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Blanco appears to be the only one on the 40 man out of that group that is out of options. Fuld has an option and so does Hoffpauir. Tracy has a decent chance but of course could be stashed in the minors also unless he has a release clause. Snyder and Millar probably have no chance. I think Blanco and Fuld likely have the spots to start the year, but I think even if Fuld wins the spot to start the year he'll be the casualty as soon as an IF gets hurt or Lou decides he wants more pop on the bench.

Quietly isn't exactly the adjective I'd use. Theriot and his agent have watched Hendry hand out ridiculous contract after ridiculous contract. Why shouldn't Theriot ask for a ridiculous contract as well? Based on that really awful Aaron Miles contract alone, I'm guessing Theriot will win. Not exactly sure what he's going to win in the big picture, but he will probably win this particular stand off. Theriot can't use the contract of Miles or any other free agent contract in his arbitration hearing. They aren't relevant to his case.

If they structure 96 like I think they might (top 32 given a bye) I think it would be great for all schools involved. There would actually be incentive to be an 8 seed while now people would rather often be a 10. The small schools at the bottom of the tournament will still get to play a big school and get exposure, but playing a 9 seed will give them a much better chance of an upset than a 1 seed. Even with an expanded field, there will probably be less mismatches overall as the 1-2 seeds will likely have a decent opponent from the very first game. And then of course the benefit to all those schools who will get in the tournament from the beginning. I think this is pretty much a win-win.

Did some mad scientist combine Tom Moore and Jim Mora? :D Apparently. I can't tell you how many times I have done that. "Playoffs!" And Tom Moore has no plans to retire. The Colts offensive line coach Howard Mudd is retiring. But Moore has said that he will coach until they don't want him anymore. He almost had to retire last year because of the pension situation, but now that's been settled and Moore should probably be there through at least the end of the Peyton years.

I would want to go for it because the alternative is not bad. The Jets backed up on their 1 yard line are not going to do anything fancy. They aren't going to take any chances that early in the game of giving up the turnover that changes the game (or a holding call on Freeney or Mathis in the end zone). So they'll punt it right back to the Colts and the Colts will probably have it in Jets territory. I think Stover can be pretty accurate from 45 in, so the advantage of having the field goal being so close isn't that much. I do understand the argument of only needing a certain amount of points, but I feel that pinning the Jets on the 1 yard line is going to give the Colts an extra 2-3 points anyway on average from having them out at the 23-25. So I think it's a very minimal risk to go for the touchdown there.

That would have been a pretty impressive day by him if he had made both. 44, 48, 52. On average a good kicker will miss one of those. Of course the Colts probably wouldn't have let up on the last drive and simply ran the ball on all 3 downs near the goal line if the Jets had 23 either.

I think it was supposed to be a quick snap sneak but the ref would not let them snap the ball for some reason. They should have stepped back and called another play when that happened. I haven't seen the Colts call that play in 2-3 years though. And I definitely think they should have gone for it there.

The Cubs are in a similar situation as last year regarding Pie. They don't have room to carry 5 OF's all year. The 5th OF has to have options left (which is one reason why Gathright couldn't stay on the team for long last year). The Cubs may carry 5 OF's to begin this year, which leaves a bench of Hill, Blanco, Baker, platoon partner, and Fuld. As soon as they want more pop off of the bench or one of the infielders gets hurt for 4-5 days, Fuld will be back in the minors. Pie might have been an option in trade for the open CF spot earlier in the offseason, but the signing of Byrd pretty much eliminates any opening for him.

Mike Fontenot as the only viable backup shortstop? Is there someone he's forgetting? It will probably be Hoffpauir instead of Branyan, but I have a hard time seeing another backup infielder making the team right out of camp. Hasn't Lou basically said Andres Blanco will be the backup SS? Yes, Lou has said that he says Blanco as the backup SS. It will probably be down to either Hoffpauir or Fuld for the final bench spot with Fuld having the edge right now.

So if the Colts and Vikings make the Super Bowl, the AFC Pro Bowl team will now be missing: All 3 QB's, two of the 4 WR, starting tight end, starting left tackle, backup center, both starting defensive ends, and the backup free safety. The NFC will be missing: 1 QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, 1 starting tackle, 1 starting guard, starting center, 1 starting defensive end, 1 starting defensive tackle, 1 outside linebacker, 3 CB, a kick returner, and the special teams player. And that's assuming that all the members of the losing teams from the conference championship games show up. I don't think that's a good assumption to make but I don't know how many to knock out because of that. So that's 27 players missing with potential for more out of 84 including many of the most high profile players.

