bukie

In comparison, here's the top 16 according to Sagarin's rating this morning: 1. Green Bay 2. San Francisco 3. New England 4. Detroit 5. New Orleans 6. Baltimore 7. Buffalo 8. Chicago 9. Dallas 10. Houston 11. Atlanta 12. NY Jets 13. Pittsburgh 14. Cincinnati 15. San Diego 16. Tampa Bay Sagarin also says the Bears have played the 3rd toughest schedule in the league to this point, behind Atlanta and Dallas.

The Bears are now seven games in, and have played their division once each and the entire NFC South. They will also proceed to play the entire AFC West in four consecutive weeks, which seems weird and unusual to me.

The Eagles' only wins thus far are against a historically awful St. Louis, and a squeaker at Washington on the annual Rex Grossman Implosion Day.

Lets look at their chances of getting a win... Miami: @NYG, @KC, vs. WAS, vs. BUF, @ DAL, vs. OAK, vs. PHI, @BUF, @NE, vs. NYJ Comment: Ouch. The only winnable games there are KC, Was, Buf and Oak, all 4 of those teams you have to catch them on a bad day to beat. Legitimate 0-16 possibilities. Indy: @ TEN, vs. ATL, vs. JAX, vs. CAR, @ NE, @ BAL, vs. TEN, vs. HOU, @ JAX Comment: The AFC South is [expletive] and they still have 2 games left against the Jags who might be worse than the Colts. They also still have 2 games against really mediocre up and down Tennessee and a decent Carolina team. They will likely get at least a win despite them probably being the worst of the 0-fer teams. Rams: vs. NO, @ ARI, @ CLE, vs. SEA, vs. ARI, @ SF, @ SEA, vs. CIN, @ PIT, vs. SF Comment: Strangely enough, St. Louis has yet to play an NFC West team and doesnt for another 2 weeks. That says everything right there. 2 games left against Seattle and Arizona plus a game against Cleveland and another against Cincinnati (decent right now but still not sold that they are a playoff team). If they don't win a game they truely are the worst team of all time. So my prediction is St. Louis 3-13, Indy 2-14, Miami 1-15 Here's an NFL oddity with current scheduling: It is only possible for a maximum of 4 teams to go winless in the NFL in a given year (since each team plays an entire other division in their conference). So, the possibility of 3 is pretty rare.

Only if two teams played identical SOS. If not, the team that played the weakest schedule would get the first pick. Odds are that'll be St. Louis, since they get to play the other two worst teams in the NFC twice each.

Since Indy, Miami and St. Louis don't play each other this year, there exists the possibility of 3 0-16 teams.

Best part about tonight: the WS will still be going on when it gets upstaged by the Theo press conference Tuesday.

3 games lead with the tie breaker. Do we ever consider the 49ers a legit threat to win the NFC? I haven't seen them play once. Of course it is a 3 game lead that is what I was trying to imply but I screwed it up. And I don't. Sorry to all 49er fans out there. You can expect a sternly-worded letter in tomorrow's Williston Herald.

I spent the post-2003 offseason arguing that aramis ramirez actually sucked when he came over because of his lackluster OBP. I was in favor of the Choi for Lee trade, even though I liked Choi a lot. 2002 Aramis Ramirez was the worst cleanup hitter in modern history. He was also playing on one leg, but that didn't stop Lloyd McClendon. He needed that bat in the Pirates' lineup if they were going to get a playoff spot.

My son is 4, and his favorite Cubs are Starlin Castro and Theo Epstein.

I was in the "Hey, he's got to be better than Don Baylor/Bruce Kimm, right?" camp. I guess that's 5.

I was pretty focused on winning the WS that year, at least early on. Then [expletive] started to go really wrong and dimmed the my long term view quite a bit. Yeah, same here. By the end you had the health issues with Wood and Prior seriously rearing their heads and they were my main reasons for the confidence before the season started. I was still pretty confident that they'd be in the mix in 2005. Hell, even after that mess of a season I still had hope because of Lee's monster season and thinking that at least one of Prior or Wood would bounceback and anchor the rotation. 2006 smashed a lot of hopes, but then they bounced back so dramatically for 2007 and 2008. I guess it really wasn't until after 2009 that I was finally like "OK, they're toast for the time being". I was pretty optimistic in 2008, because the team was pretty clearly the best team in the NL, which was the first time that had happened in about 25 years (and only the second time in 60 years).

Whatever you believed about Tebow coming into this week, you still get to believe it now.

If the playoffs started today, believe it or not, the Bears would be in.

That's two big NFC wins against likely the two next best contenders. The Philly game coming out of the bye is huge.

Nah, run it again.

Ok, now run it in.

Forte!

The Mets actually have a good front office now with Alderson, DePodesta and Ricciardi.

To all those who don't care, I respond with Dusty Baker and Don Baylor. I care a little. However, I also trust the front office to make the right choice, and it's been a long time since I thought that.

They will predict that this being a done deal means that the Red Sox have humongous leverage on the Cubs and will begin to extract major talent. They think the way this worked out is somehow embarrassing to the Cubs, and the Red Sox won the stalemate simply by stalling until after the World Series starting. As if not having Theo in the mold for a week has held up any other moves the Cubs would otherwise have made that they somehow can't make anymore.

LOL at this part. Ricketts will throw a die into the air, and the prospect assigned to the number that lands goes to the Red Sox.

Romo/Stafford. Although, I'd probably use Terrelle Pryor if it was against STL.

It appears Ricketts' assassin got to Lucchino, then.

Um, what's the other 13%? Margin of error.