champaignchris

I think that’s fair. Fields is a year younger than all three and has two years less experience than Herbert and one year less than Hurts and Tua. I think Hurts’ and Tua’s year 3 leaps are a good goal for Fields next year. Fields is pretty clearly out-performing all the other QBs in his draft class. By the way, I don’t think it’s generally appreciated how good a season Tua is having. 9 yards per attempt and throwing a TD on 6.7% of throws are eye-popping stats.

I went into the game just hoping Illinois would look like they belong on the same field as Michigan. I’d say they’re delivering.

27 year old 2nd baseman who had a cup of coffee in the bigs last year? Ok baseball people, tell me why this is something to maybe get excited about. Seems like the kind of guy the Cubs already have several of. Basically .300 with a .370 OBP over his last 3 minor league seasons in AA and AAA, with his SLG being improving each year. Seems pretty damn redundant with McKinstry, Bote and Madrigal.

Fields looking like Lamar Jackson and all of a sudden Kmet looking like Mark Andrews.

Is Bogaerts good enough defensively to move Nico off of SS? Or is Bogaerts going to be the 2B? Bogaerts has been pretty insistent on playing SS in a similar situation last year(Boston signing Trevor Story), so I think in 2023 you would see a default of Bogaerts SS/Nico 2B. There's reasons to think that wouldn't be so bad. Bogaerts has consistently had good UZRs, and this year had OAA easily above average too. Nico was very strong defensively last year, but also a decent chunk of that value came from constantly being flipped to play in the hole on LHH shifts, which could persist in this arrangement. And while the default would be this way there's also keeping Bogaerts rested or any minor injuries, so I'd expect Nico to be over there 10-20 games regardless. Plus, Bogaerts' insistence on playing SS may go down if he's paid like an elite SS and gotten his big FA deal. I think I’m getting more sold on Bogaerts. I don’t pay enough attention to the AL and didn’t realize how good and consistent his bat’s been over the last 5 years. My thought on Trea Turner all along has been that I didn’t really mind paying him like an elite SS despite the fact that he might not play SS over the last half of his contract because that bat will play anywhere. I’m coming to the same conclusion on Bogaerts.

Is Bogaerts good enough defensively to move Nico off of SS? Or is Bogaerts going to be the 2B?

Fine. Keep losing 35-32. We can be fun this year and then good next year.

Ok. I was a doubter. I’m sold. That toss to Mooney was amazing.

Losing 49-29 is more fun than losing 17-6. The kid I’d be aiming for in the draft would be Christian Johnston WR from TCU. Big, athletic. Most projections I’ve seen having him going around 8-12, which is right about where the Bears should be picking.

The real question is, will they be ranked in the CFP top 10 come Tuesday? I'd figure probably not, but maybe? They're definitely behind Ohio State, Georgia, Tennessee, Michigan, Clemson, TCU and Alabama. So they're in the discussion after that with Oregon, USC, UCLA, Ole Miss, Kansas State, LSU, Utah, Oklahoma State, and Penn State. I'd probably put them just behind Oregon and USC, even with UCLA and Ole Miss, just ahead of the 2 loss teams. The fluke loss to Indiana and the relatively weak schedule hurts them. It’s not that they’ve played a bunch of bad teams, it’s that they haven’t played any particularly good teams. The convincing win over Minnesota is still probably their best win of the year. Illinois will get its chance. Beat Michigan on the road and the rankings will take care of themselves.

Fields watched the Ravens offense and then asked, “May I please have a Mark Andrews?”

It’s only year 2, but he already has to be considered one of the biggest League-wide scouting whiffs in modern NBA history. 2nd rounders who exceed expectations tend to fall into one of three categories: 1. Undersized try-hard bigs - Draymond Green. 2. Small tweener guards - usually seniors from elite college programs - that shoot the lights out - Jalen Brunson. 3. Euros who were clearly under scouted - Jokic. Ayo doesn’t fit any of those categories. Generally guys of his size, skill set and college pedigree are either lottery picks or have some sort of fatal flaw to their game that keeps them off the NBA floor. I have to wonder if he was still suffering from concussion issues during the pre-draft workouts.

Is Abreu really going to be that expensive when Nelson Cruz got a single year guaranteed at $15 with a mutual second year option last year? Coming off the major power outage of a year he just had and given his age, I’d guess he’d be closer to Rizzo’s 2-year, $32.

