Fear The Chorizo

The fact the SEC and ACC get to schedule those joke Mercer/Citadel games in mid-November essentially gives them both a bye at a critical point in conference play (right before rivalry week) to get healthy too. It's a huge deal, and it's a shame they're not called out more for it. Because of that setup, I've been a proponent to having the Big Ten shift to a 10 game conference schedule - it limits scheduling cupcakes themselves and gives talking heads even less reason to overlook their conference champion come playoff time. And proclaiming Nebraska a cupcake will get old really, really quick. They were ranked in the top 10 when WI played them in 2016, and will be back to that level in relatively short order.

It's pretty nice seeing a big fat bagel next the the Cubs on this list. Winning is about to get alot more expensive for them the next few seasons And how much does it stink to be a Marlins fan? You're in the process of gutting your MLB squad, and you still have a dearth of impact-level talent in your minor leagues...

I really wanted UW to make the playoffs just to see how they would have stacked up against those four teams. I don't think they win the whole thing but I wanted to see how they compared as much as anything. The Big 10 title game showed they could hang with anyone in the country - they were outclassed talentwise but still found a way to stay in that game. Then they followed it up by winning a road bowl game against Miami, who destroyed ranked teams at home in November while the rest of the country was hyping them up. Clemson finishing at #4 this year is mainly due to making it easier to slot them comfortably in next season's top 5 preseason rankings...

It's not 2009 anymore - I'd say roughly 2/3 of these comparisons are dead wrong, and as others have said there's no rhyme or reason to how these are organized. Alabama is a unicorn program - put them in any conference and they are consistently a top 2-3 team because they basically get their pick of the litter in terms of recruiting and facilities. However, one can say the same thing about OSU now (as much as I despise them). The difference in perception between these two programs is due to the fallacy that the rest of the SEC is still great when that's far from the case.

I didn't watch the game, or either of the CFP games, actually. What ticked me off was having two of the 5 power conferences not even get a shot, when the school from the SEC that got put in failed the committee's "criteria" that was supressing other teams the entire way. I disagreed with Alabama getting in this year for the same reasons I disagreed with OSU getting in last year - you shouldn't be able to win a national title in college football without winning your conference first. It's not like basketball, where teams can play a ton more games to crown both regular season and conference tourney champs for each conference, and have a much larger body of work to judge conference strength during THAT SAME SEASON, not how good programs were 3-4 seasons ago. The pre-season rankings don't mean anything when it comes down to who makes the playoff Dead wrong - they still mean everything at the very top...If you open the season ranked in the top 4-6 programs based on the perception you're a quality team, it doesn't matter if you play absolutely nobody and keep winning. If you start ranked high, you get more chances to finish in the top 4, and other teams in your conference get propped up undeservedly simply because they played you and lost. For a season like this, when there were so many 1-loss teams and the undefeated schools most of the year had noticeably softer regular season schedules, it made a huge difference for Alabama to open the year ranked #1 and then basically go until Thanksgiving weekend before playing anyone decent based on how their schedule broke. That's the set up the very best teams in the SEC have currently - they are undoubtedly great programs, but the rest of the conference has proven to be a dumpster fire compared to its heyday in the middle of the BCS era. Had Auburn beaten Georgia in the SEC title game they would've probably got the top overall playoff seed with 2 losses - because they beat Georgia and Alabama when they were both ranked #1. Instead, they're a 4 loss team that lost its bowl game to UCF.

It's already shaping up to be a rinse/repeat group of teams leading the week 1 poll rankings in 2018, which will automatically set the SEC up for a huge playoff committee advantage... Both Georgia and Alabama are sure to be ranked in the top 3-4 teams (probably will be #1 and 2) going into next season - Georgia plays Austin Peay, Middle Tennessee State, GA Tech, and UMass out of conference, and Alabama plays a Jackson-less Louisville ("neutral" site game in Orlando), Arkansas State, Louisiana Lafayeete, and the Citadel out of conference. So unless somebody else in a very underwhelming and tumultuous SEC actually beats one of those two quality programs before the SEC Title game, if Alabama and Georgia play each other for the SEC crown in early December the loser is likely to get a CFP spot, anyway. This bowl season more or less indicated that the ACC was vastly overrated as a conference, the Pac 12 stunk, and the SEC was nothing special aside from UGA and it's 3rd place finisher/national champion. The Big Ten had a great bowl season and should be set up for having alot of teams ranked in the top 25 to open in 2018. Problem for them is their best programs have at least respectable out of conference opponents, and they mostly play each other before conference championship week - meaning it'll be darn near impossible for an undefeated Big Ten program to be left standing. Plus they'll already be starting behind SEC schools and probably Clemson, so their margin for error is nil again.

