RedRamage

I don't like the trade because I don't feel like we got enough immediate value for Monty. STOP: Let me explain. I do feel like for an aging running back we got a really good return... much more so that I would have expected. I'm not saying that it's a bad trade because Holmes got fleeced. What I'm saying is that I don't feel like the team is better right now because of the trade. I feel like Juice is a depth piece. I feel like the 4th rnd pick might or might not amount to something in a few years, and the 7th rnd is just a throw in for next year. I don't feel like the 2026 Lions will be better because of this trade. What if (all my fingers crossed that it doesn't happen) Gibbs gets injured? Now we're trying to piece together the RB spot with Saki or Reynolds or who? Now: I also believe I might be completely wrong here and the trade will end up being fantastic... and I really hope that this turns out to be the case. I hope that Juice becomes a serviceable starter. I hope that the 4th round turns into a star player of ARSB quality. I also hope that Monty has a good career and does will, except when he's playing against the Lions. EDIT TO ADD: I also think it's entirely possible that Monty asked for the trade and the Lions were trying to honor his wish. I don't think he demanded a trade, but I do think it's quite possible he said something to the effect of: "Look, I get it... Gibbs is phenomenal and I totally understand why he's getting the bulk of the carries. But given that he's gonna get 80+%, I'd rather go somewhere else we I can get more playing time if you can work it out." And, now that I'm typing that, there's probably a reason to say the trade is good here with that same logic. Monty is a very good RB and IF Gibbs gets hurt, he'd step right in as the new #1. But if Gibbs doesn't get hurt, you're waiting his value on the bench. Even if Juice is only a rotation guy and the 4th round pick sees only limited playing time in '26... might that still be better than 20% of Monty?

They got a decent return on him given what I would have expected, but right now I'm not sure I like what they got better than if we still have DMo. If Juice is good enough to be a respectable starter, then I guess it's worth it, but I don't see the Texans giving up on him if thought he could be respectable.

Well on the plus side it's looking like we don't need to worry about locking up anyone from the '24 class, so...

Again I'm probably parsing the language WAY too much, but: "Mr. Arnold had no involvement whatsoever in the activities that led to those arrests." I could easily argue that the activity that led to the arrests there the luring of the guys, the kidnapping, and the torture. Now, what about the activity of planning those activities? I fully get that I'm nitpicking here. I'm an NOT trying to say that TA planned it all (or participated in planning) and now he's being super cute with wording to avoid lying. But the beat up and bruised Lions Fan that I am can't help but fear that maybe we really can't ever have nice things.

Yeah, I hate this crap because it's all a bunch of he said/she said stuff right now. On one hand, I'm happy to see TA releasing a statement that he wasn't involved. On the other hand, that's kinda what I'd expect anyone to do, even if he or she was involved in some way. On one hand "...Mr. Arnold had no involvement whatsoever in the activities that led to those arrests. He didn't participate in, nor was he present for, any conducted related to the alleged offenses." But on the other hand, the statement doesn't say he wasn't involved in discussing it in a car trip like was alleged in the order. Nor does it deny knowing about the plans of the others. But am I just nitpicking? Am I just parsing the language of the statement too much fearing that they're using specific language to hide the truth? Again... I hate this crap.

I actually don't consider that a bad thing, personally. As I said I don't like the rule in general because I don't like giving a FG more importance. My opinion is it should remain a consolation prize. (In fact, I might be persuaded the idea of making it worth only two points.) But, if they are going to have the rule, then I see no issue with teams doing that. That's a product of the rule and teams are working the rules to whatever advantage they can get. Plus this could lead to more highlight moments for the UFL. Now, having said that, if the UFL is opposed to the idea of teams intentionally taking a penalty there's an easy fix... it's the same one they're employing with the limits in punting: Once an offense cross the boundary where the FG would be less than 60 yards then they "lose" the 4-point bonus for that drive.

