RedRamage

4 minutes ago, MichiganCardinal said:

Not a great look. I’m not sure what the conflict is at Ford Field on 6/8. Nothing is on their public calendar until a Zach Bryan concert on June 20th.

I agree it's not a great look, but probably won't matter. Birmingham is 7-0 with 3 games left. This week they face a very weak team in the Roughnecks. If they win that they can't finish worse than tied for the USFL conf. lead. I don't know that there's been an official release of the tie-breaker rules for the UFL, but the speculation is that they'll follow the the USFL rules:

1. Overall Record
2. Head to Head Record
3. Conference Record
4. Strength of Victory

1. Again, assuming the Stallions win tomorrow, then we'd need them to lose their next game (at Brahms, currently 5-2) and then lose their final game again the Panthers. The Panthers would need to win all of their remain 3 games, and that just gets us both tied 8-2, so over all record is the same.

2. Head to Head would be an even split. They beat us earlier, we would beat them in the last game in this senario.

3. Conference Record: Assuming Stallions win tomorrow and lose to us in the final game, their conference record would be 5-1. Assuming we win out our conference record would be 5-1. Another tie.

4. Strength of Victory: The Stallions current .347 SoV is much higher than the Panthers .314. It's possible that winning out could boost us, but I don't know if it would boost us enough.
 

1 hour ago, Sports_Freak said:

The off-season seems so long! Let's GO!!

It would be a lot more enjoyable if it wasn't true that the Tigers and the Lions have scored the same number of points in the past 48 hours.

11 hours ago, Sports_Freak said:

 

I think that's actually very clever.

18 minutes ago, Motown Bombers said:

I feel like the last time the Lions played Dallas at home was the Stafford fake spike game. 

After that Jerry threated to reveal all the secrets of the NFL refs if his team every had to go Detroit again.

39 minutes ago, Tigeraholic1 said:

Not a fan of the early week 5 bye or playing the bears twice in 4 weeks.

Assuming it's correct, I agree on the early bye, and I wish we were playing the Bears earlier. I'd rather face Williams with less experience.

3 hours ago, 1984Echoes said:

Hooker will be QB2 for the Lions for the next 3 years.

Book it.

I wouldn't bet against that... but that doesn't mean he's the best case backup.

10 minutes ago, 1984Echoes said:

IMO, Hooker is an awesome best-case backup for at least the next 3 years. Full stop.

Is he though? We really don't know anything about him. Now, there is a gigantic caveat here: The coaches do know him, at least significantly more than we as fans do. But even the coaches hasn't seen him in game in the NFL, and (hopefully) never will need to anytime soon. Add in that Hooker will be a very different style of player (more scrambling/mobility) and it would be potentially harder to transition to Hooker on the fly if we needed to.

In my humble opinion the best-case backup would be a QB who has a similar skill set as Goff does and has a track record of NFL experience. That's not Hooker.

Ultimately I'll defer to the Lions staff on this... they know him and the team far better than me so I'm not trying to say they should do X or Y or whatever. I'm just speculating: Hooker was a developmental guy who they could groom to replace Goff if they needed to. Now it's clear they don't need to or certainly don't intend to.

19 minutes ago, Jimbo said:

This is more than I wanted to pay.  Not because he didn't deserve it but I was hoping Goff was the kind of guy wanting to pay more towards the rest of the team since this is his 3rd contract.  That being said, I thought it would be around this and a year from now it won't be that bad.  I am just happy this deal is done before the season started.

Goff became a big fan favorite because he was a very good QB after another team didn't want him and was actually willing to give us draft picks to take him.  Things change now that the Lions gave him a contract.  He is no longer Cinderella but the actual King and with that will come more criticism.  He can take it and really besides Mahomes all QBs get that after they get a big contract. 

Pretty much agree 100%. I hoped he'd take less, but he's under absolutely no obligation to take less. He's earn his pay day and this is a fair payday imho.

What's going to be interesting here is what happens with Hendon Hooker? Given that he was relatively old coming out of college, and now will be sitting for 4 more year (barring injury) what does he want? What do the Lions want from him? Does it make sense to test the waters of a trade? I still see some value in Hooker. For example, it's great to have a mobile QB for the defense to practice against, but I'm sure you can get that on the cheap.

The reality is that Hooker is likely not going to get much value in a trade though without any real NFL experience to see if he's a NFL level QB. And that's likely (hopefully) not happening in Detroit anytime soon.

