RedRamage

You are allowed to bet on any sports games, but only your not at any NFL facility or in hotel that's being paid for by the team, even if you're not attending any meetings or NFL/team related events... also team planes and buses are probably off limits. Oh, and you can never bet on NFL games, even if you're "off campus." Well, except when create special exceptions to those rules, then you can bet on NFL games. But only if you're not playing in the game. Look, I'm not trying to argue that Jaymo shouldn't be punished for breaking the rules. Ignorance of the rules isn't an excuse. But my goodness... the NFL is totally trying to have it's cake and eat it too. They are slicing and dicing the rules to make it look like they are taking a hard line on gambling while also giving the players freedom to gamble away and it makes a confusing mess. Now, logically I can parse this all out and it sorta/kinda/maybe makes sense. They don't want to make it look like players are playing hard or slacking to try and win or throw a game to satisfy their bets. I totally get that. I also get that the Pro-Bowl isn't really a "game" so, who cares? Let 'em bet. Here's what I don't get: If it's okay to bet on non-NFL games, why isn't it okay to bet on NFL games that the player isn't playing in? The obvious answer is that you don't want a player colluding with with a player from another team to bet on each other's games. That makes sense... so why can an NFL player bet on a MLB game? Couldn't an NFL player collude with a MLB player? And why is it okay for a player to bet only when he's "off campus?" If a player is sitting in the hotel restaurant the night before a road game and wants to bet on a NBA game, are you really saying that it's bad optics for the NFL if the player does that in the hotel restaurant, but it's no problem if he leaves the hotel, walks across the street, places the bet, then goes back into the hotel to finish dinner?

We can be a bad team with Lorenzen or we can be a worse team without Lorenzen and maybe get a diamond in the rough...

I think Scott Harris would say no... Stoudt in triple-A this year: SO 21, BB: 23 Hinds in double-A this year: SO: 88, BB: 10 Those do not appear to be Harris-type players. EDIT TO ADD: It's worth noting that last year across three minor league levels, Stoudt had 103 SO to just 32 BB, so perhaps he's just having a rough start to 2023? For completeness sake, Hinds' 2022 (also across 3 levels) season wasn't good: 135 SO to just 25 BB.

Si.com has this mock trade: I would probably do that mostly because I'm not expecting anything great from Okwara so for me this is really a 3rd round pick for Young. Obviously the big question mark here is if Young can stay healthy and I'd want some medical professional opinions on him from that stand point. But if the doctor's see positive potential I'd be willing to give a 3rd for the potential upside from him.

Yeah, Daytona seems like a weird place to move too... Seems a bit like the Lions threatening to leave Detroit in favor of Lansing.

I dunno if I'd say he's finished, but he's certainly tending downward. He peaked at 5.0 ypa in rushing in 2020, went down to 4.7 in 2021 and last year was 4.4. I would prefer his not go to the Bears because I think he can still be dangerous, just perhaps not as dangerous as a few years ago.

Not to get too off topic, but... VPNs aren't nearly nearly as big a deal as they make them out to be on the commercials. There are definitely some advantages to VPNs, but not quite to the extent that they say. As I mentioned above my example was super simplistic to illustrate how the VPN would have behaved in the case of betting online. Rather than try to explain it in my own words, just watch Tom Scott's video here. He does a very good job of explaining this:

That still may not work. Again, it depends on what the app is doing. I'll add the disclaimer here that I don't know how this apps/sites are pulling the data, so I'm only talking about what might be going on, not what actually is. A VPN is very good for preventing a remote site from pulling your location via IP address. For those who aren't nerdish (like me), here's a very simplistic example: I send a letter to someone in California and the stamp is cancelled by the post office with information about which post office cancelled it. The person in California receives my letter and sees the cancel stamp and knows my letter came from Michigan even if I don't put my return address on it. But I don't want that person to know I'm from Michigan, so I'll use a VPN. I'll take my letter and send it to a guy in Georgia, who takes my letter out of the envelope and sends it to the destination in California. Now the person in California thinks the letter came from Georgia. What a VPN is NOT good at is preventing location data from being sent to the end destination. For example, let's say that instead of me writing the letter, I dictate it to someone else. That person happens to include a message: "Dictated by Alfred in Michigan" at the end of the letter. I still send my letter through that guy in Georgia, but once it reaches California and it's read... well, it's obvious where the letter originally came from. So, the app might be appending location information (GPS, Cell Tower, Network IP) to any communication to the Sports Book. This could include information about the Network that the phone is connected to... and that information could include location data. As a final note, I suspect that many of these betting apps REQUIRE location services to be turned on for regulatory reasons. I seem to remember hearing disclaimers on the various ads like: "Must be in Michigan to place a bet" or something like that.

Not necessarily. It depends on how the location information was obtained. If the sportsbook's servers try to determine the location using the IP address of incoming communication, then a VPN would mask this. However, if the app was sending location data from the phone (either GPS or CellTower or Network Data) then it wouldn't matter if he was using a VPN or not.

Because the rule may not have been communicated clearly to players. New evidence seems to imply that many (most?) NFL players were not aware of the rule. Given the complexity of the rule (You are allowed to gamble, but not in certain geographical locations and certain times, also some gambling is never allowed) and the severity of the punishment associated with the rule (1/3 of a season suspension for some activities, potential life time ban for other activities) I think it's fair to say that this rule should be explained in detail to players, not just listed in the rule book. Now, for the record, the Lions I believe have said that they did communicate the rule to players. But if a significant portion of the NFL say they didn't know about and/or misunderstood the rule, then I think it's fair to question the communication.

It was Navin field during the biggest sports season in Detroit history, so... I'll vote for Navin.

Navin Field?

