OnTheBlack

I agree what you're saying, but I'm not sure they should do it just because of the RB depth. I would learn more towards one of the young, athletic WR'ers. We have a few of them. The reason being, I think Shaw takes a little bit to get going and I'm not sure James has the speed you'd like to run that and be able to not only hit the HR on it, but also make it a big threat. And Taylor has the speed, but I'd rather he benefit from the threat of it as our main back. At the very least it keeps the DE/OLB'er from crashing like you said and setting the edge. That leaves the counters which we love running wide open. At QB, I haven't seen much of Coan, but Chryst strikes me as the type of coach who's not going to take the traditional approach to making a change, ie, waiting for an awful performance in a loss, or waiting until they get down big before making a change. I still like Hornibrook and think he'll improve, but if he doesn't, the Badgers can certainly end up with 11 wins, a nice win in a bowl game, but at some point the program has to try and take that final step to put itself in contention for a playoff spot. If Coan does that...I think Chryst will do that.

Yes, they can. And when Burnes is a #2 pitcher for the big league club and throwing 200 innings, we don't have to live with the regret of trading for a player who made a few starts, went on the DL and who we have no idea how he will perform(Darvish unless you wanted to move mulitple top 100 prospects) and would have had to match up against a guy like Scherzer, Strausburg, Kershaw, Wood or whoever in the post-season in the unlikely even that he was enough to push us into the playoffs....as long as we want to do a hypothetical exercise. Of course this on top of the fact that we have absolutely no idea what teams were asking for from the Brewers for particular pitchers.

The big additions for the Cubs were Quintana and Wilson. Quintana has been exactly who he was for the White Sox, a 4.50 ERA pitcher. Wilson has been terrible. Almost a walk an inning and a 2 WHIP. 5.56 ERA. Curious as to who we missed out on that would have been such a positive impact so far or helped the offense score more runs. The argument would be Verlander. But I didn't want to see them make any moves at the deadline. And I think it's ridiculous to write off any of the players listed as busts at this point. Lets give them a couple years before we come to that conclusion. And we have no idea who's gonna break out and be a 5 WAR player. The way the Brewers were headed and the way the NL looked(and still looks) with LAD, Washington and now ARZ moving into that group, I don't think the old "just get in and see how he goes from there" adage would pay off. A healthy Dodgers team would just absolutely overwhelm the Brewers.

He downplayed it after the game saying he got his foot stepped on...so hopefully that's all it is and he doesn't have some nagging lower leg injury. McGinn had a lot of really good stuff when he talked to opposing execs. That was the content I really missed. Next week may be a better indicator of how much we've improved from last year with Atlanta's passing attack. It'll be interesting to see how we cover Jones and their backs in particular.

I actually like the duo, but they were terrible today. I don't agree that he(Lane) deserved an ejection, but they kept harping on that as if it impacted the game. And Rodgers DID get blocked in the back and it was obvious. Not sure how they and Mike Periera thought that shouldn't have been called. They refs weren't great today. They did blow that call on Adams, but they also blew that call on Brice who was all over Graham in the endzone on 3rd down and there were multiple plays they could have called holding on Seattle's OL. But they just kept going on and on about the calls that went against Seattle.

I think all Packer and Badgers fans were torn. Watt looked really talented in his one year starting for the Badgers, but watching Gunter line up as our top CB last year and getting torched in the NFC Championship game it was hard to question Thompson's logic in filling our biggest need with Rodgers in his prime. Foster looks a bit like Ray Lewis did coming out of Miami but I didn't think the Packers were go with a MLB'er over OLB'er and Corner.

He definitely looks like he could be special...but I don't think the Packers would have passed if they were that confident he was gonna be there at 33. I think people had a pretty strong feeling given the Steelers need at OLB'er that they were gonna take one and Watt was up there on the board. It's just going to be that much worse if he becomes a superstar given that we had a shot at him. I completely understand why they moved back, but after watching him today...he looked like a bigger, longer version of Clay Matthews. If that's the case, it'd be real tough for King to measure up. Of course as CheezeWiz points out, it's early.

The defense was so fun to watch today. They doubled Clay and Perry absolutely destroyed the other side. Daniels just played with the interior linemen(and we were/are worried about ours....imagine what Seattle's gotta be thinking). Jones and King saw a little playing time, but I think you can expect all 4 of the top picks, King, Jones, Adams and Biegel to get more comfortable and play better as the year goes on. And we didn't even really need Lowry today. Not sure what you would really need to see to be more excited out of this Packer team at this point. Offense is always a bit behind defense but the running game looked good given the opponent and Bulaga's injury... We needed to come out of the first two games with at least 1 win IMO, and Seattle is a lot easier to beat in GB it would appear, so...huge week 1.