Okay, so I decided to look up more info on UFL's website right than relying on what Google said. So a few clarifications: On the "no punts inside 50," this holds even if a penalty causes the new line of scrimmage to be outside of the 50. This makes sense I guess otherwise if a team was like on the 48 and wanted to punt, they'd just false start, ball gets moved past the 50 to the 47, now they can punt. The "Red-zone" penalty rules are not at all what I thought. They actually had different rules vs. the NFL and are going to align their rules with the NFL now. That's a bummer as I mentioned above I always thought this was a big unfair. I would have loved to see how it played out with penalties for both teams being changed to the equivalent of half the distance to the goal.

I'm gonna have a much harder time being interested in the UFL without the Panthers, but I do think the UFL can be a great place to field test some new rules, so I'll at least be interested to see how some of these rules work out and what the teams/fans think of them. Tush push banned. Interestingly the linked article says: "The league defines the play as “a play in which, after the quarterback takes the snap, he immediately..." I wonder if the rule itself says QB, and if so can they do the tush push with a RB getting the snap? 60+ yard FG = 4 points. I'm not a fan of this myself. I always considered FG as 'consolation prizes.' Your goal is to get into the endzone, but if you come up a little short we'll allow the FG so it's not a total wasted effort. This is also why I've never liked the "sudden death" rule in OT. No punts inside 50-yard line. If you get to the other side of the field you either have to go for it on 4th down to try for a FG. Not sure on this one... Guess I'll have to see it in play testing but I don't understand what problem this is trying to solve. One-foot in bounds for a catch. I'm guessing this is to try to create more offense. I guess I don't really care one way or the other on this. Red-zone penalties = half the distance to the goal. I generally think I'm in favor of this. I always thought it was a bit lopsided how one team gets a benefit here while the other team does. Like if the offense is driving down to the 5 yard line and the defense holds on a play, the penalty is 2.5 yards. But if the offense holds it's 10 yards in the other direction. This gives the defense less of a penalty for fouls... and vis versa if the offense is starting from their 5-yard line. Overtime Format: Revised to alternating three-attempt sessions from the 5-yard line. Don't like it personally. The kickoff will occur from the 30-yard line. No real preference I guess.

Yeah, I don't know what to make of it all. Everything seems to be allegations, but also appears to be a judge's statement... which seems weird. Maybe this is all standard practice in court proceedings. It also makes me start to wonder if the previous statement by TA was intentionally worded the way it was. I could very easily just be reading it the wrong way, but note how he didn't deny any connection or involvement in the incident... only that the claims of the relationships, that one man was part of his security detail, and the other was a cousin, were wrong. We'll have to wait for all the details to emerge of course, but what I was dismissing at best only being very, very tangentally connected to TA now seems like there's a good possibility of a bigger connection.

One super nice thing I noticed when streaming was that you were able to switch audio within the video player, so I had Dickerson and Petry. It wasn't, unfortunately, synced up... that audio was a second or so ahead of the video, but that was actually a happy little accident for me as I was working on something else while having the game up... so whenever they announced something interesting happening I could quick pay attention to the video to see it.

Really? That kinda bums me for some reason. I guess I always kinda liked that the Chiefs and Royals were neighbors.

I think this is less likely to happen now that they've gotten rid of the other Old English D. That logo used the more square D and that's gone now so if they tried to revive that logo their either have to bring back the old D (which seems like something they wouldn't want to do) or get a new version with the other D, which wouldn't work nearly as well.

How about a Lion through the D?

I'm just disappointed that they didn't come with shorts. 😞

From a purely travel stand point, I don't think crossing the state line when you're that close is any big deal. I doubt there many, if any, fans who would say "I can live with the struggles of driving to get there if it was still in Illinois, but I refuse to go over the boarder!" I also think fans would be more willing to put up with all the struggles when it's just 8 or 9 events a year, vs. 81 games at Comiskey Park -- I mean U.S. Cellular Field -- I mean Guaranteed Rate Field -- I mean Rate Field. Having said all that, I still think it would be a bad idea and does look bad optically to leave your home state.

I was thinking similar things but there might be a few areas around there that wouldn't need MAJOR land "remodeling" for a stadium. Still, seems like it would be far from desirable.

Wolf Lake literally is bisected by the border of Indiana and Illinois. That said, I'm really curious where the potential site is. Looks like there's a lot of industrial area around there.

