Soul

Olympic athletes who are caught using PEDs are typically stripped of their clothing, hauled out back by a haz-mat team, and tossed in the dumpster of life without a second thought. I agree football players get off light though. I think the key word is care though, because nobody cares about Olympic sports. I care about Marion Jones!! Oh wait, no I don't.

Olympic athletes who are caught using PEDs are typically stripped of their clothing, hauled out back by a haz-mat team, and tossed in the dumpster of life without a second thought. I agree football players get off light though.

Yep. He made Eli Manning look like a decent quarterback. Imagine what he could do with a good one. I know. Everything fits but the stupid antics. Sign him and then retrofit his brain with an anti-stupidity device.

I don't think he was clean, but I do think the evidence that he used is weaker than a lot of these other guys.

Because there is anger & resentment out there over the Bears' acquisition of Cutler. Some places feel they should have acquired him rather than the Bears, and others feel he shouldn't have left Denver. There are lots of people out there who just don't like the fact that Cutler left Denver and came to Chicago. They're hoping for his failure.

An '04 repeat is a possibility. All they need to do is get into a fight with Brenly, stay in the WC race, get healthy for the last 3 weeks of the season to get our hopes up.......then blow about 10 games to under .500 clubs and fall out of it.

I'm pretty surprised to hear something like that come from Dungy. I figured him to be a bit more thoughtful than that. That's like something your average local radio hack would say. I don't even hear that coming from Mike & Mike, or Cowherd.

Yeah, Dodgers get more pub lately. Boston/NY remain fascinated with their former player & coach.

Eh, it's not that hard. People rave about Lee but he doesn't seem to to anything impressive defensively. I doubt very much the numbers people have shown for defensive ability at 1st. It seems to me that his biggest value defensively is his size -- getting to throws that would be errant otherwise. Although last night kind of blows that hypothesis...

Plus when the team sucks Dunn provides comedy. Bradley just pulls up lame when running out from the dugout.

Yeah I have no idea what Dungy is talking about. Cutler wasn't acquired to beat one team. That's just a ridiculous assertion.

There's always concern, but in my view this is about as low-risk as you can get acquiring a QB of Cutler's ability while not overly burdening your team's future options. You are always going to have to give up top draft picks for this kind of player. What makes this lower risk than usual is the fact that we aren't also rolling up a truck full of money to Cutler's door, at least not initially. In my mind, it's even lower risk given the Bears' poor history in the 1st round, but I understand that you don't normally judge the value of a pick by whether the original team knows how to use it or not. It does provide a level of comfort though -- if Cutler were to not work out, I will feel fairly comfortable that the 2 1st rounders most likely wouldn't have totally changed the team's outlook either.

I think the volume of injuries across the roster is a surprise. I think I posted I was concerned about injuries before the season began, but I didn't expect this much. Soto's fallback isn't surprising to me. Maybe the depth of it, but not the fallback itself. Bradley's injuries aren't a surprise. His continued struggles are, but I should have known better. Fonty's struggles aren't surprising to me. I was always suspicious that he would fall off as a starter. Harden/Zambrano injuries -- knew that was likely to happen. Lee -- nobody can claim this is a surprise. Soriano -- he's doing what he always does, hot/cold. He'll probably get hot again, then cold, then hot. Streaky is part of his whole deal. Demp -- everyone was predicting a drop off. I pretty much agree. It's either not surprising, or we should have been able to see it as a possibility.

We should bounce back at some point, both in terms of health and performance. Many a team has bounced back only to find the hole they dug was just too deep, though. In '07 we were like 8 games out at one point, IIRC. Nothing's over. It's just really hard to watch this crap right now, that's all.

I remember going to a Cleveland game awhile back, and those people just hated Bradley. Eventually he hit better for them, but I believe it wasn't until the 2nd season he was there. We could be looking at '10 before Bradley begins to look good. Might as well just say it right now. '09 could be the adjustment/suckage year for him.

I've been travelling for work the past few days, and completely missed the news that we signed linebacker Pisa Tinoisamoa. Good sign, IMO.

I thought there might be some injury concerns this year, but I never expected it to be like this. This is beyond anything that can be believed, really. If I was Soriano, I'd be very careful crossing the street right now. Someone's put some bad mojo on this club, or something. Sheesh.

