Fear The Chorizo

Paul Allen raves about every viking player and coach as the season approaches publicly...but privately he must spend equally enough time assembling his list of endless excuses to use when his predictions and hot takes completely fall apart. Give him credit though, for playing the part as a homer hack to the fullest in terms of football for the vikings...he actually also does a great job calling horse races at Canterbury park

Agreed, but I'm also a bit pessimistic that's ever going to happen this season, unfortunately. Their deep OL is already being tested with issues and I don't see that improving at any point this season with the Bakh daily soap opera, Jenkins out awhile and now some questions with Tom. The one thing Watson has done consistently through his young career is pick up nagging soft tissue injuries that keep him off the field on gameday. It is exciting for a young quarterback growing with such a young group of pass catchers - but at times they're going to look out of sync. There's definitely talent there, though. The other thing with so many young players, guys that are making plays are going to stay on the field - while Watson is unquestionably talented when he's 100% healthy, if he can't be on the field consistently there seems to be a good # of guys who will gladly take his starting spot on the outside. A healthy Jones in the backfield coupled with an emerging, athletic TE and the other young WRs later this season is alot of different places the ball can go to.

Never a doubt Lol

oh this is fun

He's playing by the current transfer portal rules, and frankly he can't be blamed for it in trying to rapidly turn over a roster that went 1-11 and he had no part of recruiting to that school. Will be interesting to see how they recruit the next couple seasons as CO moves back to the Big 12. Deion has put together a pretty darn good coaching staff at CO, and you can't argue with his experience as a player in both the collegiate and NFL levels as a huge draw for blue chip recruits looking to cash in on NIL deals. They'll likely go through a rough patch of this season, but he's already got the groundwork in place to dramatically upgrade the football talent coming into Boulder. I've met Deion a couple times in person when he wasn't in front of a camera - literally at a Denny's close to his mother's place while I was down in Ft. Myers for spring baseball...outside of the public eye he was very unassuming and gracious with me and teammates who approached him, not looking for autographs but just to talk a few minutes. The Coach Prime/Prime Time stuff done in front of the cameras is what he does to grab the spotlight (and the $$ that comes with it), because he knows drawing that attention is oftentimes much easier to do than it finding you - and if you're good enough to shine when the spotlight is on you the attention builds even faster. When the cameras are off (lately it seems like they never are, lol), he knows how to relate with kids and coach 'em up. Hunter was among the very best recruits in the entire county the year he selected Jackson State - he's absolutely a 1st round NFL talent provided his slight frame doesn't go through significant injury in the next year or two before he's draft eligible in 2025.

Those last 6 on the Cub schedule (@ATL, @MIL) do not look like much fun for them - even if both teams are just playing out the string....ATL is likely still pitching Fried and Morton in two of those games and I don't see them mailing any of those games in. The Braves haven't yet clinched the best NL record overall and likely wont until sometime during that series if the Dodgers keep playing well. My preference would be for the Brewers to knock the Cubs out of the playoffs during that last regular season series and then get to face a burned out pitching staff from MIA or CINCY in the Wild Card round before heading to LA for the Divisional series.

If that's the honest case, it still sucks because he can't even suit up consecutive Sundays after getting through a game healthy and not practicing during the week.

Comparing construction costs of just about anything between southern states and midwest/northern states needs to come with the caveat that there's a pretty substantial difference in labor/equipment/fuel/material costs between building something substantial in WI compared to Texas or Florida. https://roofonline.com/relative-construction-costs-by-state/ Lots of data points out there, but even just looking at costs of residential construction in the link above - if setting the national average of building a house is 1.00, building in Wisconsin comes at a cost of 1.10 compared to Texas at 0.75 or Florida at 0.80. Overly simplified, but that would indicate building Global Life in Milwaukee today instead of Arlington would've cost closer to $2B before any additional demolition costs of an old ballpark.

Bryce Young does not look the part so far...I'm always leery of undersized qbs going so high in the draft.

