soccer10k

Unless I missed one no 13-3 team has played on WC weekend under the current 8 division format. Last one was Tennessee in 1999 but they were a WC team.

Seattle’s in an interesting position. If they win, they get the 3 seed and play Minnesota at home. If they lose, they get the 5 seed and play at Philly/Dallas. So they don’t have a huge incentive to win. They’re playing next weekend regardless and the choices are playing a tougher team at home or a weaker team on the road. The Niners on the other hand have big incentive to win because they get the 1 seed with a win and the 5 with a loss.

The Bucs losing on a Jameis pick 6 is so amazing. He's also the first player with 30 TDs and 30 INTs in a season.

LOL Patriots.

Oh and go LSU.

Except for some dumb reason they have over two weeks to prepare. The final should be Jan 6 not the 13th

I just have my doubts that they can sync up exactly when the ball is kicked (is it when they initially touch the ball or when the ball comes off the foot?), where the defender is and where the attacker is when it’s that close like that. This isn’t like whether or not the ball crossed the goal line. The one today that I assume you’re referring to was in the Spurs game. It looked to me like the furthest body part forward on the Norwich player was his shoulder. Where does the shoulder end and the arm begin? Arm can’t be offside because you can’t score with your arm. So theoretically it’s a clear are you offsides or not but because the line isn’t stationary, it isn’t that simple.

I know the main difference is that Florida State team had a bunch of close calls all year and wasn't anywhere close to what they were the year before while Clemson only had one close win. But OSU and LSU just have better resume's than Clemson.

Happened to have ESPN on and they're interviewing Dabo and boy is he going all in on this whole "Clemson is being disrespected" BS that he's been going on about for a few weeks now. The interviewer says they haven't lost a football game since New Years Day 2018 but they're ranked 3rd in the playoff and asks Dabo what it tells him. He says that it's the first time it's happened in a long time, since like maybe 1966. Uh, Dabo, you only have to go back 5 years. Florida State won the title and went undefeated in 2013, then went undefeated in 2014 but were ranked 3rd in the playoff. And not only were they ranked third, they were behind two one-loss teams as well.

Colts also have to win. If it's Raiders-Titans-Steelers, the Titans go because of strength of victory. But if Indy wins, they knock out Tennessee because of a better divisional record. Raiders beat Indy and have strength of victory tiebreaker over Pittsburgh. Raiders also need a win by the Bears, Lions, Chiefs or Pats. The Raiders stink though. They're probably going to lose. Houston hasn't announced either way because they won't know until game time if they have something to play for. If KC wins (home to the Chargers), they get the 3 seed. But if KC loses, Houston gets the 3 seed with a win. KC plays in the early games but Houston plays later. If KC wins, Houston will rest everybody. Don't they usually arrange the schedule so games that affect each other are at the same time? Or is that only for in-out the playoffs(I see the 4 AFC games and the Eagles-Giants are playing at the same time) I thought they did. They must not do it for seeding differences that don’t matter as far as whether or not you get a bye or division vs WC. So 3 vs 4 you’re getting a home game but not a bye so that’s not as important. Just looking at the schedule, NE and KC play at the same time as do NO and GB (who wins and loses could affect byes). Dal and Philly are at the same time. Pitt/Ten/Oak are all at the same time.

Colts also have to win. If it's Raiders-Titans-Steelers, the Titans go because of strength of victory. But if Indy wins, they knock out Tennessee because of a better divisional record. Raiders beat Indy and have strength of victory tiebreaker over Pittsburgh. Raiders also need a win by the Bears, Lions, Chiefs or Pats. The Raiders stink though. They're probably going to lose. Houston hasn't announced either way because they won't know until game time if they have something to play for. If KC wins (home to the Chargers), they get the 3 seed. But if KC loses, Houston gets the 3 seed with a win. KC plays in the early games but Houston plays later. If KC wins, Houston will rest everybody.

When did the racism stuff happen? I stopped watching after the dummy goalkeeper forgot he could use his hands in the penalty area and karate kicked the Chelsea player to give away a penalty. Edit: Doesn’t sound like it was audible on TV. Saw Rudiger saying he was getting monkey chants. Hope they figure out who it was and ban them.

Kind of figured it would end up somewhere near there after what Strasburg got. Add an extra year and an extra million per year and you're up to 8 for 288. He got the Yankees to add on the extra year.

What’s that? It’s for a team show you say? [tweet] [/tweet]

Take one guess what happened LOL.

The semi with Clemson should be a good one. I feel bad for whichever of OSU/LSU gets the 2 seed.

