 2nd. They also get an extra 6th for the Claypool trade, so they need to make a good pick on that one.

I saw a combination of what they got in return for giving up the first pick and CMC to San Fran and it's pretty bad.

Given Shelton was a one year deal, I'd add Center as the other position they should draft in the first 4 rounds. It could technically be done without trading back. Fields could still net a pick, too.