RedRamage

The season is supposed to kick off on April 16th so there's still plenty of time for it implode. 🙂 The full schedule hasn't been released yet so we don't know when the Panthers will be playing. The league is going to being in two sites this year. From what I've read most teams will still be in Birmingham AL, but at least two teams will be playing in Memphis: The (new to the USFL for 2023) Memphis Showboats and the Houston Gamblers. Not sure if any other teams will play out of Memphis as their 'home' stadium. I think it would be nice to see a few other teams move up there but who knows what sort of space they have for practice and housing there. I appreciate that they are trying to grow the league in a fiscally responsible way but I fear that if they don't start getting teams into their 'home markets' they're not going to get fans interested.

I saw the rumor from someone on Facebook, but the source wasn't someone I had heard of before so wasn't too sure how solid it was.

This is why the idea that the agent heard rumors he wasn't going to get it seems less likely to me. Obviously possible that they heard rumors he wasn't going to get any job, but... there's probably still some jobs that are opening yet. If I had to guess I'd say that Johnson feels he still needs to learn more before he's ready to be a HC and that he's fail as a HC right now. Obviously purely a guess on my part, but if so that's a very good thing for him to do, but it may end up costing him.

This is my thoughts on the matter... I mean I really feel like the Lions are headed in the right direction... I hope that everything proceeds positively and that Johnson is even a hotter commodity next year, but there's a non-zero chance that things regress next year... heck maybe a few key injuries and the offense collapses. Nothing Johnson does wrong and yet his stock could drop like a rock. I suppose he's better on himself for a better job in the future or he feels he's learning something from Campbell... I dunno. Whatever the reason I'm happy we've got him for another year at least.

I don't know... I just don't feel like he's been around that long to form that many close bonds with other coaches... but maybe I'm wrong. Maybe there's a lot closer connection that we ever saw in Hard Knocks. I could see him maybe trying to take Brunell as his OC? Maybe Fraley? On the flip side, I feel like is AG gets a HC gig he'll take Duce with him. I'm also wondering if Johnson does leave, who's the new OC here? I think Brunell and Staley are the top options.

Excuse me, but Matt Patricia is not a brainy coordinator. He's a brainy Senior Football Advisor/Offensive Line Coach. It says so right here:

I've heard the painting combine is going to be lit this year. Did you see that guy from Certa Pro?

Umm.... no. That's absolutely not true. Christ is the old Aaron.

I heard multiple times after the game that the Lions pulled an upset. That surprised me. I mean, I know GB at home in January... I honestly thought GB would win. But I also thought it would be a very close game either way. I suppose technically it's an upset if GB was favored to win by even 1 point, but usually 'upset' is reserved for a situation where it's more or less a foregone conclusion that one team will win.

You just need a little 13 18 in your life.

Well sure... but my way of saying it is much more long winded and longer responses mean that the responding is more important, right?

Yeah, I mean it you can rationalize things a bit... the players were amped up... the trainer initiated contact first and Walker was just sort of responding to that... it really wasn't that hard of a shove... and you could see he was upset as he was leaving the tunnel... But you could also easily go the other way: It doesn't matter how amped up the players are, you have to be able to shut that off when the play is over. And you should never intentionally make contact with a non-player like that. It was a weak shove, but that still could have been enough to make the trainer lose his balance... what if Swift has a neck/spine injury and now here comes the trainer falling on him aggravating it? And most egregious: This is the second time he's made physical contact with a trainer. Honestly I would be fine with it being just a single game suspension, but I think it needs to be more than "just" a fine to get the point across.

FWIW, I think the idea of a lottery is to stop an issue that can't be address easily directly. How do we know that a team is definitely tanking vs. just being really bad? How do we know if a team is resting a players because they need it or they want to lose? How do we know if a team is actually going to rebuild after being bad this year vs. just perennially tanking? It's hard to flat out accuse a team without proof when there's plausible deniability. So the lottery, in theory, is suppose to fix the motivation without having to confront teams without ironclad evidence. Of course the problem here is that the fix doesn't really work! If a team is tanking it's because they want a higher pick. The lottery says: "Well, you can tank, but you won't necessarily get the best pick." Teams reply: "Yeah, but I still have the best chance of getting the best pick, and even if I don't, I still have a very good chance of getting the 2nd or 3rd or 4th pick... which is better than if I played mediocre and ended up with the 10th or 12th pick." Maybe if you made it a truly even lottery... every team in the lottery gets an equal shot at the #1 pick... then maybe. But as it stands all you've done is slightly lower the incentive to tank, not eliminated it.

One could argue that tanking effects more than just the team tanking though. For example, if the Lions decided to tank late in the season we wouldn't have put up as much of an effort against GB, they might have won and gotten into the playoffs over Seattle. Now personally I think while this IS a reality, it's a minor reality. I don't think there's that often that a team tanking will have an impact like this, and even in those rare cases where it does, there might be any number of other factors that effect games through out the season that have playoff implications. For example, I suspect that Green Bay would have much rather played the Lions early in the year when Seattle did vs. late in the year. Some years you have a team in your division that tanks and it helps you... some years you don't. It's a fact of life. (On a side note, this is another reason why I like division winners getting into the playoffs rather than just the best x-number of teams from the conference.)

I kinda like that idea. Owners might bitch about lost ticket sales, but if you could give 'em a cut of the neutral site's ticket sales... some about each year might be the same or close to all the amount one year and none the next.

I agree with all of this... but I won't mind if it didn't happen until like 2024 instead of 2023. I won't mind another year of stability.

Do you have a link to that? I could only find the week 18 rankings which came out before the final games.

Top off season player to target:

I agree with this. I do NOT want Johnson to leave, but you don't know what 2023 will bring. What if Goff breaks his leg in the first game of the season? The best OC in the world isn't going to look fantastic with a back QB (I mean... unless that backup QB is Brady). I don't think there is any doubt that if he tries the HC route and fails that he won't get MANY offers to be a OC again. If he sticks in Detroit and things go south next year, it may be a while before he gets another HC shot.

The devil is, as always, in the details. I agree that if you're on the sidelines and there's defenders converging... step outside instead of bang into them for that extra half a yard... unless that extra half a yard is what's needed for a 1st down. I'm fine with going down if you're surrounded, but if it's one or two guys and you have a chance to break the tackle for another 3-4 yards then you should try. I'm fine with trying to avoid contact, unless that attempt means you dance around in the backfield looking for a clean slot and end up losing a yard when you could have hit the slightly open slot for 3-5 yards. I can't say that I know what Swift's motivation was... was he really looking to avoid hits? If he had a separated shoulder then I can understand why he'd want to do that. Was he looking for the homerun instead of being willing to take the single or double when it was there? I don't know. What I can say is that it certainly felt like Swift's decision making, at times, was lacking. Taking this along with what we saw from Duce when talking to Swift in Hard Knocks seems to support the idea that Swift doesn't have great on the field awareness.

I dunno if toughness is my biggest beef with him. I mean I felt a little like he was avoiding contact late in the season and make this explains that part. But my issues with him were mostly that he didn't seem to make good decisions... dancing around trying for the home run when he could have pushed ahead and gotten the double.

It's important to note that this was PASSING ONLY... so running QBs are gonna ranked lower.

I'm not sure on this one. I think this might be a mistake.

Oh absolutely. TE is super low priority. If they spent even a 3rd round on TE I'm be upset.