I think this goes beyond the "small sample size warning." He's also 5 for his last 16. Also....he's fast. Being able to beat out ground balls is part of his game. I don't know why you'd knock him for that. I don't really have a strong opinion on who to play at 2nd base right now because I think we've got several good options, but I do hope that we at least stick with Villar in the future.

Anyone else starting to get that sinking feeling that the Packers may have really blown it with their first pick by passing on TJ Watt(trading down) and instead going with need by picking King? He had a big pre-season and then came out and had 2 sacks and a pretty impressive leaping pick as an OLB'er dropping in coverage and snagging a deep out or a comeback(couldn't tell which from the highlight). I know the narrative was that they ended up getting an extremely athletic CB in King who is 6'3 and the more productive OLB'er at Wisconsin in Biegel with the decision to pass on Watt at 28 and move down 5 spots...but I think everyone could see Watt was more athletic than Biegel. I understand why they made the picks they made, and I'm absolutely not questioning Kevin King or Vince Biegel at this point...but man, TJ Watt really does look like the OLB'er version of his big bro right now.

defensively sure. I'll take his bat over Sogard and Perez right now. I also wouldn't write him off as the 4th best defensive option there. He was a SS up until last year. You have to take his defensive metrics from less 100 starts at 2nd with a grain of salt. It takes a little while to adjust, especially a position like 2nd that's so difficult to play.

It's just amazing watching this guy work....the way he's able to keep his eyes downfield and make plays with the speed this game moves and then still keep himself aware of everything else going on? I'm loving how this D has started the year....never know how long you're gonna have elite Rodgers production.... And I LOVE how Bennett has come out and played Week 1. I don't care that it cost them 15 yards, or that the Seattle defender didn't really do anything wrong, he and Kendricks bring an attitude to this team that is awesome.

There was no punch. They got tangled up, Cobb had gotten a taunting penalty a few plays before that and then Adams was blocking him on a punt and as they went to the ground(with Adams initiating the contact) Lane kinda gave him a weak forearm. Not a hit really at all...but then he did hold his forearm on his throat under the helmet. It shouldn't have gotten anyone kicked out. There definitely was a block in the back on when Rodgers was chasing down the Seattle DE. Not sure why they're saying that shouldn't have been called though. That's ridiculous.

Murphy allowed two sacks in the first half. Otherwise he and the rest of the O-line held up as much as you can against this elite defensive front. Not much on the ground. Defense was dominant, but that may have more to do with this horrendous offensive line Seattle has and I mean horrendous. GB's defensive front has dominated the LOS all day long. Seems like Seattle's D is starting to wear down in the second half due to being on the field the vast majority of the game. Rodgers was responsible for at least one of those 4 first half sacks. Probably 2 of them. Evans has been beat a couple times as well, but like you said, Seattle has an elite front. They're probably deeper than any team in the league with the addition of Richardson. Nick Perry's play is exciting though...I wasn't sure how he was going to play after signing his big extension coming off a career year, but he's had a really good game as well.

It seems like people have suggested Verlander was washed up a couple times now. I'm also a bit surprised to see his fastball velocity sitting at 95.3 MPH at 34 years old.

I pay for quite a few subscriptions...I won't pay for McGinn's. I liked reading his articles in the MJS when he talked to scouts, but when he offers up his own opinions, I seldom agree with them. Kinda like when he said the Packers were a 10 win team sans Aaron Rodgers....

Same here. A part of me almost wishes he needed Tommy John instead of ANYTHING in the shoulder. Shoulders are just so much more unpredictable. TJ, you have it, almost get it out of the way given how often pitchers have it now and you probably don't have to worry about it again. The shoulder, even the best orthopedic surgeons don't know how exactly it'll heal. I know when I tore mine even when I was able to get back to working out and lifting, I still couldn't throw a ball comfortably after a full year of rehab. Obviously Nelson will have state of the art conditions and experts to help him, but it just scared me as soon as it happened(I wish he wouldn't have thrown with it at all, but Nelson's not a guy who wants to come out). As for the whole pitchers are babied nonsense....this is just never gonna stop. Every generation says the next one is softer, they were tougher, better, stronger...these kids today are lazy. I was 25 years old and went back to my school to watch my HS football team play and a guy in my class who I played with was talking about how "these kids" don't have the work ethic we had, etc..etc.. Baseball's different. Guys put more stress on their arm as has been explained. It's a billion dollar industry and it's run now by the most analytical minds. You don't have GM's who actually put how attractive a potential draft picks Girlfriend is, they use reason and logic. They didn't just arbitrarily decide to introduce pitch limits and the idea of progressively building a pitchers arm strength up. The question I like to ask the people who always complain about this generation(and that's really what they're doing by saying the way they're doing things now, just in a different way) is why did you guys screw things up so bad then? If the previous generation had it all figured out and did it the right way and was tougher and worked harder and the people in charge were smarter, why did you guys allow all that to change when you were the ones presumably running the education and developments of the generation that is suddenly so much softer? I'm 34 now and I coach and work with a lot of kids. They're probably harder working and more focused than they were in the past. Alright...tangent over. Just scared of shoulder injuries and the whole "kids today" in whatever manner it's framed is a pet peeve.