I get the feeling that the Lions are 100% sold on Goff. If I were to guess (and I'm only guessing here) they are probably like 90% sold on Goff. Now I'm biased here cause this is also how I feel right now. Goff played very well last year, but I'm just not quite really to go all in on him. *IF* this is where the Lions are as well, then it makes sense to not talk about an extension right now. Goff is still under contact for 2023 and 2024. If plays as well as (or better) he did in 2022 this season then you work on the extension next off season. If he regresses and/or Hooker looks like the real deal then maybe you go into 2024 without an extension? To try and head off some inevitable questions: How can you not like Goff after 2022? I do like Goff. He did very well in 2022 and I hope that continues. Why didn't you argue for the same thing with Stafford? Different situations... different front office, different coaches, different teams. Different talent levels on the teams. Generally speaking there were much bigger issues on the team than if the QB was "only" good or truly great. Why are you so eager to move on from Goff? I'm not. But the team has control over him for two more years. There's no need to rush into a big extension right now. If everything else was the same exact same but Goff was only signed through 2023 I'd be pushing hard for the Lions to sign him to an extension before the start of the season.

Yeah I think there's myth out there that you need massive bandwidth for any activity. I'm very certain that that myth is pushed by the ISPs. I remember one time in particular when I was just reupping for the same speed and the person said that I'd run into real trouble trying to do all the things that I wanted with the speed I was picking... even though I'd been doing all the things that I wanted with that speed previously. Now, I will mention that the majority of plans have a much slow upload speed than download. This isn't an issue for most people because most of us download significantly more than we ever upload. But if you're a rare individual who does need to upload large files often and/or often doing high quality video conferencing then you might run into an upload bottleneck.

I dunno... I haven't really paid enough attention to speeds for services like this vs. what speeds I'm actually using. I do know that I just recently downgraded my internet speed (cable) and both my kids came back from college and I'm not having any issues personally. With both of them HEAVY users plus me being a (at times) pretty heavy user as well, and having youtube TV (so streaming all TV content) I expected to run into some issues, but so far that hasn't happened. I believe that 5G home services are supposed to be relatively on par with cable (at least in the lower speed of cable) internet. That said, if EVERYONE in an area started using 5G for home internet that may clog things up.

It wouldn't surprise me at all if he tries to make his own Network. Given how the internet has changed how we get media, I wonder stuff like this isn't going to be much more common? If you don't need cable or TV broadcasters to air your content, can smaller things like this exist? I mean, part of the expense of a RSN is filling the majority of the time when the local sports teams aren't playing, right? It would be weird to have a TV station that's just "on air" for a few hours a day. But if you're strictly stream the sports events online, then all the rest of the stuff can just go away. Just stream when the game starts and stop when the game is over. The biggest deterrent to this, I think, are the people who grew up on broadcast or cable TV (old folks like me), but we're a dying (literally) breed. 10, 15, 20 years from now the people who HAVE cable subscriptions are going to be the oddities. If I'm Chris Ilitch, I'd be seriously looking at just creating my own streaming service for locals.

https://newsroom.meijer.com/2023-05-25-Detroit-Tigers-and-Meijer-Announce-Expanded-Partnership,-Deepening-Ties-Between-Two-Iconic-Michigan-Brands?sf178254659=1&fbclid=IwAR2O52mJ4dhOAS3Hxyt6TIQtnBCgQUgs9KFE5Ldh03P2gxcRitFa-7PRWps The Tigers get a jersey sponsor. It could be worse I guess... while I don't love the idea of commercials on the jersey there could be far worse options then a Michigan based Meijer.

I'd have no problem switching to battery for most of my yard stuff, but it'll be a long time before I'm comfortable doing that with my snow blower. We can get some decent drifting where I live plus I'm at the end of a short dead end road and because of that we tend to be low priority with plowing. There's usually a few times a year when I'll have to carve out a path down the road.

Oh my goodness! That honestly made me laugh... like really laugh.

Is the pitcher really grunting on each throw?

I'm ready for electronically called balls and strikes.

Given that we've got two leagues now both in a second season, I'm wondering if the NFL might not consider doing some sort of optioning of players to the "minor" leagues for seasoning. Just thinking out loud... I'd say something like each team is allowed to "option" 5 players... these players can sign with a minor league team but the parent club still holds the rights to that player. This would allow the player to get more seasoning/practice to develop themselves. It would give the minor leagues some more interest from NFL fans and would let the parent clubs see some developmental players in real game action. Off the top of my head I would see the Lions "optioning" people like Obinna Eze, maybe Chase Lucas? Thoughts?

Locked on Lions was talking about the Jet's DT Quinnen Williams and his contact disputes with the Jets. Here's a story talking about it. The short version is that apparently he is looking for just shy of Aaron Donald-level money. Dery, on his podcast, was saying Holmes should be on the phone with the Jets kicking the tires to see if they might be thinking of a trade. So two part discussion question: 1. Would you want to trade for Williams? If so, what would you be willing to give up? I'm sure it would start with at least a 1st round pick and would require more along with that. 2. What would you be willing to pay Williams contract-wise? I don't think there's any question DT could us an upgrade and this would be a big upgrade for the Lions. But at what cost?

I dunno... I mean obviously we'll never know for sure, but I could see Holmes looking at it and saying "Bijan and Gibbs are both on board, the likelihood that both would be drafted before we pick is very low, it's worth the risk to pick up that extra early second." This is going to be a very interesting draft to follow down the years and may end up being a defining moment in the Holmes/Campbell tenure. If these guys are (mostly) successful it'll be proof that Holmes knows what he's doing and conventional wisdom be damned. But if these aren't (mostly) successful this will be an easy year to point at and say: "Holmes thought he was smarter than everyone else in the NFL and he clearly wasn't." Someone remind me in 2026 to come back to this thread and rate the players.