Why does it seem like the AFC is a pile of garbage aside from the Pats and Steelers every year? I know that's being shortsighted considering the Broncos won it all with a geriatric Manning a few seasons ago, but I guess the most obvious reason is comparing the lack of star quarterbacks in the AFC compared to the NFC right now... In the AFC, you have Brady and Big Ben. The only others worth mentioning are either past their prime (Rivers) or young/inconsistent/unknown/injured (Carr, Watson, Luck, Bortles).

based on the quote given by Ron Wolf regarding Elliot not getting the gig this year, I'm pretty sure he's going to be gone whether he's offered a GM gig or a scouting director gig by just about any other NFL team at this point... "At least he had the opportunity to interview for it," Ron Wolf told ESPN on Sunday night in a phone interview from his home in Florida. "Obviously the people up there don't think he's worthy or they would've hired him. End of discussion."

Ball as GM would essentially be a puppet to TT, since he's still in the front office - Both Ball and TT would essentially continue being responsible for the same tasks they've been doing prior seasons, it's just that Ball can put a 'GM' placard on his desk and TT doesn't have to deal with the aspects of the GM role he never liked. If these moves come to fruition, the front office is just rearranging deck chairs because Murphy doesn't have the chops to blow it up.

I think there's definitely something to a trade that includes Santana and returns pitching - then the Brewers could sign Cain at a reasonable price, look to deal Broxton for just about anything of value, and roll into next season with an OF of Braun, Cain, Brinson, and Phillips. The combination of Cain, Brinson, and Phillips provides premium defense in CF and RF, young player platoon/late inning defensive replacement options, and plenty of flexibility to give Braun days off. Plus, this leaves their minor league OF depth in pretty good shape, with prospects like Harrison, Stokes, Lutz, and others developing. As others have stated, Cain's approach at the plate would be most welcome in this lineup - his offensive #'s will likely improve in Miller Park compared to playing 1/2 his games at KC. IF the Brewers can get him at a decent price for 3 yrs plus a 4th option year and get pitching back by dealing Santana before he starts getting expensive via arbitration, it makes alot of sense to do something like this. Cain could easily transition to a corner OF position should Brinson or even Phillips earn the everyday CF gig.

Bob McGinn is saying that Ball will be next GM and Gutekunst will be VP (assuming Gutekunst will run personnel dept). So basically nothing in the front office changes aside from TT not having to meet with the media 1x a year (now he throws his clone Ball out to the wolves). Also, in this scenario Wolf is likely the next one out the door the next time a GM gig opens up.

Putting on my tinfoil hat, but could all these weird coaching/front office personnel moves coming out of Green Bay be in anticipation of taking a run at Belichek? There really hasn't been anyone brought in from outside the organization yet to fill roles vacated by firings and other coaches/staff going elsewhere...I think the 1 year McCarthy extension is pretty meaningless. Murphy was quoted as saying they'd be looking for a GM outside the organization in addition to interviewing the obvious internal candidates - this hasn't transpired thus far like the obvious succession plan many envisioned with Thompson handing the reins over to Wolf or Ball. Maybe Murphy is laying in the weeds to see what fallout may happen in New England - Belicheck in charge with TT serving as chief scouting director/personnel assistant would be pretty awesome. I doubt those two could coexist, however.

Just for fun, hypothetically if BB were to find himself available after the season and interested in the opportunity here, would you fire McCarthy, hand Belichick the reins to both GM and HC and basically give him total control? Um, yes - and I'd think just about every other owner across the NFL would do the same thing (Assuming Belichek still wants that sort of gig for more than 1-2 seasons)

Did McCarthy always call plays since he got here? It seems like in Rodgers first years as a starter the offense was more creative and used lots of weird formations now it's pretty bland. Maybe that has more to do with the players than the coaches though. That's the drawback of playing a no-huddle/hurry up style of play - doing so limits what you can do with substitutions/personnel groupings, and frankly it also limits the plays you can call from various formations. The advantage of the hurry up is you often force a defense to really limit coverages/blitz packages and end up making the game more about winning matchups - with a healthy Rodgers' ability to extend plays, even when receivers aren't initially getting themselves open there are normally plays to be had. When Rodgers struggles, this hurry-up style looks awful and unimaginative - much like it did the 1st half of last year when they were really struggling. Early in Rodgers' career he wasn't given the same level of control at the line of scrimmage, as a result, McCarthy had no problem running the offense with a constant shuttle of personnel groupings from the sideline - IF the Packers had a reliable running game, I think this is the style of offense that would benefit the team the most as Rodgers ages. However, it would take away from alot of those plays where Rodgers catches a defense with 12 men. Frankly, it's really tough to set up an offense with both schemes - so what they've decided to do is lean on Rodgers to dominate games (rightly so, IMO). However, I think the run game suffers because of it.

