Fear The Chorizo

Not getting the ball to start the game, and the Lions having two very long TD drives makes two quarters go by very quickly... I think what this defense can potentially hang their hat on is that they do have playmakers on all 3 levels to shut drives down - however their weakness is the intermediate middle of the field, and Pettine's scheme too often seems to make those positions the focal point of the defense. Also, teams that can exploit the lack of impact talent at DE and MLB with interior misdirection runs, screens, and other RB/TE option routes often have their way when they can isolate those weak spots. Last year SF exposed Blake Martinez for not being athletic enough to make plays despite being assignment-sound in this defense. This year I think the MLBs are more athletic, but they aren't as assignment-sound and opponents are still finding ways to pick on them.

Pretty much the entire midwest hit their fall/early winter peak in terms of daily case counts in the same week just before Thanksgiving - regardless of what specific states were doing in terms of attempting to limit spread. Many will say the effort to "cancel" Thanksgiving had a big impact on reducing spread, but things were trending lower before many of the states' efforts to shut more things down really would have had a significant impact. For a state like WI, which really didn't change behavior much at all or shut anything significant down, to be showing basically the same case trends as states like MN and MI during this period points to the virus reaching a hurdle where it just can't go from spreading really fast to spreading like wildfire exponentially. Some of that undoubtedly is mitigation measures and even a moderate improvement in personal awareness living in an area where COVID is actively spreading - but we've repeatedly seen areas creep up to the verge of a true community-wide disaster only to watch the virus kind of peter out every time. Seeing how this has happened across the globe on a regional basis, in both developed and undeveloped countries, should give us alot of optimism now that vaccines are going to start getting distributed to the most vulnerable groups of people - hopefully the next spike of cases winds up leading to far fewer people actually getting really sick and dying. I know medical workers across the board would welcome that, particularly wherever the next surge in cases surfaces...which appears to be California / west coast states right now.

Getting the #1 seed is so huge this year, not only because it's the only spot that includes a bye, but also because it really feels like any NFC team that makes the playoffs could beat anyone else in the field on any given Sunday - honestly, the #6 or #7 seeds are going to be teams like the Vikings and Buccaneers that could give a #2 seed Packer team problems at Lambeau with a solid running game (Vikes) and matchup problem defense (Bucs), especially if the weather is crummy. The Packers are in a great position to earn that top seed and force the road to the Super Bowl through Lambeau - in all honesty I don't know if that's the best venue (assuming no or very few fans) for the Packers to beat all of the potential playoff opponents with their style of offense and leaky defense against the run, but I'd rather play the Saints at Lambeau instead of in New Orleans...hoping they take care of business next week and head into that Titans game with a 1 game cushion on the Saints assuming KC beats them a week from now.

Mark A has been a great team owner, and I don't harbor any ill will towards him. If he wanted to tear it all down and start over, I'd still support the team. But if he wanted to go for it, and operate the Brewers at a loss for awhile, he has the ability to do so, too. Define awhile - because they've been operating at a loss for the last 2 seasons already. The Brewers were a home game 7 in the NLCS from going to the world series 3 seasons ago. They've been in the postseason mix or in the postseason the last 4 seasons - although I'm hardpressed to call 2020 a solid team albeit the whole season was wacky due to COVID. For a market like Milwaukee, like it or not this has been going for it. The CBA is set to expire at the end of next year, and players/owners are having to negotiate in the midst of a pandemic that has destroyed their typical business model of bringing in ticket and gameday revenue - which for the Brewers is likely over 50% of the money they bring in each year. For a small market team like the Brewers who don't have the benefit of funding their roster's payroll only off a TV contract and are reliant on revenue sharing and gameday revenue, there is too much uncertainty with this offseason and what the 2021 season will actually look like for Mark A to cash in a bunch of equities and tell MS to go out and sign a few free agents.

