Fear The Chorizo

Coan may be the projected starter during spring practice - and he'll have an opportunity to win that job against a couple other underclassmen and that top 50 recruit. I can see Kelly hoping to redshirt the top recruit and bring Coan in as the projected starter who competes with the other underclassman QBs to start in 2021.

Most of the significant reactions occurred following the 2nd dose during these studies, Moderna in particular - sorry, my ability to link is tardy, but Table 23 of the EUA memorandum on FDA's website is a pretty good reference point. Essentially grade 3 or 4 reactions among the study group jumped from 2% following the 1st dose to 17.4% following the second dose for those who received the vaccine, while the placebo group had similar reactions just 2% of the time following both jabs: https://www.fda.gov/media/144673/download That second round of injections has yet to begin in the US, and there are murmurs that it may be pushed out further and/or lowering the amount of vaccine administered due to a combo of the uneven initial rollout, concerns over a couple highly transmissive COVID variants recently detected that are pushing health officials to recommend using the available vaccine supply to give more people a 1st injection, and concerns of how the side effect profile will look following the 2nd dose - particularly with elderly (80+) and immunocompromised groups of people once they start getting vaccinated in any significant numbers. The prelim data from the studies points to this approach still being pretty effective and better than nothing to provide significant immunity after just one dose, but this altered approach would essentially be a study of its own since the vaccine wouldn't get administered to the level the studies were based upon that led to them being approved for widespread public distribution. Another thing to keep in mind is study groups mirrored age and general health profiles of medical staff much more than nursing home residents/immunocompromised - as very few people over 80 or who would be deemed the most at risk to COVID were part of the test groups (similar to pretty much all initial vaccine studies to determine efficacy/tolerance). The miniscule percentage of cases where allergic reaction occurred following the 1st vaccination should be expected, along with a much larger but still very manageable percentage of cases where the eventual 2nd dose will knock otherwise healthy people on their butts for a day or two. My biggest problem is that there is a lack of consistent communication being delivered to the general public about what to expect so there isn't a freakout over what will be happening over the next couple of months that prolongs when we start seeing a positive impact from the vaccinations.

He was their coach for the last 4 seasons - they went 9-7, 12-4, 5-11, and now 7-9. Before this year Lynn signed just a 1-yr extension through 2021 after a 5-11 season, which in NFL terms is a put up or shut up type deal for a coach. Had they canned him at the first sight of trouble he would have been fired last year.

If the Bears had an awesome defense, they could win with Trubisky and that type of conservative offensive gameplan - but their last awesome defense was 2 seasons ago, and to beat good teams they have to open up the offense just enough for Mitch to prove he's not a good quarterback. Knowing the Bears traded up in the draft to pick Trubisky, when Watson and Mahomes were available, gives me warm fuzzies every time I think about it. It would be fabulous if they decide to commit to Trubisky longterm with a contract, or even have to franchise him for a season or two while they sort out a longterm QB plan....their cap situation for next year is actually more precarious than GB's, because they only have 35 players counting towards ~$181M in cap - and that's with Foles as basically their only QB under contract. If next year's cap is around the $175M it's projected to be (they will have limited cap room carryover from this season), their roster is going to need an overhaul and include tons of contract restructuring simply to field a 53 man roster under that number.

Agree. They split with Seattle, who is completely vulnerable week to week. I think Packers fans are overdoing the Tampa fear factor anyway. The Packers defense has come together a lot since October, putting Brady in GB in mid January is not a nice hot day in the Florida sun, and if Rodgers doesn't essentially throw two pick sixes I think that game is completely different. Tampa's defense, while pretty good, is not the 2000 Ravens they were hyped to be after that game...and how healthy is Evans? I'm not really concerned with having to play Tampa. This is the first playoffs in a long time where I think the Packers should really beat anyone in the field. Doesn't mean they will, but none of these teams strike fear in me. I think the Packers are better than all of them and Rodgers is on fire. It feels like most of the last decade there has been a team I try to see how we can avoid playing. I don't see that team this year. To me, the team I'd be most wary of is the Rams (assuming Goff is healthy enough to play well) because I think their defense could cause GB problems on offense without Bahktiari and a reshuffled Oline. The Rams have the Dline to wreck a game with Donald in the middle, and they could have Ramsey shadow Adams to try and limit his production. That being said, I'd still favor GB at Lambeau in 2 weeks against the Rams.

Actually wouldn't surprise me that much, either with Evans at best hobbled from a knee scare he had yesterday. Washington's defense is pretty damn good - some of its stats are padded by playing in their horrid division, but they have some game wreckers on that side of the ball. Likely that Fedex field will be a slow track for Saturday night's game, which will make it more of a grind it out type of affair that TB really isn't built for.

Green Bay likely doesn't win that Seahawk playoff game last season if it happened in Seattle. The only dud that most folks didn't see coming was the '11 game with NYG (who won the Super Bowl). That game was so fluky, too - it was obvious from the start that Rodgers was off and rusty from having 3 weeks time off as he missed some gimme throws to extend drives and score more points - and even with that they were only down a field goal late in the first half until giving up a 20+ yard run playing a prevent defense AND allowing the RB to get out of bounds to set up the crushing end of half hail mary to give the Giants a 10 point halftime lead. 4 Packer turnovers, many of them fumbles, prevented any rhythm on offense for a team that relied on that all season long. They simply fell on their face and let a good Giants team beat them. It wasn't because HFA vanished.

I only care about the bye. Being the only team in the conference that only needs 2 wins to reach the super bowl and won't have to travel for either game is a big deal with how the nfc is structured. Getting the #1 seed is a huge deal this season!

Can you be more clear and tell me why? When you look at results of the studies done on vaccines available currently, the really simple reason is that for healthy and able-bodied people the risk of an averse reaction to the vaccination is probably greater than getting COVID themselves. And not to mention, there have already been a TON of frontline workers/medical personnel who have already gotten and recovered from COVID and feel like their immune system's natural immunity/tolerance to any future infection should preclude them from getting vaccinated. While understandable to view frontline workers/medical personnel as top of the list professions who should get this vaccine as soon as possible, to me the groups who need to get vaccinated 1st should be the elderly and residents of nursing home facilities - then work down by age, not so much profession. The aversion to getting this vaccine doesn't really fall along political lines, either because there are quite a few different reasons as to why people don't want it. I think there is mixture of both fear among a wide variety of people (both the justifiable unknown from a lack of typical studies and unjustifiable conspiracy theories), and many others feeling like other people should get vaccinated before they do among others that is leading to an uneven vaccination rollout. At the end of the day I think the more people who are vaccinated, the better off society is overall - at this point the best approach may be to focus on getting as many nursing home residents/80+ yr olds vaccinated as possible, then just open it up to the general public with an emphasis on trying to push people who have yet to have a confirmed COVID case to get jabbed.

Aside from Alabama, the entire SEC was also down in a big way by their standards....like the ACC is down besides Clemson (ND second best team but no way they beat Clemson without half their roster being out earlier this year). but agreed on the point you are making.

In fairness to Dabo his point wasn't that OSU wasn't a team talented enough to win it all....they didn't play near a full season slate of games. What this cfp crap has done has given Alabama, Clemson, and OSU and even larger advantage with recruiting that they frankly don't need - everyone knows they will be in the mix, so the best talent flocks to those programs from all over the country - including from the backyards of the big 12 and pac 12 schools that are becoming afterthoughts. Its made the talent gap enormous to the point of it not being worth expanding the playoff field because everyone knows the 2-3 teams that have the most talent. Because of that, opportunity shrinks for other conferences to prove they have teams worthy of playing on that stage. What the bcs format did better than this is put much more weight into schedule strength and gave teams from more regions a chance to move into position when the top schools lost a game. The SEC had the built in advantage (deservedly so) once Alabama became the current juggernaut of having an almost automatic bid for the title game - but it wasn't too long ago when the best title game ever played (IMO) occurred between Texas and USC and that had nothing to do with an SEC school. I'd still personally prefer to go back to the old bowl system and have a series of polls determine their national champs individually than the current 4 team playoff or an expanded one given the current landscape. Right now we basically do have a superconference being bama/sec west, Ohio state, and Clemson - and its hurting the game.

The reason many are projecting around a $175M cap for 2021 is that the current CBA prevents it from going even lower based on actual revenue shortfalls the pandemic has caused - so $175M is basically the lowest it could drop for next year. Based on 2020 league revenue shortfalls even with TV money, that's where it's going to be based on the current CBA for 2021. Once things hopefully normalize a bit next year and revenues get back to where things were, the cap isn't going to just rocket back up by $30-50M dollars in 2022 and beyond like 2020 never happened. There will be a bit of a lag in how quickly it rebounds even if revenues surge - just like dropping to $175M is sort of splitting the difference between where it would go if it's entirely revenue-based year over year. IMO the league pushing forward to adding a 17th game for the 2021 season is financial insurance to avoid a 2022 cap drop that's untenable for how NFL contracts and rosters are currently constructed. A 2022 cap between $150-$160M would be a disaster for the league - I think a 17th regular season game does alot to prevent that from being a possibility even if gameday revenues are severely curtailed again next season.

Honest question - how many 250-pound running backs rely on quick feet and the ability to make defenders whiff in a hole as the main reason to their success? I'd much rather have Dillon err on the side of pressing a hole that isn't quite there instead of dancing around in the backfield waiting for something to open up. We need to see more out of Dillon on the field, but his running style isn't as road grading as Lacy's was - he has more athleticism to him...that being said he shouldn't try to be a scatback either. He's got the athleticism to make defenders not get clean shots at him to blow him up, which means alot of glancing tackles that result in 6-8 yard runs instead of running into a wall after gaining 2-3. On some of those runs where it looked like Dillon ran into blockers, he had no room to operate at the point of attack anyway because defenders were splitting blockers or he was only a few yards behind the line of scrimmage when getting the ball.

No, not with Clevinger missing 2021 following his TJ surgery.

