soccer10k

I’m starting to think that scoring one goal and then sitting back and defending the rest of the game isn’t exactly a good strategy. Spurs have given up 15 goals in 15 games in the league. 8 of those came after the 80th minute, including 4 after the 90th (though one was in a 5-1 game). So the other 7 caused them to drop 9 points, costing them four wins and a draw, with the four lost wins coming against teams 10th or lower in the table. Maybe, just maybe, they should act like a big club and attack a bit more.

Liberty-Coastal tied. Liberty has the ball 1st and goal at the 2 with about 1:30 left. Coastal with no timeouts. Livery runs a play where the RB stands there with the ball and takes a knee when Coastal gets close to him. Smart. Next play, the RB tries to get a couple yards but Coastal is trying to pull him into the end zone as he’s trying to stay out. He fumbles right before the end zone and Coastal recovers. I thought he got in but the play stood. Going to OT now. No idea why they didn’t just run the same play on 2nd that they ran on 1st. No need to even let a Coastal player near you.

Since you mentioned the Steelers, it's very realistic that they don't even win their division anymore. That they've gone from undefeated and the 1 seed to the 3 seed in the span of three weeks is impressive enough. Browns play the Jets next week while Steelers host Indy. If Cleveland wins and the Steelers lose, the two teams play for the division title in Cleveland the next week. If the Steelers win this week, they win the division because if they tie, the Steelers have the best division record. Steelers are the 12th team to start 11-0 or better. They'll be the first to not get the top seed in their conference (KC wins a 2 and 3 way tiebreaker at 13-3). They're the second to lose three games that same season (the 2009 Saints went 13-3) and would be the first to lose 4. All 11 of those teams that started 11-0 also won their division, which the Steelers only have a 3 in 4 chance to do per 538.

Yep a 10-6 team (possibly even 11-5) is going to miss the playoffs in a year 7 teams from each conference get in. Is that a sign the AFC is good, or bad? Every team in the NFC has as many wins as the bottom 3 of the AFC has combined. And only 6 of the 16 NFC teams will have a losing record in the inter-conference games when the Bears beat the Jags this weekend.....with 3 of those being NFC East teams. Kind of cherry picking there. There are also only 4 NFC teams with winning records against the AFC this year. One of those almost certainly won’t last (Atlanta plays KC) and the other might not (Green Bay plays Tennessee). Meanwhile 8 AFC teams have winning records against the NFC. AFC is also 33-26-1 against the NFC as a whole. Additionally, the good AFC teams across the board destroyed the NFC teams as those 8 good AFC teams are 26-3 against the NFC. I’d say the top of the AFC is definitively better than the top of the NFC while the bottom of the AFC is definitively worse than the bottom of the NFC.

Assuming they get #2, decent chance they trade down a couple spots if they’re not taking a QB right? Assuming someone wants to trade up for Fields.

LOL Rams and LOL Jets.

Florida had 1st and goal from the 1 or 2 with 1:20 left. The clock started to run after a review. For some reason, they snapped the ball with 20 seconds on the play clock rather than letting it run down to 2. They scored on the first play and gave Bama plenty of time to drive down for a TD before the half. Bama got their TD with 6 seconds left.

Wonder how much longer Arteta gets. I know you don’t want to keep firing managers but Arsenal sucks right now. Plus you’ve got guys getting reds every other game. They’ve had 7 in the league since he took over a year ago, next worst team (at least as of a week ago) was 3. And at least three of those were for violent conduct. They’re off to a worse start than Spurs last year when Poch got fired.

It’s all about the W-L record for Derwood. I definitely said that I mean, you’re the one asking what the difference is between the two yet you obviously didn’t even take the 2 minutes it would take to look up the scores for each team. Even that would give you an idea. So sorry for assuming you did nothing more than look at their records.

