adambr2

They're simply not doing good enough in their supplemental to 2nd round picks. Bello, Gray, Lemons, Erceg, they have to do better than this. They've been doing well in the 1st for the most part, Ray is the only 1st rounder in the Stearns era that looks like a total flop.

As a whole I'm not disappointed with the defense this year, but I'm really concerned about how outcoached Mike Pettine was in the NFCCG. Pettine was absolutely pantsed by Shanahan. It's concerning to get outcoached to the level he did in that high profile of a game and what it means going forward with him.

Do you guys think they are going to win 70 games, and do you think it matters? I think they will fall short, but I think it does matter in terms of how this team is measured historically. However, it only matters if they win an NBA championship.

Comparing players from different eras becomes difficult too. The game has changed so much over time that comparing positions becomes difficult. Jan Stenerud, for example, is the first HOF kicker. But it was a different era -- he was a 67% kicker for his career which was very good at the time but wouldn't even get you into a training camp these days. Baseball statistics are a little bit easier to compare and for the most part transcend time, at least in the live ball era.

I think any expectations of him missing the 2020 season is a pretty enormous leap to make at this point in time.

No doubt. Although if I have time, I can sit down and watch a 3 hour Brewer game and genuinely enjoy it, and appreciate the journey of their season a lot more than I can appreciate the NBA journey. I don't know why. Maybe it's because pennant races in MLB tend to be closer and even though the season is twice as long, every game seems to matter more because it's common to see a race come down to a game or two. Maybe it's the uniqueness of every MLB game. Every Bucks game is mostly the same to me. Giannis will score about 30 and add 12 boards, Middleton or Bledsoe will add 20, the bench will contribute, the Bucks will let their opponent hang around awhile and win by 15. I do enjoy watching Giannis play and appreciate what the Bucks do, but Bucks games are generally background noise for me if I have it on. If it's close in the 4th I'll be paying attention. In the postseason I'll be fully invested. But for now, barring a Giannis injury the Bucks are going to be the 1 seed, and they are not going to be challenged before the Eastern semis. So to me, that's really when it starts and everything until then is just filler. I think if you really are all in on the Bucks this time of year you need to be into the side quests (will the Bucks win 70? Will Giannis win MVP again? Will we be active at the trade deadline?)

What does Dean Lowry do well that made Gute decide he was worth a 3 year/20+M extension? I'm honestly just wondering. It feels like the Brad Jones and AJ Hawk extensions from years past - "well, these guys aren't good, but they're our guys and they fill a hole, so..here's some money."

I like the performance value relative to their cap number that a solid rookie contract K can provide, especially when you're really trying to address other needs, but I understand that it doesn't always work out. I'm sure the Bucs remember the Roberto Aguayo saga well. Matt Gay was ok, not great as a rookie this season. I don't think it's a very strong rookie class of kickers in 2020. I think the guy from Georgia is at the top and there isn't much else. That's the issue ... why create a hole for the sake of creating a hole? Why add another unknown to a team that already is likely to have several going into next season? Crosby seemingly wants to come back, isn't going to break the bank, and provides consistency. You're right ... they will need to eventually replace Crosby, and will likely do it with a young minimum-wage guy. But you don't do it following the best season of the guy's long, and actually pretty dang good career. I've been on the "it doesn't pay to pay a kicker" bandwagon for awhile, but it does feel like the last few years that the rookie/undrafted kicker pool has gotten less and less reliable. It seemed like 3 or 4 years ago you could grab any rookie and get 80-85% but more and more of these guys seem to be flaming out. I'm not interested in carrying a 5M+ cap number for any kicker not named Justin Tucker, but I'd be fine going like 2/6. That seems fair for both sides. Loyalty is a 2 way street, and I hope Crosby remembers that many teams would have cut bait with him after 2012, and there's no telling whether or not he would have ever gotten a chance to get his career on track again. Instead, he's made $25M since then.

I don't know. Makes no sense to me why Walker's voting percentage was ever that low. I don't know what their reasoning was.

