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I would be very opposed to it. Either it's a rule or it's not a rule. At the end of the game, the team leading by a point does not get a do-over on a shot clock violation. Since you brought up basketball, in the NBA they do get a warning the first time they are assessed a delay of game (the second time is a technical foul). That's probably the closer analogy to the pitch clock.

There are 3 tiers of 2nd contracts for RBs. The elite tier is 15-16M/year = McCaffery, Elliott, Kamara The 2nd tier is 12-12.6M/year = Aaron Jones, Henry, Mixon, Chubb Then the 3rd tier is all the way down at 7-8M/year = Conner, Fournette, Ekeler Now there's a guy in each tier that probably shouldn't be their (Elliott down 1, Henry and Ekeler up 1), but I think Montgomery would rightly value himself in that 2nd tier. Maybe he's not on Derrick Henry's level, but he's clearly better than Fournette and James Conner. And Barkley obviously belongs in that elite tier. So, you're talking about 12M for Montgomery vs. 15M for Barkley. Barkley is worth that difference. Now to be fair, Montgomery may not get 12M on the open market as all those guys re-signed to avoid hitting the market, so there may not be an open market to pay a guy that much. But that's besides the point for the Bears who would be paying for him NOT to hit the market. I guess there's a scenario where he hits the market, realizes he's not valued in that 2nd tier and signs back with the Bears for like 7-8M/year, but that's risky for the Bears to let him hit the market. And still, if the Bears miss out on Barkley, they could go much cheaper than 7-8M for a backup RB and give the reins to Herbert. I was surprised when you got to the part of Montgomery being in the second tier. I do not think the broader public views it that way. I just looked at a few different lists for the top FA RB's for example, and Montgomery is usually 5th on those lists. That would be a stunning contract for me if he got 12 million a year.

The Dodgers have an $100 million per year head start on every other team in the league via their tv deal, the Cubs are far from poor but they don’t have a structural advantage that approaches it. https://blogs.fangraphs.com/lets-update-the-estimated-local-tv-revenue-for-mlb-teams/ How many concerts happen at Wrigley a year that they don't have to split the profits with any other team? Looks like about 10 per year. How much do you think that adds to the bottom line? BTW, the Dodgers who were only averaging 3-4 concerts in the years before the pandemic had 9 last year. If that continues, that's not even a revenue booster for the Cubs over a team like the Dodgers.

Transactions is a hard one. It is really only needed as its own forum for certain periods of the year, but when it's needed it's really needed. In November and December when rumors are flying and teams are actively signing players, it is really helpful in having that in one place rather than having the rest of baseball in one forum and the Cubs in another. Same thing for July before the trade deadline. It was even more helpful before mega threads were common, but even now it's very nice to be able to go to the forum and see threads for all the players who have been signed with a glance and then go into the rumors threads after that.

As someone who hasn't watched much baseball the last couple years, I can tell you from my experience that this change is going to make me more likely to tune in this year. If I felt like I was likely going to fall asleep in the 7th inning, I just wouldn't tune in. The fact that the games will end earlier will help, but also the faster pace of play will help me even being tired stay engaged in the action. Now, there still are challenges. I've fallen out of the habit, and the only way I can watch the Cubs is if I switch back to traditional cable which is not happening right now. If baseball fixed that issue, that also would go a long way.

The Ravens are going to franchise Lamar in some way. Even if they do the non-exclusive one, if the Bears signed him and the Ravens didn't match the Bears would have to give up two first round picks. If this was done before the draft, I can't find this for sure but my guess is the Bears next pick would be one of those two, so the #1 pick would be going to the Ravens.

If you are trading Fields you'd better be 100% certain that Fields is not the guy and that the guy you draft is the guy. You are basically staking your career to that decision. I like GMs that aren't afraid to take some risks but that is way too much of a gamble based on what we've seen from Fields so far. This feels like some variant of sunk cost fallacy. You should make whichever decision you believe is best, neither deserves "you better be certain to not pick me" status. I think the psychology of it does matter in the case though. Is the Bears keep Fields, nobody knows who they would pick otherwise. If they trade him, that #1 pick gets compared to what Fields is doing every single game. The patience level from the fanbase goes way down. If he's only ok as a rookie, it's so much worse than it usually is for even a #1 pick. So it might not be right that the two scenarios are judged differently, but it has to be factored in that they will be.

I was able to catch the last 8 minutes of Indiana-Illinois. The refs called every single little thing the entire way down the stretch. It's been a long time since I've seen a game called that tightly. In that stretch, it hurt IU more than it did Illinois, but I think the calls themselves were pretty consistent.

Didn't the most questionable review go against Philly by bringing that catch back? I thought the other two reviews were obvious calls. As for the penalty at the end, yeah it's sad that it hurt the entertainment value of the game on a call that is sometimes missed. And I haven't seen great video of what was described. But what was described by both the referee and the Eagles defender is a pretty clear foul that changes the play.

As far as the Bulls winning 8 straight, Jordan himself has said multiple times that he doesn't think they would have. Considering that is so different from his usual mindset about everything, I have to think that reflects his true feelings. Here's one quote from 1998: https://www.espn.in/nba/story/_/id/29050123/michael-jordan-phil-jackson-jerry-krause-one-nba-player-stand-most

Presumably since free agency starts in March the Brady decision one way or the other will have been made way before the draft. I think everyone would agree if the Raiders got Brady that would eliminate them as a trade up possibility.