Is there any legitimate evidence of this at this point beyond personal assumptions and anecdotal experiences/opinions? Sorry, but I can ask the same question asking for legitimate evidence that it is working well and I doubt there's going to be research proving that position at this point in time, too....An article I read about a month ago indicated the Saint Paul school district had 40% of its highschoolers failing at least one class over Q1 2020, up from ~20% in fall 2019. The superintendent then tried to assuage those concerns in the article by stating a good percentage of the kids failing classes were those that essentially weren't even participating despite tremendous efforts getting students equipped with iPads and other remote learning tech over the summer. So for engaged kids, it was only a little worse - but they basically have no chance at teaching a growing number of disengaged kids. Saint Paul is far from the only large school district faced with this problem, either. The legitimate evidence of this will be coming out over the next 1-2 years in the form of diminished standardized test scores, graduation/dropout rates, and/or less-aggressive curriculum plans to try and make up for the learning gap caused by this disruption. I'll end with a personal anecdote, even though it means little in the grand scheme of things - my 7 yr old daughter has an anxiety disorder (selective mutism) she's worked through and gotten therapy with, and it's a tremendous benefit to her to interact with her peers to keep building confidence. She has grown leaps and bounds over the last 1.5 years, and she has actually benefitted by the way our district's in-person school option has been set up (reduced class sizes at elementary level because middle and highschoolers are elearning heavily, opening those buildings up to space out elementary classes). This has been a stepping stone for her to catch up academically to her peers and develop skills necessary for coping with typical in-person school, which will be more crowded schools and resuming a more aggressive learning plan. The district has essentially repeated the last semester of her previous grade this fall, because they realized based on their May standardized test scores that the kids didn't learn anything from March-May and a decent percentage of her grade were going to be doing the elearning option this fall as well. Those test scores this fall overall show that engaged kids as a group are treading water in terms of learning progression, but there is regression/inconsistency in those scores with the group of kids who haven't been in-person at all since March. 2020 has been a year where it's been hard to find silver linings, and personally seeing my daughter's progress has been the brightest one by far - but looking at her peer student group collectively in a very reputable school district, the conditions that allowed her to make this progress haven't been beneficial overall in terms of learning and developing socially.

I bet there are no cases of someone getting infected via a one year old or toddler. why? Because their viral loads are far too low for adults to be infected. Kids are frequently tested when a parent has a confirmed case or is a close contact to one. Elementary aged kids and younger can be infected by adults, but there is little to no evidence pointing to them being able to infect adults at any significant rate. Dr. Fauci recently said it best - close the bars and open the schools....it's not the schools being open that cause transmission, it's the bars that adults continue frequenting and interacting (faculty/teachers/staff included, or their close contacts that continue with making poor choices) that are the much bigger problem. And despite there being some improvements with it, elearning is once again proving to be a trainwreck when it comes to actually educating kids, particularly young children. I think college and high school kids are still able to pick up some kind of value, however arguably the most important aspects of their education and development towards being young adults (interacting with their peers person to person) have been taken from them for close to a year now - and the US is in the group of countries where that is the minority policy.

Spanish flu's outbreak occurred at a time when most people were reliant on trains to travel further than 10 miles from home by land and cruise ships by water - air travel wasn't even a commercial option yet...and news traveled at an even slower rate - It would have been infinitely easier to impose a strict quarantine then on even a military base compared to now and to prolong the rate of the virus' spread, because population centers in general were much more isolated 100 years ago. Estimates were that the globe had roughly 2 billion people on it around the time of the Spanish flu. Multiply that 1920 global population estimate by 4 to get near today's population coupled with an incalculable increase in the developed world's ability to get around (not only locally but also internationally), and I'm just thrilled COVID-19 isn't nearly as fatal/medically harmful to the vast majority of humanity as Spanish flu was.

No team's window and operating plan was crushed worse last season by COVID than the Reds, IMO - small to mid market team who spent heavily in the 2019 offseason and mortgaged their future to bring in a bunch of veterans to try and make a run at it that they initially tried to offset by including prospects for teams to take on bad veteran contracts (Bailey), only to lose all opportunities for a full season of gameday revenues and wind up with even more bad veteran salaries remaining at the time when they would need it to try and resign some solid young pitching that's now getting more expensive via arbitration.