I agree with all of the examples you provided - but you more or less made my point. We didn't have organizational depth and were in a more precarious position to be trading most of the quality prospects we had at the time, because there was nothing behind those players squeezing them between upper minor league levels and MLB. There were years of failed drafts that caused quality depth to suffer in the minor leagues - and frankly the Brewer development system was probably just as big of a culprit as poor drafting. I'm not saying we're at the point where if no trades are made that we'll lose 5-7 valuable prospects via rule V next offseason because our system is oozing quality depth, but knowing when we're approaching that point and getting the most value via trade is critical to sustaining the strides DS and company have made to the entire organization (minors + MLB club) in a short time. There's a separate thread in the minor league forum talking about the top 25 under 20 Brewer prospects to watch - while much of it is still projection, I'd argue 4-5 years ago we could barely come up with 25 prospects of any age in the Brewer system worth following.

2) Don't schedule Florida Atlantic (2017), New Mexico (2018), Kent State (2019), Southern Illinois (2020). There literally is not a legitimate NC game until 2020 with Notre Dame. Sure you can't predict BYU would be horrible when you scheduled them, but some of these other cupcakes are a total waste of time. We don't need Alabama on the schedule, but a respectable mid major or usually lower ranked school would be a serious + for our resume yearly, especially with us being in the weaker half of the conference. Play a road game if nobody wants to come to Madison. I think based on this year, many Power 5 programs and ND are going to do the exact opposite - ND has already stated they are planning to make their schedule easier. The SEC was rewarded this year for having only 8 conference games, plugging midseason bye weeks before their best teams played each other, and scheduling joke games against community college-level competition the week before their rivalry games. Why does the Big Ten need to schedule difficult non-conference games when they already play 9 games in what is consistently the deepest conference in college football? In fact, if I'm the Big Ten I push for 10 conference games, 1 cupcake, and 1 non-conference game of each program's choosing as to how competitive it may be. The Big Ten west was the weaker side of the conference this year - that won't always be the case. With the rotating interconference schedule, it's very difficult to try and stock quality non-conference opponents in schedules during years when the perceived interconference schedule is weak. And FAU is a bad example to use for a weak non-conference opponent - they won 11 games this season and will probably wind up ranked in the top 25.

Once we got Greinke, it was time to get Marcum as well. Had to go all in. Marcum was acquired before the trade for Greinke...and the Brewers' downfall following those trades was not being able to draft well enough to replenish the prospect talent given up that offseason. There are smart ways for the Brewers to acquire talent both via free agency and via trade - since not every prospect currently in the Brewers' system (not even close) will contribute in Milwaukee, when their value is highest they should be dealt to help the big league club. It's a GM's role to evaluate when the time is right to move on from those players and get maximum value in return. Hoarding prospects is great, but eventually you run out of room and roster space for them all - and the ones that don't force themselves into MLB with their performance dramatically lose value to the parent organization if they are held a bit too long. If there are Matt LaPorta's currently in the system who could headline a deal for impact MLB talent instead of being held and exposed at the MLB level, I'm all for trading them when their value is highest. Obviously a GM needs to limit losing prospects that develop into solid MLB players, but part of improving depth of a small market team's farm is being able to draw from it during trades and having confidence in the front office's ability to identify amateur talent to replenish it.

Who else is a Sean Manaea type player that the Brewers could be targeting via trade? Seems like a good thread starter to me... For a talented young starter that was in the process of breaking out with the Mets before running into hamstring issues, what about Robert Gsellman? My guess would be that he's unavailable and the Mets would be more inclined to listen to offers for some of their more established starting pitching.

From what I understand, McCarthy's in-season extension was more or less to help with bringing in a new defensive coordinator - tough to attract the best names with a coach having only 1 year left on his deal and a GM situation in flux. That tells me they knew Capers was toast much earlier than at season's end, and they were just playing out the string - wouldn't be surprised if the "extension" was done after they lost at Carolina along with the GM succession plan. Fangio would be a fantastic hire for that job, if he's willing to make another lateral move and not become a head coach. My $'s on Wolf getting the gig, but I wouldn't be surprised if they are holding the door open to Schneider to see if he'd be interested. If Wolf isn't made GM this offseason, he'll go elsewhere. And I agree that Ball would be my last choice, since it would be purely a Ted disciple without proving he's built something elsewhere without him.

