UMFan83

I know rankings are beyond meaningless but I'm looking forward to seeing Michigan at 2 on Monday. Trey Burke is amazing.

This is one of the best non march madness games I've watched in quite some time

I can confirm from trusted sources that J'Marcus Webb is not on the injury chart and will play this weekend.

why don't we save time and just report on which starters are playing?

I loled We should throw that money at those Indian pitchers that were in the Pirates system a few years ago. One of them is still pitching. http://www.baseball-reference.com/minors/player.cgi?id=singh-001rin Just looking at his numbers they look alright, but he's super old for his league. Then again, he's only been playing baseball for 4 years, so... I'm not sure if I should be somewhat impressed or massively underwhelmed on that information. Actually after I posted that, I wiki'd them. The other one is now a serious javelin thrower or something. The wiki page is full of gems....

Rose - $19 Love - $15 (on current deal) Noah - $12 Gibson - $9.5 Butler - $1 MLE - $6 MLE - $6 MIN (x7) - $7 ----------------- Total - $75 Luxury tax line this year - $70m Sorry you lose. Edit: Obviously i dont know what the luxury tax line will be in whatever year this deal happens and I am plesantly surprised that $75 isnt outrageous. It's possible old man Reinsdorf signs off on that, especially if he can trade one of those MLE guys midseason when he determines the team isnt championship caliber to get under the tax.

I loled We should throw that money at those Indian pitchers that were in the Pirates system a few years ago.

No one deserves to get shot but that one bulls fan was acting like a damn idiot. Anyways, [expletive] philly...i [expletive] hate that place. spent 1 day there in my life and the number of rude people I encountered was astounding. fake edit: yes I probably deserved it fake edit 2: no i wasnt the dude that got shot

This is silly. Sanchez would be a nice signing, even if its a little more than I would gave him, but he's not a player who is going to make or break whether we contend next year (obviously), nor is his not signing going to ruin our rebuilding plans for the future. I know it sucks to be once again told the cubs have a done deal with someone only to have the rug pulled out from under us, but welcome to the world of twitter. If there's anything to learn its to stop taking anything on twitter as gospel.

Someone has to tell BMarsh that if getting 160 receiving yards couldnt beat the Seahawks or Vikings, there's probably not much he can do to help win even if he does blow up.

Thanks...I tried to search around for those kind of stats but couldnt find them. As fun as it is to take a terrible looking record of 14-46 and use it to rip on Lovie, it doesn't look all that bad compared to the average coach.

1. Indiana 3. Michigan 7. Ohio State 10. Illinois 13. Minnesota 19. Michigan State Quite a dropoff after that as no other Big Ten team received a vote for top 25 in either poll. As great as the top half is, the bottom half might be quite mediocre. Wisconsin looks like they are having a down year, Iowa looks a year or two away, Purdue is down, Northwestern isn't as good as last year, etc.

That number doesn't look good, but I'd like to see some other coaches records when trailing at the half. Usually when you are losing at halftime you are not playing well. On the other side, I think he's something like 50-10 when leading at halftime, which seems pretty damn good. 14 wins when trailing at halftime over 9 seasons is something like 1.7 wins per season, which doesn't seem all that bad. Maybe I'm way off though... Edit: And when I say 'doesnt seem all that bad' I mean relative to his overall coaching record. I'd probably be a little surprised if that was Bill Belichek's record, given that he wins 12 games a year, but for a near .500 coach like lovie, that sounds about right. I guess the whole train of thought is that Lovie is a bad coach when it comes to making halftime adjustments, not possessing the right offensive gameplan and being unable to help rally the team from a deficit. And that would be a fine train of thought if we knew that Lovie's record is worse than other coaches out there.

I saw that line earlier and was surprised. Chicago is home and they've been losing to runners, not through the air. But still, they look like garbage on both sides of the ball and should lose big. Yeah thats way too much respect given to the Bears

That number doesn't look good, but I'd like to see some other coaches records when trailing at the half. Usually when you are losing at halftime you are not playing well. On the other side, I think he's something like 50-10 when leading at halftime, which seems pretty damn good. 14 wins when trailing at halftime over 9 seasons is something like 1.7 wins per season, which doesn't seem all that bad. Maybe I'm way off though... Edit: And when I say 'doesnt seem all that bad' I mean relative to his overall coaching record. I'd probably be a little surprised if that was Bill Belichek's record, given that he wins 12 games a year, but for a near .500 coach like lovie, that sounds about right.

yeah, the browns aren't that bad. they're a competent qb away from being playoff caliber. Apparently RGIII just has a knee sprain, and might be back as early as this week.

We've won 8 of the last 9 games against them. The last two times we played them we blew them out as caused multiple players to lose composure and then the next game we almost pitched a shutout. How have they given us fits? I'm not saying its a gimme as we did lose the last time we played there but by no means would I say they've given us fits.

