WrigleyField 22

Garçon and Bengals

I'll wait to see them unveiled. From a tradition standpoint though shouldn't the road uniform say the city name over the team name? Main home and roads are good though so hopefully this can just be a slight upgrade to the blues.

That could mean anything. At the very least, tanking could just be actively losing games. If this front office's history is looked at, they are much more likely to tank in an effort for cap space than losing for draft picks. I wouldn't be surprised to see aligning salaries to make a play for 2015 or 2016. If that were the case, the tough decision would basically come down to Noah. Everyone else is expiring, a amnesty option, or easier to let go.

Man the NBA is so messed up right now. Two legit teams in the East. Two bottom dwellers in the West. They should scrap conferences this year and let the best 16 in. Looking at the East's standings, they're just losing nearly every game they play against the West.

I don't think a D League is going to create true stars, but I think it would go a long way in helping teams that are dedicated to creating a system. Just imagine a bunch of guys being trained in Thibs defense for a few years and then stepping in on the cheap, allowing dollars to be allocated more toward the high end.

Would further limiting the college issue help? If players can't be drafted until after 3 or 4 years instead of what it is now (2 years, right?) might that help make the draft deeper in terms of talent? I don't really think so. You'll see a little bit of a dry spell for a while, then maybe one or two wild drafts from all the guys forced back, and then it would just even out. I think getting rid of the college rule altogether might be more helpful. Back before the rule, tanking and picking a high school player was so risky it wasn't even a good bet. Having that extra year of review against exponentially better opponents has made the scouting pool much less risky.

But we wouldn't even be trading for Tejada. We'd be trading for the chance to draft This Guy (Chosen only because he's # 7 on their list) Depending on how badly we want to tank, maybe we can also get This Guy and if we're lucky can combine those two to get This Guy Bottom line we're not getting This Guy I'm keeping Derrick Rose. If he is a Mark Prior, he at least won't stand in our way of eventually striking lottery gold one day.

Yes they do, and the Bulls don't.

I'm not convinced tanking is really that big of a deal, or even can be "solved", but what about a mixed system of weighted and equal chances. Like what if the first pick in the draft was a straight 1/14 odds. Picks 2-4 would then be weighted, similar to the old system, with 5 and after not being in the lottery. Everyone would still get their weights ahead of time, you'd just drop out the chances of the winning team after the first lotto. Basically assigning a separate group of lotto numbers. Or to get even a little more complicated, make it an increasingly favorable scale, and lottery all the way out to 7 or 8. So the worst team may start with a 7% chance, then a 15%, then 35%, etc. This general idea though would basically discourage all out tanking, but also encourage some playoff tanking, though I'm not sure exactly how likely that would be, especially since you'd be tanking for an all or nothing chance. The shifting scale would be particularly perplexing from audit perspective as numbers are pre-assigned. The alternative is to keep the 1-3 lottery format, but then extend the lottery format all the way from 4-14 with equal or increasingly equal odds. So as a the #30 team, if you miss out on your roughly 65% chance of top three, you are then thrown to the chances and just as likely to end up 4th as 14th. From a risk perspective not a huge deterrent, but a little bit, since you no longer have your #4 fail safe. And for the fringey teams, you're still keeping their jackpot odds low and thus their playoff tank incentive low. Or also open up the 1st round losers to the lottery, definitely at decreased odds though. Perhaps a second tiered lottery starting at 8 or 9.

I feel like I could put my entire roster up except TE and K (of which I have one each). But I'll keep it simple 1 Flex, 1 RB Zac Stacy @SF (and coming off concussion), CJ Spiller v. Atl, Shane Vereen @Hou, Donald Brown v. Ten, Bobby Rainey @Car, Alshon Jeffrey @Min Edit- I guess I'm throwing my QB pick up here too Foles v Ari or Brady @ Hou

Luck Nelson, DeSean, Cooper And now that I say that, how can I recommend two Phi receivers and not their QB? I guess I'm taking Foles too. While I'm not liking them to burn up Arizona, I do like playing the odds that you'll get at least 2/3 good plays from that combo.

Isn't this something dictated by your league/commish? Probably but I think we're just set at the default. Will suggest a rule change for next year. The good news I was up 17 points going into last night and despite Vernon Davis being awesome RGIII [expletive] the bed and I took home the 1 pt win and game up on the final playoff spot. Take care of this week and I'm in the playoffs with a pretty solid roster. Pre- rant retracted.