IMO, Cobb will cost too much for the production he'd provide and also costs the team a draft pick if the Brewers sign him. IIRC, the Garza signing was viewed as purely a financial commitment, because he didn't cost the Brewers a pick. Small market teams need to be very cautious about free agency to preserve their draft picks more often than not. It is very surprising to me that none of the marquee free agent starters have been signed, yet. Definitely an unprecedented game of chicken being played by all parties at this point, likely driven by big market teams' drive to stay under the luxury tax threshold and small market teams' reluctance to give up draft picks and hamstring their payroll flexibility. With what relievers are getting, I'm surprised the quality arms that will provide 3x the innings pitched aren't being prioritized. At this stage, TB's demands for Archer may be too steep for the Brewers to acquire him, but if they are willing to accept a mix of prospects that won't decimate the farm, it's worth the Brewers to explore trading for him. His contract is basically what Lucroy's last deal was in terms of value through their prime years at their respective positions, perhaps even better. All pitchers have injury risk every time they take the mound, so I'm hesitant to try and prognosticate when one's about to break. Historical durability is definitely an advantage for Archer, but I'd focus on his better K rate when comparing both pitchers moving from Tampa's home park to Miller Park

Since Archer is a better pitcher, 1 year younger, and will be much, much cheaper over the next four years than Cobb, I'd rather take a long look at what it would take to acquire him than hamstring your budget on a starter that isn't a difference maker. Sure, you can't empty the farm for him, but if Archer isn't moved this offseason and Tampa gets off to a rough 2018 start, stars may align for the Brewers to try trading for him at this year's deadline. By then they'd have a much better idea on Nelson's status, too. If they are 1/2 way into next year and their 40 man roster crunch is that much closer, DS is going to have a pile of controllable arms/prospects that were here before his tenure started who are going to have their best value to the Brewer organization as trade bait.

Bye before LSU and the citadel before Auburn. They aren't even trying to hide the fact that their schedule is a cupcake. And they'll probably open next season ranked #1, which will make it impossible for them to drop out of the top 2-3 teams unless they lose to Auburn at the end of the year again...by that time there will only be 1-2 other undefeated teams left, so they won't fall far enough in the rankings to be removed from playoff discussion. See why this is a farce? ESPN ran an article the day after Alabama dominated Clemson about how it's likely they'll be a fourth straight meeting between those two teams in next year's playoff...

He's never pitched more than 180 innings in a year, right? Very hard pass on him anywhere close to his asking price

If they expand the playoff, I'd still prefer they expand to 6 instead of 8 and give the top 2 ranked teams a bye. The quarterfinal games would be played the week of Christmas, with the semis and Final played on Jan 1 and the following week. 6 teams guarantees at least 1 team from all 5 power conferences if each conference has a deserving representative, and still leaves a spot for either an undefeated non-power 5 school that's deserving of a shot or a dominant non-conference champ (Alabama this year, or apparently any year they don't win the SEC title). In looking at Alabama's schedule for next year, they mightaswell pencil them in for one of the CFP spots on Jan 1, 2019 as well. That's what stinks about this current process - likely the best and most talented team that really doesn't need any help/preferential treatment has such a protected and sheltered schedule along with getting all benefit of doubt by the system (polls, media) and its own conference that until a whistleblower gets them in trouble with the NCAA, there's no denying Alabama. Because of that, for any season Alabama doesn't win the SEC, if there are other deserving teams in that conference like UGA the rest of the college football world is left fighting for only two CFP spots.

The defense being as mediocre to bad as it has been really has weakened this roster, because so many of GB's high draft picks the past few seasons have focused on defense. Realistically, the only thing they should prioritize on defense personnelwise is pass rushing (OLB, DE) - the rest of the improvement needs to happen with a new defensive staff and the players they already have in the room. That's because offensively, OL and TE positions need to be addressed in early rounds of the next few drafts - there just isn't impact talent or depth on GB's roster at those position groups. For all the WR's Green Bay typically carries, I think that position needs some serious attention, too. Cobb or Nelson won't be around next year, unless both take significant pay cuts. Adams is really good, but I worry about him longterm with his concussion issues. I feel like they need to move on from Davis and Janis and bring in some young receivers that can be more than special teams gunners or punt fair catchers.