JosephC

The "Deer District" was such a success that all those dumb-dumbs in the city of Milwaukee get to pay an extra 2% sales tax and all those dumb-dumbs in Milwaukee county get to pay an extra 0.4% sales tax on top of the 0.5% they were already paying. But look out....just think of all that huge tax revenue that will be generated by all these $10 an hour retail and short-order cook jobs! After all, this will be a year-round destination now, and people from Dallas will be pining to trudge around in the Wisconsin snow in the middle of January for the experience of shopping the American Family Field stadium district. Wow. At least Attanasio will make boatloads of money, as he will need it to push the team's opening day payroll to 120 million (which is was in 2019).

Back to reality. ESPN has an article up regarding Mike Locksley's (Maryland) job security (or lack of). I remember saying back in September that we really don't know how good Maryland is or isn't. They beat the Badgers, but Locksley has always been able to recruit, so perhaps this would be the break-through year for them. Since beating Wisconsin, Maryland has gone...Washington = loss, Nebraska = loss, UCLA = loss, Indiana = loss, Rutgers = loss. They've lost every game since the Wisconsin game. The further we get away from the Washington win, the more and more unbelievable it seems. Between Wisconsin, Maryland, Purdue (probably the worst of all), Michigan State and Penn State, the Big 10 seems to have a record number of crappy teams. Sure, with expansion that number was going to go up...but having 5 of them seems to be a real high number. Indiana is currently a 29 point favorite. They had the nail-biter last week against Penn State, but the two games prior to that were a 45 point win against Maryland and a 50 point win against UCLA. At home, their closest game was against Old Dominion, which they won 27-14. Against Big 10 competition, their smallest margin of victory in a home game this year has been 25.

If that is the typical performance from #77 and #88, Walter Payton wouldn't be getting many yards with those two guys on the field.

I post on another board where, I would guess, about 30% of the people who post live in New York, although they are mostly Jets fans. Last year they were talking a lot about the Giants and them being on the HBO show. In there there was a lot on Barkley and the Giants decision to not re-sign him, From what I saw, and I didn't sit there and watch full episodes, it left me with a really bad impression. That got much worse a few months later when I was messing around on overthecap, and couldn't help but notice that Barkley had something like a 3.8 million dollar cap hit while playing with the Eagles, and the Giants had Drew Lock on their roster with a cap hit of 5 million. Now I know how NFL contract work, and the year one cap number is going to be the lowest number, and it is going to go up dramatically from there. But when a team moves on from Barkley and instead has a 1-year backup QB that has a higher cap number...that is not only a bad look, but that is just stupid. Schoen was hired by the Giants on January 21, 2022...so he was in charge the entire 2022 off-season, so he legitimately owns everything from 2022 forward. The Giants were 4-13 in 2021, and under Schoen they've gone from 9-7-1 to 6-11 to 3-14 to 2-8....total for the 3+ seasons is 20-40-1. I can't imagine a scenario where a firing is more deserved.

If Policy does make a move, I think it's much more likely that he would fire all three of Gutekunst, LaFleur and Ball then rather just pick out the head coach and fire him. I've always had a hard time figuring out how the powers-that-be in the sporting world can pick out a person and scapegoat them when their performance is so reliant on the performance of other people around them. Take the Giants as an example. Why fire the head coach now when it is so obvious the GM owns just as much responsibility for the sorry performance of that team? To me the obvious move is to wait until the end of the season and just get rid of everybody. Not saying that should happen in Green Bay. They are 2 games above .500 with plenty of season left to play. But with the Giants, I just don't see why one guy gets scapegoated now when the entire organization needs to be overhauled.

I'm not going to go back through all the Packer threads to see if this has already been posted. A "deep-fake" video that should go down as a classic!

For those of you who are saying LaFleur is going to get fired, see Mike McCarthy....at the time he was fired McCarthy had a 4-7-1 record and the previous season was 7-9. So in a season+, the Packers had posted a 11-16-1 record, The Packers have a 5-3-1 record, and that is coming off a season where they were 11-6. So the last season+ for LaFleur is 16-9-1. LaFleur's future in Green Bay likely hangs mostly on what Gutekunst thinks of him. Who was really behind the hire of LeFleur, was that more Murphy or was it more Gutekunst? If Gutekunst was behind the hiring, I don't see LaFleur going anywhere at long as the Packers keep putting up 10 win seasons. If Murphy was the guy behind the hiring, it wouldn't surprise me if the Packers dump LaFleur sooner than later so Policy/Gutekunst can put their hand-picked guy in the position. That's just the way things work.

I'd like some clarification on what you mean by "middle-of-the-pack?" Lots of people look at Wisconsin/Iowa as not being in the top tier of the Big 10 along with Ohio State, Michigan, Penn State. So are they middle-of-the-pack, or are they still in a tier above middle-of-the-pack? For example, in the last 4 full Chryst season (2018-2021), the Badgers had a Big 10 record of 21-12. From 2022-2025, Iowa has a very similar 22-12 record in the Big 10. Then let's look at Illinois, from 2022-2025 their record in the Big 10 is 17-16. From 2022-2025, Minnesota has the same 17-16 record. So my question is, is the 2027 expectation for Fickell at the level that Wisconsin and Iowa has established over the last couple decades (or "had established" in the case of Wisconsin)...or are we just hoping Fickell can get to Minnesota's level by 2027?

Will the Packers be motivated to play the Giants or will they lay another big, fat egg.

So a week after the Panthers go into Green Bay and beat the Packers, the Saints go into Carolina and beat the Panthers by 10 points. I guess NFL teams play when they want to play and don't play when they really don't feel like playing.

What an embarrassing loss for Washington. We can talk about the travel and weather, but definitely weather should have played no role as what we saw is pretty typical northwest weather. Have to give Wisconsin credit, they had no business winning this game, so they get props for pulling off the upset.

LOL, looks like Washington fans are going to get to wear the paper-bag-of-shame over their heads this week.

Speculation on my part, but I think the biggest reason Chryst was fired is that McIntosh saw Wisconsin's style of football as being outdated, and he was the AD who wanted to be known for bringing Wisconsin football into the 21st century and make them a legitimate national championship contender every year. So I don't think there was any chance of bringing in an offensive coordinator who was going to implement any sort of power run game offense. In fact, I would again speculate that if McIntosh saw Phil Longo as exactly the type of offensive coordinator this program needed. And I'm off the Longo bashing bandwagon. It's clear now that he wasn't the problem. They scapegoated him, and now can only score 5 points per game against Big 10 competition. This offense is historically bad. Wisconsin's offense has scored 27 points in 5 Big 10 games. The team that is sitting 17th in the Big 10 in total points scored is Purdue, and they've scored 104 points (played one extra game). Wisconsin = 5.4 points per game. Purdue = 17.3 points per game. Again, this offense is historically bad. The second to worst team in the league is literally scoring more than three times the points that Wisconsin is scoring.

Now people know why I use the term Chryst derangement syndrome. People literally making up excuses for Fickell's pathetic performance based on what the old coach did or didn't do four years ago. Never mind Fickell went 7-6 in his first year at Wisconsin, with all the crappy players the old coaches left him with that didn't fit his system. He's had two years with high school recruiting and the transfer portal to get better and that has resulted in 7-6 to 5-7 to 2-10 (maybe 3-9 if they get lucky somewhere). PS - There is a reason why Chryst got fired. I think the reason is now pretty obvious. The athletic director is a moron.

I just don't think people have a handle on how the travel will affect Washington. They made the trip to Maryland and only won by 4. They made the trip to Michigan and lost by 17. So their showings when having to play in the eastern half of the country have not been great so far. There is also the potential for snow in Madison starting at around 4. But the forecasts have it as being snow showers, probably nothing that would have any real type of impact on the game.

