UMFan83

Looking through the teams receiving votes Michigan has as good of case as any right now...there haven't been very many impressive teams so far. Really? How many of those teams have given up 450 yards to an FBS team?

LOL UMass about to make it a 5 point game with 2-3 mins left.

This is like watching the Bears with all these 3rd and 4th down conversions by UMass

I agree....Big Ten teams are going to demolish UM. After seeing a performance like this, you have to wonder if UM can even make a bowl game. The key will be whether we can beat either Purdue or Illinois (assuming we beat Indiana). Last year we were unable to because our defense couldnt stop them for long stretches of the game.

Was it you that last week said that you were starting to worry about Michigan? It was you or another Iowa fan. When you said that, UM was up 21-7 over ND. From that moment until your comment above, Michigan got outscored 34-14. Luckily UM has scored 28 unanswered since that point but UMass is carving up UM's D yet again and about to score. This season is starting to look like a mirror image of last year.

Hey Fred, what's the Cubs longest winning streak this season?

He should be benched until the end of the year!!!!! :D Redeemed himself to end the game. I was just going to say that. Would have scored 1 and gotten the 2nd run to 3rd.

2 more errors by Castro tonight....

I don't feel like the season has crept up on me, but it's going to take some getting used to watching with the vast majority of the pressure off. Sure, I want the team to repeat. But I just feel a little more complacent, or I guess content. I hope the team isn't of the same mind though, of course. And I'm sure Q isn't. There is a lot that is going to push the returning Hawks to complacency no doubt. We'll get a good grasp on how mentally tough this team is. When you are under 25 years old and you've already achieved the ultimate team goal, it's very possible that even if their intentions are good, they can't mentally give the same bit of extra effort to win. Combine that with a fact that they have a ready made excuse if things start to go wrong (all the turnover), and I wouldn't be surprised if they had a really down year (really down meaning 5-6 seed in West). That said, there is a lot to look optimistically about this season too. The core players are all back. The defense is mostly back. The key returning players have limitless confidence that they can be a top team in the league, they've been through these battles before, they know what it takes. Bolland is hopefully back for the entire season instead of only 1/3rd of it, we'll likely have a lot of young hungry players working hard to earn PT. With no Huet, our goaltending should be reasonable stable throughout the year. The key is really depth. They could realistically compete for a repeat if they stay focused and get lucky with injuries. If they do have considerable injuries, it's gonna be a struggle to even make the playoffs because there is a huge dropoff of proven talent at a certain point. But I just can't see a team with Kane, Toews, Bolland, Sharp, Brouwer, Hossa, Keith, Hammer, Seabrook and Campbell being anything but a dangerous team.

It still boggles my mind that the season is starting up again tomorrow (preseason at least). It feels like a week ago I was watching the victory parade. Doesn't seem possible that we're ready to compete for a Cup again. I havent gotten my fix of enjoying it yet. Guess we'll have to try to win it again.

Interesting. I wonder if Torre thinks he's coming here.

But they didn't beat the Lions by 30, therein lies the reason people are down on the Bears. Some would say the Bears had nearly 4x the number of yards the Lions did but barely won because they are a flawed team that is poorly coached and turns the ball over. Some would say the Bears had some flukey luck with turnovers and a bad goaline offense, otherwise they win easily. Both could be right.

Bill Simmons goes from predicting the Bears go 3-13 this year, to becoming his "Hmmmmm" team (whatever that means) based off a 5 point controversial win over the Lions.

sounds about right. I would be absolutely stunned if any major or even local reported picked the Bears in this one. If their O-line starters were out again, I could see someone picking the Bears, just because such a big deal was made out of it last week. But now that it looks like they are playing, I don't think many will even make the score decently close. My prediction is Cowboys 24, Bears 20

Fred Taylor plays the Jets so that eliminates him. Barber-Williams is a pretty tough call. I would go Barber at home. The Bears looked really good at stopping the run last week, albeit against the Lions. Who knows if its a fluke, but when the Bears were a dominant defense a few years ago they were much more effective against the run.

What? A one time upper class organization that has been pretty crappy for a while now whose last really successful era was in the 70's? Kind of fits. Not sure who else is better. Kind of I guess, but the Orioles current level of crappiness is so far beyond the Dolphins it's not even really worth talking about. The Dolphins have had a losing record 4 of the last 6 years, which is terrible for them (you have to go back to '88 and then '76 to find another Dolphins losing season) but the Orioles haven't had a winning season since 1997. But yes, both franchises were at their best in the 70's, for whatever that's worth. I get that it would be hard to make a good match and all. Yeah like you said its hard to match every team up perfectly. They are as close of matches as I can find for each other. Like Jersey said, successful in the 70s with sporadic success in the 80's. In the 90's they were good consistently (moreso for the Dolphins), but never could get over the hump. Then both have had disappointing decades in the aughts (moreso for the Orioles). I was also thinking that both have underrated passionate fanbases.

I remember when we hired Q, some of the talk was that he couldn't win in the big games, couldn't win in the playoffs. You can't win the big games, until suddenly you do win the big games. He's been the right guy at the right time for the Hawks. He still has the stigma that he can't beat Detroit in the playoffs. His alltime record in the playoffs against Detroit is 6-20 and his regular season record against Detroit (not including last season) is 21-49-12. Detroit has also beat a Quenneville coached team in the playoffs during each of their last 4 Stanely Cup championship runs. Seriously? Do you mean seriously as in "I hadn't heard those stats before" or seriously as in "I can't believe you are ripping on the coach that just gave us a cup" If its the latter, that is not my intent. I love Q for the most part. I'm just saying that not beating Detroit and not winning the Cup were his 2 stigmas that kept him from being an elite coach. He has fixed the bigger of the 2 issues, but the Detroit issue remains, fairly or not.

I remember when we hired Q, some of the talk was that he couldn't win in the big games, couldn't win in the playoffs. You can't win the big games, until suddenly you do win the big games. He's been the right guy at the right time for the Hawks. He still has the stigma that he can't beat Detroit in the playoffs. His alltime record in the playoffs against Detroit is 6-20 and his regular season record against Detroit (not including last season) is 21-49-12. Detroit has also beat a Quenneville coached team in the playoffs during each of their last 4 Stanely Cup championship runs.

Whenever we have a horrible season, at least we are able to dominate the Cardinals. 11-8 against them in 2006, 8-4 against them this year so far.

Our crappy team just went into St. Louis and swept the Cardinals in a three game series where the Cardinals had Garcia, Wainwright and Carpenter starting.

C'mon put the best relievers in, I want to [expletive] sweep these losers.

And probably ended whatever tiny hope that the Cardinals had of getting back into the race.

Umps make a bad call that ends up giving the Cardinals a run, blah.

Molina made a horrible throw. The steal was off a hit and run that Z swung through.