bukie

hyperbole galore here. Given that only a single word in that entire quote could even be interpreted as hyperbole, the irony here is that your 3 word reply contained more hyperbole.

there 2-3...they lost to the bears which they didn't play better than...They ended up getting beat pretty handily by Dallas. The closest they got was the Washington game which I will give you they outplayed them. Also statistics aren't the only thing that matters when factors in how good a team is. No, the Eagles significantly outplayed the Bears statistically in the game, despite the score. Statistics matter much more than wins when determining how good a team is now and how good they will be going forward.

Baltimore and Philly both outplayed their opponents statistically despite losses. Whether they won or lost the game has no bearing on the stats and statistical rankings.

I'd say the opposite. I think Orton can detect the pressure a lot better than Rex, and sets up the blocking scheme to handle it.

Their defense has been far and away the best in the NFL to this point. The offense is average and the ST is bad, but the defense offsets that enough to put them at #2.

Team rankings for this week according to DVOA: 1. NY Giants (56.7%) 2. Baltimore (42.5%) 3. Philadelphia (32.7%) 4. Tennessee (28.6%) 5. Washington (24.5%) 6. Carolina (20.3%) 7. Dallas (18.1%) 8. Arizona (16.6%) 9. Pittsburgh (15.0%) 10. Miami (14.7%) 11. Chicago (14.4%) 12. Tampa Bay (13.7%) 13. New Orleans (9.9%) 14. San Diego (7.9%) 15. Denver (7.0%) 16. Atlanta (5.9%) 17. Buffalo (3.1%) 18. Green Bay (2.7%) 19. Minnesota (-0.5%) 20. NY Jets (-1.5%) 21. San Francisco (-4.3%) 22. Oakland (-6.3%) 23. New England (-8.8%) 24. Indianapolis (-9.1%) 25. Jacksonville (-10.7%) 26. Cleveland (-24.9%) 27. Seattle (-27.9%) 28. Cincinnati (-31.9%) 29. Houston (-38.7%) 30. Kansas City (-54.0%) 31. Detroit (-65.2%) 32. St. Louis (-65.3%) What it all means: - Positive is above average, negative is below average. - The NFC East is really good, and Philly is better than they look. - Miami is clearly the class of the AFC East right now, oddly enough. - New England, Indy, Jacksonville, and Seattle are nowhere near good teams right now. - The bottom 7 teams are clearly worse than the rest of the NFL. - Detroit and St. Louis are comparatively worse than the NFL more so than any team is better than the NFL. Those ratings are two of the worst 5 ever recorded after four games.

According to this weeks Defensive-adjusted Value Over Average (DVOA) stats, the Bears are now better than only two teams on punt returns: Pittsburgh and Dallas.

Chicago-Atlanta is hardly a clunker, though.

Last week it was rated 9th overall, above average in both pass and run defense (slightly higher in run D). As opponent adjustments come in, the rating will look better, as the teams they've played have ended up better than projected (aside from the Colts). It'll probably be better in this week's ratings, also.

You could always switch it up for a few weeks and go with "the team that plays Detroit".

I'm also not saying that the Big Ten is for certain the second best conference in the nation. I'm just saying a reasonable argument can be made, and it can. The conference isn't nearly as bad as most people are making it out to be, and nowhere near as bad as the ACC, Pac-10 or Big East. Yes, even though USC is probably still the best team in the country. It really isn't a ridiculous position to argue.

That final score of the Missouri game is a bit misleading and you know it. UI scored a meaningless TD with no time left to bring them back to within 10. And I believe Maclin missed a big portion of the game, too. Was the game a blowout? No. But Mizzou won it fairly handily. C'mon. Don't put me in the lame position of having to defend those clowns. In summary: Donglashings aplenty from the Big 12's top 3 if they played in the Big 10. It was a 10 point game for a good portion of the second half too. Mizzou scored a TD with 5 minutes left to make it 17. It wasn't a one-score game, but it wasn't won handily either, and the outcome was very much in doubt until the last 5 minutes.

Don't worry, only half of that will be true next week. MSU is going to clobber Northwestern (sorry Jon). I really doubt that. In fact, I think NW is going to win that game. It'll probably be a close game, as I think MSU is a slightly better team, but with NW at home it will offset the difference.