We were closed basically all of November and my kids went back 11/30. They are both home sick today. Cold and flu season don't quit, either...especially when boatloads of kids and other population groups that actually have a greater chance at becoming significantly sick from those type of viruses vs COVID have largely been sequestered for most of a year, giving their still developing immune systems a big and harmful delay in learning how to deal with any number of diseases. All 3 of my kids instantly picked up colds at two different schools within the first week they returned to in-person school back in September, too, causing them to miss a few days while we waited on testing results to confirm what we suspected - COVID negative but in all likelihood sicker than they otherwise would have been if more was available for them to do with their peers from March - August. It's not like we were under a rock all summer, either - but next to no activities/camps/schools/public places open or available at all during the summer months made it very difficult for continued interactions. Disappointed hearing superintendent/public officials' family members being harassed by misplaced parental anger, regardless of the point of view. That shoe has just as easily been on the other foot for this issue as well - many local school district officials in my neck of the woods who have pushed to keep schools open by making the valid case COVID spread simply isn't happening in elementary/middle schools at levels that warrant them closing face a daily barrage of unfiltered hate coming their way from disgruntled parents who think they should be closed - even as they aren't forced to have their kids in school and have had the benefit of an improved elearning option this entire school year, with the opportunity to put their kids back in school if/whenever they are comfortable doing so.

4)Savage has made major strides as the year has gone on, and I believe he's becoming a top-tier safety. Agreed - he's had his share of minor injuries that haven't kept him off the field for extended periods of time, but have limited his explosiveness. When he's healthy he's a rangy safety that can make plays all over the field, and it seems like something's clicked in terms of enough game experience to give him the confidence to play fast using his instincts. Then again it always helps when you're playing against bad quarterbacks! Hoping to see his development continue.

How wild is the nfc right now? Despite obvious flaws, the packers are the best team in the conference, yet most of us have limited confidence in them making a long playoff run...at least until Brees proves he can play qb for the saints, I can't consider them the better team..

I see, you're attempting to use duration of immunity via infection to predict duration of immune via vaccination. That would not work in this situation. The type of immunity generated by the candidate vaccines (either mRNA or rAd) is going to be very different than the type generated by an infection. One can certainly learn things from comparing immunity via infection to immunity via mRNA or rAd vaccination, but duration of protection (particularly when the correlates of protection are poorly understood) is not one of those things. Gathering that type of information, IMO, is invaluable regardless of how much it helps with predicting the length of a vaccine's effectiveness. I should have been more clear in stating what I'm interested in seeing is the comparative immunity over time between vaccines and natural immunity to symptomatic response via a prior infection - not gathering this data now prior to widespread vaccinations winds up ruining the opportunity for that type of research. I think there's a good likelihood with this virus that once you've been infected/exposed and recovered, OR been vaccinated, any future infections will lead to a much more diminished percentage of cases resulting in significant symptomatic response - even among elderly/immunocompromised. If that's the case then the vaccine push should be focused towards people who haven't yet been infected once medical personnel and elderly/immunocompromised groups are vaccinated. At minimum it would help determine how widespread distribution of effective vaccines would need to be across the globe to effectively neuter COVID-19 - particularly in developing countries that most likely will have had SARS-COV-2 infect a majority of the populations prior to them getting a vaccine supply. I'm confident developed countries will have sufficient vaccine supply to temporarily halt large numbers of symptomatic COVID cases over the next year, but not for developing/isolated parts of the world. The issue I see with big Pharma actually wanting to push for this type of data gathering is the potential for there to only be a 1-time need for a vaccine and/or confirmed COVID case for people, which severely diminishes their longterm market for it in the developed world. For public health that's a great thing, for big Pharma's bottom line it isn't.

