sabretooth

Today is a HUGE eye opener. A startling beat down of a top-tier team. If they can run the ball like this every week they will be in almoat every game. The 3 down weeks running the ball this year have been the 3 blowout losses....recognizing that they had very bad Lions' D = adverse situational play calling = low run production in those games. If they can run and pass like this they will drop 30 points a game and be a winning team even with the usually crappy defense. If they can play O even mostly like this and have just average D they will be a playoff team. Goff wont play like this every week, but what if his O Line was fairly healthy, his recievers like St Brown, Reynolds and Hock were catching the ball, and Goff himself was just an ordinary decent QB instead of a goof? They have taken 3 fairly ordinary RBs and have built a league average running game despite the near-total lack of a passing game and poor defense until pretty recently, a pretty mean feat. The coaching staff clearly know how to run the ball as a team, something I have never seen with the Lions, except maybe the Lomas/Utley/Andlosek OL in the early 90s, but they had Barry carrying. This looks like a job for Aidan Hutchison! Not saying that he alone can turn the D around, but a HUGE motor guy with upper tier skills and smarts can certainly give this D some personality and certainly haul it out of the basement. Everybody knows how much I hate tanking, and I sure like to see this team win a game, but we've only got a couple of games left, and I'd sure like to see them secure one of these top flight defenders like Hutch. I guess we'll see if they succeed, if you could call it that.

Oh....so I take it that SoCalTiger was against the Tigers signing Correa?

What DD signing in Philadelphia are you referring to?

🙄

Ha! Yes, I use a online TV, a PC, and projector for watching TV/movies...I was watching a game when my cat perched herself in between the projector and the screen....her shadow appeared to be stalking Johnathan Schoop 😃

As much as you did with your previous post, I'm sure.

This would all work just fine if the owners were as personally virtuous as the players 🙄

It all comes down to talent, ultimately, something the Lions don't have. My reasoning for wanting Campbell to give up the playcalling responsibilities is this: unless the HC is an uncommonly talented offensive mind and play caller, he should hire an OC who is really good at it. Campbell doesn't seem uncommonly talented at playcalling.

🙄

I guess it doesnt matter in a season when you're already 1-10-1..... But yeah Campbell needs to find a capable play caller for his OC.

He aint no Matt Patricia thats for sure 😀👍 He seems like a genuinely lovable guy. Lots to love about him!

Nobody cares, except everybody but KL2.

The thing that shows the power of the 2006 experience for me is that every time people start talking about specific 2006 memories, I start to get emotional, remembering other awesome things like: - C-Mo's Grand Slam against the White Sox (I was working on rebuilding the soffits on my house and almost sawed my arm off when he hit that) - C-Mo's HR against the Yanks (my wife and I were on a date night and I heard that in the car before we went to catch a late movie) - Thames' HR against Minnesota to cap a 33-1 weekend series blowout (I took my four little kids ages 2 - 6 to the game on a lark after Church, my Church was in downtown Detroit), Thames was my favorite Tiger that year - Pudge's HR against Carmona (and Dan D's call) - A Tigers-themed birthday party that we had for my two oldest sons in October (both of my oldest sons' BDs are in October) My word, that season was just incredible.