Giannis is such a cheat code. Still think over the course of a 7 game series they can be beat in the playoffs and even though those team didn’t have Giannis Bud is kinda doing in Milwaukee what he did in Atlanta for 2-3 years. Great regular seasons then falter in the playoffs with not making the right adjustments/too 1 dimensional on offense. He’s definitely a cheat code, though they’ve taken a step up from last year. They’re currently at a +13.6 differential on the year. NBA record is 12.3. Obviously they’re not going to keep that up all year and glancing at their schedule, it looks as if they’ve had an easy road so far. The only thing that stopped them last year was Kawhi, and even then it took Toronto winning a 2 OT game to keep that series alive. Barring other teams making trades or figuring things out, they’ll be a heavy favorite in the East. It’s pretty impressive that Giannis won the MVP last year and got better.

The Bucks are really good.

I could see them putting Oklahoma in over LSU but doubt they would go with Utah. Of course Utah is ahead of OU in the rankings right now but who knows.

Here’s a situation where I don’t like replay. End of the first half and Auburn guy gets tackled with one second left except the clock runs to 0. Auburn has no timeouts but picked up a first down so the clock would have temporarily stopped. They review and determine that the clock should have stopped with 1 second left. This allows Auburn to get the FG unit on the field and set. Have them a free chance at 3 points. There was no way Auburn would have gotten set to run a play had they stopped the clock at 0:01. I still generally like replay, there are just kinks that need to be worked out.

The Raiders are kind of garbage. They’re 6-5 but all 6 wins were by one score. They should be a 4-7 team right now. On a related not I have no idea how DVOA is calculated but how isn’t Balt-Mia on there?

So the Rams are probably effed for the next few years, right? Barring McVay pulling some miracle with Goff. If the biggest bargain in the NFL is a good/great QB on a rookie contract, the worst thing is a mediocre/bad QB getting paid a ton of money. It's looking like the latter is what the Rams have in Goff. The Rams have also traded their first rounders in 2020 and 2021 to the Jags for Ramsey. I know things change really quickly in sports, but boy do they appear to be in a bad spot unless Goff/McVay figures it out.

Managers definitely do get fired too quickly. I’d forgotten until the other day that Ranieri won the title with Leicester, won his UCL group the next year (it was weak but they still did it) and was fired after they lost their first R16 leg to Sevilla because they were in 17th.

This could truly be one of the worst unforced errors in the history of sports business. They make it to the mountain top of super clubs after decades of being second class and then they hire someone who is the antithesis of their culture and business model. I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you, just playing devil's advocate here... What should they have done with Poch? Last 24 league games (12 this year and 12 last) and they have 25 points. So for almost 2/3 of a season, they played like a relegation team. And they couldn't score while playing a chunk of their normal team against a 4th division side. I know they had the UCL run and that was amazing, but that can't be the only thing you're judged on as a manager. This wasn't some string of unlucky results in the league either where Spurs dominated but couldn't win. They got outplayed by teams like Sheffield and Brighton. They need an 86th minute goal just to tie Watford. In 5 of 12 games they held a lead and didn't win. They also blew two leads in the UCL. I'm not saying Poch was the whole problem or even the main problem. But he's certainly not blameless. He can't be. How long do you let it go on before you make a change? I really don't know what the right answer is here. This is strictly regarding the Poch firing, not the Mourinho hiring. I won't even try to defend that because you're spot on with that part.

With regards to firing Poch, I'm torn. On one hand, this was the best stretch in the team's history. On the other, things were horribly off with the team. Poch clearly had a foot out the door. He talked at the beginning of the season how he would have quit Spurs had the won the UCL final. I would have understood it because there was nowhere to go but down after that. I know he returned but it was like Zidane leaving Real after their third title. Nothing else to accomplish really. But something had gone stale at the club. Had they just been bounced by City in the UCL QF last year, there would have been more talk about it going into the season. But the UCL run kind of papered over the cracks. With 12 games to go last year they were in 3rd and closer to City and Liverpool than whoever was in 4th. It was a dumb conversation because they were never winning the title but the media was actually wondering if it was a 3 team race. From that point on they took 11 points out of 36 and only finished in the top four because Arsenal and ManU tripped over their own feet even worse than Spurs did. I totally understand that Poch was frustrated because they didn't buy a single player for two transfer windows. Any manager would be for any club out there. But he'd also gotten away from what got them to where they were. They used to be a high press team. Not anymore. Why go away from what was working. There's been talk about how the players have been unhappy with his new tactics, whatever that means. This sucks. Poch is a great manager and he'll get almost any job he wants next. The best of luck to him. But sometimes you need a change and this team clearly needed some sort of change. Levy isn't going anywhere and you can't just change the whole team. Will this be a good move long term? I don't think so, but it's certainly possible. Maybe this was as far Poch could take them. I doubt it, but it's possible. As for Jose Mourinho: