JosephC

I see it the exact same way. I think Alonso would be a decent bet on a 3-year deal. 5 years, this will likely end up being a bad deal for Baltimore. Average value per year is reasonable, but forced to pay him and use a roster spot on his those last couple of seasons just doesn't seem like it will work out.

Now I see reports that Leonard has a PCL sprain and Rivers may be "forced" to start. Forced? I think Rivers starting is what the Colts wanted all along. If old man gets killed, I am not interested in hearing a bunch of crying about it. I wonder what Corey Linsley and B.J. Raji are up to these days?

For some reason I keep thinking of Jordan Phillips, who was another huge DT that played college ball at Oklahoma and was a 2nd round pick of Dolphins back in 2015. I know Riley is a different guy who is younger and played his college ball at Oregon, but for some reason I keep calling him Phillips.

Arizona State QB-Sam Leavitt heading to the portal. Will be a redshirt junior next year. Began his college playing days at Michigan State, played in 4 games and preserved the redshirt, and then transferred to Arizona State where he played the last two years. Led Arizona State to the college football playoff during his first year there, and was getting some late round one/round two mentions early this year. Suffered a foot injury, had surgery in early November and missed the end of the season. I found one article that estimated he got paid roughly 3.1 million this last season. Hard to tell where he will rank once all the transfers get their name in the portal, but a very good chance that he will be one of the top 5 QBs available. SI has an article up and they speculate that the top 5 landing spots for Leavitt would be LSU, Miami, Texas Tech, Indiana, Florida State.

You see what the 1-win (previously) Titans did this weekend? They went into Cleveland and beat the Browns. Screw all that nonsense about, "the Browns defensive line is great, they can beat anybody on a given week." That is crap. The Browns are terrible. If the Packers can lose to the Browns, they can lose to any team on any given week. NFL players play when they wanna play. NFL teams with talent can be really good...when they want to be good.

That's why I used terms like "not definitive" and "primarily." There are always going to be situation in ballgame, whether it be rotating guys to different spots due to player fatigue or simple down-and-distance, where players are going to get bumped to a different spot for a few snaps here or there. But in this last game, it looks like Brooks and Brinson were the 3-techniques and Wooden and Phillips were the nose tackles.

Obviously not definitive, but based on the Bears game, it looks like it is "primarily" Brooks/Brinson at 3-technique and Wooden/Phillips at nose tackle. Also, since Bo Melton has played 56 snaps at wide receiver and 0 snaps as a defensive back this season, can the Packers just go back to listing him as a WR?

The Chiefs now have the same win-loss record as the Miami Dolphins. Would have never imagined that a month ago. Lots of crying about the Daniel Jones injury. I don't think I'd be too upset if I was a Colts fan. That team had already hit the predicted downhill slide, and I figure this injury likely just saved the team from a massive 4 year, 180 million dollar mistake.

Packers win, Bears lose. It has a nice ring to it.

I realize the Dolphins have been playing terrible teams lately. However, a month ago the Dolphins were in the running for worst team in the league honors and squarely looking at a top 4 pick. Now it looks like they are less than 1 hour away from being on a 4-0 run. Is this the first time in history a team has dramatically improved when keeping the coach and firing the GM instead? Probably a tactic more teams (in all sports) should consider, I still think the boob running the New York Giants should have been out the door long before Daboll.

Considering how little Stackhouse has shown, he should get thrown into the same mix as Riley and Bohanna and may the best man win. Considering the amount of bodies they already have at DE, without even counting Cox, I don't think they will stick with 6 DTs very long.

I'm not suggesting that Grimes and all the offensive assistants should be fired, but it would be surprising if every one of them kept their jobs. Coordinator, QB, RB, WR, TE, OL...name one group that performed at a satisfactory level in 2025.

We'll see what happens on Monday/Tuesday. I didn't figure the Badgers would make any coaching moves prior to the end of this early signing period, but it would be pretty surprising if nothing happened next week. They ran Longo out of town last year, hard for me to believe they would keep Grimes and all the offensive assistant coaches based on the performance. In 2024 they averaged 22.9 points per game against Big 10 opponents, this year that number was all the way down to 9.

Pitt bailed on the @ Wisconsin game this upcoming season. Both team's websites indicate this was a mutual agreement, but the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is reporting that it was Pitt that backed out. This series was going to be a home-and-home, but the Pitt home part of that got moved to Dublin...so I can only assume Pitt did not want to have to play road game and a neutral field game as this series. Pretty wimpy move to back out of this game considering the state of the Badger program. I would figure other teams would be lining up to try and get a win against a Big 10 team. The Badgers certainly won't be any type of powerhouse next year, and their schedule is light enough where the opponents should not be ending up with a 3-9 weak spot on their strength of schedule ranking at the end of the year. The Badgers will now play Eastern Michigan instead. They still have Notre Dame on their schedule, so the out of conference schedule isn't a complete cakewalk. Badgers now have home games against Western Illinois, Eastern Michigan, Michigan State and Rutgers...those 4 games alone should match their win total for this year. Road games at Maryland, Penn State and Purdue, this could be the easiest schedule in the Big 10 next year.