I think this will the first of what will be several ass-whuppin’s in a row. I think 5-12 is an optimistic season record.

I have to admit that I'm unfamiliar with Illinois having a bye and wishing that they had a game to play. Usually at this time of year, I'm thankful for a bye because I won't be tempted to waste 3 1/2 hours watching a desolate football program get its brains mashed in by a mid-tier Big 10 team. 5 games left and a bowl and the only result going forward that won't be considered a resounding success would be to lose out. They beat NW and lose all the rest of their games plus the bowl, and this season still exceeds expectations with the most wins in a season in over a decade. As it is, the most likely scenario going forward looks like taking 2 of 3 from @Nebraska, MSU and Purdue, losing soundly to Meat-Chicken, and then beating the worst NW team since the 80s. Finish 9-3, probably lose out to Purdue on the tiebreakers for the West division champ. Go to the Duke's Mayo Bowl in Charlotte to play someone like Syracuse, with a solid chance of winning the bowl game and finishing somewhere around #12 in the AP.

Plus, you'll need to factor in a likely 11-1 Illinois team that would have victories over Michigan and Ohio State. Loss to Indiana = automatic elimination It would be so Illinois to have a botched touchdown call keep them out of the CFP. Won’t happen, but blown calls in Illinois games directly led to instant replay being added to both college football (Michigan 2000) and college basketball (Miami 2013).

DeVito will be starting today for Illinois.

These are not mutually exclusive positions.

The non-Mooney WRs on this team are worthless. Just awful.

You think so? He seemed a little wild and gave up a really hard hit double by Freeman. He hit that right after I posted. Still, it was 99 mph right at the top of the zone. Freddie Freeman is one of about 20 humans in history who could have turned that into a double.

Whatever was wrong with Josh Hader looks fixed.

It appears Vegas agrees, as the #24 Illini are 4 point home dogs to unranked Minnesota next week (and I agree with this assessment, I think Minnesota is the one legit team in the BTW this season). I'll be curious to see if that changes if DeVito is cleared to play. The backup is hot garbage. I have no idea whether DeVito will play or not. But I suspect there will be no word one way or the other right up to game time. Huge game for the Big Ten West. The winner will be the favorite for the division going forward. Illinois in particular will be favored in every remaining game except Michigan. I have to keep things in perspective and remember expectations going into the season. Anything beyond a sixth win and a bowl birth is gravy. More than anything, what Illinois really needs is to stack several bowl seasons together, 4 in 5, 5 in 6 and go back to being a consistently relevant football program for the first time in 30 years.

The ideal remainder of the season would look a whole bunch like this game. The best scenario is the Bears going into the off-season knowing Fields is the guy and having a top 5 pick to start building a team around him. Yesterday was quite easily Fields’ best game as a Bear. He was also quite easily the best player in a Bears uniform.

They’ll be heavily favored in their next 3. Have a great chance of being 8-1 with a win over ranked Kansas St. They’ll be ranked then.

That was the year they started off 6-0 before finishing the regular season 0-6. They still got to a bowl and beat the 6-7 UCLA team that had gotten into the PAC championship game only because USC was ineligible that year and then needed a special exemption from the NCAA to play in a bowl game with a losing record. As for how bad Illinois has been, the true tale of the tape is the won-loss record. Over the previous 10 seasons, Illinois is 69th out of the 70 current or soon to be P5 schools in winning percentage, ahead of only Kansas. Over the previous 30 seasons, Illinois is 66th/70, in front of only Duke, Vandy, Kansas and Indiana. Another way to look at it is the head-to-head records since 1992 against the Big 10 schools Illinois should historically be competitive with - Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Northwestern, Purdue and Michigan St: NW 11-19 PU 8-16 WIS 6-20-1 IOWA 6-17 MINN 9-16 MSU 4-12 There is no historic or demographic reason for Illinois to have been dominated by each of these schools over the last 30 years. Illinois had a all-time winning record against all of these schools prior to 1992. The difference is that each of these schools made at least one great coaching hire in that time while Illinois repeatedly made bad ones. 1992, by the way, in addition to be a nice round 30 years ago, is also the point where John Mackovic left as football HC and AD. So, there was a clear change in administration at that time that coincides with Illinois’ downturn.