The Buscher

Oh look. There’s Odell Beckham once again running his mouth about the Giants. First he expressed all sorts of happiness at being moved, and now today he says the team disrespected him by trading him. I was sad when he got traded especially since the return didn’t seem all that good, but he’s doing a good job of showing why he got traded in the first place. Dude is a complete malcontent. And this is a week after Baker Mayfield talked about Beckham looking forward to playing in front of a packed house that he didn’t get with the Giants as if it’s some sort of indictment on the fans that they didn’t want to spend hundreds of dollars to go watch a crap team. With the collection of personalities they’ve assembled, if the Browns don’t make the playoffs in the next season or two, that franchise is going to implode.

I’ve seen several Pats fans saying stuff like “Hill only isn’t being suspended because the league wants to make sure we have competition in the AFC!” I swear they insist that everything is a leaguewide conspiracy against them because it’s the only storyline that keeps them interested after two decades of dominance.

Awful. Way, way too young. Bad couple of weeks for ex-Giants Super Bowl champions. I remember him as mostly a backup lineman for a few years, but I saw a ton of outpouring from Arkansas fans about how great he was on the field for the Razorbacks. It's easy to forget that anyone good enough to play on Sundays, no matter how late they were drafted or how brief their NFL career was, was almost certainly one of the best players on their team in college.

Haha, I was trying to get my friend to go with me for ages and he’s now moved to the other side of the country so I might have to go it alone and I can take as long looking through the exhibits as I damn well please.

Yeah I’ve heard that winter is the best time to go. I’m planning on making the trip eventually, it’s only a little north of a three hour drive for me.

Mike Leake pitched eight perfect innings before some guy named Luis Rengifo ruined it.

I definitely agree with that. It's a massive societal issue and victims deserve the support and counseling they need to empower them to not go back to their abusers. People who commit a horrible crime like that should have to pay the price. The only way I can see to potentially tackle this from an employment standpoint is the employers themselves having a clearly defined policy about whether or not arrests for certain things can lead to dismissal, usually under the guise of a character clause. The Athletic probably has one and my last company had one. However, based on my own experience, very few companies will terminate immediately even with such clauses in effect unless there's clear cut, no doubt evidence immediately available. We had at least three instances where we suspended people with pay and we knew full well they were getting fired even if charges were dropped in the respective cases due to the potential damage done to the image of the company and its clients. But we still had to keep them on the books for a few weeks before legal gave us the green light to invoke the character clause.

It seems like they only did it in the 80s and early 90s. The closest thing we have nowadays is the Legends and Celebrities softball game. I'd be all for bringing something like this back and seeing these guys actually play again. The Athletic have already suspended him pending investigation. Took them less than an hour to take action. Yes there's a segment of Twitter that want him immediately terminated, and I understand it, but the HR person inside of me knows that won't hold up in court. Everyone is entitled to due process. But there's nothing preventing the employer from immediately suspending the employee and taking away their platform while the investigation happens. The NFL should take notes.

I hope he shreds his knee.

This league is a fucking joke.

While it took ages for them to put out any actual details, year’s game was at least announced in mid-May. They haven’t even done that.

It’s nearly August and the game has yet to be even be officially announced. Don’t expect anything more than a glorified roster update.

Unless I was in a position to get Gronk, and now he's no longer even in the league, I nearly always save my TE until my second to last pick of the draft before kicker. It's an unimportant fantasy position.

Going back to the Clowney thing - DEs and LBs having separate franchise tag amounts made sense at one point but nowadays the lines are blurred between those positions more than any in the sport. A DE in a 4-3 could very well be an OLB in a 3-4, and teams are changing their schemes all the time. Having LB as a lone designation means you have your pass-rushing OLBs being worth the same as run-stuffing MLBs. The league could try to more clearly separate those two positions. But really they should probably start adapting PFF's categories for the front seven on defense: you have interior linemen, off-ball linebackers, and edge rushers. That's the most realistic way to assess what the player is actually meant to be doing.

I never bought into the idea of intentional tanking in the NFL or really any sport. A crap team is a crap team and the records will reflect that. And in a scenario where teams have to bench everybody, you'd get just that: a crap team. Front offices might well feel that losing is better, but the players themselves aren't going out there thinking "we'd better throw this game to get a better draft pick". Any athlete, professional or otherwise who goes into a game hoping to lose should stop playing the sport.

Jadeveon Clowney will play 2019 under the franchise tag as he was the lone tagged player to not reach a long-term contract with his team. Furthermore, the NFLPA is expected to file a grievance on Clowney's behalf as the Texans have him listed as a "DE/LB" and as such they are trying to pay the LB franchise tag amount which is $1.7 million lower than the DE amount.