Since buying the Cubs, the Ricketts family has done nothing but throw money at renovating Wrigley Field and buying/redeveloping property surrounding it to try and maximize gameday revenues - they had to refinance most of that development in 2019. This was all done under the assumption that it would quickly pay for itself with sold out stadiums and plenty of festivities happening even in the offseason for people to frequent and spend their money. The Cubs are a huge market with their own sports network/TV deal as of 2020, but the amount of $ it took to get them set up that way definitely has their day to day business operations desperate for the revenue streams it projected from fans on gameday. Those revenue streams just aren't going to come fast enough for them to justify not slashing player payroll as well - the fact they are willing to deal their best pitcher from last season because he was still under a big contract and consider resigning Lester coming off the end of his bloated contract and buying him out for $10M because he would cost much less longterm tells you everything you need to know about what their balance sheet looks like headed into 2021. They've also laid off over 100 employees in baseball/business ops in the past year.

The Padres also generate revenue from quite a few downtown developments they are part of around Petco, and that is expanding - I believe that includes both residential and commercial developments that can provide revenue streams no matter how many fans can go to ballgames...conversely, the Brewers have a nice large parking lot for tailgaiting. And despite all the recent spending by the Padres, they spent many years not spending in terms of payroll that led to prospect hoarding - so now they still have a bunch of quality players on their roster making pre-arbitration salaries that keeps their payroll from getting anywhere close to the luxury tax threshold true large market teams consistently operate at.

And I wonder how many people don't opt-in just because they think the immediate $200 more in their paycheck is a better deal. I think it's much more that the immediate $200 in their paycheck is needed to cover monthly bills for the vast majority of people in the low middle class and below incomewise - not that it's a better deal, but that it's necessary to put food on the table. Where I think a huge benefit could be realized is understanding that putting even a pittance towards retirement early on can really make a difference, and understanding what minimal amount people could put into a retirement account to get some sort of company match and reduce their taxable income to the point where takehome pay reductions from retirement contributions are offset by a similar reduction in payroll tax. This isn't talking $200/check, more along the lines of $25-50 a check.

If the cap does drop to $175 as many are predicting, the Packers really are in some trouble. Them and about 1/2 the league...then if the cap stays at $175ish million or even drops further for 2022, pretty much every team is in salary cap hell - because teams that right now have alot of room will need to extend their best young players currently on rookie deals, too. This is why I don't think it's too far-fetched for the NFL to adjust the salary cap rules over the next couple of offseasons to prevent teams from having to cut 30-40% of their rosters to get under the likely caps based on current revenue forecasting. Doing that floods the UFA market and forces those veterans to either resign and play for peanuts or hang them up a few seasons early - plus it really suppresses the contract value marquee UFAs could get on a $/year basis.

I maintain that a franchise tag is ideal if they can make the cap work, because I think we’d all be fine with Jones playing on one more one year deal. Yes, but I think it will be very difficult for that to work in this situation when the cap is likely to drop closer to $175M and the recent RB contracts would cause a franchise tag for Jones to eat up too much cap room on next year's roster. As much as I'd like to hold onto Jones for another season in Green Bay, I just don't see it with him hiring Rosenhaus after whatever negotiations they've recently had broke down and what it would cost to franchise him. He's looking to get paid and rightfully so for any player in his prime - what sort of options might there be to tag and trade Jones to a team that would have cap room to give him a longterm deal? I think GB's best options are to attempt doing that, or simply let him walk and get the draft pick compensation moving on from him would provide. Edit: One thing that might still happen over the next 1-2 offseasons is for the NFL and players' union to try and agree on a stopgap uncapped season or two until revenues stabilize post pandemic....not so much for the financial benefit of individual organizations/league (they're just fine longterm and they know it), but for the benefit of avoiding massive roster cuts and turnover of good veteran players so teams can get under dropping salary caps based on the current CBA rules. I'm not sure if that will happen as soon as this offseason (which would enable GB to keep Jones on a franchise tag), but it has to be on their radar - many teams will be hardpressed to get their rosters to $175M headed into next year, but if there's another drop in cap room for the 2022 season there are going to be very few who can stay under.

Gutekunst's draft picks in Rounds 1-2 in his tenure... Jaire Alexander - lockdown pro bowl corner Josh Jackson - yeesh, but he's still a rotation corner Gary - developing OLB that still oozes potential Savage - emerging star at safety Jenkins - pro bowl OL Love - ? Dillon - tonight shows what he could be when given consistent opportunities That's pretty solid work, IMO - the Love pick may still dictate his overall success/failure as a draftnik, but he's hit much more than he's missed thus far at selecting guys who make a difference early on in their careers in the early rounds.

that's just not fair

We've got to remember that this Titan defense isn't very good...at all. What's great to see is that the Packers' D showed up in a big way against an offense that was rolling.

Yep, little bit of overconfidence there. He's been able to pretty much whatever he wants tonight, so understandable. It's kinda not though. He so rarely throws picks because he just doesn't do stuff like that, even when he's lighting up the scoreboard. It's that plus the mishandled snap that put them in second and long to begin with...uncharacteristic

Not Rodgers' best series there...

Not the type of gameplan he'd figure heavily in - lots of underneath stuff in the passing game, and Lazard is the primary blocking receiver on running plays. MVS has been on the field, just not much.