Yeah, it's kinda funny that there is so much demand for predictions in the media when their predictions aren't any more or sometimes less accurate than any joe blow predicting. The media in general pick horribly. They only seem to care about what happened the last 3-4 weeks and base their predictions on that. Here are some examples: -The Saints dominated all year, scoring the 9th most points in NFL history, having a very opportunistic defense, and a legit home field advantage. Unfortunately they couldn't go undefeated, losing at home to Dallas, and with nothing to play for anymore lost their last 2 games. This caused everyone to jump ship and choose a team that gave up 45 points last weekend over the Saints at home after a bye week. Simply idiotic. - A nitpick although I mostly agree with your overall point, but the Saints still had something to play for in their second to last game. They were playing for homefield advantage when they got beat by Tampa Bay. They then had to wait for the Monday night game when the Bears beat the Vikings in order to clinch. So they had a 2 game losing streak entering their playoffs with their last game not counting since they didn't even play Brees.

Dempster was a good #2 last year and was an ace the year before that. Is there anything that makes you think he's going to collapse from what he did last year? I'm not sure I'd call the rotation a big question mark. Sure, it would definitely help if they signed a risk like Sheets who could provide another possibility of great production. But this rotation as it currently stands is at worst average and most likely above average in the National League. And that's anticipating a severe regression by Wells and Lilly missing a month or two.

I don't have access to the article but the Cubs payroll obligations for their already signed players is around 100 million in 2011 (that includes Ramirez coming back on the player option). I'm not sure where they are getting the almost 125 million unless they are doing something really strange with signing bonuses. That's still poor but a huge difference when talking about a payroll of 140 million overall. The Cubs don't really have many contracts where the player is well overpaid. Their problem is that they have a couple badly overpaid, a bunch of guys who are making about what they should, and simply not enough discounts on their roster (either cheap free agents or young players). They've been so risk averse because of the endless pressure to make the team perfect to win that year. The whole point of discounted players is that they have risk and the Cubs have caved and paid for safe production over and over again. If they let the current core ride for the next two years, they really aren't in that horrible of shape. The current team has a chance with hitting the right breaks to compete during that time frame. And the rebuilding with a new core can happen gradually during that time. The Cubs are starting to have the farm system that can help with that and they just don't have many contract anchors that will really destroy the process. Now if the Cubs go out and sign several of their players whose contracts are coming up in the next year or two (Lilly, Lee, Ramirez, Fukudome) to more big deals, then they will be in serious trouble. But all those players are reasonable bets to be good to great over the course of their current contracts.

If that's what you want, that's fine with me as well.

Well, they are paying 9 million for Lugo to play for the Cardinals this year. Ortiz will almost certainly be overpaid this year. Lowell is a huge question mark and will likely not be worth anywhere near his salary this year. When you include the posting fee Daisuke has been a disappointment so far and it is uncertain if he will ever live up to that huge deal. Their contracts they handed out this year are risky but it is too early to call them poor. I didn't look at their short contracts for their bench players and relievers. They don't have a Soriano on their roster, but they have several examples of questionable to poor type of contracts.

Choi was good. 1B is a tough position. If you limit it to 50 games started or above Choi would probably be the leading candidate (Karros would be right there as well but Choi had the bad few games in 2002 which probably breaks the tie). If you're willing to go lower than that then Mabry would be the top guy.

I don't agree with this. The Bears led by 7. If it was a 1-6 point lead, then you take timeouts to avoid losing the game without getting the ball. Worst case scenario with a 7 point lead is OT. And the Bears were at home, so I have no problem with the way it was played. Home teams have virtually no advantage in OT (I saw one statistic that said they win 51% of OT games). The question becomes what advantage do the Bears get by not calling timeouts? It didn't hurt the Vikings. They still had plenty of time to not hurry and call their entire playbook. And it had a potential benefit to the Bears with a good kickoff return to have time for more than a couple plays.

