almagest

Get ready boys, because I read the tea leaves again and discovered "Tucker too"

Yeah, but they continue to be unable to get off the field. No punts forced all game.

Me neither. That is a damn good team.

Murakami saw that Bears game and knows he has to be on the other pope-blessed team

The Packers absolutely controlled that game until late in the 4th and they completely crumbled. I would've preferred a blowout but I'm not upset with watching them choke harder than I've seen any team choke in a while

Hey, Green Bay, how does it feel to lose a game on a deep bomb? Bad, doesn't it?

I'd be happy with either

And you guys thought I was joking with finding "Murakami is coming" in Venable's quote

Clearly, we should all 100% believe this Twitter rando.

Murakami is coming is right there. Could it be any clearer?

Wouldn’t have minded taking a shot on him.

I would also prefer to keep local governments out of it, because the fans and taxpayers end up getting screwed no matter what happens. The way I understand this situation, though, is the Bears are funding the stadium. They want infrastructure help from the state (who owns that infra), and the state said its not a priority in 2026. Yeah, the Bears don't HAVE to move, but honestly they should. Soldier Field sucks to get to, the field sucks, it's tiny, and it's outdoors when most modern stadiums are domes. The city already blew their chance to keep the team in the city. The state should be trying to work with them on this but instead we get petty nonsense back and forth endlessly.

Bring in a front office guy from Tampa and immediately trade for someone on the margins of their roster, eh?

I don't miss most of his performances, but I do miss Joe Kelly because of this kind of stuff.

Right - go somewhere else, establish you can get some good stuff done there and get your name back in the GM consideration carousel

I remember I was getting a car emissions test done when the news broke, and that's the only emissions test I ever remember doing. Was sitting in the car stunned the whole time.

If so, probably saw the writing on the wall there and wanted to move on. Seems like a lot of the really good front office talent is gone from the Rays now, plus their impending sale likely means a lot of changes at the top.

Nothin' like eating some lunch and watching Soxtalk at each other's throats over an assistant GM hire!

Like I said, good QBs have rarely if ever move teams. It just doesn't happen, with or without a cap. For a long time I would've agreed that a great QB is the most important thing to have and you can figure the rest out. After watching the Bears and Jags this year, seeing what Darnold and Mayfield were able to do with KOC and Cohen after essentially being written off, and noticing that pretty much every Super Bowl team had a good to great coaching staff I changed my opinion. I think a great coach can elevate an average QB, or at least work around him. I don't think a great QB can drag an average coaching staff to contention - in fact, I'm not even sure you can be a great QB with anything less than a good coach unless you're a ridiculous outlier. IMO coaching is the most important piece of the puzzle in the NFL. QB is probably second, though the offensive line play is pretty close (and that is also incredibly dependent on coaching). It is admittedly hard to say because the NBA was a very different league 40+ years ago, but I'm just not seeing much difference in who was good then vs now when looking at larger market size. The Lakers and Celtics have always been good. The Bulls were solid at inception and have been pretty bad the rest of the time minus the 90s. The Knicks had some solid teams and 1 or 2 championships, but have been a joke the rest of the time. The Nets and Clippers have almost always been a joke. The 76ers have been a joke for a long time. The Raptors have one year. The Warriors were good in the 60s/70s and weren't very good after that until they drafted Steph and built around him. You basically have two paths to success in the current NBA - keep trying to find stars in the draft until you do then build around them, or get your current stars to recruit other good players to take less money and build a super team. I don't see how their soft cap impacts any of this. My argument is less that the MLB has "better" parity, and more that the salary cap A) doesn't seem to make much of a difference in the other leagues, and B) MLB would barely change with one in place unless it was WAY more restrictive than any of the teams or players would allow for. I covered the reasons why in my last post. Ray Ray brought up revenue sharing + league wide tv rights and I think that's a much better idea to help with parity in the MLB.

NFL teams with great coaches are the only ones who are successful, and coaches are not subject to the salary cap. Stud QBs have never been bought by the highest bidder. They've always been zealously guarded by whoever drafted/originally signed them, to the point where a big part of the NFL's stance against free agency until relatively recently was due to "protecting" QBs from poaching. NFL team spending has always been in a rough parity as well. There's just not a lot to indicate that the salary cap has been the driving force in any change to the competitive landscape there. OKC is not a dynasty yet, and this is really their first glimpse of sustained success in franchise history, even going back to the Seattle days. If we're talking NBA market size, four of the seven dynasties (Lakers, Bulls, Warriors, Celtics) since the cap started are large markets and account for 66.7% of dynasty championships and 55% of overall championships. I don't see how four teams accounting for 55% of championships in the last 40 years shows a salary cap win. I've also already outlined why I think a cap and floor won't work in MLB in a previous post, but it really breaks down to A) The cap isn't going to be below the current highest spend, B) The high spenders will still spend the most, and C) Floors are only going to enforce bad decisions from the poorly run teams at the bottom, and you can't force them to pay more than they are able to. A better revenue sharing model and standardized TV rights are much better ideas.

Yeah, I blew that one. I don't know what I was looking at last night.

I don't follow hockey except to bandwagon the Hawks, and I don't follow the NBA that closely because the Bulls are a dumpster fire, but enough to keep track of the league. I do follow the NFL. I know the NFL has revenue sharing. If you want to argue that MLB needs a similar revenue sharing model (or at least a standardized TV deal), that's definitely worth considering. I just don't think a salary cap is going to accomplish anything. The A's were in the same market as the Giants and have had multiple dynasties and years of dominance. Their recent incompetence has little to do with their market size.

The markets are different in the NFL. You can't 1:1 compare them. Look at revenue by team for both leagues and compare where each team is ranked.

Salary spend ABSOLUTELY correlates to wins in MLB. I'm not arguing against that. It does in the NBA as well. The NFL always had rough spending parity + coaching matters SO MUCH in football, so it's hard to say the cap changed much there. Some MLB teams (Brewers, Rays) buck that trend, but it's really hard. The playoffs are the equalizer there, as you pointed out, which is why I used the WS champ comparison. You're also not changing the landscape of the best regular season teams in MLB by implementing a salary cap. The cap is going to come in at the top of the current team salary spend. They're not going to make the top 5-10 teams shed a ton of salary from guaranteed contracts. So you'll still have the exact same situation you have now, and even if the cap never goes up you're still going to have the same teams at the top. Smart teams will also figure out how to skirt the rules and continue to sign the players they want even if they're at the top of the cap. If you raise the floor too then maybe you'll see some change, but you'd have to make it pretty tight to make a difference, and there aren't enough good players to go around to change much here. You're also still competing against existing market size and team revenue - you're not going to force the Pirates or A's or White Sox to spend to a point they can't afford.

The Packers haven't been a dynasty since the 60s. Them consistently having a hall of fame quarterback and being a well coached and well run organization since the early 90s has nothing to do with the salary cap. Even with these advantages they still only have two championships in 30 years and they haven't won in 15 years. KC has a hall of fame coach and a great QB. There's no salary cap for coaches, so anyone could have hired Andy Reid at any time, and no star QB has ever been poached in the history of the NFL because of the ridiculous free agency rules until the 90s. Even since then you haven't seen it because teams know the value of a franchise QB. "People who disagree with me regularly have a disease" is certainly a take. I'll keep it respectful.