I think he missed one last week too. Reminds me of Parkey ruining our playoff win when he should have been replaced a long time before. hasnt there been a ton of missed xp's this year? of has it just been the Bears? It had actually been the best regular season league wide percentage for extra points since they moved the line back (94.6%).

You're welcome, now please give the Colts a good deal on the #1 pick!

This is what my wife was saying to me. They were always going to intubate him and sedate him. And then it will be awhile before they truly see how he is. All the things that doctor listed are definitely good signs that give him a better chance than most of recovering, but it will take time to know for sure.

Not to mess you up further, but I got two updates this afternoon. Hopkins is dealing with a knee issue, and McCoy has concussion symptoms so it will be David Blough starting this week for the Cardinals.

Uneducated ramblings of a casual soccer fan here: I described soccer to someone else as normal play being a team needing basically 3-4 awesome plays strung together in order to get a goal. The joy in the game comes from the rising excitement level as the first play comes together, then the second, then the third. The hard part about it is the last play is the hardest one of the string, and often it doesn't even come close to being completed. The exceptions to these rules are transition play (which is always exciting) or a giveaway, which just doesn't happen that often on the WC level. ' I'm not sure if the game itself is more or less exciting on a lower level. More giveaways and mistakes which open up exciting moments, but on the other side even less amazing strikers that completely change the game. The one thing I'd love to change as a casual is that I'd love to assign 0 points for a 0-0 game in the group stage. Force teams to get out and try to get a goal. And it would create even more permutations and drama for who gets out of the group.

No. They are still one of the four teams with one loss or less, so they still have a case. I think they are likely out, but it wouldn't utterly stun me if they weren't. The last two days have officially broken fivethirtyeight's model :lol: I almost always like their models, but that is a pretty insane result right now.

It's odd to me when people take something that very well may be true and use a comparison that distracts from that. The Lions were up 22-0 on the Commanders at halftime and Wentz dropped back over 50 times in that game, many of those times when the Lions knew very well a pass was coming and could rush the passer at will. The Bears might be awful at rushing the passer, but using a drastically different type of game to illustrate that point doesn't help prove that point.

I took a cursory look at it. That was my impression too. I also understand that they have a higher tier, for more money, but it only gets you the ability to stream replays of the games. Seems like a waste of money to me. It's worth noting that people overseas can buy all the games live......so this whole crappy setup is due to the DirecTV contract, which hopefully goes away after this year. I get that DirecTV showered the NFL with money to keep that exclusive rights package but in the process the NFL lost a lot of ground in their nationwide offering to all fans. All the other major sports are way ahead and have been for years. Also there's the fact that the NFL app is about as user friendly as a fighter jet cockpit, but that's another story... Yeah, it seems like the only reason they released the app is to test things out before it goes fully operational when the DirecTV contract ends. All the reporting suggests the NFL doesn't plan to do Sunday Ticket on their own app. They are planning to sell that package to one of the big streaming services. As TT says, this package is really just a limited one for people who would like a cheap way to get their local market games but don't care that they can't watch it on a TV.

I don't love that. I will miss having home and home series against each NL opponent. There really is no point of leagues anymore except as an arbitrary split for playoff purposes. Sent from my Pixel 6 using Tapatalk That's seemingly still possible if they lower the amount of division games. Something like 12 games against your 4 division opponents (48 games) 6 games against the 10 other teams in your league (60 games) 3 games against the 15 teams in the other league (45 games). That leaves 9 games to put wherever. That would be way more balanced in terms of comparing teams in different divisions. Edit: Saw your edit after I finished mine, sorry.

I have no idea what to think about Wentz. I can tell you his stats do not tell you how awful he was for the last stretch of the season. There were plays to be made on the field, and Wentz was so inaccurate that they wouldn't be close. Throws behind receivers when they weren't supposed to be, throws too high. It was really, really bad. However, he didn't look like that for a stretch in the middle of the season. In the middle of the season, he would certainly have his Carson Wentz type of plays where he would take a crazy chance. But he also had long stretches of really good play. He did have COVID before the last two games which absolutely could have affected his play. But he started struggling before that point. Hence my struggle to figure out how to categorize him.

We're familiar. But we've also seen it with a legitimate (non-blitzing) pass rush. Oh yes, I'm definitely aware :) One of the names the Colts may look at is Lovie actually. Eberflus never had the pass rush in Indy. Buckner has been great on the interior, but there was never a consistent edge rush.

I don't know if Eberflus will be a good head coach or not, but I would not be worried about Colts fans reactions. The Colts have had some version of the Tampa 2 for a large percentage of the last 20 years. Watching the soft coverage, the easy completions, and the lack of blitzing while waiting for turnovers gets very old for some fans after awhile. It's essentially the version of the baseball team that hits a fair amount of home runs and strikes out a lot too. It can be effective, but it can also be very frustrating to watch for too long.

I'm bringing this back up since you referenced it a second time. It may be technically true that the coin toss winner team wins exactly half the time if you take out the playoff numbers and include the ties as "non-wins", but it's pretty misleading. Because if you do exactly the same for the non-coin toss winner teams, the non-coin toss winner teams only win 43.4% of the time even when taking out the playoff numbers (with the other 6.7% being those ties). That's still a pretty healthy advantage for the coin toss winner.

If baseball was all played in a different country and only had widespread television access to the US market in the last 20 years, it wouldn't be very popular either.