Well, they're going to lose to the Packers next week. So prepare yourself for that. Beyond that though, there's an Arizona team that shouldn't even be classified as an NFL team, and a Detroit team that I'm watching right now. And if I've ever seen a team in give up mode, it's this Detroit team. So, no excuse to lose those last 2 games, I don't care what anyone says. Agreed...but what I'm saying is that the Bears only have a decent shot at making the playoffs even if they win the last 2 and finish 10-6. They will lose tiebreakers to Washington, Minnesota, Green Bay and Seattle, so if either Minnesota or Washington win their last 3 games, the Bears will be out unless Seattle or GB completely collapses. Edit: BTW, the Redskins last 3 games are @ Cleveland, @ Philly and vs. Dallas. With the way they are playing right now, I could see them winning all 3.

I know I'm taking over this thread but wanted to point out that the Bears playoff odds went down 17.3% today, going from 95.1% to 77.8%. If they lose to GB next week, that result alone will drop the Bears another 18.4%, putting their odds at 59.4%...if they lose to GB and Washington, Dallas and Minnesota all win, that drops their odds down to 51.1%. After doing all this work, I feel a lot more pessimistic about the Bears playoff chances than I did a few minutes ago.

Ken Rosenthal ‏@Ken_Rosenthal Source: #Rays will send James Shields and Wade Davis to #Royals for Wil Myers and other prospects. Interesting trade. I wouldn't have done it if I were the Royals, but at least they get an interesting return.

A couple more things I'm looking at...I guess the playoffs aren't as likely at 10-6 as I thought. If the Bears finish 10-6 and their loss was to GB this is what we're looking at... -If Minnesota wins out (@ STL, @ HOU, vs. GB), and the Bears win out after losing to GB, the Vikings will win the tiebreaker and knock the Bears out. This is worrisome, even though i dont think its likely for a mediocre MIN team to win in Houston and against GB. There's a small chance that we are rooting for GB in week 17. -If the Bears, Vikings and Packers finish tied at 10-6, the Bears would be the odd team out -This is also the case if the Bears, Vikings, Packers and Seahawks all tie for the 2 WCs/NFC north division spots at 10-6 -If its Seattle, GB, Minnesota, Washington and Chicago finishing 10-6, the Seahawks and Redskins win the 2 spots with GB winning the division -Bears also lose 3 team tiebreakers to Washington and Seattle -Bears actually win 3 team tiebreakers if Dallas is involved -As far as head to head tiebreakers, the Bears of course win the tiebreaker over Dallas and lose the tiebreaker to Seattle. They will LOSE the tiebreaker over Washington, who will have to win out to tie at 10-6, and as we discussed earlier, will lose the tiebreaker to Minnesota. Again, this is all based on Chicago losing next week and winning the next 2, which to me seems like the most likely outcome in the last 3 games. If the Bears finish at 10-6 with the wins coming over GB and Detroit, and the loss to Arizona, the Bears odds change for the better, but they'd still lose tiebreakers to Washington, Green Bay and Seattle. To sum this all up, if the Bears finish 10-6 by going LWW, they'd better hope they are the only 10-6 team (besides Seattle), unless Dallas also finishes 10-6

Hah, I am playing with the playoff machine right now. Not that this is all too likely at this point, but if the Bears won their final 3 games, they'd still have a shot at a bye. SF is 9-3-1 and the Bears 8-5 SF's schedule is: @ NE @ SEA vs. ARI Playing in NE is a very good shot at a loss. With how good Seattle is at home, and they way they are playing right now, I'd say SF has a good chance to lose that one as well. At that point if the Bears were to go 3-0, the last game doesn't even matter. I suppose you'd still have to worry about Seattle winning the division at 11-5 at that point though. Seattle has @ BUF, vs. SF and vs STL. They could definitely run the table, and if they do the Bears can't get a bye. Also, the Giants could probably win out and have a shot to win the tiebreaker over Chicago. So maybe the chance isn't that great.

Despite being demoralizing, I think the Bears will still be determined against Arizona and Detroit. The one big thing that has gotten Lovie this far is his ability to motivate his players. Even if we lose to GB we'd still have a better than 50% chance at a playoff shot, so it shouldn't be too hard for him to motivate the team. Add the fact that players love playing for Lovie and his job would essentially be on the line, and I'm pretty certain they will get up for the game and have as good of a shot as any week. I don't know this, but I would guess internally the injuries are on the back of everyone's minds, and the losing generally began when players started dropping. I think they still believe they are a very good team and can get back to the level that the team was playing in during their 7-1 start. As a pessimist, I would point out the quality of teams that was a huge part of that start, but I doubt the players think that way.

False. The bears need to go 10-6. If they lose this week at worst they will be tied for a playoff spot. I think I saw somewhere last week that if the bears finished 10-6 they had a 97% chance of making the playoffs.

What was he saying? Next weeks game is gonna bury this team barring more Cutler to Marshall magic To paraphrase, Cutler should be grateful if the Bears resign him, since he can't stay healthy. Holy hell, that is [expletive] ridiculous. Someone needs to give him an exorcism. I think he's possessed by the spirit of Jerry Angelo.