Look I don't want to seem like I'm defending the guy too much here, but he's quoting a legitimate local news station who is quoting a police detective's comments during court proceedings. That's not a "My source said he heard someone say..." I mean ideally journalists should fact check, but I think most people would assume that a police detective wouldn't be making comments in court about this if the detective hadn't checked them. I don't think it's unreasonable to assume a police detective is a believable source, especially when the accusation being made is simply that there's a link here... not that TA orchestrated or was involved directly in any way. In the end I 100% believe that he should have tried to reach out to the Lions or TA to get a statement. But I believe that these days 90% of "journalism" seems to be about getting the story out first, so I can't fault Florio anymore than I fault 90% of "journalism" these days.

That's not totally fair. Florio was reporting on a story by a Tampa Bay news station which was reporting what the detective in the case said about the men. Neither the local station nor Florio made up the possible connections. Both also have updated their stories with the statement by TA. You could argue maybe they should have checked with TA first, but in today "Gotta be first!" news cycle that wouldn't be the go to move, and Florio at least said it was "possible ties." The local news station said TA was "linked to two suspects."

As far as I can tell the house that the items were allegedly stolen from was rented by TA. The detective in the case also made the claims about the two men being TA's security guy and cousin. And of course we're just going on what everyone is saying right now. The Detective says they are these people, TA's person is saying they aren't. I'd guess that TA wouldn't say the "cousin" isn't a cousin if he is because that would be a pretty easy thing to prove one way or the other, but maybe he's like a 3rd or 4th cousin or something? Like I'd never say that someone I'm that distantly related to is "my cousin" but some might? The security guy might be something as simple as: "He was, but isn't anymore." Or it might be that the security guy claimed to be employed by TA to the detective, so the detective was just related what he heard??

But if the NFL's allegations are true (which they are claiming is supported by the evidence presented), the union was cherry picking to push a narrative. So if "everyone knows" that Owner A is a putz and they (that is the union) wants to further that idea, they'll cherry pick the player comments that support it. And if everyone knows that Owner B is a good person and again they want to prop up that idea, they can cherry pick what fits that story. In short: The NFL was saying the union was being fair and presenting all the data, just the data they wanted to present. Again, if true, I could see how the NFL wouldn't like that. There's certainly the ability for the union to extort certain things from certain owners if they really were being nefarious with this stuff. On the other hand I also think the NFL locked on to this bit because it paints the union's actions in a bad light. I don't, for a second, think the NFL would have been fine with the report cards if the union has just released all data.

An update on the linked story: UPDATE 11:58 a.m. ET: Fox 13 has added an editor’s note to its story. “A representative for Terrion Arnold responded and clarified that Hudson is not a security guard for Arnold, and that Williams is not Arnold’s cousin,” the note explains.

Hey, Tim's just presuming innocent until the guy is proven guilty. After all Pearce's Attorney said: "Mr. Pearce maintains his innocence and urges the public to understand that while allegations have the power to shape a narrative, that it is hardly the full, complete story. We look forward to vigorously defending our client and remain confident that he will continue contributing positively to both his team and the community he serves so well." So, ya know... don't rush to conclusions!!

Please not London! I wouldn't want the Lions to have to travel there every year.

Yes but... at what potential risk? Obviously it's gonna REALLY depend on the situation. Like let's pretend that Joseph's condition is so bad he can't play anymore... he's 25 right now and potentially could make many millions more if he got back to even 90% of what he was. We'll, then it's probably worth the risk of trying something not fully tested because it's not like he's got any NFL career left in our senario. But what he can still play, just may not quite as well as he was? Maybe he's down to 80% of his peak. He's still gonna make a LOT of money... not as much as 90 or 100% Joseph, but still a LOT. If he risks an untested procedure he might get back to 90 or 100% and make even more... or it might fail he goes down to 40 or 50% Joseph and ends up not being good enough to stay in the NFL. So yeah, it'll massively depend on the individual and their current condition. Now, having said that I read through the article that @gehringer_2 linked above and there's mention of some early phase clinical trials already underway with, I'm assuming, humans given that it references volunteers and lab animals don't generally volunteer. So I might be way off on how close this is to the market. Completely outside of the world of sports... I'm SUPER excited about this news as someone who already has some joint pain issues and some arthritis problems.