I can understand passing on pro ball for college as a 39 round pick. I guess I don’t fully understand passing on pro ball for the local d2 school in one of the coldest cities in the continental US. I am sure he has a great relationship with the coaches and I don’t understand the motivations of every 18 year old, but one seemed like the “no brainer” choice if his top goal is career as a pro baseball player. It certainly did...perhaps he's just got that much confidence in himself developing further. I also have virtually no knowledge of the program he's going to, but his stuff is gonna have to be impressive to earn substantially more in 3 years when there will inevitably be questions about competition level.

I'm not really tracking that logic. We've never had an abundance of OF depth before and it's also fairly common for power hitters to move from the OF to 1st base as they age. Santana's 24 years old and Braun is starting to age, but we finally had viable 1st base options. I think the reason it wouldn't happen(especially with regard to Braun) would be more because of what we have at 1st base rather than any trepidation to move him. And with regard Santana will improve a little bit in RF. It shouldn't be that hard with his athletic ability. He makes some nice plays out there. So at 24 I wouldn't write him off as being a career abyss defensively in the OF.

Bump - good call Briggs, considering most on here were applauding him being let go. I never got it and was always a scooter fan. Maybe next time they will think twice about straight up cutting a career .280 hitter. I mean who honestly does that? For all the good moves Stearns has done, this is one that could have easily been avoided. One who in the previous nearly 1000 PA's had a slash line of .263/.307/.399, couldn't hit lefties, was starting to get more expensive and didn't fit in with the teams future plans. There's also the fact that he's playing in Cincy(a sandbox) and has more than doubled his HR/FB ratio. It'd be nice to have had his production at 2nd base this year, a year in which we ended up contending when nobody thought we had a chance. So using hindsight.... I absolutely agree, it'd be great to have had a 2nd basemen who's OPS jumped 200 points from his previous 2 seasons to .900 this year. But when you had Villar coming off the type of year he had, plus an abundance of MIF'ers coming up(or already up) and Arcia cemented as your SS of the future, it made plenty of sense to move on from him. This is really getting ridiculous....repeatedly bringing up this Gennett move. He's gone. It looked like the right move at the time, and I'm guessing after his comes back down to Earth after his career year and posts a .750 OPS next year while playing poor defense and even hitting .280 walking at a 6 pct clip, it'll look like the right move again. And if Villar bounces back to the player HE was in '16 and a truncated '15 season, it'll look that much better. Also, hasn't just cited a players batting average as an argument that said player is good player become as outdated an argument as arguing how good a pitcher is by using W/L record?

I think this has been the best part of the 2017 season for the Brewers organization. Contending this year has been great, but having so many talented pitchers perform at what the levels they have is what could give this team staying power. And while it's a ways away, it also MAY afford us the ability in the future to actually spent like a big market team on a true ace(given that we could have so many guys who are cheap and controllable for the next 6-7 years). At the very least it'll give us great payroll flexibility. I said in another thread, this is the most pitching depth that I've ever seen since I've been following the Brewers prospects. I'm still comfortable with our position prospects, but our pitching prospects definitely have made me that much more excited for the future.