Yeah, we're not talking about 83-79. In terms of Michigan, a loss to Iowa would have put a serious damper on the season in my opinion, and would have made the season kind of "meh" with one great and very memorable victory against OSU, but one that would have been reduced to a "one off" by virtue of losing to MSU and losing the Iowa game. By making it to the Playoffs, that makes this a special season. I think if they lose to Georgia it's a very good season but not a great one, but one with an epic all-time win vs OSU. If they beat Georgia and lose to Alabama (without getting crushed) I think it's an all-time-great season, and one that could catapult Michigan back into the conversation as a top 5 team with all kinds of potential recruitment benefits (though they will have their NIL policy matter to wrestle with, and if they stay ultra-conservative on that, it coud hold them back big-time in recruiting regardless of this season's success, not to mention our cold-weather status). Obviously if Michigan wins it all they would have beaten OSU, crushed Iowa, beaten Georgia and presumptively Alabama....three elite victories and one smack-down on a top 20 team in the postseason, making this one of the greatest overperformances of any team in any sport of all time. I am not expecting that, and if it happens, Jim Harbaugh will be a greater sports god figure in Ann Arbor and will probably command anything he wants, including a more liberal NIL policy to help with recruitment, and a 100-foot-high gold statue in his honor on top of the Bell Tower. A prime example of a team that didn't win it all but was still an all-time-great season: the 2006 Tigers. That was an all-time-great season filled with amazing memories that for me far eclipse what I personally experienced relative to the 1984 Tigers. It was aggravating that they didn't win the WS, especially given castoff Jeff Weaver's role in the WS loss, but frankly, that season will always be in the Pantheon of greats for me.

I would like to see a more focused look at end of game management, including TOs...but yeah this study at least suggests that Campbell and crew have a generally effective approach to TO utilization.

Ultimately the CBA determines how the talent in baseball is distributed on the field, which can dilute or enhance the talent on the field, particularly if the CBA leads to a lot of tanking (which affects the talent on the field in a ***huge*** way), or service date manipulation (which affects talent on the field in a marginal way). The owners are a vital piece of the equation -- while sports teams are toys, the owners are always going to press their financial advantage where possible, including influencing as much of the public and sportswriters to adopt the owners' cruel preferences for the uber-management of financial risk, including the horrible practice of mega-tanking over multiple seasons. I don't get the sense that pro-tanking dopes have much sway, despite the amount of virtual ink spilled on the subject in sports media....but it sure bugs the hell out of me that any non-owner supports tanking, and I would very much like to see CBAs and practices that de-fangs mega-tanking....though I know we as fans really have little or no influence over any of this one way or another.

I agree with your basic premise that the players are the game of course, and further that the most successful organizations run with as little technical input from ownership as possible, that's why they hire GMs who hire the technicians and should really "run the show", after all. But because the owners write the checks, and since there is a lot of flexibility in providing a large payroll, medium payroll, or how-low-can-you-go payroll, the owners matter a ton, and their attitude individually and in the aggregate is vitally critical in determining the competitiveness of the product on the field generally, and the deliberate exercise of harmful "workaround" strategies for teams seeking cost-controls, like uber-tanking over multiple seasons.

That study focuses on whether teams waste TOs or not. Campbell, by those numbers, did not generally waste TOs through game 9 as much as others. Whether he is good/poor/average on managing end of game situations goes well beyond the question of whether he wastes time outs generally.

Yeah, as I understand/recall, the MLBPA pushed for the current top-heavy soft-cap approach, and the players preserved these aspects by agreeing to longer periods of latency for players before FA, which reinforced the pay gap. I don't really care how they structure this stuff, but as you mentioned here, it's not like the players are a bunch of helpless/hapless kittens who have been beaten down by management. The players' leadership created the current situation just as much as the owners did, it takes two to tango.

I think this is probably the most accurate read of the situation that I've heard.

Yeah, whether his advice was oriented towards the most effective approach, all things considered, I dont know.... I just mean that he is an example of a manager who was highly respected by the front office and who had a collaborative relationship with the front office and whose input had an impact on overall roster and player development…. and I think that's the way it should be. The ideal currently is to have a Manager who is plugged into advanced analytics (ie, not Gardenhire).

Oh, I see....not to my knowledge.

well played auto correct LOL

In all seriousness, I respect your wits, you have an great abundance....it would be interesting to see what would happen if you expressed as much disgust with Lions mgt as you seem to with their critics.

Tell you what..... when Campbell wins his 1st Super Bowl with the Lions (1st of many I am sure!), I will have myself photographed bowing before a picture of Campbell, I will sign it, and post it here, along with a picture of myself eating a huge plate of crow, cooked to MBs specifications. 👍😀