nicksaviking

Definitely. But it looks like the Bengals D has stopped playing, so he's probably safe outside of a non-contact injury.

No, the line has been noticeably improved. Even with Darrisaw getting pulled due to the blowout. Wentz has been perfectly serviceable. Twice he held on to the ball too long, but I'll take that over the Wentz who wants to win on every play and throw it into triple coverage.

Getting Darrisaw back will be huge. That’s almost certainly the biggest roster upgrade they’ll have all season.

And Flores out of town because he wouldn't tank and turned what should have been 5 win teams into a 9-10 win teams.

The Dolphins are a perpetually average team. That's a hard pattern to get out of.

Based on how things typically go for Minnesota teams, if the Twins WERE to acquire some young top end talent, your proposed giant payday for young players will probably come to fruition with the new CBA, leaving the Twins in a spot where they can't or won't pay them.

"What is my typical day? Great question Joe! Today I was assigned to compile data and evaluate the Blue Jays vs Yankees game. So unlike your managers, coaches and players, I have a much better understanding of how two actual professional ball clubs are supposed to compete against each other!"

I can understand cutting number crunching jobs that can be consolidated. But is that all the scouts do? Isn't there SOME in depth analysis, insight and anticipation that comes from experience and intuition? I'm not sure it would benefit the Twins to have less of that.

Can Keaschall adjust is one question, do the Twins as an organization have the personnel and structure to help him adjust is another. We've seen this over and over and over again. I'm hopeful Keaschall breaks the loop, but young players don't understand and figure out adjustments all by themselves.

If he plays average he probably gets more than one year of guaranteed pay, which probably still means he would have gone elsewhere anyway. Would have been the Kirk Cousins paradox version 2.

Right, that's what I meant. Re-signing him and telling the world you were planning on competing was reasonable through most of the year. After those last two games the national narrative was that Darnold was a fraud. Which is largely unfair. So when I say they couldn't re-sign Darnold and tell claim to try to be trying to compete, the issue was mostly optics.

After the melt down games, the Vikings couldn't re-sign Darnold because right or wrong, it would have signaled that they weren't planning on being a true contender. I'm also nowhere near giving up on McCarthy, he's clearly talented, but the game is also clearly too fast for him right now. What I am encouraged about is that he does not appear gun-shy and indecisive. We've seen that with Christian Ponder and Teddy Bridgewater, the Bears have seen it with Justin Fields and now Caleb Williams. You'll never be a winning QB if you're tentative and fearful of mistakes. If anything, McCarthy has been too reckless, I think you can work with that. But two years of injury are tough. This team REALLY needed to have their answer on him come the end of this season so they know if they should move on; it's looking less likely that they will know enough. I also don't buy the injury conspiracy; that strip sack looked nasty, I thought he was going to end up getting carted off the field.

The owners are doing fine and can sell if they'd like? You have been following our latest ownership saga I presume? I'd be happy to be in their position, but I'm quiet sure that many are not seeing the ROI and appreciation they were used to. And yeah, the NBA has passed MLB in every meaningful demographic, which certainly has to at least be raising the alarm bells of any owner that does want to see the league continue. I admit there may be no such owner; I suspect plenty only care about immediate profits over long term health. But I also believe there are angles to this immediate profit that may spur change in favor of a competitive equality.

Because there's only a handful of 'CEO' players and the vast majority are at or near your bottom tier? Yeah Bryce Harper won't like it, tough luck because there are 10x more Kody Clemons who would see their pay increase exponentially. If you took a poll at the workplaces of those Fortune 500 companies and asked if the workers would be in favor of limiting CEO raises so there was more money for everyone else, it would overwhelmingly pass in favor of the working class. At those companies the worker bees get no vote, with the MLBPA, they all should, even if I suspect those with the most money try to silence them.

I'd imagine it would work similar to what happened in the NFL in 1994. Teams were forced to shed salaries and some of those bigger contracts ended up on teams that previously wouldn't pay them. Not to mention the two new expansion teams looking to make an impact with big named players. Additionally, teams will finally be forced to pay young players accordingly. Maybe there's no more arbitration and pre-arb players. Or they could have a grandfather clause which I believe the NBA had in 1984. As for opening their books, the players are going to demand that regardless even if it's an arbiter who sees the numbers and not them. We're long past the days of the union taking the owners word about their earnings.

