WrigleyField 22

Beautiful

Omg Demar. Worst FA signing of the offseason.

I’m still for expanding the playoffs. The competitive balance isn’t that relevant to the matchups themselves because people will still watch. People love brackets and there will be occasional upsets and the beat downs will still get massive ratings. Also, I wouldn’t necessarily take these semi’s being bad as an indication that future playoff games will be just as one sided. The top 4 teams aren’t always the actual Top 4 best teams. For example I think many teams in the top 10 would have beaten Cincinnati like Okie State or Ole Miss or Baylor. There are plenty of 2 loss teams that are better than teams with 1 loss or even teams with no losses. Those teams might have fared better against a Bama or Georgia, but because they were left out we’ll never know. The expanded playoff allows for those type teams to have a shot. Maybe. Perhaps running the regular season straight into the playoffs could help parity too. I'm sure a 4 week layoff helps the top teams recover whereas going straight into a playoffs would introduce some parity due to injury and just fatigue. Shorten the regular season by a game or two. Pay players for playoffs and expand it to 12-16 and let's go.

I may be way off, but the playoff system is destined to be disappointing. Instead of expanding, go back to the old bowl format, but instead of naming a national champ afterwards, have a game between the two top teams after bowls are all done. Yea I know it will be a quick turnaround and all, but we still get a championship Where do we stand now as far as these first round playoff games and actually getting us something interesting? 3/16 of interesting games in the semis?

Yea I'm not a big gambler, but under bets are what you'd want to hedge anyways right? Hedge against your own team.

If he's not starting he shouldn't be backing up. That's the only hill I'll die on. If they wanna wrap him in bubble wrap at this point I'm okay with it.

If it's on the wire at all with Najee into Monday night you gotta look at some prop hedge bets of some kind right?

The empty wheel lady's responses were even worse than the original tweet. People asked basic questions for her to defend and it was basically, "you just proved my point!". She totally had no actual point. When someone said Madden was pretty forward thinking about player safety her retort was he did that because he knew he had profited off the violence.

One thing keeping Leftwich from being my top guy is I'm not sure who would be coming with him. For one, the guys I'd probably have ahead of him would potentially come with a GM candidate as well (McDaniels, Roman, Moore). Secondly, the Bucs have a really good coaching staff but a lot of their top guys are older. Their younger guys are mostly unproven, especially in terms of being coordinators or playcallers. And Leftwich has only really coached under the Arians tree so it's not like he can pull guys from his past connections, unless it's from his playing days (admittedly, I haven't looked into anyone he may have played with or for). So, you're potentially looking at a 1st time HC, who will likely also have calling plays on his plate. You may get an experienced OC as kind of like a mentor, but I'd imagine you'd also get a 1st time DC since I don't see Bowles coming with Leftwich to make a lateral move. But I do love your 1st point, and it may be the most important when looking at the next candidate. Fields would be a fantastic fit with what Leftwich has shown he can do with an offense in the last 3-4 years. Yea, and antectodally, Bowles also was not successful in bringing staff with him when he left Arians.

Still have really no reason to trust this blogger, but horsefeathers it

They should just interview every DC that's faced the Bears at least 3x over the Nagy tenure and just ask, "why was our offense so easy to gameplan against" and take lots of notes.

Dang, that CHI to WFT OT pipeline

Jeff Dickerson dies from colon cancer at age 44. His son, 11, has now lost both parents to cancer. :(. Just gut wrenching. https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/32953502/jeff-dickerson-espn-chicago-bears-reporter-dies-age-44?platform=amp

_______Demar______MJ 97/98 PPG_____27.6______28.7 FG% ____50.6%_____46.5% 3PA_____2.3________1.5 FTA______7.8________8.8 TS%______59.8%_____53.3% WS/48____ .201______ .238

Well definitely seems like there will be no firing until Black Monday. Question I guess if they "inform" him so they can start interviews, but with GM and maybe entire leadership structure still under question, it doesn't really matter.

First two early rumors for Jax were Pederson and Caldwell. Maybe just a by-product of them being available now, but also possible Jax will prioritize someone with HC experience.

Obviously the players play to win, but the "upside" of making your own pick worse is bumping ups little all the other rounds.

