JTMacc99

I think there is only reason they didn't cut Winston on the spot for what he did. The Saints are one of the teams that plays extensively with void years to work around the salary cap. If they cut Winston, they would immediately take an additional $6M of cap hit in 2024. And since he'd be off the roster, they lose any ability to continue messing around with the void years on his contract for the $10M of dead money they're kicking down the road with him. He's hitting next year's cap for $4.6M even though they're only paying him $1.2M. If they cut him (as they should) the cap hit goes up to $10.7M. The Saints made this bed with their salary cap shenanigans, and now they have to lie in it.

I think it's more that Wink is old and cranky and thinks he's at a point in his career where he's not 100% open to "suggestions". So if his head coach does something like tell him that he's displeased with the job some of the other defensive coaches are doing and wants them to be replaced, Wink would rather quit than let somebody tell him what to do. It's unfortunate because the Giants players do like Wink. On the other hand, the Giants had the youngest defense in the league this year, and while they were tied with Baltimore for the most takeaways (31) they were also 27th in Yards Allowed with an atrocious 4.7 yards per carry surrendered against the run. I hope they make a thoughtful DC hire. I saw Brandon Staley's name tossed around, and I don't hate that idea. He was the rising star defensive coach after leading a great Rams defense in 2020 when he got that head coaching job at the age of 38 give or take. Head coach is a HARD job, especially when you don't have years of experience as a coordinator or college HC. I have a feeling that Staley is still a really smart defensive mind, and he would probably thrive as a coordinator for a couple years where he could just coach the unit and be free from all of the head coach crap.

Just saw someone posting a few more wild statistics about Tiger Woods.

Spending my lifetime in the greater NYC area, college football was never really a big deal for me. It's not a New York thing. My mom got her masters degree from Notre Dame, so we did have a rooting interest in the house. And that's pretty much how I end up rooting for anybody in these games. "Do I know anybody who would be happy if one of these teams won?" One of my coworkers is sending her son to Texas this fall to pitch for the baseball team. (Kid hit 93 on the radar gun at 17, and just like that Texas appeared with an offer.) So I'll vaguely root for Texas for the next couple years. I'll also root for the Iowa teams because my company does a lot of business in that state, and many of my coworkers there are invested. Doesn't take much for me to choose a side.

It's an NFL head coaching job. Somebody is going to take that paycheck. But yeah, it's difficult to imagine that a good veteran or highly sought after candidate would choose to work for that owner over pretty much any other opportunity.

There is no drama with the NFC East in my opinion. At least no drama with the top two teams. Neither one of them has much of a shot of winning the Super Bowl, so it's a lot of positioning for nothing. The Cowboys will lose at San Francisco should they make it to the NFC championship because they are terrible on the road and clearly not as good as the Niners. And Philadelphia is a mess right now, and it sure doesn't look like they'll be reeling off 4 playoff wins in their current state. The most interesting thing about these two games is where the Giants and Commanders end up in the draft order. Right now they sit 5 and 2. If they both lose, which would be on brand for them, it depends on what happens with Arizona (4) home vs Seattle and New England (3) home vs the Jets. Let's just assume the Patriots beat the Jets. That'll drop them to 5 and move the Giants up to 4. If Seattle chokes against Arizona, which is possible, I think the Cardinals drop to 5, moving the Giants up to 3 and New England to 4. If the draft order ends up being Chicago (from Carolina) Washington NY Giants New England Arizona It'll be one heck of a build up to the draft. Washington and New England kind of have to take a QB. If the Giants like a QB prospect when they're picking, they also kind of have to pick one. The question starts with, does Chicago pick Marvin Harrison Jr and stick with Fields?

I’ve really enjoyed revisiting this show on Netflix. It’s excellent background watching

You made me look...

That's what I do.

You got me thinking about the Giants throw back uniforms whenever they are in a game with it. They're a very old team, but the throwbacks tend to do things like go to the 1980s. So I looked up what they wore in OLD championship years. Turns out they'd have to go back to the leather helmet 1920s to get weird. And even then they were just sort of red with a blue stripe. In 1958 they were rocking this look, which they pretty much wore again as a standard uniform in the 2000s

I made SO MUCH salsa this September. I found a great recipe for home canning, and I think I made about 30 pints. My ingredients were my heirloom tomatoes, serrano or/or jalapeño peppers depending on which ones I had more of in my garden at the time, white onion, bell pepper, apple cider vinegar, and tomato paste (which was for consistency and important for the canning process.) It was a pretty low heat salsa, but it is delicious and has a consistency similar to what it looks like that Trader Joe's salsa has. The one batch where I added habanero peppers was definitely hotter, but it also reminded me that I can live without the taste of habanero. It's got a funk that I just don't like. Looking at the ingredients for the TJ salsa: It looks like they've got poblano and serrano peppers in there to add some better tasting hot peppers. And it also looks like they add the ghost pepper heat from a powdered version, and THAT sounds like a good thing for me to add to my own next year. It would add material smokey heat without the funk.

