OldSchoolSnapper

Yes. I would classify both games as humiliating losses.

I think the Lions are washed. Even more washed than I think the Packers might be. They need a regime change. Not to say there isn't talent, but they blew their window IMO and they aren't a serious threat. The Bears are the only team in the division that I think is still ascending. Williams dropping some absolute dimes in this game though, wow.

Meh. Humiliated the Packers twice so schedule merchants seems a bit tough. Then very nearly took out LA. Bears have a good team. I think they will win the division. Williams is the real deal, makes a lot of big plays when the play is dead for most quarterbacks. Their defense will leave a bit to be desired but they will be competitive consistently with Williams.

The bye is more or less locked. The nice thing about the cushion and not needing to win the last few games, is they can use them to maybe get an idea of who can actually throw in the playoffs.

I actually feel better about Harrison having that kind of night than I would have if he'd gone out there and given up no runs with 93mph soft tosses that flied out. Yeah there's still a problem and he's playing himself off the roster, but you have to give him another go after seeing where the velocity is.

I couldn't care less if Jacobs suits up and is productive. I just don't care what kind of people these guys are. But it is just very odd the Packers are lining up at the guillotine for a guy who will probably miss at least half the season and then get cut next summer.

Slop fest where the Packers leave a bunch of points on the field and don't impress, but ultimately win because I think Minnesota is going to be really bad. Something like 17-13. The Vikings ineptitude on offense gets people too excited for our defense.

It was a stupid column and an almost impossible thing to do, but I am not discounting the success the Rams will have just yet. I think there's enough concerns with how old the team is to see them flame out terribly, but I've seen a lot of weird stuff happen in Week 1 before.

I ended up grabbing the Navimow X430 and I have been wildly impressed it so far. Can't speak to longevity. It is extremely good at getting close to the edge, and the auto mapping is beyond anything I could have imagined. Even kids crap left in the yard doesn't trip it up. No issues with pets either.

He will be the next Brewer to win MVP.

They'd be as big of an underdog as a 100-win club can be. Whether that is based in reality or not, that would be the story.

Skipping a round of course matters, but baseball leaves you chronically exposed to random outcomes more than any other sport. Basically every part of your team can be neutralized on any night. Your great pitcher can throw 8 shutout innings and if you can't hit, you can still lose. Then he can't play for 4 or 5 days. Your great defense can get taken out by a couple balls that never touch the field. A blown save in Game 1 can take an entire series off the rails. This is much harder to do in basketball or something, when the underdog team has to pull off an identical task 4 times. You could drop the Athletics in the playoffs and it's quite possible they win a series. Much harder to do that with a random NFL/NBA team. So the point of my ramble is really that I don't care too much where we land, whether that's 1 or 3. It'll be a very similar situation regardless, a strong roster that needs to be good and lucky and is of course susceptible to the randomness of the sport, forced to beat some very good teams this year. It has always been the least-hot-takey pro sport for me, where I just shrug and accept the outcome. I think this is the best team they've ever assembled, the strongest mix of their analytical prowess + a big bit of just raw talent, legitimate superstars. But it doesn't mean they won't get swept in their first series.

There's less real difference between the 1 and 6 seed than people want to believe.

I don't say this to discredit Megill this season or what he's done in Milwaukee. But I just don't trust the guy to close a 2-1 playoff game. I've never felt safe with him out there in the most intense situations. Uribes isn't perfect either, but he just feels more made for those moments.

Video review and getting the call wrong, name a better combination.

Just glad Miz looked well. I wasn't really worried about it but just to have it verified. Didn't want to see another September meltdown in the staff.

There isn't really a reason for him to pitch on the road in October though if they hang on to #1 or likely #2. He isn't going to start a game 3 or 4. Maybe a Game 5 if you're down 3-1, but eh. He'd be back at home in 6 or 7.

I do. 2022 and 2023 were two of the worst consecutive years on record for WI high school football. I would consider 5 blue chips 'decent'. Depending on your source, 3-4 blue chips came out of the state in 2022. '23 might have been the worst year ever, they had 1. The '23 class would be seniors now. That is the in-state pool he has been working with. Last year's was also quite bad. The best class WI has seen in a long time, actually, is this year's seniors. From 2017-2021, UW landed the No. 1 kid in the state. In 2021, they signed all of the top 6. From '22-'26, they lost 3 of the top 5 to other places every year. There's a bit to unpack there, since last year the #1 kid in WI was ranked in the 600s nationally.

