UMFan83

Hiring Jim Harbaugh would be great for your franchise, but if he chooses to leave CFB, he's gonna probably have his pick of the Dallas and Minnesota jobs too. Or at least 1 of them. Gonna be hard to say no to coaching teams that already have that level of talent to work with.

It's been that kind of year for the Vikings.

Geez that is truly beyond awful. They need flex picks like NBC does. GB/Atl or Chi/Phi or Bal/TB would all be much better games.

C'mon, he knows with that talent he can get them to win. Also consider the fact that they haven't played 1 minute with Mike Miller this year, who would immediately be the 4th best player on the team when he's healthy, there is a lot of room for growth. As much as I take pleasure in the Heat sucking, I can't deny that there is probably a sleeping giant on that team

Til February they are saying. I think I read that they are signing dampier though.

I don't even think Wade was supposed to play today because of his injury. He gutted it out and killed the team because of it.

If Miami was in the West, I'd seriously start to wonder if they were gonna make the playoffs.

I've been buying the stats that say that Miami is the best team in bball despite the record. But why do they keep losing? Sure they blow out teams....some of them. But against others, they lose. I keep telling myself that they will eventually gel and turn those close losses into close or blowout wins, but they are struggling against teams they shouldnt struggle against. Now Indiana is definitely a decent team this year but c'mon. PS I realize its not over but just to be in this position is surprising.

When is the last time that no Cubs player got a single vote for MVP or Cy Young? Edit: it happened 2 times in the last 35 years (since 1975), in 1986 and 1994.

I'm with ya on the disclaimer but even still on the game Collins started the rushed for the most yards a bears team has in almost 15 years so I'm not sure the bears even had a huge knock in rankings for that game. The biggest factor that's weighing them down is the oline and in particular pass blocking which was historically bad until a couple weeks ago.

Of course, those haven't taken into account this week's results. Also, the Bears should get a bit of a disclaimer for 6 quarters of Todd Collins football. Sure but I don't know how much of a bump we will get. The bears already rank 6th in their d rankings so I'd expect a bit of a bump. The offense is 30tj and is a huge gap below 29th and was nothing special in all metrics on Thursday. So they might be like 20th or something.

According to Football outsiders efficiency ratings the Eagles should be number 1 and the Bears should be 24th.

I keep thinking about how big these 2 games are. Actually how big this game is in particular to set up the rest of our season. If we can win this game, we are 8-3 with the worst team left on our schedule coming up. By no means is Detroit a gimme, although it seems like several close losses have killed their spirit a bit. But its a game that we should win if we are a playoff team. And if we beat Philly, theres no reason to turn around and lose to Detroit. I honestly think this team can beat Philly. And I am pretty sure that we will at the very minimum have a very close game on our hands. We haven't been blown out against anyone this year and with how good the defense is playing, I can't see even a good offensive team like Philly blowing us out.

Well the Packers did shut out the Jets in New York as well :) I'm aware of that. I'm talking about how their league leading point differential is built up over the last 2 weeks by playing teams that essentially have given up. Not saying the Packers aren't good. Not saying the Vikings weren't at a similar spot when they played the Bears the week prior. The Packers are a great team. I don't think they have the resume to be the number 1 team in people's power rankings.

Mccarthy for OC, Childress for Special teams. Lovie can be Defensive backs coach when he gets canned.

but omgz Miami is 8-5 how are they number 1, thats a jank system!! Who made that list ESPN??? Amirite!

The post I meant to reply to was yours, in which you said you don't see how they could win. Right? They've stunk in Minneapolis, but they've also been a pretty weak team for a long time. And 7-9 teams tend to lose road games in the division to anybody that doesn't suck balls. If Chicago doesnt' take a step back the next few games I could see them winning in Minnesota without having to take luck into account. Every NFL team has talent. Detroit is talented, but they have only 2 wins for a reason. Cincy has loads of talent but only 2 wins for a reason. The Vikings have a lot of talent but they have 3 wins for a reason. A lot of it is old and/or banged up and their flaws go much deeper than head coach. I said I don't see them winning, but I didn't literally mean that I don't think they can win. I just meant that it's gonna be harder to win then it was if Chilly wasn't fired and the team continued collectively falling into apathy. We just do strange things in the Metrodome, and it scares me with a potential revitalized team waiting for them. I guess we should see how they respond before I start throwing out proclamations like that though.