2 hours ago, MichiganCardinal said:

How do UFL playoffs work? Do we play the undefeated Stallions? Or any chance of hosting a playoff game?

Top 2 teams from each division play each other, so we know we will be playing the Stallions. There is an outside chance we could host the game, but exceedingly unlikely.

The UFL Championship, like the Super Bowl will be played at various member teams home stadiums. This years Championship will be at "The Dome at America's Center" home of the Battlehawks.

Holy crap... SA came back and won it! 

A 10+ minute drive in the 4th qtr for a TD, then a 3-pt conversion. On the kickoff Houston fumbled, SA takes over and drives down for a Ryan Santoso FG to win it and put the Panthers into the playoffs. Yes, that Ryan Santoso... 

Well, the had one more drive in the 3rd quarter... and surprisingly this one did NOT end in a fumble or a punt:

So Michigan secures a playoff spot today if Houston loses. Houston is facing San Antonio. SA is 4-2 going into today's game... and this is their drive chart so far through, nearly through 3 quarters:

They are Minus 13 yards so far for the entire 3rd quarter!!

Brian Lewerke is getting a lot of snaps as QB for the Panthers... he does NOT look good. His passes are not accurate at all.

40 yard FG is good. The field is NOT great either. Lot of runners slipping on the field.

22 yarder is good.

Bates with a 51 yarder... that's his first time kicking on a natural surface.

Okay so... YAOM (yet another old man -- pronounced: yeah-ohm) commentary:

If I separate the uniform from the Tigers... I actually like the uniform over all. I think it has a pretty cool look to it... I like to colors. I even think the hat goes decently with the jersey. It's not perfect. In particular there are three things I'm "meh" about:

• I'm not wild about dark jersey on dark pants... I don't think you could do white pants, but maybe some more or bigger detail/stripe? It looks like the pants were a bit of an afterthought.
• The hat feels much the same way. I think it actually looks good with the jersey, but again the lack of detail (simply dark blue with "Detroit" in white using the same font as on the jersey) makes it feel like an afterthought. Very bland, and generic even paired with the jersey. Horribly boring by itself. Looks like something you'd buy at a Walgreens when you're leaving Detroit after visiting because you forgot to buy a better souvenir.
• The 313 patch... I get the intention with making the '1' stand out, and that's nice. But the 3's are WAY to light imho.

Again though, over all I do like the look of the complete package over all. I like the colors, the details... I like the VIN plate... I like the Tigers Eyes at the bottom. As a whole it's a solid B from me.

BUT....

Do I like them as a Tiger's uniform? Meh... not really. I wouldn't want to see them used regularly. The classic whites are a fantastic uni with a lot of history. No need to try to improve on perfection. So if you ask me: "Don't mess with greatness. There's no need for this."

BUT....

No's asking me and more jersey variation means more sales for the ball club so it's going to happen whether I like it or not. So if it's going to happen... well, while I think they could have done better, they also could have done much, much worse. Given that it has to happen, I'm mildly supportive of what we actually got.

Bates today:

50 yarder: Good, but a penalty gave the Panthers a first down so didn't count.
43 yarder: Good
60 yarder: Good
39 yarder: Good
49 yarder: Good
47 yarder: No Good, but a penalty nullified the play
42 yarder: Good

He better be!

I don't know that there's any connection with the Lions beyond that he's playing Detroit and I'm sure many (if not all) of the other NFL teams will at least have some level of interest in him. So I don't think it's automatic that he comes to the Lions but I certainly hope that he enjoys playing in Ford Field a lot.

2 minutes ago, Toddwert said:

have the Lions signed Bates yet?

No... there's a rule in the UFL that NFL teams can not talk to the players or the players' agents in season. So, no NFL team can sign him right now.

60 yards through to end the half.

55 yard successful kick from Bates. It doesn't count because defense jumped offsides and that gave the Panthers first down.

Panthers gain 12 yards and stall our again, just Bates kicks it from 43 and this one will count.

1 hour ago, Deleterious said:

It would be better if they removed the Pistons.  I don't need a 28 hand losing streak when I am playing poker.  

Yeah well... I did need another suit. I suppose I could have done one of the UofM or MSU, but neither of them are red. And as bad as the Pistons are right now (I really don't follow them much, but even I know how bad they are) they've at least had championships within my life time.