I looked REALLY hard for a clean Die Hard streaming option and was kind of surprised there was not one. The newest one was on MAX, and I think 2 and 3 were available somewhere. Only Die Hard option was part of my cable package with AMC. And while I could deal with the commercials, I have no interest in the edited for TV version. For example, when McClane uses the radio to report the terrorists to the police and gets the response "This channel is for emergencies only", his awesome, flustered, response of "Do I sound like I'm ordering a fucking pizza?!!" gets hacked to remove the f-bomb. And where's the fun in that?

My daughter has run into this exact conversation. She is aware she leans towards wawder but hasn't been able to completely go to neutral water. We had this conversation the other day because there is commercial for a dog food that airs multiple times a day on the Sirius radio station I have on as background noise. The food was developed by Dr. Marty Goldstein who then comes on the air to tell us, "I'm so confident your dawg..." Dog is the word that gives me away as somebody from the NYC area. I pretty much have it cleaned up, but Dr, Marty is killing me. It's getting to the point where I'm just going to say dawg and the heck with it. (Kind of like the way I say macamadamia nut because that's the way Homer Simpson pronounced it, and I like his way better than the real one.)

That’s kind of the way I summed up that game as a Giants fan: Garbage calls (or non-calls) did the Giants no favors But they’re a very young team and they are continuing to play hard, so that’s good The eagles win, makes it less likely that Dallas wins the division, and there’s no way they are winning three row games as a wildcard team And, Philadelphia looks terrible, so they’re probably not winning the Super Bowl either so that’s good And unlike the Jets, the Giants managed to look OK, and still preserve next year‘s draft position And lastly, the patriots have a game left with the Jets, which they will probably win, and drop them behind the Giants in the draft, making that eagles loss, even more tolerable

SO MANY long running shows have unsatisfying endings. This was not one of them. It hit on all the right notes for me. I'm sorry to see this show go, but I loved the way it wrapped up.

Announcement here about the Royals forum.

You did great!

That's what pisses me off the most about the Yankees lately. The only thing preventing them from buying championships is that they're bad at it. As long as the owners are never going to band together in a way to create a true revenue sharing and then live through the disastrous labor stoppage that would be necessary to implement a salary cap, so that true competitive balance could start to evolve in MLB... And as long as I've been a fan of the Yankees since I was 8 years old, well before I understood anything about baseball haves and have nots... I might as well embrace the fact that my team has a massive advantage over the others. And if I'm embracing that fact, for the love of God, can the people in charge of my team actually do something with its unfair advantage, and not field a team that barely breaks the Mendoza line as a whole?

Agreed. We probably shouldn't be too shocked if it went into a very regular rotation along with New Orleans and very likely Las Vegas.

WOW. I mean, I do think that stadium and location is an ideal setting for Super Bowls, but I would think they'd send one back to Florida, or really anywhere, before going back there again so quickly. ETA: Ahh... Upon further research and seeing a different outlet reporting that Super Bowl 61 will indeed go back to SoFi stadium just five years after the last one, I think I get it. Not only is it a good place for the game, Super Bowl LXI will be the 60th anniversary of Super Bowl I (Packers vs Chiefs), which was held in Los Angeles.

Heh. Not yet. If he continues to play pretty well but the Giants only get one more win to run out the season, I would say he's likely the Giants #2 QB going into next season. (Which would make him the starter week one, as it's unlikely Jones will be in great shape with his ACL by that point.) On the other hand, if the Giants somehow manage to navigate their final four games (@ Saints, @ Eagles, Rams, Eagles) with some wins, especially against the Eagles... Conversations will need to be had. But all logic and recent history makes it seem pretty unlikely that the Giants are all of the sudden capable of winning games against the Eagles. THAT would be quite the feather in Tommy Cutlets hat. Where did you see that? I only see that the next three (58-60, or LVIII, LIX, and LX) are in Las Vegas, New Orleans, and San Francisco. I would be pretty surprised if they went from San Francisco right back to LA the next year.

I just went off to see if I could find Tommy DeVito draft prospect write ups. I found a pretty thorough one from PFN. In there was this as a strength: Gutsy performer who will take a hit and pop back up. Has visibly positive emotional responses that can be infectious. Heh. His positive energy has definitely been infectious, both for his teammates and for me.

Weekly power rankings here. I got a chuckle at the MVP rankings. Starts with the actual top three, then adds Trent Williams (apparently they are reading my posts here, which is flattering), and then DeVito and Flacco. 😂