I know that OSU has a built in advantage by being OSU, but this year puts a fine point on how completely ratings-based these football rankings are. 6-0 Ohio State has a monumental advantage over 6-0 USC because reasons. They've also made it clear that a Group of Five team will NEVER make the playoff, as they keep dropping undefeated Cincinnati below one or two loss teams Clearly you haven’t watched USC play if you think they’re worthy of going to the playoff. It’s all about the W-L record for Derwood.

Bama could have lost the title game and still gotten into the playoffs IMO. They are clearly the best team in the country and it isn’t particularly close Oh they definitely could have anyway. Had Florida won today, Florida beats Bama close, OSU wins, ND wins and it’s Florida, Bama, ND, OSU. Or if Clemson hammers ND, Bama gets in over ND. It’s just that this seems to solidify it. I mean, I guess if they lose by 30 they could be left out but that isn’t going to happen.

That Florida loss locks Bama in to the playoff, right? Let's say Clemson beats ND and OSU wins, those three are probably in. You can't put aTm in over Bama. You're not putting a 2-loss Big 12 champ. USC would be 6-0 with at least three of those being close. You've got Cincinnati undefeated but the committee moved Iowa State above them last week so they'd need Iowa State to lose and even that probably wouldn't be enough. So it's probably Bama-Clemson-ND-OSU if Clemson wins and Bama-ND-OSU-aTm if Notre Dame wins (assuming OSU wins).

Florida might have torpedoed their playoff chances because some dumb CB threw a shoe. Tie game, 2 minutes left, Florida gets a stop and was going to get the ball back. Shoe of an LSU player comes off and Florida player throws it downfield. LSU still driving right now.

Ole better hope his team shows up this weekend otherwise he might be out of a job in a week. They easily could have won this group after beating PSG in Paris and hammering Leipzig. At the very least, they should have advanced. Instead they’ll be in the Europa. EDIT: Might have spoken too soon. It’s 3-2 now. ManU only needs a tie to advance.

So apparently the 4th official said something racist to Demba Ba in the PSG-Basaksehir game and both teams walked off. EDIT, sounds like it was said to an assistant coach, not Ba

They’ve both been a lot better lately. 2nd and 3rd longest current winning streaks in the league after the Saints. In the NFC. Chiefs are 2nd with 7 and Cleveland is tied with the Giants for 3rd at 4.

LOL Steelers.

I saw the play also and didn’t know that an LSU player picked it up. I couldn’t believe it didn’t get overturned but that makes sense now why I didn’t.

and three straight NLCS appearances when i had previously seen one and a horsefeathering world series ring on all their fingers so basically you're trying to argue that we should give the white sox extra credit for not having failed yet? i only raise it this way because you're the one who wants to use hindsight. Arguing nothing, legit asking. Judging the Sox core on projection, which is just educated guessing until it happens. We overvalued our prospects. Sure, they won a title, but that doesn’t mean we were right. Schwarber is horsefeathering Rob Deer. But how do you know the White Sox didn't also overvalue their prospects? You're trying to compare two things that can't be compared the way you're trying to do it. You have to wait 5 years to see how things turned out. Obviously we know now that Russell was a horrible human being who peaked in 2016. We know KB hasn't turned into the perennial MVP candidate we thought he would become. We know Schwarber didn't become the high OBP with power hitter we thought he'd become. Could the WS core turn out to be better than the Cubs was? Sure. But they could also turn out to be worse. All we can do at this point is essentially compare the WS right now to where the Cubs were post 2015. Cubs had: -KB was the second pick in the draft, destroyed the minors and had an .858 OPS and 5.3 WAR as a 23 year old in a full season -Schwarber was the 4th pick, destroyed the minors and put up a .842 OPS and 1.3 WAR in only 69 (nice) games. -Russell was a highly regarded defensive shortstop who had a .858 OPS in AA at 20 and while his OPS was just under .700 at 21 in 2015, he still managed a 2.8 WAR. -Rizzo was 25 and coming off back to back .900 OPS seasons where he was worth a combined 12 WAR -Contreras was 23 and had just put up a .891 OPS at AA. And that's not even mentioning Javy (horrid in 2014 but still had a .911 OPS at 22 in AAA) and Ian Happ (#9 pick, .822 OPS in low A and A at 20 in 2015). It's easy to forget how incredibly loaded the Cubs were/appeared to be. They seemed set up to dominate the Central/NL for the better part of a decade. I'm not saying the White Sox aren't talented and I'm not saying what they do over the next few years won't surpass what the Cubs did from 2015-2020. I just think what's happened the last couple years with the Cubs has clouded your view of what the Cubs appeared to be headed into the 2016 season.