The tiebreakers are simply awesome this year. Denver is the #5 seed as of today but they don't control their own destiny while two other teams behind them do. And then of course look at how Denver can make the playoffs: 1) DEN win + NYJ loss or tie + BAL loss or tie 2) DEN win + NYJ loss or tie + PIT loss or tie 3) DEN win + NYJ loss or tie + HOU win 4) DEN win + BAL loss or tie + PIT loss or tie 5) DEN win + BAL loss or tie + HOU win 6) DEN tie + NYJ loss + BAL loss + PIT loss 7) DEN tie + NYJ loss + BAL loss + HOU loss or tie 8) DEN tie + NYJ loss + PIT loss + HOU loss or tie 9) DEN tie + NYJ loss + PIT tie + HOU tie 10) DEN tie + BAL loss + PIT loss + HOU loss or tie 11) DEN tie + BAL loss + PIT tie + HOU tie 12) PIT loss + BAL loss + HOU loss + JAC loss 13) PIT loss + BAL loss + HOU loss + NYJ loss 14) PIT loss + BAL loss + JAC loss + NYJ loss 15) PIT loss + HOU loss + JAC loss + NYJ loss 16) MIA loss or tie + NYJ loss + BAL loss + HOU loss + JAC loss or tie I'm not sure I've ever seen a team with 16 different scenarios to make the playoffs in the last week. This could be made very easy if the Jets and Ravens do win on Sunday. Otherwise this race could be one of the most complicated ones in history.

I am somewhat fine with the Colts resting starters but the way they did it was exceptionally poor. Announce that you're going to rest them before the game if you're going to do it. Or if you're not going to do that, then pull them early. Pulling them when playing a couple of more possessions would have very likely won the game is terrible. It was still a close game and the Jets would have been careful not to throw any cheap shots late in the game. There was little danger and as the game went along the chances for going undefeated grew bigger and bigger. The only way I would have supported pulling them that late in the game is if another offensive lineman had been hurt and they decided to be careful because of that. But the offensive line starters didn't even come out of the game! The Jets have a chance of getting this break twice in a row. They moved the Jets-Bengals game to Sunday night. If everything goes as expected on Sunday, then New England will very likely have clinched the 3 seed over Cincy based on SOV earlier in the day (obviously needs a NE win as well). Cincy still has a mathematical chance to catch them in that but they need almost everything to go their way next week. So if that happens, the Bengals will also have the situation where they can lay down versus the Jets and then play them in the first round.

I'm not trying to support Hendry other than the fact that some of the suppositions about how easy his job should have been are probably incorrect. He didn't walk into a great situation and he didn't have this massive payroll advantage for his entire tenure. It would have been an amazing GM job to completely overhaul the offense (which is what was needed because when he got the team the offense was both not that good and the only good players were aging quickly) and have the team rebuilt to have them solidly in the playoffs during 05/06. Hendry did do a decent job of rebuilding that offense, but he also destroyed the one thing the Cubs had going for them when he took the job by hiring Baker and letting him destroy the young arms. That led to the terrible seasons in those two years. Since then, he's done a mediocre job of spending money and building a team. There have been some extenuating circumstances, but he still has plenty of reasons to lose his job. He's easily replaceable. But he hasn't done such a horrible job that it should be a no brainer that he loses his job either (we've seen several GM's around the country that are that bad). He's just one of those guys in the middle tier of GM's who is going to lose his job one day because he hasn't done enough.

Opening day payroll and win totals during the Hendry years: $79,868,333 88 $90,560,000 89 $87,032,933 79 $94,424,499 66 $99,670,332 85 $118,345,833 97 $134,809,000 83 Thanks for the effort. That's pretty similar to what I was looking for, but I do note Goony's observation that the payroll is affected by other parts. Since Hendry took over the team, only once has he been able to match the level of production he got from the 2003 and 2004 team. That's not good. Especially if you take into consideration the significant increases. 50m doesn't buy what it used to. And speaking of 50m not buying what it used to, if you take the Yankees out of the equation, how much of an increase do the other 29 teams show over that same timeframe. I'm not referring to each team individually, but rather all of them combined. I sense that payrolls are smaller today than they were in 2003. They were handing out ridiculous contracts on just about every team between 2000 and 2003. While the Cubs have enjoyed a nice increase over that time, most other teams have reduced their payrolls. In addition to what Davearm said, it looks like that other than the Cubs or the Yankees, the other 28 teams have increased their payroll by an average of around 15-16 million over that timeframe. 8 teams have cut payroll while 19 have increased (1 team was almost exactly the same). 12 teams of those 28 have raised their payrolls by 20 million or more. 10 teams of those 28 have raised it by 30 million or more. 5 of those teams have raised it by 40 million or more. Now if we were looking at just the last couple years, the Cubs payroll was exploding a lot faster than other teams. Before that it was pretty normal growth.