Childress isn't why the Vikings struggled. They might get a bounce with the coaching change, but that will fade over the next three weeks' worth of games before Chicago arrives. Leslie isn't going to bring Moss back, and he isn't going to make Favre change his stripes. I'm not conceding that game until we see how the next three week's shake out. I'm not conceding any game, but understood. I'm not conceding any game either but it is gonna be tough. The amount of effort the Vikings put into their last couple of games is questionable at best. The Vikings are still relatively talented. They are better than other 3-7 teams out there you would think. The Vikings players supposedly hated their coach and were mired in a funk of controversy and undisciplined play. Say Leslie gives them a little bump. Say they win a couple of games in a row. The effort is there, the players like the coach, and although the playoffs are highly unlikely, the team has a new common goal to finish the year strong to keep Leslie as their coach. Suddenly a Monday night game in the dome seems a lot more difficult than it did yesterday. I'm not gonna pretend that Brett Favre is randomly gonna stop throwing INTs like he's auditioning for a role in ABC's movie of the week: "The Rex Grossman story". I'm not going to hide the fact that the Vikings are a bit banged up and the Williams wall is not the same as it was 2 years ago and the secondary is questionable, etc. But it will most likely be a more difficult game than I had hoped for, in the stadium we've won in only 1 out of the last 9 games there.

I'm waiting for students to discover Touchdown Jesus with a tear running down His face at some point.

The season will probably end with a fizzle this weekend. Let's hope Michigan is at least competitive in the bowl game. This game against OSU is going to be painful. The majority of the projections I am seeing suggest Michigan is gonna end up at the Insight Bowl playing Missouri. I can't see us being favored in that one. Considering there's a good chance that Michigan won't have beaten anyone with a winning record this year going into the game (if ND loses to USC and Illinois at Fresno St.), it's gonna be a tough matchup. Edit: Didn't realize UConn is all the way up to 6-4 this year, but they have Cinci and South Florida to finish the year.

I'm surprised they didn't just make Favre the interim coach.

Nice....it definitely had to be done your right. That will be the move that wins the division for the Packers most likely. If the Vikings get a similar bump in effort as the Cowboys did, I can't see the Bears winning in our house of horrors, on a Monday night no less (when everyone plays their ass off...see Bears/Vikings last December).

Yeah for the Bears to have a chace to win, they're gonna have to keep the Eagles under 24 points. Gonna be an interesting matchup of contrasts. Our units somewhat match up evenly with each other. Scoring rankings Bears offense: 25th Bears defense: T-1st (GB) Eagles offense: 2nd Eagles defense: 20th

The division is a much safer route to go than the wild card if you want to make the playoffs. As far as the Wild Card goes, there are realistically 4 teams fighting for 2 spots: Bears/Packers loser Saints Bucs Giants Technically the Redskins (5-5) have an outside shot as well. But based on having 4 different 7-3 teams fighting for a spot, I'm starting to wonder if 10-6 is not going to be good enough to make the playoffs. Will the Giants go worse than 4-2 and the Bucs finish 2-4? In that case 10-6 will take a WC spot. If the Giants go 4-2 or better, and/or the Bucs do better than 2-4, we're looking at a 10-6 team not making the playoffs most likely. I wouldn't go handing the divisions to the Falcons and Eagles just yet, either. In reality, there are 7-8 teams fighting for 5 spots, between Atlanta, Philly, Chicago, Green Bay, New Orleans, Tampa Bay, New York and maybe Washington. At this time, I think the odd teams out are going to be Washington, Tampa Bay and Chicago, but there's still plenty of time left for those teams to improve, or the other teams to get worse. Yeah what I really meant was there are 4 teams fighting for 2 spots: -1 of GB/CHI -2 of NO/ATL/TB -1 of PHI/NYG/WAS I just chose the teams that are currently not in a sole division lead. At this point, I am a homer so I'd say the 3 teams out will be TB, NYG and WAS :)

How has NE not been impressive? They are 8-2 this year and have beaten Miami, Baltimore, San Diego, Pittsburgh and Indianapolis this year. GB does have the best point differential in the league, but I guess I just don't credit them to destroying a teams that have given up. Kudos to them for playing well and not taking their foot off the pedal but the last 2 weeks they've destroyed 2 teams with a combined record of 6-14 by 66 points. Don't get me wrong it certainly is impressive to beat an NFL team by that margin, but based on the teams played it isn't enought propell them over a team like NE at this point. Or Atlanta.