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Only 2 of 10 Urlacher's similar players through year 10 on football reference are in the hall of fame, and only 3 of the 10 of his career similar players have made it. I don't think he's a lock at this moment. As for Lewis, through year 14 7 of his 10 comparables are in the HOF and 7 of his 10 career comparables are also in the HOF. I'd consider Lewis a lock and players like Brooks, Urlacher, and Thomas as probables. One of those three could easily get left out though. by and large i see the same names from year to year for both of them. and, as i stated, Urlacher has primarily played in a system where he was under a considerable more amount of pressure to cover area. Urlacher has essentially been playing a hybrid safety/linebacker combination position that a lot of those guys couldn't play. you also conveniently failed to mention that one of those guys whom Lewis is compared to through year 10 is not in the hall of fame because he's Brian Urlacher. That's because I didn't look at the comparables for Lewis through year 10. I looked at the final year for both of them right now-Urlacher through year 10 and Lewis through year 14. I appreciate your point about Urlacher's position, but I doubt the HOF voters will get that nuanced. They're more likely to see Lewis's ring as a point in his favor rather than consider Urlacher playing a harder MLB position...especially because the perception of the Bears is they play Cover 2 where the MLB isn't that important (of course, the Bears don't play a traditional cover two precisely because of Urlacher's talents). If Urlacher has four more Pro Bowl seasons in a row he'll be where Lewis is now. There's nothing to indicate he can't do that right now, but I'd still bet the chances are less than 50/50. It's just hard to predict any non-quarterback to sustain a high level of play that long. Really that's the only main thing Lewis has above him though is longevity.

Indinapolis can't show a FOX game at 1:00 because of the Colts being at home. That's why you see little pockets of green also in Detroit, Nashville, Buffalo and NYC. The Dallas game is the only option for those markets.

Only 2 of 10 Urlacher's similar players through year 10 on football reference are in the hall of fame, and only 3 of the 10 of his career similar players have made it. I don't think he's a lock at this moment. As for Lewis, through year 14 7 of his 10 comparables are in the HOF and 7 of his 10 career comparables are also in the HOF. I'd consider Lewis a lock and players like Brooks, Urlacher, and Thomas as probables. One of those three could easily get left out though.

right on both accounts I was thinking Bruce Matthews but he only played 19 seasons.

April 5th is late? didn't they open up on like April 11th this year? Game 1 was on April 1st this year.

I have a hard time seeing how this team competes in 2012 without Ramirez in the lineup. The drop off from Ramirez to the next best available 3B in the free agent market is enormous. Nick Punto or Jose Lopez won't cut it. It's possible someone like Vitters steps up in the next year or two, but there's absolutely no guarantee Vitters will even stick in the majors. Plus, trading for a 3B would be a dicey proposition, considering how much a team would likely have to pay for someone like David Wright or even Maicer Izturis. If the Cubs could trade for a good 3B and/or upgrade at another position (2B or RF) in addition to landing Pujols or Fielder, I'd consider letting Ramirez walk. Otherwise, retaining Ramirez needs to be a priority for the Cubs in the offseason. It doesn't seem like it would be that hard to get all three salary wise simply by backloading the FA deals handed out a bit. Make the first year for Wilson/Fielder/Pujols less like the Soriano deal and when their salaries go up for the 2013 season, Z's $19M will come off the books. I'm not sure that will even be enough to keep payroll from going up. That would partially depend on if Pena's 5 million is on the 2012 budget or not and it would also partially depend on if the Cubs are planning on keeping relievers like Samardzija and Wood.

Nope. If this was a different organization I'd probably be cheering for it just for the fun of it. But I don't like having a guy with patience issues trying to get to an arbitrary number of hits by year end. Production isn't about a specific number of hits and Castro still has a lot of learning to do. But oh well, he's good enough to not get screwed up by it. He's probably good enough not to get screwed up by it. Still, it makes me nervous that he's taken exactly 2 walks in September. 2 walks is pretty much on pace with the rest of his season. It's his 3rd highest walk rate of the 6 months. And September is his lowest strikeout rate of the season.

I guess I don't understand the question. You can recover the ball if it doesn't cross the line of scrimmage, but you still have to make the 1st down after you recover to keep possession. Otherwise people would get their punt blocked as a strategy.

If the Cubs aren't going to roster him this winter then they shouldn't roster him now. Rostering him and then de-rostering him makes it more likely to lose him than exposing him to the Rule 5 draft.

If the Cubs keep him on their 40 man roster than he'll be under team control this winter. I can't quickly find if he used all his options with the Mariners (he used at least two) so I'm not sure if the Cubs would have the ability to option him to the minors next year or not or if he would have to stick on the major league roster.

I would expect the Colts to play better in future weeks. Houston is maybe the worst matchup in the whole league for the Colts. The Colts have looked awful against them several times over the last few years. This game could have gotten ugly even with Manning. But all the flaws of the Colts that Manning has been obscuring over the last couple years came out in full force yesterday. Interesting to see Mario Williams admit that they were simulating the snap count to induce false starts which of course is a penalty.