I highly recommend having a barf bag ready if you are going to listen to this.

This isn't even news in Madison. When McIntosh sent that support letter out to ticket buyers and donors awhile back, the first couple days the reaction was "he can't be serious," and that quickly morphed into Fickell will absolutely be the Badgers head football coach in 2026. People needed a couple days to process if McIntosh is just that much of an idiot egomaniac, and after thinking about it decided the answer was yes. Anybody still left on the fence, and there weren't very many left, lost all hope when Ted Kellner (one of the big, big, big donors) threw his support behind both McIntosh and Fickell. Everyone in Madison has already bailed on football, it's all about basketball now. I never thought I would see the day where all the football fans were completely uninterested the first week in November, but it has happened. McIntosh and Fickell have completely destroyed the program in 3 years. The only talk I heard this week regarding football is that the athletic department rolled out the Ireland trip packages earlier this week. For those that don't know, the Badger play Pitt in 2027 and the game will be in Dublin. I didn't know about it, but a guy who I work with who attends ALL these special football games told me about it and said there was no way he was going unless Fickell can manage at least 7 wins next year. Another guy who always goes to these games told me his wife wants to go and they are thinking about a 9 day Belfast/Galway/Kerry package (didn't want to do London because they've already vacationed there) but the game itself was not a motivating factor whatsoever. He made it clear that they were interested in Ireland and had the attitude that, well, there just so happens to be a game happening on one of those days. The thing that scares me the most is that with the lighter schedule next year, it wouldn't be a shock if the team was just a tad better and will scratch out a 5-7 record...which of course McIntosh will say progress is being made and they will keep Fickell for 2027...and they will slip back to 3-9 or 4-8 territory. It's going to be a long, long, long road back to respectability with these two clowns running the show.

Try isopropyl alcohol to clean windshield. You may still get the smearing effect, but it should be better than household cleaners.

Just wait until these streaming services start merging, and you are left with 3 streaming service options that each will charge you $200 a month (even higher after adjusting for inflation). That is the future of streaming in the USA. Enjoy any streaming advantage you have now, because it will soon be gone. I lived through the satellite dish era start to near-finish, and it's pretty easy to see the direction this is heading.

A couple Packer-based sites have mentioned that someone at The Athletic is reporting the Packers are asking around about cornerbacks.

I thought then and still think now, that Jenkins was the odd man out after the move to center. We'll see if Jenkins is on the 2026 team? Personally, I think the odds are overwhelming that Jenkins is traded after this season. With him off the roster, it frees up 20 million in cap space, which would have given them the flexibility to keep Clark.

I can't believe so many Packer fans still view Kenny Clark as a completely expendable throw-in in the Parsons deal. I wonder what it would have taken Gutekunst to get out of including Clark in that trade? A third round pick and a different player? A second round pick? Of course Jones is going to say that Clark was an essential piece as he is going to sell the press on the idea that the trade was made on terms that he dictated. I would have to believe that the Packers could have gotten Clark removed from the trade, and they would be much better for it if they could have done so.

Three "O'fer in the Big 10" teams played yesterday, and all were losers. At least the Badgers have plenty of company in the toilet. Michigan State went to Minnesota and lost in OT, which gives me a tiny bit of hope the Badgers just might be able to pull off an upset against the Gophers. Penn State and Michigan State play each other a couple weeks from now. Purdue's remaining schedule is Ohio State (home), Washington (away), Indiana (home)...so they are a super near-lock to go winless in the Big 10 this year. Also, in an amusing note, I see a sportsbook has put up odds for the next Penn State head coach. The best odds currently are: Brian Hartline = +125 Joe Brady = +200 Eli Drinkwitz = +300 Jeff Brohm = +500 Urban Meyer = +600

If the Packers had Ja'Marr Chase or Justin Jefferson on the roster, I guarantee you their output would be much greater than 600-700 yards per season.