They only hold the tiebreaker over Miami and Houston if they don't tie with them and another team. So, the Titans will make the playoffs at 9-7 if no team other than Miami OR Houston finish 9-7, but not both of them. Well, they have the tiebreaker over Houston regardless. But Miami is a different story. And there are lots of scenarios that could possibly involve the Dolphins. They could win the division, which would be bad for Tennessee as Tennessee cannot beat NE in any 2 or 3 way tiebreaker. They could possibly beat Denver or Baltimore in certain tiebreakers which would then cause Denver or Baltimore to eliminate Tennessee. So if either Denver or Baltimore win their 9th game the Titans also want them to win their 10th game just to avoid that scenario. And NE beating Jacksonville would be very helpful for the Titans because it not only gives the Jags a loss it also makes it impossible for Miami to win the division.

It affects both in the markets these cities are in. In Chicago for example, they originally were going to see their game, the Packers game, and the Cincy-San Diego game. Now that their game is moved, they'll see their game, Miami-TN, and probably the Detroit-Arizona game. Both games ended up changing because they don't want to play a game on the other channel at the same time the Bears are playing.

Now the whole country will get to either see the Falcons-Jets or Cardinals-Lions. And now even less people will be able to see the Cincy-San Diego game (since the Philly market will likely be shifted to the 1 pm CBS game since their game is now at 4:15). I really wish it was a CBS doubleheader tomorrow.

I can always appreciate your level-headed observations and you are probably more accurate with the reality than most of us, but the last sentence in the above quote disturbs me a bit. You make it sound as though all trades happen because a team has personality issues with someone, when we really don't know why players are traded. Teams trade players they like all the time. Kenny Lofton sure bounced around, as did Reggie Sanders. I don't think anyone can honestly say that each time Bradley was traded was due to his misconduct or poor behavior. Do we honestly know why he was traded from Montreal to Cleveland? Zach Day was a pretty nice return for Montreal in exchange for Bradley. How about the trade from Cleveland to LA? Franklin Gutierrez and a PTBNL is a pretty decent exchange, also. I don't remember any issues until he actually got to LA, where a fan hit him with a bottle or something. He lasted 2 years in LA before LA traded him for Andre Ethier, another pretty good trade. I recall the Cubs being interested in him then, also. They loved him in San Diego. And they loved him even after he got himself hurt. The one issue was actually a pretty legitimate complaint on Bradley's part, and no different than just about any other situation a typical player goes through. The manager was simply trying to get his player away before suspensions became a part of the equation and in the process, Bradley messed up his ACL. Freak accident, but no one in San Diego turned on him. I don't remember any problems in Oakland, either. Texas loved having him there, and it sounded like for the right price they might want him back. Sure, he's had issues time and again, but I can't agree that all of the trades or team changes are because he's a marked man that no one wants. I have no idea why he was traded from Montreal. I know he had been suspended in the minors for spitting gum at an umpire, but ultimately the Expos situation is uncertain why they decided to trade him. Here's a link to why he left Cleveland (and he had plenty of issues there and the article has brief references to several of them): http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=1773330 Basically the end was when he got into an argument with his manager and it was bad enough that he was barred from training camp and quickly traded. Here's a link to why he left the Dodgers: http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2258032 Bradley had multiple suspensions in 04 along with a confrontation with a reporter. He also didn't get along with Jeff Kent and claimed Kent was a racist which was the stated reason for the Dodgers eventually trading him. The police also had to come to his house for domestic violence calls 3 times in 05 after he had been arrested for another incident in 04. In Oakland, everything was fine for a while until Bradley was battling some injuries. Oakland wasn't willing to guarantee him playing time as they had a crowded outfield when he got back and Bradley was upset about that so Oakland ended up DFA'ing him (they later were able to trade him before the 10 days were up). Here are some quotes from that story: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/06/22/SPGH6QK00S1.DTL I don't believe San Diego got rid of him because of his attitude. The ACL incident was well publicized but the Padres seemed to support him through that and I believe they offered him a small contract even with the torn ACL. Texas wanted to keep him but was unwilling to offer more than 1 year and Bradley wanted multiple after the 2008 season. And the Cubs got rid of him for off the field attitude reasons. So that's 4 out of 7 teams that seem to have gotten rid of him because of off the field problems, 1 that is uncertain, 1 that is unlikely, and 1 that just wasn't willing to offer multiple years. I didn't say that every team he's been with had gotten rid of him because of his attitude. But several teams have.