RedRamage

I'm ready for electronically called balls and strikes.

Given that we've got two leagues now both in a second season, I'm wondering if the NFL might not consider doing some sort of optioning of players to the "minor" leagues for seasoning. Just thinking out loud... I'd say something like each team is allowed to "option" 5 players... these players can sign with a minor league team but the parent club still holds the rights to that player. This would allow the player to get more seasoning/practice to develop themselves. It would give the minor leagues some more interest from NFL fans and would let the parent clubs see some developmental players in real game action. Off the top of my head I would see the Lions "optioning" people like Obinna Eze, maybe Chase Lucas? Thoughts?

Locked on Lions was talking about the Jet's DT Quinnen Williams and his contact disputes with the Jets. Here's a story talking about it. The short version is that apparently he is looking for just shy of Aaron Donald-level money. Dery, on his podcast, was saying Holmes should be on the phone with the Jets kicking the tires to see if they might be thinking of a trade. So two part discussion question: 1. Would you want to trade for Williams? If so, what would you be willing to give up? I'm sure it would start with at least a 1st round pick and would require more along with that. 2. What would you be willing to pay Williams contract-wise? I don't think there's any question DT could us an upgrade and this would be a big upgrade for the Lions. But at what cost?

I dunno... I mean obviously we'll never know for sure, but I could see Holmes looking at it and saying "Bijan and Gibbs are both on board, the likelihood that both would be drafted before we pick is very low, it's worth the risk to pick up that extra early second." This is going to be a very interesting draft to follow down the years and may end up being a defining moment in the Holmes/Campbell tenure. If these guys are (mostly) successful it'll be proof that Holmes knows what he's doing and conventional wisdom be damned. But if these aren't (mostly) successful this will be an easy year to point at and say: "Holmes thought he was smarter than everyone else in the NFL and he clearly wasn't." Someone remind me in 2026 to come back to this thread and rate the players.

I'm not a huge follower of college football so I might be completely wrong here, but it seems to me that "lack of institutional control" is intentionally vague so it can be applied to situations where the letter of the law isn't broken but the spirit is. One could argue that if street racing by UGA staff/players was regularly happening and UGA didn't do anything to try to stop it and it was being done in UGA leased vehicles that that could qualify as lack of control. Obviously there's a lot of "ifs" in there: If it really was happening regularly... If UGA knew about it (or it can be proven they knew about it)... if UGA didn't do anything to try to stop it...

Bummer... I mean, I'm not sad he's leaving the Vikings, just that he was traded instead of cut.

Now, could they have gambled in the hotel, but not in their room? I mean, technically the team is paying for the room but like if you're in the lobby the team isn't paying for that. I could walk into a lobby of a hotel without having a room there. (Yes, this is a joke comment... I'm not seriously questioning if this would be "legal" or not... I'm trying to highlight the absurdity of the rule.)

Interesting thing I noticed: The Pack were so embarrassed by their loss to end the 2022 season that they apparently are refusing to play us on Sunday for over a year.

Yeah, I would have been for that as well. I suspect traditions like the Lions T-Day game won't really happen anymore because money speaks louder. It's unfortunate. Here's an interesting thought: What if weeks 2-17 every team got a designated Thursday game? It'd require two Thursday games every week, but that's 16 week x2 = 32. Every year your team in week-x will play Thursday. I wonder if other teams would like that or not?

Another ugly loss for the boys in burgundy. The season started out so well, but they're now 2-3 including 0-3 at Ford Field. Not a good way to build the fan base. Somewhat in defense of the Panthers, I thought the officiating in this game was down right horrible. I saw lots of holds that went uncalled. Heck there was a spot where well after the play one of the Maulers smacked a Panther on the helmet... not quite a punch, but dang close to it. The ref was 5 feet away, looking right at it and did nothing. Then of course the Panther player was an absolute idiot because he went up to the other guy and spit on him... which the ref saw. They have two more games at home... this week Saturday and then to finish up the season on June 18th. This week is again the Birmingham Stallions, who were last years Champs and are 3-2 so far this year. Given how horrible the OL has played these last few games I'd be pretty surprised if they pull out a win next week. That leaves the last game of the season as their only likely hope for a win at Ford Field. At least it's against the Stars who are all bad (2-3) and whom they've already beat.