Don Barclay has been put in bad situations which has made his bad play really stand out...but I'm with you. I've seen him play poorly enough that the only way I'll be convinced he's good is by him actually staying healthy(which is no small part of his problems) and him actually doing it. Just hearing McCarthy saying how much confidence they have in him doesn't inspire any in me. McCray might be the worst interior OL that I've seen on the Packers in the last 15 years(of the guys to make a roster). I stand by what I said about it being tough to tell at times how bad the interior OL look in the pre-season because so much continuity and communication is needed, but how he makes this team over any of the 4 WR'ers we cut is baffling to me. Patrick might be alright as a center, but I don't think he's a guard. He looked alright there. What I hope they're doing is waiting until after week 1 and then looking at a guy like Greco(haven't seen if he's signed yet). But he had that Lisfranc injury and those take a loooong time to heal. I had one and it took a full two years before I was completely healthy. Now I didn't have NFL trainers and the top foot specialist in the world(like the Packers do) but I'm hoping waiting until after week 2(where his contract is not guaranteed) and them wanting to give him more time to heal is the only reason we haven't signed him. He's a perfect fit. Guard/Center who is a good NFL vet, should be cheap and comes from the same type of blocking scheme we run. At 32...you'd think he'd want to play for a contender. Especially after playing for the Browns. So I strongly agree on every point. Packer fans who are 20 will probably never see another QB like Rodgers(or even Favre for that matter). Get him the players he needs to keep him upright. It's the last time I'll say it, but letting Tretter AND Lang go was a really poor decision IMO.

Well...to hear it from an Ump, you'd have to hear an Ump admit that he's wrong several times a game and he was tricked by how the ball was caught. So I don't think you'll hear it from an Ump. I'm pretty much in the same boat as you. Coached, I did little league when I was a kid, but no real ump experience. So I think you're gonna be disappointed in your goal to find a real qualified high level ump to talk about it. Incidentally, I saw the rankings about a month ago of the catchers who got the most balls called strikes this year. Out of all qualified catchers and there were 93 of them at the time, #93....Jonathan Lucroy. I wonder if that has to do with him getting so much talk about what a great pitch framer he is(I did go back to look at the previous 5-6 years and he was inside the top 6-10 the last few years, had a multi year run at #1 and this matched his reputation) that it started to work against him. Or if like everything else, his game had just fallen off in that area too(this was before or right around his trade to the Rockies.

A little disappointed to see Elliot go. He looked so good at times during his career with the Packers, but could never sustain it. That they brought in Brooks and Odom...a guy who hasn't practiced at OLB'er at all is pretty telling about what their OLB'er group looked like. They're also bringing in Quinton Dial, a 6'5 320 LB DE. With Don Barclay going from a guy that McCarthy wasn't worried about not being ready for week 1(same with Bulaga) and now going onto IR, it has to make you wonder if Lowry's injury isn't a little bit worse than they let on. Of course they are extremely secretive about injuries when they don't really need to be in the pre-season. I am surprised that they didn't bring Gray back onto the practice squad...obviously I thought highly of him(of course these guys end up bouncing around quite a bit). Hopefully like Callahan last year, after being claimed by the Saints and then the Browns, maybe Hill will wind up back with the Packers. Really glad to see Gilbert on the practice squad. I'll bet he ends up on the 53 man at some point this year. Pankey looked like he could become a player. I also hope they bring someone in at Guard/Center. Greco looks ideal...but if they have Patrick/McCray as their #2 center heading into Seattle with that DL which now includes Richardson..they could be in trouble there if anyone goes down.

I wasn't. Maybe it was Nick Perry's first 4 years, Jones, or our recent history of late first rounders not panning out that clouded my opinion, I just wasn't feeling confident he was gonna be a impact player. I kept hearing how much better he was playing from the analysts toward the end of last year, but I didn't really see it. But this year...he just looks so much different. Like he's in a new body. His frame just looks bigger. And I have an affinity for Wrestlers who play football...it helps so much with the hand fighting. But I didn't see this jump. I did think Lowry could be a good player, but then I was convinced by the scouts and everyone who talked about his short arms that he wasn't gonna be. But he has a Bosa/Watt type frame and motor. So maybe he's not a superstar because of his short arms, but he can at least be a good player. He also looks a lot bigger. As for Randall, I don't know if you guys watch hard knocks, but there was a guy who hurt his knee this past week and stayed in the game and he was just a little slower and absolutely got exposed. So even if Randall's injury wasn't worse than they said...he tore a muscle in his groin that required surgery. I don't know how a DB can be anywhere near 100 pct with an injury like that. It wouldn't surprise me at all if he had a big year this year. He's flashed several times before. He saved the game for us vs the Jags last year with diving pass breakup on 4th down(or the last play of the game, can't recall which). He was also a bit of ball hawk his rookie year. People also forget that in addition to being injured....both he and Rollins played different sports the first 3 years of college. He was a Baseball player IIRC and Rollins was the basketball player. So they were both hurt and raw after having productive rookie seasons. As for Montgomery...he spent all off-season working with that feet guru...so he should have improved quickness in his feet and better agility which is the most important thing for a RB. I still won't begin to guess who ends up as the 2nd running back. Each week someone else looked better. One week is was Williams, then Mays..I thought Jones ran the best at the end but not by much. If our running game is working...Rodgers could throw near 50 TD's this year.