That would be nice. Here we are in early June and I find myself hoping for football season to get here sooner, for obvious reasons.

http://www.tvgasm.com/newsgasm/trainwreck.jpg

I don't know. The best baseball teams win a little more than 60% of the time, and that's including against all competition, good or bad. How often does the best baseball team beat another top 8 team? 53%? The best NFL teams win 80% or more of the time. I think being the best might matter more in football, but it still doesn't absolutely determine the champion. Zona got to the Super Bowl with a 9-7 record last year. Pitt recently won a Super Bowl as a 6 seed. I really do think, after all is said and done, alot of this analysis winds up being just bunk. Give me the 6 seed Steelers and a Super Bowl championship over the other team that was better, but didn't make it. I'm an emotional guy. I'll take that emotional Super Bowl run from a team that maybe wasn't all that great on paper any day. The championship is really all that matters to me. That goes for all sports. It's not bunk. Unless it's actually attempting to predict one team as a champion. And in that case, said analysis usually amounts to a big chart with pictures of "experts" and their Super Bowl picks, which is obvious crap to begin with. Legitimate analysis tells you things of value. And the fact that it isn't going to do a great job of saying who ultimately wins is implied due to the nature of all this. I don't think legit analysis attempts to do that, anyway. It tells you who is likely to win and might or might not give you a good idea of what teams are actually better than others, but you're not going to see them say, "Team X will win the Super Bowl," at least, not without major qualification. If they do, you know what you're reading is crap to begin with. Unfortunately, like 90% of fans don't realize this and that's why the crap analysis is what you mostly find in the mainstream sources. I think most fans don't really care who someone says will be good on paper if it doesn't mean anything in terms of the championship. Maybe I'm in the minority though. BTW, ultimately -- and especially in the NFL -- I watch this stuff for the emotion. Stats & analysis are a distant second.

I just need this team to start playing better because otherwise my 3 trips to Wrigley are going to be unhappy. That is all.

I don't know. The best baseball teams win a little more than 60% of the time, and that's including against all competition, good or bad. How often does the best baseball team beat another top 8 team? 53%? The best NFL teams win 80% or more of the time. I think being the best might matter more in football, but it still doesn't absolutely determine the champion. Zona got to the Super Bowl with a 9-7 record last year. Pitt recently won a Super Bowl as a 6 seed. I really do think, after all is said and done, alot of this analysis winds up being just bunk. Give me the 6 seed Steelers and a Super Bowl championship over the other team that was better, but didn't make it. I'm an emotional guy. I'll take that emotional Super Bowl run from a team that maybe wasn't all that great on paper any day. The championship is really all that matters to me. That goes for all sports.

I don't think last year's team was stacked at all. They were balanced, and had most of their players either outperform expectations are reach the high end of their expectations. Most teams have guys underperform, and the 2008 Cubs got lucky that nobody really did that. I think the problem was Hendry assumed this was still a 97 win team, did nothing to actually improve them this offseason (despite the payroll going up while most others went down) and decided to tinker for quirky postseason matchups. As I recall, lots of people assumed this was a natural 97-win team, not just Hendry. I recall a lot of people thinking this team might win 90 and win the division by default if the competition stayed in the 80s. Still lots of baseball to be played yet, but the idea that the rest of the Central would stand still was probably a bit.......ill-advised, I guess.

You can't be serious. That's absurd. The best teams don't always win championships, especially in a format like the NFL's one and done playoffs. Do you not agree that baseball playoffs are a crapshoot? And those involve 5 and 7 game series. The difference is the best football teams usually win a much greater percentage of their games than the best baseball teams, so one would expect the better team to prevail more often in any one game than say, in baseball. But it's still not a guarantee that the best team wins the SB. Any prognostication can only be expected what is most likely to happen, not what will definitely happen. Failing to predict that Tom Brady would get injured and his team would therefore lose 5 more games and not make the playoffs does not make something a poor predictor. So then what's the point of talking about who's great and who isn't? It doesn't really mean all that much in the end. Congrats, you were the "best team in football" but missed the playoffs. Pointless and stupid. Following sports is pointless and stupid. But we do it presumably because it's entertaining and fun. NE missed the playoffs because their best player got hurt early. They easily win that mediocre division with a ridiculously easy record against both western divisions if Brady was healthy. Personally, I don't really care much about talking about who's great and who isn't. I just want to see the teams I like win champsionship. The best way to do that is probably to field the best team you possibly can. It probably means more in baseball, where you have 162 games to equalize some of the short term success.

Pretty much. What IS the point to all this masturbatory pontification anyway? It never means much.