RedRamage

Mostly from baseball-reference.com

Obviously, it's going to depend on the foot. If the Lions' docs look at it and conclude that he's healthy to play now, then I'd definitely say go for it. To be totally cold and analytical about it: If this is a situation where the Raiders are saying: "We're concerned that if you don't get the second surgery you'll re-injure the foot and be out for an even longer period of time." Well, that's not so much an issue for the Lions if they sign him to a one-year "prove it" deal. For the Lions they need short term help until Alim is back. If Wilkins plays for 6-8 games, re-injures the foot and out for the season... well, that's about the time that I'd expect Alim to be thinking of coming back, as well as some time for Tyleik to learn the NFL and possibly be ready to step up to a bigger role. Now, putting a little humanity back on: I'd hate to the Lions to go into a situation like this with the idea that they could "use up" Wilkins and then just spit him out. I would want my team to look out for the player first. But the reality is that the Lions are in a position where it'd be great for some short term help at DT without major concerns if the help only lasts 1/2 a season.

I tend to agree... but I'm also gonna defer to people much smarter than I when it comes to football and the OL. If the staff things Ratledge can cut it and do it better than Glasgow, then obviously go for it. Still it seems like it's be easier on Ratledge to not have to learn the NFL AND learn a new position in the same year.

Van Andel I agree with everything you said except that Van Andel Arena can't do football*. It's a hockey/basketball sized place. *Okay, technically it can do Arena football. Fond memories of the Grand Rapids Rampage... but that's not UFL football.

Perhaps... but it also lent some appearance of legitimacy to the team as well. Just using my Grand Rapids example: Where would they have played? The best football stadium in the area would be GVSU, but as mentioned that's quite outside the metro area of GR. The other real possibility would be Davenport's stadium... I forgot that Davenport had a stadium in my earlier post. That's actually further away than GVSU from downtown GR, but closer to many of the suburbs of GR which sprawls more south than west, east or north and its also VERY close to the airport. Anyway, you're either in a Div. II stadium or worse, a High School stadium, if you center yourself in GR. Playing in a stadium like that is going to very much brand you as a very minor league team. Compare that with playing in Ford Field. Obviously no one is going to assume a team (or league) is a major player just because it plays games in an NFL stadium, but at the same time they're playing in an NFL stadium: That means they're not just some fly-by night thing, right? I mean NFL stadiums don't just open their doors because someone comes up and asks nice. They have to have some important people behind them to even get a stadium to listen to their pitch, right?

How close is your finger to the panic button? I gotta saw I'm starting to move a bit. Look, I get that we're only a half game out of the top of the AL. I also get that we're 8 games over the Guardians. So I'm not even close to pushing the button yet. But, I've at least looked at it and judged what direction I need to move my hand if I'm going to push it. If we go back to July 1 to avoid looking at too much recency bias we're 7 and 11, and our run differential has dropped like a rock: What's troubling to me is that we already saw a huge decline in June and now we're seeing even a steeper decline in July. Again, I'm NOT pushing the panic button yet... but I'm starting to twitch a bit.

Saw that last night too. Here's a news story on it. https://www.woodtv.com/sports/report-ufls-michigan-panthers-to-relocate/ Sad but as you said @MichiganCardinal not super shocking. The story mentions that they are looking at other places like: "Boise, Idaho, Columbus, Ohio and cities in Kentucky and Florida as possible new homes." I guessing they are thinking that markets with NFL teams are preventing people from showing up from for "minor league" football games. That makes some sense I guess... but not so sure about Florida with three NFL teams and concerns that Jacksonville not being able to stay there themselves. Anyway, it would be cool if Grand Rapids was considered... but I don't know if it's quite big enough here and we also don't really have a great football stadium in the city. GVSU is probably the closest one that would be decent enough, but then that's 15 miles outside of GR so makes it even less likely.

Can we request Benetti for regular season games too??

I agree with you for any sport where a contract is guaranteed for the player as well as for the team. If a team can't cut a player for under performance and not pay him, then a player should live up to his deal even if he over performs. But in the NFL, where teams can and do cut players all the time before they aren't living up to their contracts I have no real problem with a player trying to "cut" his team when he over performs.

This is starting to feel like an old school Lions game... getting screwed by the refs.

While I agree 100% with this, I doubt we're gonna see major changes any time soon that address this. But, there is a minor change that could address this: Players who are on their first HOF ballot and receive at least 5 votes (not 5%) will not be dropped from the list. We really should get rid of the silly notion that a player is HOF worthy, but just not first ballot HOF worthy... but I don't see that disappearing anytime soon so the alternative is just don't drop players from from the ballot the first year if there's even a low level of people who vote for a player.

I almost wonder if there shouldn't be some sort of petition system where candidates who think they are HOF worthy prepare a case before a panel of baseball experts (managers, players, writers, historians, etc.) Honestly I'm imagining a court room sort of thing. The "jury" is a mix of various experts. The "judge" is someone from MLB who ensures rules are followed. The prosecution provides the evidence and the witnesses to support the claim that the player/person is HOF worthy while the DH (designated hater) is the defense trying to challenge the accuracy and/or relevancy of the evidence presented and poke holes in any comparisons to existing HOF members. That's probably way to elaborate of a system but it seems like it'd be more accurate than the current system and less prone to snubs because of less known players from smaller markets or biases against/for teams or players.

I think the theory was that journalists would be the most knowledgeable while being the least biased. Obviously it's not a perfect system but the hope would be that journalists would be less likely to vote for someone just because he was a good teammate or in the hopes that that person would then vote for you as well. (Or that you might withhold a vote because you didn't like a guy or because that guy always seemed to have success against you/your team.)

Referencing my previous post about trying to think of some way to signal "I give up" other than the slide, I actually mentally debated having some sort of LEDs built into the QBs uniform that he could trigger. I mentally rejected the idea but not for the reason you're probably thinking. As much as it would be an abomination to see a QBs jersey start blinking on the field, it actually would solve a lot of problems. Having the jersey light up would allow defenders from any angle see the QB was giving up. The QB could assume any position during this time (to brace for any late hits) while still clearly signaling his intent. And replay could clearly show where the QB was when he first signaled allowing for accurate marking of the ball AND being able to determine how far away a defender was when the QB signaled to judge if a defender hit the QB late or not. So yeah, as ugly and awful as it'd be to see this in a game, it actually solves a lot of problems. But I threw out the idea because I couldn't think of an effective way that the QB could trigger the LEDs. How do you get a trigger or button that the QB can easily activate that's always very easy to access in a split second but also (nearly) impossible to accidentally set off?

Where's Skubal on this list? I don't think he's in the 100% lock at all, but I think he's in that mix of reasonably good shot. Expanding on Oblong's categories: If they retired right now, are they a HOFer. The way they are going they are almost there. They have the talent and the track record to have a HOF career, but need more seasons at this level. I view line 1 as 100% (obviously). Line 2 is maybe 90%+, does that sound reasonable? Then Line 3 is 70%+. I guess what I'm trying to identify in line 3 is players who aren't new on season... they've been at it for a while and have shown the talent and have the the stats and great seasons to indicate they are top tier players. These are different than players like Meadows, for example, who seem to have the potential to be all-star players, but don't have the track record or the service time that we can reasonably extrapolate from. And these are different than players like Bobby Higginson, for example, who have had many solid years but were never a top tier guys. I'd put Skubal in my new Line 3 category. He has amazing talent. He's been in the league for 4.5 seasons and he's had 1.5 seasons of HOF level of play. He's headed to the HOF but has to accomplish a lot more yet vs. players in Line 2 who just have to just not fall off a cliff to get into the HOF.