I don't think anyone would argue that Ohio State had 6-7 talent. They obviously didn't. But simply listing future NFL players strips away virtually all of the context of what Fickell actually inherited, and I believe you're just doing that on purpose. Fickell wasn't hired in December, given an offseason to build a staff and install his program, and then went 6-7. He went through spring practice as an assistant expecting Jim Tressel to be the head coach. His job was supposed to be filling in during Tressel's suspension. Tressel then resigned on May 30, and Fickell suddenly became the head coach for the entire season. Days later, Pryor, who everyone had expected to return after his five-game suspension, left entirely. Braxton Miller was enormously talented, but calling him "QB-Braxton Miller" without mentioning that he was an 18-year-old true freshman is doing a lot of work. The same applies to Devin Smith and Ryan Shazier. Those guys becoming excellent players later doesn't mean they were finished products in September 2011. Miller was so raw that Ohio State basically couldn't throw the football for portions of that season. And the suspensions weren't insignificant just because some of those players eventually returned. Boom Herron was coming off a 1,100-yard, 16-TD season. Mike Adams was a first-team All-Big Ten tackle. DeVier Posey had led Ohio State in receiving the previous two seasons. Pryor was the reigning Big Ten MVP and never returned at all. Losing that group while simultaneously losing your head coach in late May is a pretty substantial disruption. Treating 2011 as evidence that he was handed a normal, loaded Ohio State team and simply couldn't coach is revisionist. You can make a perfectly legitimate argument that Fickell has failed at Wisconsin. You can even argue that his Cincinnati success hasn't translated to the Big Ten. But pointing to 2011 as definitive proof that some Ohio State fan had him figured out 15 years ago requires ignoring almost everything unusual about that season and most of Fickell's coaching career afterward.

Sick burn, man. That really hurt my feelings and justified the absurdity of using his one season in which the real HC was cast off and half the star players were suspended or left the team. An interim scandal HC is a totally reasonable circumstance in which to evaluate a guy's first major HC job, and you totally don't come as bitter or having sour grapes, or grossly reaching just to bash the guy in this thread at all. Maybe pretend I'm Fickell and insult me more and it'll help you feel better about how bad the team is. Probably not though. The fact that you brought up his interim gig at OSU, which he and everyone knew was temporary on Day 1, and was just a "here, take this flaming bag of poo while we take a cycle to extinguish it," sullies anything further you have to say about the guy. I hate the Badgers, and people like you are a huge reason why - the smugness. I personally don't care if Fickell is fired today. But any non-Badger fan forced to digest their product semi-consistently could tell that the seeds of decay were planted long before Fickell ever got there. The real winner here is Leonhard, who would have also lost a bunch, because quite simply the horses are not there, and now he has a coaching career he can still salvage. The basketball program would be in the exact same spot if it had to roster as many kids. Wisconsin doesn't have good football players. It stopped getting them years before Fickell was hired. Then they did a piss-poor job of supplying him with the resources to get the right ones. He may very well have failed anyway, but they're trying to course-correct 3 years later. The whole thing is a mess, I'd be lying if I said I'm not enjoying the humble pie a bit, but their administration is as much to blame as any coach.

Fickell might be the worst coach in the B1G. I honestly don't follow it anywhere near closely enough to know. But his random scandal year in a depleted and suspended OSU shouldn't count for anything. I personally think his timing at UW could not have been worse: in-state talent pool decaying, reinventing the offense when the portals became a complete mess, underfunded NIL. I don't think he has really had a great shake of things trying to be a HC. Wisconsin was fading before he took the job.

Oh come on, lol. We both know this is just a LITTLE disingenuous.

Yeah, I mean, that's kinda what I was going to say. I don't have a strong opinion on Fickell, or UW as a whole. But I think he's suffering big time from timing. His predecessors had benefits from the legacy of the 25 years or so before them. It takes a while for the shine to fade. It was gone by the time Fickell got there, and now they're trying to rebuild it. That's incredibly hard to do without a regime change, in the midst of the NIL/transfer portal chaos that the program was just not prepared for at all. I think his fate is being fired soon, just not sure he had a real chance. The group that comes in after him will have more realistic expectations. I don't think UW is set up to succeed for a couple of years at least. I just have a tough time believing that a guy with the experience Fickell had, as well regarded by very big names in coaching as he was, is really that bad of a coach.

Lara should get the save.

There's an indisputable correlation with NIL money and wins, and it raises the floor of your program tremendously. You will always be able to find exceptions scouring 140 teams, and you can't just expect to win every game because you outspent the opponent. I don't think anyone thinks that. But o/u $20mm is a median win increase of 2 and a mean of 2.5. Wisconsin got caught with its pants down. It was not in any way prepared for NIL, thought they would continue winning 8-9 games a year because predecessors made it look easy, and paid no mind to their eroding program that many fans could see after Bielema. I know what Bielema is to many people, but it's hard to argue that things didn't start to decline once he left.