But he also played for 17 seasons, was one of the best bats of his era, averaged[ a 141 OPS+ and .965 OPS in those 17 seasons, won 7 gold gloves, won an MVP, and was worth 73 WAR in his career. Those are clearly HOF credentials compared to many others before him. Why should anything else matter? You can't induct Harold Baines and then tell me that Larry Walker is not a HOFer.

You basically said that past percentages aren't relevant in the first paragraph which is a really good point and then seemed to contradict it in the last. Larry Walker has a very strong HOF case. Credentials should be all that matter. I don't know why he only got 10% on his first ballot, but he shouldn't be penalized for that in the future. His resume still is what it is.

After all that, still a pretty uneventful 13 point win.

Allowing too many reloads.

Just need to keep Giannis out of foul trouble. Hope he can avoid picking up his 3rd before halftime.

I certainly hope we have a lot better performance on an international stage in store for the last 3 quarters of this game than we showed in the 1st.

Sure, that's true. And I would have had no problem with him being unanimous. I just don't see any reason for outcry on him not being unanimous. I think the silly historical practice of some writers not voting guys in on their first try has kind of ruined it for me because in the back of my mind I'm always comparing the guys of today to some of them. The fact that 23 writers felt compelled to not vote Willie Mays in on his first try and 9 chose not to vote in Hank Aaron just seems ridiculous by today's standards. These guys were true all-time greats. With that said, I'm glad that practice has been largely abandoned, it just seems like a disservice now to some of the best ever.

Jeter is really overrated. He's a HOFer and deservedly so, but the way he's talked about you'd think he is on a top 10 list of the greatest ever and he's clearly not. You cannot convince me that he doesn't earn bonus reputation points for being a Yankee, spending his entire career there, and having a reputation as an ambassador for the game which really has nothing to do with his playing career.

How? Bad officiating sure, seems to be both, seems to be every sport, but superstars dictating the game? I wish. Aaron Rodgers would have more than one Super Bowl under his belt. Superstars only have as much dictation as their talents will take them in the NFL. Maybe a star QB will occassionally get the benefit of the doubt on a roughing call more than a rookie QB might, but that's about as far as it goes. Star players have very little leverage in the NFL. They can hold out and even that doesn't usually end well for them so very few will dig in their heels like LeVeon Bell did. Even the ones who are free agents are powerless to change their situation if their team decides to slap the franchise tag on them. NBA superstars can, and routinely do force trades, form super teams in locations of their desire, and benefit from superstar calls from officials. That's part of the NBA culture that is referred to, and I can't see how the superstar aspect of that compares to the NFL.

I cannot for the life of me understand the big deal with Castellanos. He's a defensive butcher whose only value is in his bat. Unless you really think what he did for the Cubs for two months is the sign of a genuine breakout he's basically Domingo Santana for his career with somewhat less Ks and the ability to play multiple positions badly instead of just one.

What do you perceive as the "NBA Culture?" Also, I think most of us may be a little older so don't notice, but millennials all over the state love the Bucks more than the Brewers in general. I think the negative NBA culture he's referring to is, superstars rule the game and dictate the game, terrible officiating (the 2007 scandal in particular), and a WWF/WWE like sports entertainment culture. If Hollywood has a sports league, it's the NBA. I think that's the negative culture as much as I can define. Maybe I'm wrong and maybe you have numbers to back up that second statement but if not I can't imagine it is true. My social group is mainly millenials and many of them follow the Brewers and very few are deeply invested in the Bucks. I think the Brewers have become more deeply engrained into Wisconsin sports culture in the last 10-15 years despite the unpopularity of baseball in general among millennials.

There is even a decent possibility that the pieces we get after trading him in a couple of years amount to more than the pieces we traded for him. Well I should hope so, because the pieces we traded for him haven't amounted to much, and he's worth much more now than when we acquired him from the Marlins.