Honestly, I hate when the Lions aren't on 1:00pm on a Sunday. I get that having prime time games means that the team is probably doing well and the league views the team as a draw... which is a good thing. But I like my Sunday afternoon routine. I'm okay with a 4pm time on occasion, but night games aren't nearly as fun for me. I have to stay up later, and if they lose I'm upset and it's hard to go to sleep and if they win I'm excited and it's hard to go to sleep. Honestly nothing would make me happier than for them to have 1:00pm games all season long, except for T-Day of course.

Well I mean sure... if you want to look at it logically. But that takes all the fun out of it.

The thing is that the player are already circumventing the rules. They know they're not supposed to do this and did it anyway. Yes it's possible to put in various complex network or device/location blocks, but these wouldn't be super simple AND would be very easy to get around with a VPN. The amount of extra effort put in to try to electronically block people from break the rules would probably only stop the accidental situation where a person just forgot for a moment. Any one who wanted to get around the tech block could do it easily.

<Tinfoil Hat Time> I had a thought this morning. What if the reason that the gambling companies "ratted out" various NFL players was because they were winning too much? Oh, you're going to take a bunch of our money? Fine... maybe we'll just leak to the NFL where you were placing those bets. Let's see how you like that, shall we? </Tinfoil Hat Time> Obviously this is just pure conjecture on my part. I have ZERO evidence that this is why it happen. I was just trying to figure out why a betting company would actively try to remove customers. I suppose the other very plausible reason is that it's part of their contact with sports leagues that they will monitor and report on players activity.

Just to be 100% clear here... I'm am NOT saying that the Lions are or should be grooming Hooker as Goff's replacement. However, I think it's worth noting that in just about every discussion I remember seeing here the talk of getting another QB was because: a new QB might be more mobile in a league where mobile QBs seem to be increasingly important. a new QB would be cheaper than what Goff is projected to make in a couple of years a new QB would provide depth in case there was an injury to Goff or a regression of Goff's play I don't recall anyone saying that Goff is too old now or would be too old in a couple of years to be an effective QB. I anyone did argue that I'd say they were dead wrong. We've seen very effective older QBs so I'd say worrying about Goff being too old at just 28 is silly. Now if he was 35 or so then you might start worrying about regressing skills or that he might be thinking retirement. But not at 28.

My understanding is that Stanley Kubrick was hired to film the fake moon landing. However, he was such a perfectionist that he insisted that they film on location.

Any good QBs available at 29?

Hmm... odd that they made that request. Maybe there's a good percentage of Bears fans who travel to KC? Southern Illinois ain't too far from KC.

Through 33 games I'm pleased to say that we're pulling away from the pace of 2003: 2003: 7-26, R=96, RA=164, pW/L = 9-24 2023: 15-18, R=121, RA=162, pW/L = 12-21 It's probably worth noting that at this point in '03 we were under performing out pW/L while in '23 we're actually out performing it. If you compare pW/L the two years are still pretty close, but '23 is still the better year.

I think I'd prefer Bridgewater to Rudolph... but we're talking backup so it probably won't make a huge difference. Honestly I'm not two knowledgeable on either guy so I'm talking a little out of by butt but I feel that Bridgewater is closer to being an NFL starter, so I'd prefer to have him just in case we need him.

It's a shame because the Panthers really looked good in their first two games this season... then they come home to play and Ford Field and lay two eggs. Disappointing and not a great way to build up the fan base. I had better hopes for this one because in the first two games they were definitely a slow start, but strong finish team. Points by quarter this year: 1: 9 2: 23 3: 17 4: 27 Last week they got down by a lot early on and never recovered. This week they were keeping it closer to start off but the offense never got going at all.

Yeah the rookie wage scale is one of the best things to come to the NFL in a long time. I mean, without it we couldn't have endless debates about paying Goff vs. a cheap rookie.

If you're really holding this up as proof that Carter will not be a problem, I'm sorry... but that's a very silly thing to do. Carter's concerns weren't that he would hold out or demand more money. The concerns were if he would do stupid stuff off the field or be self-motivated enough on the field (or workout room) to make his talent work in the NFL. This is kinda like saying that "This guy can't have a drug problem because look: He helped an old woman across the street."

Obviously assuming that this is true... that's horribly, horribly unprofessional. I mean it's fine to think that and it's fine if you want to use that as a reason to not pursue a guy... heck, it's fine to try to cut an interview short if you've decided this isn't your guy (I've been in a few interview processes where we did this... after the first few questions you're like: Yeah, this person isn't who we want... let's just skip through like half the prepared questions...). But you don't say that to the guy's face. Very rude and dumb.