The quality of the games would nosedive though. I suspect most teams will either sacrifice two early season non-divisional games or save their backup games for the very end of the season, which will mean a whole lot of unwatchable football that won't draw the ratings the league would be hoping for. The 18 games schedule/16 games played max idea is so ludicrous that I'm convinced owners deliberately put it out there to try to negotiate down to what they actually wanted.

The 16 game schedule is perfect as is and it's structured in such a way that you know all but two games on your schedule every year. It works. There is no good reason to change it.

Owners have proposed an 18 game schedule but players would only be allowed to play in a maximum of 16 games per year. So presumably, gigantic preseason rosters would just be the norm all year and teams would have to strategically decide when to bench players. Unbelievably bad idea. Can't imagine what a mess that would be. Would be funny though when a Pats/Saints Sunday Night Football game ends up being all backups because Belichick and Payton decided an out of conference game was a good week to give everyone a breather.

Ended up getting this on the cheap. Downloaded the most recent OSFM, spent five minutes converting every closer in the game to a reliever (the CPU has always been wonky with closers, crappy closers continue to stay employed just because there aren't many of them) and launched into a fantasy draft. While I don't want to see it happen, I implemented league-wide DH because I figure if the league ever did something as drastic as a fantasy draft in real life, they'd go all out with changing everything. My closer to reliever conversion though did have unintended consequences, they've never modified draft logic over the years and I forgot that no other team takes a RP until round 9 and then every CPU takes one in a run. Remembering this I ended up spending my 7th and 8th round picks on Jose Alvarado and Josh Hader - obviously there were higher rated relievers but I wanted the best guys I could get that were making league minimum with a lot of team control left. My team ends up being freaking incredible, got Yelich and Story with my top two picks. A lot of really good young talent that can win now, solid pitching, and a handful of older veterans for backup roles. Starting lineup looks something like: 2B - Dee Gordon SS - Trevor Story RF - Christian Yelich LF - Khris Davis DH - Max Muncy CF - George Springer C - Tucker Barnhart 1B - Jesus Aguilar 3B - Asdrubal Cabrera Ridiculous that I got such a good young core, still haven't decided on the lineup order but I always like L/R balance. I'm playing some spring games to decide on the bench but Brian McCann is probably going to be my backup C to give me some thump on Barnhart's off days. David Freese had a HR off a lefty in the first game I played and has killer ratings against them so he might potentially be a 3B starter against lefties. Yandy Diaz can play anywhere but at a B potential he may or may not be better suited playing in Syracuse every day until I get an injury. Speaking of B potential, I got Stephen Piscotty in like the 30th round so he could be an upside guy on my bench or in Syracuse. Rotation will be headed by Miles Mikolas, Mike Clevinger, Jimmy Nelson, and Chris Archer. Gio Gonzalez is going to make the team as he can't be optioned, but he's in a race for the #5 spot with Matthew Boyd, Jerad Eickoff, and another guy whose name escapes me. Bullpen has five locks - Alvarado, Hader, Liam Hendriks, Hector Neris, and Bryan Shaw. Shaw's the only one I'm not happy with, I drafted like 35 rounds and simmed the rest and the game drafted Shaw for me even later than that. I mean ratings wise he's a good fifth reliever, but he makes a ton of money. Gio might be in here, might keep like a 60-something rated player as my #7 guy if I find someone in spring I feel good using. Very Brewer heavy team, actually. Not intentional but it worked out that way. I have none of the Top 50 prospects in baseball so that's a mild concern but with my core players all being young and cost-controlled for a few seasons I think I can manage.

The highlight of the Celebrity Softball Game was The Miz talking mad shit after making Ryan Howard swing and miss twice only for Howard to take him deep on the next pitch.

I'm actually shocked that they didn't try to shoehorn Joe Namath onto that Top 25 list as they normally do with all of their top lists. TD: 173 INT: 220 Completion Percentage: 50.1% His entire legacy is built off of his guarantee to win Super Bowl III, for which he was awarded MVP despite not really doing much. Look at the stats from that game and tell me he deserved it over Matt Snell. Nope. Historians point to that game as a big reason the merger happened, and between that and Joe's larger than life personality, that's the reason he gets endless praise from the league. To his credit, it was a different game back then so the subpar stats aren't anywhere near as backbreaking as they'd be nowadays. But given how stat heavy sports fans are nowadays, it'd be easy to look at his numbers and think he might be the worst player in the Hall of Fame.

This will end up being like 2008. Josh Hamilton didn’t win the Derby that year but he’s what everyone remembers. Will be the same for Vlad Jr.

BIG MEAT PETE!!! There’s my World Series.