It definitely sounds like MLF wasn't thrilled with the effort given in the NFCCG. https://sports.yahoo.com/did-matt-la-fleur-question-the-packers-effort-in-nfc-championship-game-165359777.html

I like the performance value relative to their cap number that a solid rookie contract K can provide, especially when you're really trying to address other needs, but I understand that it doesn't always work out. I'm sure the Bucs remember the Roberto Aguayo saga well. Matt Gay was ok, not great as a rookie this season. I don't think it's a very strong rookie class of kickers in 2020. I think the guy from Georgia is at the top and there isn't much else.

This team has at least 10 priorities it needs to address before even thinking about making a change at kicker (or punter, another recent tangent of yours). Both of those positions are very minor in the scheme of this team's future success. I'm sure Crosby will sign another deal, and it likely will not be the most expensive deal for a kicker in the league. Ficken arguably looked better than him last preseason. He's gonna know he can't be greedy. Crosby is just fine, though, and will likely be just fine for at least the next 3 seasons. "Tangent"? Ok Ron. As I said earlier, I fully expect Scott back, I was simply critical of his 2019 which I think is a pretty reasonable stance given the results, particularly in the second half. And as i said about Crosby I'm good with bringing him back on a short-term, reasonable deal. There's a big difference however between making a change at a position where you have a free agent and one where you have a guy on a rookie contract. You're implying that making a change at kicker leaves less money for other priorities when you say "this team has at least 10 priorities it needs to address". Well no, it actually leaves more because you'd most likely be replacing with a rookie. Which will happen eventually, Crosby will get to the age where you'll just have to start over at kicker. Potentially you'd save about 5 million for those other needs.. But I agree that probably won't be yet.

What numbers do you want me to give you? I can give you where he ranked among his peers in accuracy in any given NFL season, (once in awhile in the top 10, but usually the middle to lower part of the pack), but if you don't put any stock into it then it doesn't really do much good for me to do that. So I'm not really sure what you are looking for. Total points is just a longetivity stat. You can't compare kickers from different eras. It's apples to oranges. Kickers in the 90s weren't nearly as good as they are now, and kickers in the 70s and 80s weren't nearly as good as they were in the 90s. Kickers are better and more accurate than ever. It's why you can bring up a list of the top 30 most accurate FG kickers of all time at any time and probably at least 20 are active kickers. The top 25 NFL kickers today will probably stack up very well to the top 10 kickers in any given year in the 90s. I will agree that there is something to be said for a kicker who can at least be consistently serviceable and not "lose it", but Crosby arguably did lose it in 2012. He is very fortunate that we stuck with him after that or his career could have easily gone in a different direction like someone like Parkey. Yes, Mason has made some big game winning kicks. (he's actually missed a pretty good number of game winning kicks in his career, too, but fortunately those have typically come in the regular season). So has Will Lutz. So has Adam Vinatieri. So has Garrett Hartley, so has Nick Folk, so has Robbie Gould, so has Matt Bryant. My point is that these kicks in today's NFL, even under pressure, are usually made. So yeah, it's a cutthroat position for sure and a game like Mason had in Detroit last year can cost you your career if you're with the wrong organization. If Mason had that game with a different organization, he might be on the street now. By today's standards, Mason was a pretty inaccurate kicker for the first 3 years of his career and if he was with a less patient organization, his career might have ended after 2009. So while you don't get 400+ kicks being horrible, if you are just ok, you need some luck involved to get there, too. Mason has had some luck. So if you're saying that in today's NFL the top 25 kickers are all really good and then there's a few floundering ones at the bottom or young inconsistent ones then I would agree with that. But for the most part they are pretty much all the same once they are established. The ones who can't hit 80% hit the street. Even perfectly serviceable guys like Dan Bailey sometimes find the street and get picked up by a team like the Vikings and don't miss a beat. Serviceable kickers are a dime a dozen, they're not a luxury. Crosby seems like a super good guy and I'm happy for him and all the money he has made and the career he's had here. I just happen to have the opinion and belief that I knew is going to be an unpopular one, that he is overrated on reputation and I think generally dedicating $5M+ of cap room to a kicker is a waste unless you have a true elite of which there are very few.