That was a terrible decision from Foles and incredible catch by Byrd.

The Jimmy Graham revenge game.

Have we gotten confirmation that hobbled ankle Fields is not the backup for this game yet? Edit- Answering my own question

Yep. I think there's just this general fan misconception that the requirement is to bring in a brilliant football mind and if they fail it means the guys a dummy and that was the issue. I don't doubt Pace has some awesome traits, but I feel like in 7 years time we've seen enough to know the entire package isnt right. There isn't a shortage of bright football minds out there that makes Pace too smart to let go. Go find a new smart guy. Maybe there some extenuating and background knowledge only those in the weeds know and have good reason to believe Paces best days are ahead, but I'm skeptical. One of my biggest worries is whether he just has the right attitude to be the leader. In the Wiederer article it talked about how he hates conflict and aims to avoid it. Now, unnamed source and all, but I feel like the circumstantial evidence can be formed to actually support that claim. That to me, if accurate is a flatal flaw that goes deeper than just evaluating individual hits and misses. A guy in that top spot can't be leading an echo chamber where avoidance of disagreement and conflict are rewarded in the name of uh, "collaboration" and "conviction".

Pace has been just good enough to not leave the cupboard bare behind him. And he's done a lot apparently to build up the infrastructure in the org. But yea, after 7 years, those little positives aren't enough to hang his hat on. Depending on #secretextension status his contract is up. It's not just sticking it out another year. It's likely a new 3-4 year commitment. If: 1. Pace did get a secret extension at some point and has a year or two left. 2. A new President is named and they decide to give Pace another year. 3. They jointly do the head coach search and bring in a big time coaching hire. Then I'd be *just okay* for him getting one more year and seeing what a new coach can do with a Pace built roster. If it flops badly in 22, New coach is elevated (unquestionably) to top of Football Ops food chain and builds out FO staff from head coach as head of football ops.

I mean, its the NY Post...so... Ah, quite old article too. Forgot Bruce Allen was an agent. Make that a negative mark for hiring an agent lol.

Did I miss a link? Which article specifically are you referencing?

I've long been a proponent of the fact that a guy like Pace as your top football guy is fine. The question is whether Phillips as their top non football guy who football reports into makes sense. It does sound like their questioning thst, but yea are ak undecided that they're now unprepared. Did something really happen in the past 365 days that changed Phillips mind about changing his role? So I'd be curious about what a guy like Armstrong's role actually looks like that broadly complements a primarily personnel/scout based GM at top of Football Ops. Something that is more than head of hiring and firing. Like DePodeata in CLE is all football ops based, but seems like hes broadly responsible for charting a course of a broad football ops expansion (heavily analytics driven). More I read and think about Armstrong and I'm wondering if it's just about him being well connected to coaches and execs and if the intent is just an alternative to a hiring consultant? Or would he have a real permanent job? I was skimming an article this morning with my morning coffee on why former agents would make better GMs, and the gist of the argument was that they understand 1) how to negotiate and not turn off players and agents and 2) how to work the salary cap, where as a scout-based GM is not that well versed in those areas. I can squint and see that, and it does make me wonder about the Foles, Graham, etc contracts Pace has put us into. Maybe that is all the McCaskeys are thinking about. I don't find that idea without merit. A couple thoughts though. There's two examples I can think of like that currently. Loomis in NO and Roseman in PHI. Neither was an agent, but both are the finance kind of GM, not scouts. Definitely in NO and maybe even at times in PHI, that GM pushed those personnel down to a HC with very broad personnel say. Philly kind of waffles a lot though, hence the Pederson power struggle and firing. Many people still seem to be suggesting a Pres Football-GM-HC structure. That is a structure I don't immediately see a strong alignment of power and incentives. Say whatever you will about the traditional President role, but being answerable to profit/revenue/valuation does lend itself to a seemingly decent balance of long term strategic organization building and on the field winning. Everyone's roles and incentives line up pretty nicely in that scenario with just the typical GM-HC power struggles. If Armstrong is just a untraditional GM that to me is different than an expectation than filling a traditional business/Pres role or filling some undetermined Football Ops role that isn't GM.