Well for one we don't know how long Pat is planning on working for.

What the horsefeathers is this [expletive]? Go horsefeathers yourselves, Ricketts.

i knew it was gonna be ugly so i took my ipad to the gym and watched it on the elliptical so at least it wasn't a total waste of time Yeah, not surprising in the least. Spurs weren’t going to come out of their shell unless Chelsea scored. Same strategy as last week.

If only the NFL thought about their schedule for 2 seconds or, say, looked at the postponement issues MLB had, they might have built in a midseason bye week and/or scheduled a week off between the end of the regular season and the start of the playoffs. Oh no, there were no covid cancellation issues and we gave the players an extra week off for no reason! The horror! And if you do a make up week after the season, you'll know going into the last week whether you have cancellation problems. If you don't need it, you just tell teams that if there are no makeup games, the playoffs move up a week. You wouldn't even have to change the Super Bowl date. If you need the bye week to make up games, there's one week between conf championship games and the Super Bowl and if you don't, there's the standard two weeks between games. And even if you have to move the Super Bowl, it's not like the stadium is going to be hosting anything else in early February. Just so stupid all around.

Is there really that much they can do about competitive balance? The best players are worth so much more in basketball than in other sports so that if there’s a dominant team/player, that team is always going to be good. The Spurs and Lakers won the West all but one year from 1999-2010 and won 9 of the 12 titles. It was Jordan before them. And the Lakers/Celtics before that. I agree that there are desirable markets that players are always going to want to go to (i.e. LA). GS looks good now but they were largely a joke of the league for 40 years. Cleveland made two ECF in 36 years and no finals before 06-07. SA has always been good (39 playoff appearances in 45 seasons) but nobody would call them a destination. And even being a place people might want to play (New York) means nothing if your franchise is a disaster. I’m just not sure what can be done in basketball other than restricting player movement to get players to not bolt all the time. You don’t have to go to MLB style rules of player control to get to make an impact, it’s ultimately about incentives. For example, let’s say every team has one uncapped roster spot, you now can give Anthony Davis(and Durant before him, etc) before him) a real decision to make. In the current setup there’s precious little difference in options aside from markets and teammates which becomes a self-perpetuating cycle. But part of the problem is how much these guys are making now. A few years ago it might have been the difference between 20 and 30 million. Now it’s the difference between 40 and 50 million. Durant’s last year with the Thunder he made $20M. This year he’ll make $39M. Harden made $15.7M in 15-16 and will get $40M this year. Eventually, that extra money doesn’t matter as much and they’re just going to play where they want to play. I suppose if it was, say, double, some guys would stay. But others would rather win, live where they want to and make $30M than not win, live in a place they don’t like as much and make $60M.

Is there really that much they can do about competitive balance? The best players are worth so much more in basketball than in other sports so that if there’s a dominant team/player, that team is always going to be good. The Spurs and Lakers won the West all but one year from 1999-2010 and won 9 of the 12 titles. It was Jordan before them. And the Lakers/Celtics before that. I agree that there are desirable markets that players are always going to want to go to (i.e. LA). GS looks good now but they were largely a joke of the league for 40 years. Cleveland made two ECF in 36 years and no finals before 06-07. SA has always been good (39 playoff appearances in 45 seasons) but nobody would call them a destination. And even being a place people might want to play (New York) means nothing if your franchise is a disaster. I’m just not sure what can be done in basketball other than restricting player movement to get players to not bolt all the time.