That won't work and the players won't and shouldn't go for it. Just like every other functional pro team, the cap and floor have to be within 10% of each other. But the owners know this is the only way it will work or get accepted, so I (possibly naively) have to think that the commissioner talking caps now, long before this possible lock out will happen, means they have come to terms with the NFL/NBA/NHL model. The Yankees and Dodgers won't like it, but like what should have happened 30 years ago, there are enough middle and lower market teams to vote them down. Not that I think they'll have to because really, I think what the owners actually want is the expansion teams and the reported 2 Billion expansion fee per club. As much as they like to talk, they can't add two new markets that are smaller than the ones that are already crying poor. Not with the current media/revenue model. Raleigh? Salt Lake City? Those are AAA markets, the only reason they could possibly want them is because the league is drooling over the big, fat upfront payoff. And a full revenue share of media rights isn't as big of a sacrifice as we'd think; it means way more to the small markets than the big ones. The last figures I see are that the Yankees made 143M from Yes Network in 2022, that's a lot, but only 20% of their overall revenue that year of 657M. So if there really will be 4B plus in expansion fee revenue, letting the big market teams take a bigger chunk of that pie in exchange for near-full media revenue sharing could offset some of that lost revenue, meanwhile despite their size, the newness of the expansion clubs are going to help buoy the overall media pool.

Tai Felton in the 3rd is already looking like a regretful pick. No Addison, Thielen is still only running 65% of the snaps as he's old and likely not yet back up to speed, yet Felton has only played special teams. In the 4th round alone there were three or four RBs that would have been helpful right about now. In the secondary, drafting Billy Bowman instead of Atlanta getting him might have won last week's game and Craig Woodson looks like a steal in NE; both went in the 4th. Several LBs from that round are already contributing and making their mark too and the Vikings need those. And it's not like there weren't better receivers available if that's the position they REALLY wanted.

.391, .404, .358 and .369. Those were the breakout year OBP of Muncy, Turner, Martinez and Ortiz. Being able to work the count and get on base was the reason that after years of toiling it all clicked for them, and this was a skill they all had going back to the minors. Kody Clemens OBP is .289 here in his 'break out' season and his prior MiLB and MLB numbers track with that. That number in itself is a DFA'able offense on a capable team. He doesn't have the skill set to be a reliable everyday player. It's why many of us were saying not to bring back a guy like Michael A Taylor; it was a fluke season and you can't be a reliable player year in and year out without that skill. Unlike Taylor, Clemens is pretty much free, and in the Twins case there is no chance they can fill their 40-man with actual MLB talent next year, so he may stay. But all things being equal, I don't want him here if only to prevent Baldelli from over-using him at the expense of more talented players.

Vikings sign Desmond Ridder as the 3rd QB. Not coincidentally, he was in training camp with Cincinnati. Truly coincidentally, Brett Rypien is the Bengals back up QB, the Bengals signed him to their practice squad back in August.

I thought it would end up being Jamaal Williams. If only to mix it up this year.

I'm sure it was, but at what point does the 8th year RT see an unaccounted for edge rusher coming to kill the QB and say, 'I better pick this one up because the rookie QB and Center clearly didn't read this right'? Or was he trying to teach them a lesson?

Winston would make games fun, but I don't think the winning kind fun. In terms of winning and losing, I'd guess the two are a push. So if it's a push, I'll take Wentz because at least he has a shot to pull a Daniel Jones, getting a starting gig elsewhere and getting the Vikings a comp pick. Winston on the other hand will never be giving another NFL Day 1 starter gig, as evidenced by his lack of getting one since putting up a !5000K! passing yard season six years ago. The collective lack of confidence in him is staggering. But I agree, he's fun.

Jake Browning vs Carson Wentz. Too bad for the networks it's too early in the year to start flexing games.

For those guys isn't anything less than a championship a wasted season? I can't imagine anyone thinks Cousins can do that. Also, I'm not sure it's a given that Cousins is any better than Wentz. If I had to bet I'd say he is, but we haven't seen him do anything since he was benched. If that noodle arm we saw at the end of last year was what we can now expect from Cousins going forward, he's toast.

Nope. The stratification of where Cousins may be too good to bench, but not good enough to win it all is too big. Players, fans and some coaches would be calling to keep Cousins just to watch entertaining football, but at the expense of figuring out a long term solution, which was the path they committed to when Cousins left. I'd rather lose ten games with McCarthy than win ten games with Cousins, simply because to someday win a championship, they have to figure this out. Even if Wentz plays well enough to win games, we're way less likely to have that problem.