The Buscher

New game drops March 19th. Definitely not getting it since I only just got the latest one at Christmas but just a heads up for the thread. Lots of moaning about the fact the game will be out on PS4 again (basically just assuming they can't really make a greatly enhanced PS5 version if they're still working on a PS4 one). The PS5 shortage seemed to finally end last year but sports games generally are always among the last to be released on old consoles because a lot of people can't afford a console upgrade and the money is there.

Giants fans seem to be wishcasting Mike Kafka to Seattle but a Seahawks fan account who has dumped accurate insider info said last night that Mike Macdonald will get the job there and that Macdonald's 2nd interview in Seattle today is largely just a formality.

Massive win for that fanbase. Angelos sells while the team is good and the value is high, new owners take over who hopefully won’t be cheap and will pony up to extend Adley and Co.

I kinda wanted Turner on the Mets, felt like he'd be a good fit as they need another bat specifically in the DH spot and I think having him in the clubhouse to help out some of the younger players would've been an asset. It's possible they can still get JD Martinez but I have my suspicion he'll land elsewhere. Feels like the Mets will just use the DH spot to rotate guys in and out which would be fine if their lineup was good enough as is, but I don't think it is at all. David Stearns has to keep saying "we're building a team to compete for the playoffs" because he can't say "we're punting and focusing on young players". I don't look at this roster as one that will win more than about 75 games unless a LOT goes right. It's easy to see the plan...largely just ride the season on young players, get the rest of the bad money off the books and retool for next year. But this is likely going to end up wasting a year of Lindor and Nimmo's prime, plus it's possibly the last season we have Alonso. I understand not wanting to hand out multi-year deals but the CBT is already blown out of the water this year, Cohen should be aggressive in high money 1-year deals to try to make the most of this year in spots where it makes sense. If you would've told me in 2020 that in just a few years we'd be seeing Steve Cohen punt a season I wouldn't have believed it but here we are. Once he lost on Yamamoto the hopes of trying to be good seemed to disappear with it.

For the most part this tracks with how the Lions' subreddit is responding. I do think there's a smattering of "we might never get this far again" mixed in there and I don't think it's all that doomerish to feel that way, Campbell himself told his players something similar. Not that he believes this was their only shot, but that it very well could be. Sobering reality is very few teams ever get to the level of the Chiefs and Niners where they're in the Conference Title game every year. Winning in January is extremely hard. But if you're a Lions fan, your team's sucked most of your life and your season's been dead by October for a lot of your fandom. At the bare minimum they've set themselves up to be a team that should be fun to watch for the next few years and if the team's giving the fans an actual full season every year it's already a huge improvement from what they're used to. If they become the Bills where they make the playoffs every year but get their hearts broken annually, maybe eventually the mindset will change. But it's easy to see why after this first heartbreaking playoff loss, Lions fans are able to move forward with their heads high.

I'll admit that as much as I wanted the Lions to win I do think this probably leads to a better on-field Super Bowl. Feels weird to say that given the Lions have been fun and competitive all year plus they already beat the Chiefs. But it'd just be a gut feeling. Had the Lions won I'd probably have this sinking feeling that it would be 2 weeks of everyone hyping up the Cinderella story and trying to talk themselves into a Lions win only for Mahomes to just show up and jump off to a 3-score lead and the game quickly becomes a dud.

Detroit fans deserve better than to have one of the biggest nut-kick playoff losses in recent history

I shudder to think what global pandemic will break out after this Chiefs/Niners SB.

I’m sure most Lions fans were expecting to lose this whether they admitted it publicly or not. And really, they entered this thing as underdogs and with a house money kind of season. Even with that in mind, the only scenario that could’ve led to a total heartbreak would be to blow a huge 2nd half lead. And here they are. Just awful.

Lions just had to cap off a great season with one of the biggest playoff choke jobs in recent history.

Dan Campbell’s ultra-aggressive decisions were always gonna come back to bite him at some point this year

Team-wide meltdown for the Lions in this 3rd quarter

Although QBs win SB MVP most of the time, anyone wanting to buy into another player (and silly conspiracies), go to FanDuel and throw a few bucks at Kelce +2100 right now.

I really thought with Brady leaving the Pats that it’d be a pretty open revolving door with AFC contenders every year. Nope. The Chiefs just outright took their spot. Mahomes made it to the AFC Title game at minimum and there’s no real reason to expect anything else until proven otherwise. They’ve also proven you can just throw the regular season out for them. As long as Mahomes is under center they’ve got a chance to win it all and when all is said and done it’ll be 2 teams largely running the AFC for like a 35-year span.

Wonder if Vegas will have betting odds on the number of Taylor Swift camera cuts CBS makes. Will make for some fun SB party drinking games.

Playoff Lamar makes a return with a Hero Ball throw. Shame.

And that’s the ballgame. Brutal. Chiefs to another SB. CBS execs doing high fives in the office.

Short of taking Mahomes out at the knees I’m not sure there’s much hope. KC’s offense didn’t look like themselves all year but they’re peaking during the month that matters.

Yeah, with how the Chiefs offense has looked if the Ravens go down 14 here it might feel like game over honestly.

Well, the Chiefs made that first drive look easy.

So admittedly there's a lot of acclaimed TV series I haven't watched because most of my free TV time goes to sports, wrestling, or video games. So when I actually am looking through for a new show to watch it's likely I'm going to pick something that only has a couple of seasons as it feels less daunting than a show that ran for 7 seasons at 1 hour per episode or something like that. The time commitment scares me off, effectively. With that said, I spent 2 hours watching the first 4 episodes of The Bear and it's awesome. I'll breeze through this show in a week. Loving everything about it so far.

There's conflicting stories on Belichick - some saying he still wants to have GM responsibilities he had in New England and others (probably Belichick's camp) suggesting he'd be happy to step back into just being a coach. I have to think it's the former. Just seems really difficult for me to imagine that a guy who has had full roster control for 20+ years is content to just step back and let someone else pick his team. Yes, head coaches all get a say in their roster but giving up that level of control feels tough to fathom. Maybe a year out of the game will change his mind. As a Giants fan I can say that if the team is a disaster in 2024, I'd have no problem with hiring Belichick as the next coach. Because I believe he's still a good football coach. But that interest is completely out the window if he wanted roster control. It's bad enough he makes a lot of weird coordinator/coaching hires based on who he's friends with, but if you look at his drafting history over the last decade you'll see it's not good.

Generally it’s Giants, Yankees, Rangers, Knicks. Basically the “older” teams. But everyone has their own mix, often depending on whatever teams your parents supported.

Got MLB 23 as a Christmas cheapie. One thing I can say got killed dead in MLB 23 is Manager Mode. Which is a shame as I enjoyed doing in-game managing at times when I was too frustrated with hitting. The CPU strikes out a comical amount of times playing against itself even with adjusted sliders. It never used to be like this. I joke about the uptick in strikeouts in real life but in a CPU vs CPU game you will see multiple silver sombreros and probably one or two golden sombreros every game. Manager 10 games of franchise. Through 10 games my team (Mets) have already struck out 139 times. The runner up is the Marlins who I’ve played in 7 of the 10 games with 130 strikeouts. The 3rd highest is the Royals with only 96. That already a huge enough variance to tell you CPU vs CPU play is broken and I suspect it’ll never get fixed now because the number of players who actually use manager mode is quite small.

No prolonged coaching search for Michigan. Sherrone Moore promoted to the head coach role.