Missouri beat Illinois by 10 on a "neutral" field (yes, I know the distance is equal, but nobody on the Missouri side of the state line roots for Illinois, so let's stop calling it a neutral field), and PSU beat Illinois by 14 at home. Neither game was a "donglashing", and Illinois isn't even the second best team in the Big Ten right now, so to say that Missouri, Texas and Oklahoma would crush anyone in the Big Ten is hyperbole at best, and an outright fable at worst. I think you overrate the difference between the top of the Big 12 and the top half of the Big Ten quite a bit.

Man I disagree with a lot of this post. Michigan is bad. That's why they're the ninth best team in the conference. It has little to do with the overall strength of the Big Ten. The Big 12 is way better. Way. They have 3, maybe 4 teams that would win the Big 10 easily. (MU, UT, OU, maybe TT.) KU and Okie State would be in the top echelon of the Big 10, too. CU would be a middling team. The rest of the Big 12 is average to awful, but it's certainly not worse than the middle to bottom part of the Big 10. Penn State has been just as good as anyone in the Big 12, so any of them winning easily is laughable. Those 4 are better than anyone else in the conference, though. OK State is probably better than anyone else other than Ohio State also, but after that, I'd probably list Michigan State, Illinois, Northwestern, Wisconsin. KU and Minnesota have eerily similar resumes this year, actually, and nobody thinks anything of Minnesota. Kansas is probably ranked more on their merit from last year than anything they've done so far this year. They beat nobody and lost to a South Florida team that is only ranked because people feel the need to keep someone in the Big East ranked (Scary enough, Pitt may be the best team in that conference). Iowa and Nebraska are also similar. After that, in the Big Ten we have Michigan, Purdue and Indiana, and the Big 12 has Colorado, Kansas State, Iowa State, Texas A&M and Baylor. Colorado is probably the best team of that lot, Kansas State, Michigan and Purdue are similar, and the other 4 are really really bad. So, in summary, the Big 12 has more highs and more lows, while the Big 10 has a lot of decent teams, with one great and one awful team.

The Big Ten is a lot deeper than it looked at first glance. After Penn State and Ohio State, there's a cluster of 4-5 teams in the 21-30 range (Northwestern, Michigan State, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota?). In a year where Michigan might be the 9th place team in the conference, it says more about how good the rest of the teams in the conference have been than how bad Michigan is (although, they are bad, don't get me wrong). The SEC is still the best conference top to bottom, but the Big Ten could actually be in the discussions for #2 (Big 12 has 5 great teams, but they are incredibly top-heavy), which almost seemed silly at the beginning of the year.

Well, the easy part of the Lions schedule is over now. No, seriously. Their most winnable game from here on out is probably a home game against the Saints.

Having a running back on your team about to turn 29 is usually a bad idea. Jacksonville went from looking good to being embarrassed by Pittsburgh in florida. that was some one-sided reffing in that game, and I was rooting for (betting on) Jax. How is losing 26-21 to a consensus Super Bowl contender an embarassment? The Jags haven't been particularly good this year, but I don't think last night was an example of that. I wasn't particularly impressed with either team, but with the Pats & Colts down this year they each probably have a legit shot. I think this is the year when the NFC is finally fielding teams that are better than the AFC. Right now I'd take the Skins & Giants over anything from the AFC in the Super Bowl. Heck, I might be inclined to take any team from the NFC East over any other team in any game at this point. The entire division has a combined 10-1 record against teams in other divisions.

See avatar.

Yeah, just look at that obsession. There's like 3 posts in that thread that mention the Sox in a derogatory way.

I'm going to go with "not a whole lot", since they look about as real as the seat she's sitting in.

Next person to use lime green for sarcasm gets smacked. There's no need to burn retinas.

Can I still wear my 1998 NL Wild Card Champs shirt? I'm going to wait to break out the 2003 NL Champ shirt until later in the playoffs.

Oh well, so much for the slim hope that the Cubs would score the first runs of the playoffs this year. :)

Prepare for a Phillies-White Sox world series: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/playoffs2008/news/story?id=3619261