chw42

SF and KC moved up a lot Edit: Wow they're both top 6

Oh no, why is Rick Hahn there?

Benintendi for Scott + cash, who says no?

With ABS being a thing next year, the value of framing will be decreased (although definitely not eliminated). Quero's biggest weakness is his framing, it cost him about 1.5 wins of value last year. I say we wait and see how his power develops and how the new ABS rules affect his value defensively as a catcher before trading him.

The Bears are gonna need to give Roushar a raise to keep him this off-season.

Ozzy doing that against Parsons and Gary is incredibly impressive. He had a better game pass blocking than Wright.

Must be nice to still have money for other stuff when you're doing stuff like this.

It's not as big of a deal as it used to be. If he kicks that into the end zone, they get it at the 35. If you let them return it, they probably get it to the 30 anyhow. 5-10 yards can make a difference there, but they gave up a 50 yard TD instead, so whatever.

I have a feeling that had Virginia won the ACC championship and gotten in as the conference champion, Miami would have been left out for ND. There's a lot of politics going on behind the scenes. Leaving a P4 conference completely out of the playoffs while letting in 2 G5 schools who are probably gonna get blown out in the first round was probably never going to sit right with the ACC. There's a reason why they had ND ranked ahead of Miami for basically all the rankings up until the last one. I wouldn't say the selection process is completely rigged, but it's heavily favored towards the big programs like Alabama and the conferences that Disney/ESPN has media deals with. The SEC is always going to get favoritism and in this case and I think ESPN's media deal with the ACC probably affected putting in Miami over ND. ND definitely deserved to get in over Alabama because Alabama has been straight garbage for the last month and teams that limp to the finish definitely do not deserve to get into the CFP. But, ND should really just not lose to 2 of the 3 good teams on their schedule next time. Maybe this wouldn't be a problem if they just joined the ACC.

Aside from the final play, I think 2 other plays really changed the game yesterday. The first was Loveland's drop/fumble right after the interception. Caleb made a good throw, but Loveland could not complete the catch going to the ground. Nice play by the Packers' safety as well. If they convert that catch, they get the ball at the 20 after a big momentum swing on the INT. They get at least 3 points off it instead of punting the ball right back. It probably changes the entire tone of the first half. The 2nd was the 3rd and 2 on the Packers' 2nd to last drive, where the Bears had 4 guys surround Jacobs behind the LOS and let him go right through for 21 yards. Just piss poor tackling. I know Jacobs is hard to bring down, but come on. That should never ever happen in the NFL. If you tackle him for a loss there, they most likely kick a FG and it completely changes the way that the final drive is managed. That TD they gave up right before half was also a huge back breaker. You finally score points and hope to stop the Packers from scoring in the middle 8, and what happens? Your highest paid DB decides to not play his deep half and lets a deep crosser get right behind him for a TD. People want to blame Brisker for that play, but that's really not his responsibility. There is no way that the left side deep half is supposed to carry with a post like that. It also wouldn't have made any sense to have no real deep zone for the entire right side of the field. I know Jaylon Johnson needs time to get back up to speed, but his mistakes yesterday were purely mental.

They're setting up the ND vs. Miami narrative for the final spot. They realized that if Bama is between those 2 teams they can't have arguments about that in this final week. ESPN needs their sports drama for their talk shows.

You're forgetting that a G5 school will be #12. Realistically, the only argument is Notre Dame vs. Miami if BYU loses the Big 12 championship game because they have the same record, mostly played the same teams, and played each other. ESPN has been trying really hard to argue for Miami.

I don't think there's any scenario where Alabama is out if BYU loses the Big 12 championship.

Or change their schedule so that recruiting happens later in the year and coaches aren't forced to do this.

If the field is expanding to 16 next year, I think we'll see this argument less. But yeah, if Vandy somehow got in over Texas when they played nobody good in their non-conference play and got beat by Texas, then there's a great argument for never scheduling any elite teams in non-conference play for SEC or Big Ten teams.

He went up against 2 of the best defensive lines and came out looking good enough. Keep in mind he went against Maxx Crosby in week 4 as well and did ok. They really threw him to the fire and he's survived so far. It won't get any easier though. He's gonna see Parsons and Garrett in the next 3 weeks. Just an absolute gauntlet for a rookie tackle to go through. He's basically gone up against a top 10 pass rusher in every game he's started so far.

Win 2 of 5 and they're in the playoffs. Win 3 of 5 and they win the division. I think they need to aim for at least a split with the Packers, beat the Browns at home, and then win 1 of 2 against the Lions and 49ers. Win 1 of 5 and they're gonna need the Lions to lose 3 of their last 5 and the Cowboys to lose 2 of their last 5.

If Trapilo can be a long-term left tackle it really frees him to go all out on defense.

Hopefully we get TJ Edwards back for next Saturday. Jackson and Ogbongbemiga did fine the past 2 weeks, but they were special teamers for a reason.

I was shocked at how easily we ran on them all game. If Ben had done that all game instead of trying to throw the ball in the 2nd and 3rd quarters, we probably win this game by 3 scores.

The great thing about this win was that our running scheme was so good that it forced Fangio to either commit to the run or defend the thing Caleb is really good at: the play action dig route. Fangio basically said we'll let you run but we're not gonna bite on play action and let Caleb dice us up over the middle 20 yards at a time. The result was an ineffective play action game and Caleb no longer being able to do the thing he's really good at, but we absolutely destroyed them on outside zone cut backs over the middle. We must have ran that like 10 times this game and averaged 10 yards a rush. Ben out schemed Fangio today and that is not easy to do. I've been wondering why DCs don't try more to scheme against that dig post combo off play action more. Because that's easily our most efficient pass play all year and we go to that concept every game.

He was pretty awful for 3 quarters. But when the Bears needed the conversions on the last 2 drives he got them. The Eagles make a lot of good QBs look bad. Love and Goff looked terrible against them too. Goff completed like 1/3 of his passes.

They're 7 point underdogs on the road. So it's not some impossible feat, especially given how inconsistent Philly's offense has been all year. They looked great against Dallas for 1.5 quarters and then Eberflus of all people adjusted and they didn't score the rest of the game. My main concern is the line blocking for Caleb against that vaunted Eagles defensive line. We saw Love and Goff struggle a lot against them. The offensive line did fine today against the Steelers' very good defensive line. Watt, Heyward, and Herbig are all great defensive linemen. Trapilo absolutely shut down Herbig, who was one of the highest graded pass rushers by PFF going into today. They probably would have had no sacks today if Caleb just stayed in the pocket and threw to DJ in the middle of the field on that sack fumble TD. I've been worried that as the competition got better, we were going to start seeing more holes in Caleb's game. Because he does hold onto the ball too long. He does linger on reads. But we're 12 weeks in now and we've faced 3 really good defensive line groups in the past 3 games and Caleb's doing just enough to pass the test and we keep winning. I think going into this week, I would have given us maybe like a 20% chance of winning this game. After today and seeing how we held up against a pretty damn good pass rush, I'd give say my confidence level is up to maybe 35%? It's a short week, it's against the defending champs, and it's on the road, it's never easy to win given those circumstances.

The Giants are going through what we went through last year. Bad coaching does a lot to lose you close games.

Could be, but that possibility is why you trade a guy having a near career year at age 34.