MichiganCardinal

I believe that they put the Monday Night wildcard winner in the Sunday Night divisional round game, so I think this is correct.

I'll root for the Commies. I'd prefer to play them next week at this point.

If they don't, they'll lose. Whether it's the Bucs, Rams, or Vikings, they need to play better on offense if they expect to advance. Jalen Hurts is a liability at QB.

Slay and Dean have both gone out with injury in the first half for the Eagles.

Packers went 12 rounds with the Lions, beat the Seahawks by three scores, demolished the Saints, then curled up into a ball and died.

Might be nice for the Packers or Commies could win, so we have the full week to prepare. The guys are back in Allen Park tomorrow, but won’t know their opponent until Tuesday if the Eagles and Bucs win.

Cam Sutton gets burned on the opening defensive drive for the Steelers.

Supported by the record this year too. NFC went 47-33 against the AFC.

The AFC may have the more flashy QBs, but the NFC is a deeper conference.

Bad offense, bad defense, and bad special teams. This game has it all.

The Chargers defense has looked very good, but it's hard to tell if that's just because Houston's offense is so bad. This is bad football for playoff football.

The bright side of this is that the next generation of sports historians will have no question about whether the 2023 Michigan team would have beaten the 2024 Ohio State team.

“Weighing options” = “please someone else make me an offer”

Texas finally shows up on offense and their defense immediately gives up 75 yards on a screen play.

If Ohio State wins the National Championship, I can’t decide if I’ll get the Ohio Staters in my life a “University of Michigan back-to-back National Championship” apparel, or “Ohio State University 2024 4th Place in Big Ten” apparel. The former will piss them off more, but I think the latter is funnier.

Career, meet toilet bowl. Couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy, said no one ever.

I assumed the Lions wouldn’t get one until 2026. They’re overdue to lose a home game to a stupid international game that neither the players nor 99.9% of the fans want.

There’s an element to the Dan Campbell experience that only works in a few select locations. Detroit, Pittsburgh, Buffalo… maybe Cincinnati or Cleveland… The “we are going to take on the identity of this city” piece to his intro press conference is real. He did. Meanwhile Mike McDaniel took on the identity of the city of Miami and it appears to have led to a Charmin soft football team and a cocaine addiction. That’s not to say Campbell wouldn’t have success in Miami, but I don’t think he would be the cult hero that he is here.

The Saints should have hired him instead of Dennis Allen. He should drag it out and get as many millions as he can from them this time around. I think they know how bad it is though after they treated the salary cap like monopoly money for a decade. He'll have a long leash.

Like the Packers, for me at least, it isn’t what they’ve done, it’s the fear of what they could do in any single game.

A change from a few days ago but I think I’d most prefer to play the Commanders. Then the Vikings, then the Packers, then the Rams. I really think they’d beat any of these four teams, but I think the Rams are the type of team you have the least room for error. Coming off a bye week, I don’t want to come out a little cold and have it burn us. They also have the best QB of the four. The Packers are so bipolar that I don’t trust them. If I knew I was getting the Packers team that lost to Minnesota and Chicago to end the season, they’d be my preferred opponent. But when we might get the team that went 12 rounds with us on Thursday Night Football a month ago, no thanks. The Vikings would play us closer than they did last week, but I think Goff has that defense figured out to a large extent. They were out of synch for a number of drives but had no problem turning it on late. I’m pretty confident the Lions would win this one again. The Commanders can have a good offense, with a mobile QB, which initially gave me some pause. But their run defense is atrocious, and makes me think that game might not be all that close. In their last three games they’ve given up 211 to the Eagles, 211 to the Falcons, and 228 yards to the Cowboys. On the season, they’ve allowed more rush yards per game than all but Carolina and New Orleans. I think it would be water vs. sieve with our offensive line, and Daniels would have a lot of trouble keeping up.

It's interesting, and obviously noteworthy to home, but Fraley has never been a play caller at any level. I'm not sure it would be a good move for a defensive-minded head coach like Macdonald to promote an OL coach to OC. I figured it would make more sense for Johnson to take Fraley with him, if Fraley wanted an OC job.

Maybe I'm crazy, but I really think the Steelers will give the Ravens a game on Saturday. The teams split the season series, which in and of itself should tell you the spread of Ravens -10 is ridiculous, but on top of that the game that the Steelers lost three weeks ago, Pickens was out with an injury. The Ravens run defense is possibly the best in the league, but their pass defense is among the worst. People are seeing that the Steelers lost four in a row and are counting them out, but those games were against the Eagles, Ravens, Chiefs, and Bengals. This is still a good team. Tomlin will have them ready to go. And maybe most importantly, the Steelers were designed by Kevin Colbert and Omar Khan to beat this Ravens team. They recognized by 2019 and 2020 that Lamar was going to be the player to beat if they wanted to continue winning the AFC North. Their defense is specifically constructed to slow him down. I expect a classic AFC North low scoring defensive showdown, which plays to the Steelers strengths.

I did a thing and booked a (fully refundable) AirBnB in Baton Rouge, Louisiana for 2/7-2/10. No way I could ever afford tickets to the game, but just being on Bourbon Street would be amazing. Don't let me down boys.

This is kind of an odd one. I love Spielman, but he has no executive experience in the NFL except for this current "special assistant" role. I'm not even really sure all of what he does here, but he's great, because he led to the hiring of Campbell and Holmes. It seems like Ray Agnew would be a more sensical target, but I have heard very little smoke around his name.