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QUOTE (JenksIsMyHero @ Sep 17, 2017 -> 10:45 AM) Whelp, my Sunday afternoon just opened up. Will they win 5 games this year? They should...but they will have games where they get smacked down...the offense is just way too one-dimensional...especially with Glennon. Zero playmakers at the wide-out position. Defense can play but Bucs have a ton of passing weapons and when Bears are on the field as much as they have been (thanks to turnovers and too many holding penalties)....they are going to have a hard time. Especially because they still massively lack playmakers on the defense who can create turnovers.

QUOTE (LittleHurt05 @ Sep 17, 2017 -> 10:30 AM) And thus ends Chicago's love affair with Tarik Cohen. Such a bad decision Very bad decision...yes...still a really good and exciting player. Awful decision in an awful game. I know this is not all on Glennon but I'm ready for Trubisky to come in haha.

QUOTE (Lillian @ Sep 14, 2017 -> 05:45 PM) How many top 50 position player prospects does it take to produce one guy, who ever puts up a year like the one Avi is having? Look, I love these young prospects and the whole rebuild, as much as anyone, but at some point, it seems like you have to appreciate the rare successes and try to hang on to them. Avi is a young guy, and has many years of his prime before him. I hope that they extend him and lock him up for the next 5 or 6 years, to take him through his prime. He and Abreu, who could ultimately move to DH, could comprise half of the middle of the order, for the upcoming window of contention, beginning in 2019. I want both of them on that roster. I hope that Moncada becomes a Tim Raines, Ricky Henderson type lead off guy. If you plug Jimenez into the middle of the order and add one big left handed bat, you have the run production needed to win a lot of games. Beyond the production, there are a also few intangibles that come with keeping guys like Jose and Avi. Jose is a terrific leader and club house guy. Both could provide some important veteran presence, on what will be a very young team. There is also something about the camaraderie of maintaining a core of guys, and not turning over the entire roster. It is also difficult to build fan loyalty to a revolving door of prospects. I just don't think that the success rate of prospects is high enough to trade away every prospect that works out, for the hope and "promise" of more and more prospects I think the key point is you get to a spot where to get better, you can't keep removing guys on the roster who are already solid players...if you do that you are in a neverending process where you aren't getting the talent. With Abreu, I understand the concept of moving him because he will get older, that said, his bat is really good and if you move him without getting pieces who can get plugged into the lineup (relatively near-term), you are just subtracting from your team and shooting your rebuild in the foot. With Avi, that argument is even clearer, especially since, we should have capacity from a pure contract perspective. The interesting point with Avi is how do you project him out long-term and how much do you view this season as a mirage (and what is the league worth). I can see scenarios to move him, but I also see a guy at his age who this could be the first year of an ascent to being a really good hitter (a tool that he has always had). While his BAPIP is inflated, he has hit the ball hard and seen some improvements in other offensive trends..including better walks rates, etc. Additionally, his defense has taken a major step forward (from how bad it was) which also enables him to be a more effective player then before. Being able to have an Avi in your lineup when your other guys come up, allows you to actually have a deep roster and he very much can be a valid contributor to the team during periods where we anticipate contending.

QUOTE (southsider2k5 @ Sep 14, 2017 -> 06:22 PM) Cleveland got an incredible deal for Kyrie. That is the type of deal we should have gotten. They got a star, they got players, and a top of the draft pick. That was phenomenal. Originally...yes...after all these medical reports, I am less convinced of such.

QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 14, 2017 -> 04:23 PM) I know it's not going to happen, but the Bulls are actually in a really, really good position for the FA market next year. The Salary Cap in 2016 was expected to balloon again in 2017 and that didn't happen - as a consequence all those 2016 deals are extra terrible and that has knocked a bunch of teams out of having cap space. It's not going to happen because of the FO, but a competent front office would be in a spectacular position to compete for a star next year. And had we waited a year, we'd have been in that position with Jimmy Butler's steal of a contract (a guy who, need I remind everyone, legitimately wanted to be in Chicago). It was beyond stupid, but alas, it is what it is. At this point, I hope this path works as well as the pro-tankers think it will.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Sep 12, 2017 -> 12:11 PM) The lakers tanked last year. The Spurs say they didnt tank but they ran crap lineups out and sat Chuck persons pretty much all season after Robinson and Elliott went down. The Warriors did tank, even as bad as they were prior to that season. They benched Lee and NateRob for scrubs, they traded Monte Ellis mid season. https://www.cheatsheet.com/stocks/5-nba-tea...html/?a=viewall Tanking isnt an art, there is luck to it because your pick isnt guaranteed by your record(hello Derrick Rose), but acting like it has to be a prolonged tank is not correct. Some teams fold up late in the season and "protect" their better players in order to give themselves a chance at a higher pick. I'm referring to the Lakers when they won championships (Kobe era). The Lakers have tanked for a few years and have very little to show for it thus far...Ball might actually be something but Russell is already gone, Randel is mediocre, and Ingram was a giant bust until he went on a late season run that maybe gives Laker fans some optimism.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Sep 12, 2017 -> 10:36 AM) Prolonged or not, those teams tanked When did the Lakers tank? They traded Vlade for Kobe. They never tanked or had any top pick. They signed Shaq with free agent money, traded for Kobe, and then traded for Pau (for Marc Gasol). When did Miami tank? They drafted Wade @ 5 (and did not do any form of tanking to get there). They already had Zo on the roster (and obviously he had some health issues). Spurs were a very good team who lost its best player, David Robinson (who statistically was worth 20 wins on his own) and then had Vinny Del Negro and Avery Johnson (who were both quality players the year before) royally suck. Even then they had the 3rd worst record in the league at the time and won the lottery. They are the closest you can call to "tanking" of the teams on the list. The Warriors were just a bad team. They weren't tanking. Tanking is intentionally being bad / trying to be the worse in the leauge. The warriors were just a bad team for a long time and even then, it wasn't with super high picks that they excelled, it was with good picks, but nothing legendary. They drafted well and I think everyone on this board would say the Bulls failed at "tanking" if they ended up with a 7th and 11th overall pick in this year / next year's draft (which is what the Warriors did with Curry / Klay). Good teams get better because they drafted well...not because they just crazily tanked. The exception to this is the Cavs, who maybe tanked, but they also royally sucked and obviously won LBJ.

The Miami Heat, La Lakers, Boston Celtics, and San Antonio Spurs have made the vast majority of NBA championships post the Jordan era and none of those teams really built themselves by a prolonged tanking strategy. Golden State is the new dominant team and their best players were drafted 7th overall (Steph), 11th overall (Klay), 35th overall (Draymond) and Durant (Free Agency). I already know everyone is going to say, well the NBA doesn't work that way anymore, but all of those teams won a ton of championships without truly "tanking". Wade / Duncan were the two highest picks drafted by any of those teams, but neither were part of a prolonged tank. Duncan was a pure luck of a Spurs team that had its best player dealing with a back injury (David Robinson) and Wade was drafted 5th overall and very quickly the Heat were back out of the lottery (they were only in the lottery the year before they got Wade, when they drafted Caron Butler @ 10 overall).

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 12, 2017 -> 09:27 AM) Just in time for the Bulls' tanking...lottery reform. NBA needs to do it. Tanking is bad for sports.

QUOTE (Heads22 @ Sep 11, 2017 -> 06:03 PM) What a tough loss. The plan was obviously to make Stanley beat ISU, and he did. Glad to never have to play Wadley again. David Montgomery is special. Wadley was ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous. Montgomery was really good too.

What is Josh Gordon up to these days? Is he eligible to play? I presume a team with limited hopes like the Bears isn't going to take a shot on Gordon, but hey, we are pretty desperate for wideouts and he has massive talent.

I've seen some people complain about play-calling. I still think we are going to lose a lot more games than we win, because we don't have a playmaker in the secondary / lack a playmaker at QB / lack a playmaker at wideout. That said, I am a firm believer that by the end of the year, we will be the closest this franchise has been (in a long while) to going on a sustainable run because they have building this team the right way. I am hoping / quietly optimistic that the playmaking QB is on this roster today (Trubisky) and when it comes to the other pieces, we can continue to address this via the draft and free agency. Reality is, if we had a good QB, I'd say we are a legitimate playoff team (because we have a playoff defense). What we don't have is a "special" defense because we lack the disruptive playmakers to force mad turnovers and I think a dynamic secondary player would change that. Our backs and oline has talent, in fact (hopefully Long eventually gets healthy and Whitehair builds upon last year...even better if Grasu emerges as a legit center) and our TE's actually have some potential (not even counting Miller...looking at Sims/Shaheen which could develop into a very formidable duo over time). Wideout we know is garbage for now...but we can build it out. Long story short, I think the playmaking gap at some key skilled positions will cause us to lose quite a few more close games then we win and I'd suspect given the fact that we can't score it in bunches, that we'll have a game or two where our defense struggles against high-octane offenses and we get blown out, but long-story short, I believe Pace is doing this the right way. Hopefully ownership sees it and with the way the season goes, we end making some positive headway/traction that prevents us from hitting a "reset" button because I believe in the path this franchise is going.