Here's a study I posted last week screening almost 10 million people from Wuhan that looks at that. 107 asymptomatic cases out of the 34,424 previously infected people. They also note that they did not see a single case of asymptotic spread to close contacts in either the previously infected or the no known previous infection groups. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-19802-w That's all good news, but also important to note two things: 1 - This was performed in China, so any COVID-related data should be taken with a grain of salt....They're still reporting less than 5,000 people dead in a country of ~1.5 billion from it and refuse to allow for a reasonable inquiry to the origins of this virus. 2 - While this data set is encouraging, far as I can tell the sampling was done back in mid-May through early June. That's only a couple months after that area was at its initial peak, and the testing occurred only about 1-2 months after they had a punitive lockdown of that entire province - meaning the community presence of COVID at high enough viral loads was next to zero and initially infected people were very likely to still have active antibodies circulating in their immune systems. For the purpose of determining a better understanding of how long a vaccine dose would be effective, I'd like to see a similar study performed in either New York or Paris right now, or in a place like Houston late in the spring before any widespread vaccinations take place - to actually try and quantify the rate of reinfection on previously infected people closer to 1 year from localized peaks where the virus is still circulating and likely rebounding in the community among people who weren't infected with it the first time around.

Thankfully we haven't had any huge problems with reinfections so it seems one would have a good chunk of time after getting it before they get it again. The answer to that could be asymptomatic reinfection - no problem with that for them individually, but they could potentially still infect other people who have yet to come into contact with the virus/been vaccinated. To this point there is very limited data proving/disproving that possibility because people who have already suffered through a confirmed symptomatic COVID infection have no reason to get tested again unless they get physically sick again. It is interesting that none of the public figures (NFL coaches, athletes, politicians, etc) who may have gotten COVID this spring have had a documented reinfection despite very frequent testing without needing to display symptoms... What really mystifies me is seemingly a lack of a sustained antibody testing study to help answer these questions...over time we'll know but one would think it should have been easy enough to grab a batch of confirmed cases this spring, summer, or even now and offer them an incentive to participate with routine antibody tests to see how long they remain in the immune system, and also see if there is prolonged immunity to future symptomatic response to subsequent COVID infections even in the absence of active antibodies. I know the vaccine trials are planning to track this information over the next couple of years, but they could have started gathering this data months earlier than when the vaccine trials really ramped up. There have been isolated studies in various places around the globe that point to ~a couple months of seroprevalence in infected patients, followed by asymptomatic reinfection - that points to a reason why population-wide seroprevalence seemingly isn't shown to be much higher than 20-30% even in hard hit areas as it's not a totally cumulative factor. Nothing definitive, though.

I think this is all very fair and accurate. An 18 week season with two byes made so much sense. Particularly with foregoing preseason games and what should have been the assumption that no games would include fans of any substantial crowd size, they had plenty of calendar available to fold in 2-3 leaguewide bye weeks - including a week off at the end of the regular season to try and reset infections for playoff rosters. Instead they will likely need to push the schedule back haphazardly in a couple weeks, and some teams are going to be really adversely affected because of it.

To top it off all 3 Bronco QBs that were kept from playing Sunday because they watched film while being maskless in the presence of Driskel have continued testing negative and are cleared to resume practice. Far as I know improper mask use had nothing to do with the Ravens' outbreak. It's more of a 'virus gonna virus' sort of thing than most want to admit, but the weird way the NFL and even various government agencies attempt cracking down on non-compliance of evolving and sometimes questionable at best protocols is, frankly, scary. These protocols are helpful in mitigating risk of viral spread, but they're nowhere close to 100% effective - unfortunately punishments are enacted like they have demonstrable proof that failure to adhere to certain guidelines is the only reason someone was infected. Daily testing helps to prevent a roster with emerging infections from playing a game that could lead to a multiple team outbreak, but it doesn't necessarily limit a lone team's initial outbreak because it often takes several days before positive tests start showing up in infected people. The NFL trying to get this Ravens/Steelers game in tomorrow is essentially throwing caution to the wind in terms of preventing viral spread between rosters, and the quick turnaround for the next game on both teams' schedules means they would really be rolling the dice to prevent an outbreak on one team from quickly morphing into 4 (Ravens, Steelers, and their next opponents) without daily testing helping much at all.

His transformation occurred when he went from a piggyback starter to a reliever (and became “Dave”). Developing into a bullpen pitcher appears to have had a huge positive impact on him and contributed to his significant increase in velocity, so it would be risky to revert back to the role he was previously scuffling in. Plus, remember he missed the playoff "series" against the Dodgers because of shoulder fatigue, after a 60 game season...Williams excelled as a late-inning reliever, so he's a reliever.