Yup plus a buyout but I'm not sure if that counts for the cap Capped at something like 600k. Anything else we pay to the buyout is against cap. Not sure if teams exercise third channels or not though. I'm sure the Russian would.

Mirotic won't be rookie scale. We'll have to use cap space or MLE/whatever on him.

So how exactly does all the different ownership levels go between Comcast, NBC, and Comcast Sports Net? As long as it's a net revenue win for Comcast they wouldn't stand in the way right?

Oh even with a healthy Rose I think there was a high chance we don't pay the tax, just because of repeater issues, but as far as total outlays go, I'm thinking of things like the Boozer amnesty and whether they actually would try to use saved tax money or say, "well we're still paying Boozer, so we can't use the MLE or make this trade." Stuff like that.

I'm open to trading anyone not named Rose, but realistically I'm not going to force any deals, even Deng, unless the value is fair. Even in our state, we can make a decent two round run in the playoffs and rack up a few extra games of playoff revenue. And I know it shouldn't be a big deal, but with us being a tax paying team now, I want any additional revenue we can. Unless you're willing to fire Thibs, we just can't be bad enough to make a meaningful tank.

Mostly Shirt-sees for me, but real jerseys Bears- Urlacher, Marcus Robinson, Curtis Conway, Jay Cutler Non Bears NFL- Elway, Deon Sanders (Cowboys) Bulls - Rodman Never a real Cubs or Hawks. No colleges either Shirts-sees Cubs- Ramirez, Fukudome Bulls- Rose Hawks- Kane

I'm gonna put in a pre rant about the long wait times on ESPN fantasy trades. Jimmy Graham puts up 16 but I need to wait til Tuesday when he's mine. I'm sure he'll put up like 4 straight 4 point weeks now.

Players not drafted aren't eligible. Graham out of keeper options, and Brady just expensive, so I'm all in on this year for those guys.

Still have Luck this weekend, then going forward I'll play the Brady/Foles option which I'm kind of dreading as I previously didn't have any QB decision. As far as the keeper auction goes, it was hard to lose Luck as QBs tend to get overrated in the auction, but I still have 5-6 solid WR/RB keepers with a limit if 3 so I felt I could afford to give up some keeper status to go big this year, and I'll just have to funnel some of my WR savings into a QB next auction.

Well it ended up being two separate trades, but this is what I ended up dealing: Andrew Luck, Tony Gonzalez, and Michael Crabtree For Nick Foles, Tom Brady, Jimmy Graham, Chiefs D. (While dropping Rob Housler and Pats D to accommodate.) The one trade won't go through until after this week so really hoping Graham doesn't have an absurd week as this will be my make or break week for playoffs most likely. How'd I do?

Since this post names Martin Short but leaves the manager unnamed, is it a wash or does it only count as a Martin Short post? I guess I'm just adding to the problem.

Flex, Donald Brown @Ari, Bobby Rainey @ Det, or Shane Vereen v Den. Non PPR. Somehow got Rainey at 6th on the waiver wire.

Yea, I have no problem with taking the knee on the return. The field conditions sucked and the minimal chance is not worth the huge risk. Just rewatched the 2 minute drill. I can understand the perspective from not calling the TO from the 5 with 1:15. The explanation makes sense. But right out of the two minute drill, they got a first to the 16, and 1:55 was on the clock. Not sure why you don't call the TO there. If you stop them 3 times and use all your timeouts, you're still looking at about 50-55 seconds. The thing is, they're still in a possible passing situation there, so if you make a stop on a pass, you may get a free stoppage and get the clock with well over a minute left, albeit with no timeouts. The only other thing that crosses my mind though is that if you make a stop there, it was a run play, and now Baltimore is in the position of maybe burning timeouts, or you can still stop the clock just as you would if you had called it prior to that play- still gets the same end result, 3 stops and one full play clock, but Trestman took the running clock for first down when the defense was reeling rather than stop downs 1-3. From a time perspective timeouts on 1-3 are no different than timeouts 2-4. Is either better? You could probably go really deep trying to break down the offenses possible responses, but if you let up a first down its all moot. It was a really bad performance from the D to give up a first like than in a short play. If your D makes a better play there, the timeout situation looks better. Timeout or not, there were two back breaking first downs in a row there though. If you make stops, Baltimore is the one stopping the clock. Mostly I'm just glad there seems to have been a very conscious and deliberate strategy that wasn't meat-bally, even if it was ultimately questionable and risky. I also disagree with your assumption about the other team scoring.