QUOTE (Brian @ Sep 11, 2017 -> 10:56 AM) Why is it accessible at AMC theatres then? Can't they block it from their chains? Who knows..maybe at some point they will. The reality is, AMC is still making all of their money on each ticket with this other company hoping they can make money off of the "data" collected (in excess of the loss they have on tickets).

QUOTE (bmags @ Sep 11, 2017 -> 11:03 AM) Really good wideouts are great to have, but there are plenty of good receivers that drop to the early 2nd round. Obviously, you want an AJ Green/Julio Jones draft, but I'd rather either trade down to back half of first and get a wideout if it's a need or take a harder position to find. So maybe that is the analogy I wasn't following. I think of RB's as being late round guys, so when you said that, I thought you meant the same thing for Wideouts. I do agree you can find good wideouts in the late 1st / 2nd round. Obviously, you can hit past that, but most of the better wideouts in this league were higher round picks.

I realize Alshon was always hurt but I really didn't like giving up the only real passing weapon we had for nothing. We have good running backs and solid TE's (hopefully Shaheen can emerge as the season goes on) but our WR corps opened the year bad and is now a total dumpster fire. Creates opportunities so hopefully, someone rises from the ashes of this corps.

QUOTE (bmags @ Sep 11, 2017 -> 10:33 AM) I do pretty much agree that WRs are like rbs and no reason to spend a top 10 on one. I disagree with this. While with elite QB's, you can create QB's, there is something special that elite wideouts have. That said, you don't necessarily correlate the best superbowl teams to those with the best pure wideouts. I.e., megatron was amazing, Lions always sucked though. Even Brandon Marshall...one of best receivers in his era, zero playoffs to show for it. I wanted Amari Cooper badly with that pick...unfortunately Raiders pounced on him before us. White was not an overdraft but clearly it didn't work out in our favor. One thing about wideouts though, I do feel that we see a lot of higher pick wideouts kind of bust / not be that good.

QUOTE (TheTruth05 @ Sep 11, 2017 -> 10:03 AM) To add to this question, are all the movies available as soon as they hit theaters also be available on the service? Yes....but if you have to be close to the theatre to buy, so if it is a peak release movie, probably issues getting tickets, but otherwise, this is a legit service. Has gotten a lot of press and AMC's CEO has publicly spoken out against the company.

Urban or Chip will be Notre Dame's head coach next year. Yep...you heard it here first!

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Sep 10, 2017 -> 08:16 PM) Eli used to be good, right? I've never though Eli was that good. That said, when he gets hot, he gets hot. He has a lot of bad habits that make him turnover / mistake prone. I also thought Dak looked pretty lousy yesterday. Not much juice on his ball, etc. Quite a few spots where the Giants could have turned those into turnovers.

QUOTE (Jack Parkman @ Sep 10, 2017 -> 03:22 PM) Yeah, and it is unfortunate. White was on the score a bunch leading up to 2015 draft, seemed like a good dude and was genuinely excited to be a Bear. It is a shame that his body couldn't withstand NFL football. I really don't like using "bust" for someone who didn't turn into a good player due to career altering injuries. That is not a scouting failure, it is just a fact of football and poor luck. Injuries suck, and football chews a player up and spits them out. Good guy and injuries happen. Too bad. At least he got himself one nice paycheck. Hard for me to blame front office cause we never ever got to see if he actually could be good and it wasn't like he was injured when we drafted him. Guy played in college and then had something crop up and has never been the same since.

QUOTE (Dick Allen @ Sep 9, 2017 -> 02:18 PM) This just in.....Iowa State still sucks. Nice win for the hawks

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QUOTE (Balta1701 @ Sep 8, 2017 -> 07:55 AM) So it is your belief that Carlos Rodon has done nothing but "watched television" since his last time out? I have no inside info but when I read this first thing I saw was that maybe he just woke up sore, slept on something wrong and as they got closer to the start and he had loosened up they decided to take the extra cautious route. No basis for that.

QUOTE (TheTruth05 @ Sep 8, 2017 -> 03:16 AM) I really thought Chiefs had no chance yesterday after the first half. Pretty crazy to see Alex Smith throw a couple deep balls and shred the Pats at Gillette. Many times on this board, I've said that I think Alex Smith is one of the more underrated passers in this league. He's the Rodney Dangerfield of QB's.

QUOTE (bigruss22 @ Sep 8, 2017 -> 07:51 AM) I work for a Financial investment mutual company now, I honestly wouldn't trust these guys without laws in place that make them specifically call out investments that make them more money. Way too much incentive to screw people over, I just think of the mortgage crisis and how brokers were pushing variable rates because they made 5x as much on them, why wouldn't these guys sell do something similar? Russ...where you working for. Since you reference Mutual, I presume it is an insurance company? Are you at CUNA?