Yeah, but it's probably best for them to not have to count on needing all 53 roster spots to hold onto players if they don't need to given the fact they always have backup kickers/specialists waiting in the wings should Crosby or Scott get yanked off the roster last minute due to a COVID test or potential exposure....having that flexibility is pretty useful because it allows for last second signings without having to lose other players just so you have a kicker or punter for a game. Plus there is Linsley's knee and a few other injury situations they need to deal with. If Dillon just got back to the practice facility last week I'm sure he had some sort of symptomatic response, but that doesn't necessarily mean he's walking around in a haze or has an IV bag connected to him - at his position, the Packers have the benefit of 2 healthy RBs that were ahead of him on the depth chart to begin with in Jones and Williams. There isn't an urgent need to get him back on the field, so they have the luxury of letting Dillon get 100% healthy and back to full strength before activating him.

Sounds about right. Until yesterday, I had no recollection that not only was Austin the 8th overall pick of the 2013 draft, but that the Rams traded up from 16, giving up their 2nd and 7th to take him. Didn't come close to living up to that value for them. Maybe he can catch a swing pass TD to add to Rodgers' growing list of TD passes to 1st rounders!

I wouldn't automatically assume the latter. He could be suffering from the 'brain fog' that many have mentioned a lingering effect that wouldn't make him a danger to others but would potentially limit his ability to be on the field. Or something like that... Given the flux of WRs and LBs knicked up / returning from injury and taking up gameday roster spots (Lazard, St. Brown, Erving, Kirksey, etc) and Dillon's extremely limited role thus far in the offense, the Packers may simply be waiting to reactivate him when they have a need on the field so they aren't stuck with a roster crunch decision that could cost them losing a player. They just signed Austin, too.

I believe the discussed plan was for a season to start the last week of February/first weekend of March, so they'd have been looking beyond a January start. I know there were numerous rumors regarding how the format would look, though. To your other point, I do think it's fair to assume that 100k fans in the stands in 2021 is an unrealistic assumption, at least based on what we know now. Still, the NFL is gradually allowing more fans in. The Big Ten would have had similar TV revenue, the same 8-game schedule, but the POSSIBILITY of having SOME number of fans in the stands come March/April, vs. the zero in-person revenue they have now. Add in the possibility that more high-risk staff and such could potentially be vaccinated by then, I do think there's a higher possibility that they'd have had a cleaner season in the spring than the disaster they're working through right now. But, your point regarding a September start is certainly a valid one. Whether there'd have been additional revenue in the spring rather than then won't be known until we reach March/April, I suppose. The issue with pushing a spring football season starting that late (Feb/March 2021), is that any delays COVID-related that would bring likely starts impacting the Fall 2021 football season in terms of players recovering...particularly if the normal ebb and flow of player injuries on the field in the spring wind up impacting their availability for another season of games starting just a few months later. A spring football season also jacks around a collegiate program's roster development in terms of upper classmen remaining the focal point and creating a logjam of underclassmen/redshirts/recruits that wind up costing kids playing time opportunities. And let's be honest - any football games with ~500 - 5,000 fans in the stands happening right now aren't making teams any additional income, in fact they are likely losing revenue by having to staff stadiums with additional security, COVID protocol employees, concession vendors (tbh I don't know if those are even open), and crowd control employees to let in a small trickle of fans in right now. It's more of a goodwill gesture than anything at this point. Until we're at a point where stadiums are able to fill at 50% capacity or more and ticket markets somewhat return to normal demand, spectator sports aren't going to have that cash cow spectators typically bring with them to the stadiums on gamedays.