It was just the Cubs' turn in the "look out for that team" role in the game of NL Central standings roulette. 1st the Pirates, then the Reds, then the Cubs....kind of ironic the dirty birds were the one team that sucked consistently enough to never factor in the discussion or realistic division title angst this season. I'm just hoping this September swoon doesn't prevent the Cubs from throwing Bellinger a spectacularly dumb longterm contract, giving Steele a huge contract when he's likely overdue for arm troubles with his heavy 2023 workload, or even better giving PCA a 13 yr extension this offseason for him to make a lot of great catches while failing to hit.

There's a reason why he was considered the best player in this year's draft (and why if he fell even a little bit I was fully on board GB using the draft capital they had to move up a little to get him), regardless of position. He just gets to holes instantly and has the vision/burst to make the 1st guy miss even in the hole - barring injury I think he'll be considered the best back in the league by this time next year.

In general I mostly agree with all of this - there's a reason why blowout games are few and far between in the NFL...specific to yesterday's game, I just think the Packers had enough of those gift-wrapped opportunities to dramatically impact both score and game flow early on they blew, and as is typical those miscues wind up biting them in the W-L column at the end of a road game they were in firm control of for 3 quarters. Does the defense appear to suck against the run once again? Yes - but ATL is one of a handful of teams that are built to focus on running the football, so they're going to gouge a bunch of defenses this year in that department when their opponents fail to make plays to force them to ditch the running game. Catching those two easy INTs dramatically changes the flow of the game and probably gets the score to a point where the Falcons just don't go on a running play binge midway through the 3rd quarter when they were down 12. Offensively, even with the two scoring drives to open up the 3rd quarter the Packers didn't maintain possession long at all - their TD drives were 4 and 2 minute variety, followed by 2 straight 3 and outs when they needed a drive and then that last possession that also went nowhere.

GB also had close too 100 yards of offense due to PI penalties that don't show up on the stat sheet, so the offensive yardage output isnt nearly as bad as the numbers actually look ...that being said, running only 44ish offensive plays isn't good enough for them as an offense, and that did wear down a defense on top of the fact they once again struggled to stop the run. The offense got away from a really good midgame rhythm, and couldn't find a drive the team really needed late third/early 4th quarter. With all that they still had a shot to drive down to kick a fg at the end to win it and couldn't get it done. I'd argue the plays the Packers didn't make were much more impactful to the outcome and overall flow of the game than a guy not getting two feet in bounds on a catch and the team having to settle for 3 instead of 6 on a drive.

It's not even what happened in the 4th quarter with the defense getting rolled and the offense not being able to make a play or two when they needed it most - If Jaire picks off a gimme INT in the 1st half it'd be a coin flip if he'd make 1 guy miss and score or set the offense up in instant FG range, and the same could be said of the dropped INT early in the 2nd half by Quay. Add those missed opportunities to make plays handed to them to the botched FG attempt on their 1st drive due to a false start and delay of game (at the time I was more P-Oed at the special teams unit for taking 40 minutes to get set up instead of 40 seconds, but it is on MLF to not just take that penalty and burn a timeout, too), we're talking about being up more than 2 TDs headed into the 4th quarter and the sustained running game the Falcons were able to get going in the 2nd half probably never even starts. It's just a game full of missed opportunities, and they let a team who does one thing really well offensively get into a good rhythm with it, and couldn't come up with a big drive when they needed it in the 4th quarter. This should be a 2-0 squad and it stinks they're not due to largely self-inflicted mistakes.

What a waste of a winnable game

And another very tick tack call in the secondary

Early returns on this year's draft are pretty damn good

Love the aggressiveness there

In the midst of a blowout road victory for the 2nd straight week despite a ton of key players out on offense.

If gb loses this game, it's because they can't catch the ball on defense

Yeah, but then again Ridder will be good for several more bad throws yet today...I just don't think he's very good.

Contact started with him in bounds and he honestly barely touched him Was surprised a flag didn't fly though

Ugh ...catch those please

Robinson is going to be the best rb in the league very soon