And that was before last night...now LaHair is at .500/.565/.950. All kidding aside though, if the Cubs like his bat I think they have the luxury of keeping him on their bench next year. With Barney starting at 2nd, that makes keeping another backup SS unnecessary. Baker and DeWitt can backup pretty much every position besides SS, C, and CF. So you have a backup C, a backup CF (that could be Colvin, Campana, or a free agent), Baker, DeWitt, and that still leaves one bench spot. There's no real need for that to be another defensive backup so the Cubs can afford to put a bat in that spot, and if they think LaHair can put up a .750+ OPS he could be it.

That's really close. IIRC, the first down isn't the stick but where the last chain ends. It looks like the football is really close to there but I can't see it well enough to see if it made it or not. It definitely should have been reviewed though because the spot wasn't even for sure correct.

The Cubs had 37 losses on quality starts just last year.

who did they predict for the WC? Sorry I never answered this. Rosenthal has the Falcons and Cowboys. Florio has Saints and Eagles (with the Cowboys winning the division). Did the Cowboys add anyone to a 6 win team? How am I missing the sudden rise to playoff-caliber status? Romo being healthy is enough? More PFT staff picks.... http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2011/09/07/the-pft-postseason-picks/ Of the 5 that pick, 4 picked the Cowboys in the playoffs, and the one that didn't had the Lions. The Cowboys went 3-8 in games decided by 7 points or less last season. Add in the return of Romo and the fact they were a playoff team the year before and you could see why they are a popular pick to rebound. Also they were 5-3 after the coaching change last year.

Wonder how he'll get the MVP Award now Easy. If the Colts go 4-12 without him, how can Manning not get the MVP? People have speculated for a long time how good the rest of the Colts roster is around Manning. It looks like we could be finally finding out.

That's a great combination to have. If they could just improve either their power or their walks to be average (they don't necessarily need both) they'd really have something. A hitter really needs two of the following three tools to really be successful: batting average/low strikeouts (low strikeouts by itself isn't that important but it does help keep BA high and also helps players translate from level to level), power, walks. It doesn't really matter which two, but having just one unless it's extremely elite isn't enough.

Maybe, although this was a little different of a situation then tennis coverage where they aren't contractually obligated to cover any individual match. Anyway, the schedule was very tight. With the NASCAR race starting at 11:00 there was a decent chance it was going to run into soccer even if there hadn't been a small rain delay. I understand the frustration, but this happens anytime there are two sporting events scheduled back to back like this. Usually, the earlier event gets the priority unless the later event is considered much more important. And in this case, NASCAR was both the first event and also probably considered the more important one.

This is the second time in a month that ESPN has done this too. No shock that they delayed showing the second live event until the first one is done. In this case, I don't see how it's ESPN's fault that they have had so much rain in Atlanta. It's ESPN's fault because they had a block from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. ET on ESPN2 with nothing to show because the U.S. Open tennis matches which were supposed to air there were cancelled. So rather than have two things on channels they weren't supposed to be, ESPN could have switched NASCAR to ESPN2 and left the soccer game right where it was, thereby not screwing over tons of people who recorded the game on ESPN but couldn't switch because they were at work. And what happens to the NASCAR fans who were recording the race on DVR and suddenly it switches right before the end of the race? They have the same argument. It doesn't make sense to switch the event that is going to have higher ratings and is near the conclusion for the lower rated event that is just beginning.

That's what I'm wondering. Don't know where IMB is though and it looks like the draft time has been canceled for now until he makes that change.

This is the second time in a month that ESPN has done this too. No shock that they delayed showing the second live event until the first one is done. In this case, I don't see how it's ESPN's fault that they have had so much rain in Atlanta.

No injury that I know of. It sounds like he's been cleared of any charges in a shooting this offseason. But most people around the league agree those two pro bowls were a joke (he was good, but wouldn't have been a Pro Bowler on another squad). He definitely seems to have a bad work ethic and tends to do his own thing on the field instead of staying within a system.

Colts fans were surprised by this one, but from ESPN writer Paul Kuharsky:

I don't know if it will hurt as bad as people think. The Bears were excellent on kickoffs, but they only had a 1.6 yard difference between the average of their returns and the average they gave up. They had just under 60 kickoffs last year so just under 100 total yards advantage on kickoffs. Their punt returns while less returns (33 returns, 39 returns defended) were where they gained huge chunks. They had a 9.3 yard average difference. And the new kickoff rules should help a good punt returning team because there will be more punts from deep inside somebody's territory than there were before.

I think his bat has gotten better this season (the knock on him was always that he should be hitting for more power then he was, and this year is his best power season yet) but I would agree that it hasn't improved enough for him to be better than a low tier starter at second or a solid utility player. I think his numbers could still project slightly better than that over the next couple years as his BA has some room to move up, but he's close to his peak.