To repeat earlier information, the vaccine will not knock down COVID case counts on its own initially, and perhaps ever - its purpose is to make just about all COVID infections asymptomatic, which will help expedite the virus' spread across the general population without stressing the health system. And at this point there is no good idea how long a vaccine provides immunity from symptomatic immune system responses. However, getting as many people some form of immune system exposure to the virus or even better a vaccine capable of diminishing the symptoms it causes will only help get us to the point where it is comparable to the seasonal flu. The US is somewhere around 14 million confirmed cases via testing at the moment - simply by factoring in an order of magnitude it's very likely that 1/3 of the population has been exposed...that's not saying 1/3 currently have antibodies capable of fending off another infection, but it's saying the US already has a large percentage of its population where the virus is no longer 'novel' even before a vaccine is distributed to expedite it. If people put this in the proper perspective, an effective vaccine distributed to the right ~30-40% of the US population (targeted to the elderly, medically vulnerable and healthcare/high risk workers) can bring this country back to business as usual rather quickly - but if the perspective is for nobody to ever get ill/die from COVID-19 again and for community-wide COVID testing programs chasing an increasing percentage of asymptomatic infections, we'll be under a rock indefinitely - because even with a vaccine and multiple years of developed herd immunity, the most elderly/at risk medical cases will continue to have COVID cases that lead to severe health distress and death (just not nearly at the rate that has been occurring due to COVID being novel to most everyone).

The vaccine, even if it begins getting distributed in December, wouldn't have allowed much more of a chance for a full Big Ten season early next year anyways, college kids aren't going to be anywhere near the top of the list of people vaccinated, and fans who would attend games would mostly be at the bottom of the pile, too. I have doubts whether fans are in the stands in considerable numbers for any sports next year, too. Even after initially distributed, much will be unknown as to how long the vaccine prevents symptomatic response to COVID before requiring another dose to firmly get a handle on future flareups with COVID infections, so it's not like 100K people will be cramming into football stadiums next September. Even if that appears to be medically possible, there will be public anxiety towards resuming many of these activities full stop, so future revenues will be diminished and difficult to project for the next several years. The uncertainty of gameday revenues means all power conferences tried to get a season in now to get the revenue they know was available to them now, simple as that - even the Pac 12 where most of its schools are in states with much more onerous COVID-related restrictions related to team sports/gatherings. Also, compare COVID numbers right now vs this summer when conferences initially made the decision to try and get a season in during the fall - there's no way planning for a football season starting 1 month or two from now would happen at the collegiate level. Back in August the concern was hundreds of people testing positive for COVID in many of these Big Ten states each day...now those same states have daily new case counts ~5-10X that, if not more. The mistake the Big Ten made was in not starting their season in September so it would have basically ended by now, and have a chance to build in some free weeks to allow for rescheduled games if necessary - but that's a hindsight = 20/20 comment. The Big Ten opted to have a season this fall to avoid losing revenue they absolutely need now, so hopefully widespread athletic program cuts for nearly everything but football are staved off - yes it was also to try and get Ohio State as much of an opportunity as possible to get into the CFP, because getting a Big Ten team into the CFP is a financial windfall for the entire conference.

I think this is a very good point. He seems very willing to take the 3-7 yard check-down this year vs. holding for a bigger play. Not only that, but they've moved towards using multiple personnel groupings on drives and gotten away from the 3WR/1TE/1RB combo they leaned on towards the end of McCarthy's tenure, where it seemed like Rodgers was constantly looking to catch a defense substituting to get free plays and stayed in a delayed no-huddle where they became predictable. Once the talent level dropped on the outside, receivers struggled to win 1-on-1 battles running vanilla routes, and Rodgers almost had to buy enough time for the play to break down in order for guys to get open. Many plays and formations now require Rodgers to get the ball out quickly, and it seems like ARod has bought into that given how good his RBs and now TEs are in space. Seems like they are rushing up to the line much less, yet still playing at a faster tempo than a few years ago when formations were stationary and routes were predictable.

For starters they found a way to get their best young talent (Albies, Acuna) signed to insanely team-friendly contracts. Aside from them, they also have quite a few young players either in pre-arbitration or early arbitration stages of team control, so that affords them alot of payroll flexibility. These veteran contracts are 1 year deals, and they appear to be targeting a few perceived holes in their pitching staff. With $65M coming off their books and very limited arbitration salary bumps on their current roster, spending ~$26M on two veteran pitchers is actually pulling back...