gehringer_2

Have we beaten Alabama since Brady? EDIT.....nope. Lost in 2012 and 2020

My reservation about Williams would be around the fact that USC wasn't better. *Generally*, an NFL all-pro caliber QB is such a huge advantage to an NCAA team they can't help but be pretty dominant if the team has any kind of overall talent level at all. Maybe USC was just that bad, but that would be my issue. Even Brady, who no-one thought was that good at the time, finished his senior season leading the #5 ranked team in the country. Off the charts physical talent is no guarantee in the NFL where being able to think the game fast is more important than any physical skill.

Right on both counts. A) The NFL will never have a minor league. (Of course the truth of that statement is exactly the source my abstract concerns about professionalizing college FB!) b). Hockey is weird sport. I'm a fan and I still often find myself wondering why I'm watching such an odd activity.

it's really funny to hear how confused the signals even inside the industry are. Have one friend who sells cars. To hear him, the dealers and the sales arms of the Car Cos are ready to ****can the whole EV experience. Have another who works in research for a car Co: "This is typical market psychology blip for a technology introduction - there is no going back" I think the funny thing is that Mr. Toyoda, who was forced out for pushing back against the all EV future is going to turn out to be half right - he said you have to go through wider adoption of hybrids as the transitional tech, and he is going to turn out to be right. (though I still believe he was wrong in his fascination with Hydrogen....). The manufacturers were hoping to avoid hybrids, esp plug in hybrids - as that is the most expensive car to build, but this is what will actually work for Americans who mostly commute short distances but believe they may have to drive cross country at any moment's notice. Plug-in hybrids could probably still reduce gasoline consumption by 80% without having to overcome owner range paranoia while longer range non-IC tech evolves.

It wasn't three guys with the ref. Decker was checking in while Skipper was still running onto the field. It on the video and Aikman reported that right at the get-go. There was a second lineman with Decker but it wan't even Skipper.

It's hardly even really a 'trick play.' A flea-flicker or a fake punt is a trick play. Tackle eligible is completely normal play except for uniform number rules, which obviously are unnecessary otherwise you couldn't have it waived anytime you want just by asking.

Dept of useless information: The old stadium in Miami was actually painted completely in orange.

That's OK, you still want to get the last dance just for the experience.

correct

yup. and LOL at myself - I reversed the player numbers in my post....Don't give me any stripped shirts...🤣

Yup. Just in terms of trying to figure out what passed in the ref's mind - in the film you see Skipper running on to the field when Decker is already talking to the ref. You can guess the perceptual short circuit was that the ref then remembered being told by the guy he saw running in because that is what he expected, that the player signing in would be running on to the field - so his brain re-arranged the pieces of the memory to match the experience pattern already in his memory. This kind of thing happens a lot and most people just deny that they are prone to error but everyone is. That's one reason referees shouldn't work alone - to guard against the single brain short circuit, but this was a single point of failure case - only one ref involved.

right, but if one were to go looking for drivers/correlates, like matching to weather etc, you would want to use un-smoothed data.

one could do a deep dive on this - weather is big driving factor - but it should show up as similar regional groupings, e.g Cleve/Chi/Det and/or NY/Phil etc., moving in concert and should also correlate to heating/cooling degree day data that utility Cos. generate. In any case, COPAs numbers have moved through such a large differential it's hard to say much about the park from them. I am curious if other parks have that much noise in their results. I do remember we were in Minneapolis the year Target opened the factors were low and everyone was really worried about how big the park was playing and turned out to just be a cold summer in that part of the country.

CoPa Park factors are weird though. They are supposed to be independent of the team, but look at the CoPA HR factors over the last 20 yrs. When the team hit well, they were generally good or neutral (08-16), when the team is terrible (21-23, 00-02) they are very low. I don't have the answer to that but it's weird and an unmistakable correlation. https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/leaderboard/statcast-venue?venueId=2394 I can hypothesize that what is happening is that a good team which hits more HR is ahead at home more and its pitchers thus are challenging the opposition hitters more and giving up more solo shots thus the HR park factor goes up. But that is a pure swag and you'd have to go through every team to see if their factors even track their team results the way Copa's seem to before you could put any credence to it.

yeah - if you've been to any pro sporting event in the last 10-15 yrs you know the 1st thing you do even as a fan is tune out the stadium PA as it's 99% garbage noise. I would never expect a coach to be listening to the PA. He's listening to his headset and/or the people next to him.

yup. this is exactly it. but it's just as much having Knox, Burks and Bogan on the court - all of whom shoot the ball a little and pull defenders to the arc. You can have Thompson and Killian out there without the big men and the lane will be largely closed off because teams don't bother to defend either of them. Even Bogan was taking it to the rim once they got some spacing. Ausar needs to go to the gleague until he has some kind of offensive game, and Killian just needs to go. In 4 yrs he is not one step closer to being an NBA player than he was when he was drafted.

do you think that would make much difference? If a kid intends to leave, he still won't want to play.

Vierling had no platoon split last season and his OPS when at 3rd was >800. If he could sustain that it's definitely your answer. But SSS applies. It was only 111 PA

It's just amazing how ignorant people can be and how deep their lack of basic curiosity can be. Motivated to go to rallies but not enough to even read the document they claim to hold so dear.

it will limit the opt outs for the playoff bowls, not for the garbage...I mean non-playoff bowls.

Good way to put it.

so he had a 140 OPB points in walks (110 in 600 PA). I don't know if I'd call it 'worst case' but I wouldn't be surprised to see that cut roughly in half against MLB pitchers. If his average drops from 280 to 250 on promotion and he loses half the walks, that will pull his OBP down to 320. Not bad but a player you are less willing to work around position issues for. Granted this reading may be on the pessimistic side, but most years less than half a dozen of the league's best hitters reach 90 BB. Maybe more than 55 BB for Malloy but more than 80 would be a lot to ask.

i was going to say Hinch should be used to having a single DH but it's easy to forget that Cabrera was only playing every other day last season.

Winning puck battles is a skill that has been in short supply on this team for a long time, but the breakaways they are giving up is just poor discipline: making bad passes and/or letting letting the opposition get up ice from them and that should be fixable. All they can do on the goaltending is hope Lyon or Husso start playing better. Maybe time to look for a goalie-whisperer to add to the staff.

Cade and Ivey with 19 points at the line. They have to play that game more.