For some reason Iowa made an announcement that Ferentz will be back coaching next year. I realize the guy is old, but it didn't seem retirement was on his radar. Running point total of head-to-head matchups- Ferentz = 94, Fickell = 16

The Badgers picked up a safety this morning, Kah'ni Watts from Texas. He's way down the list of safeties (Rivals has him a #133 on the safeties list, #203 on the Texas Prospects list), but he helps an area that the staff had prioritized as a specific need. Rumors in Madison indicated they felt this was a real weak spot and had been pursing safeties very hard late in the process.

First transfer guy lasted all of 2 days before flipping to Kansas.

I'm going to assume they are done with the high schoolers. Time to take a brief look at the scholarship situation. QB - They only have 3 scholarship guys on the roster (usually like to have 5), and one of the three is Danny O'Neil who looks like a guaranteed transfer, and one will be an incoming true freshman. Needless to say, they will be looking at added at least 2 transfers and it's not crazy to think they will add 3 like they did last year. RB - They have 5, generally teams like to have 7-8. so there is definitely room for a couple more. I don't think this group was nearly good enough last year, so there is a good chance they will look for an impact player here. WR - They only have 8, which is a concerning number. Kekahuna briefly tried the portal last year, there has been some speculation that he might try it again. They will likely look to add at least 2 and, again, need to find a real playmaker. TE = They have 7, could look to add one more. Overall this looks like the best and most settled of the offensive skill position groups. OL - Generally 15 is the number, although Gary Anderson's number was 14, and they only have 13 now. So a good bet that they will be adding 2 via transfer. EDGE/DL - They have 15, but will probably be looking for an impact Edge player at Peterson and Reiger were both seniors. LB - They have 11, which is probably 1 more than they need. Should be good here. CB - They have 7. Could use one more. S - They have 6, rumor had it they really wanted to add one in this high school recruiting class but struck out. So the 85 scholarship limit is gone, but still a good benchmark. Badgers currently only at 77 which does not seem like a good number because guys will be leaving, and frankly last years group of transfers left a lot to be desired.

Looking at the national scene, of the Rivals Top 300, there are only a handful of guys that have not given a verbal, but there are 33 Top 300 players that did not sign a letter of intent today. So even though the Badgers haven't been linked to a single one of these guys (to my knowledge), maybe they is some hope that there is a surprise flip on Friday.

They aren't saving all their money for offensive linemen (although they for sure will pick up a couple transfers), I think they are going to throw all the money at a quarterback.

McIntosh should have kept his pie-hole shut about bigger investments "recruiting and retention." It's one thing to lose a top recruit to Oklahoma, but it's a entirely different story to make statements like that and then lose the best player remaining in the class to West Virginia. Badger football is doomed as long as this moron is running the athletic department.

Janda really improved as a defensive player this year, and it sounds like Wisconsin were open to having him play defense. He flipped because of "stability" and liked the developmental program that Iowa has in place. https://247sports.com/article/iowa-flips-wisconsin-dl-commit-jack-janda-264472541/ LB-Karsten Busch ended up going to Miami and CB-Azel Banag went to Oregon. There is nothing else on the radar in terms of high schoolers. Signing day today, and all of the Badgers high schoolers have signed with the exception of Amari Latimer.

Badger lose tight end commit Jack Janda. He flipped to Iowa where he will play the defensive line. Never a good thing to lose a committed recruit to Iowa.

Badgers get a pretty nice flip in Tennnessee WR-Keeyshawn Tabuteau who was a Vanderbilt commit. Smaller guy (5-11, 165) that doesn't carry the huge rating (#62 WR per 247), but looks like a speedy guy with playmaking ability. Exactly what this offense needs. A couple days ago Iowa Central CC LB-Taylor Schaefer also committed to Wisconsin. Previous staffs did not go after these players very often, but if my memory serves me correct, they did a great job selecting these guys because most of them ended up being solid players for the Badgers. Andrew Van Ginkel was one, and if you want to go back about 15 years, defensive tackle Dan Moore was another. No word on Kentucky LB-Karsten Busch, and I'm a bit surprised because I thought he would be an official commit either yesterday or today. Also no word on CB-Azel Banag.

If the run game would go back to using real fullbacks, putting the QB back under center, and then just go downhill and smash the opponent, I would go back to watching games. Zone-blocking, stretch plays, trap block, counter-trey, make offensive linemen fun to watch again! Running 30+ draw plays out of the shotgun sounds incredibly boring to me.