TrueBlueGED

You have a whole heck of a lot more faith in Trubisky than I do. Every time I watch him I come away pretty unimpressed.

FWIW, even when his individual production was abysmal last year, he was still having a positive effect on teammates while on the ice together. I know that doesn't speak to the dollars and valuation aspect of your point, but it's not nothin'.

Nice to see you engaging in your usual effective manner.

Your beer league team, I'd imagine.

Kris Baker had a good point: how in the world does a goalie coach not correct this?

Can't wait to win this year! I've never done as little prep as I have this season, so you just know this is going to be when I make another run.

Just looked it up: the Saints have a cap-free out of Brees' contract...after next season. If they cut him after this year, they'll have $21 million in dead cap. Wonder if they hope to sign Teddy to a 1-year deal and then take over for Brees in 2020? That's the only thing that makes sense to me, but man is it loaded with risk.

Mostly yea, but there's more nuance to why. QoC matters while the players are on the ice, but even the most inept coach doesn't have his 4th line against Crosby regularly, so in the aggregate you don't see much effect. It matters, but nowhere near to the degree that conventional wisdom would say. I think a lot of the disconnect is because most would look at it in the micro, shift-to-shift sense, whereas McCurdy et al. are talking about season-long effects. So there's some talking past each other. Hockey is fluid enough that everyone sees time against everyone, so the variance in QoC is pretty tight, and thus it's pretty hard to measure statistical impacts. I think McCurdy overstates things as a whole on this because he doesn't do enough to acknowledge the measurement difficulties of QoC, but I think his point is pretty sound when walked back a notch. What I don't think has been properly assessed are potential cumulative effects of QoC. For example, does Risto look worse against lesser players because he's worn down from the first half of his shift against Crosby? I would think yes, but I don't think this type of question has really been addressed, and doing so with the available data would be super challenging.

That's a mighty big gamble for a 3rd round pick. I have a hard time believing that's the Saints' thought process.

One would think if his value was higher than a 3rd, the Jets would have gotten it from someone.

Weird that the Saints would trade for him when they just gave Brees an extension...last year? I can't see Teddy staying there when he's a free agent after this season, and New Orleans certainly can't afford to franchise him until Brees retires.

Congratulations on agreeing with your own previously held view?

This sucks. I loved Zetterberg's game, and he was a complete class act.

This is pretty much where I'm at. If he was head and shoulders above the alternatives, I think you'd have to play him...but he wasn't. Let him continue to learn, work on his mechanics and reads, and get to play behind a (hopefully) NFL-caliber line next season. Of course, this line might get all 3 killed, so perhaps the order in which they are offed isn't all that important ?

It's still only preseason, but at the very least, it conforms to my expectations.

I think I'd have rather gone through a non-rigged table than have watched that half.

Sucks. Just sucks. I rarely agreed with him on policy, but always respected him.

To your first paragraph, I will simply paraphrase political science: partisanship is a hell of a drug. They may not like the persona, but as long as he's doing things they like, the persona isn't enough to produce change. Just for an example, Trump's approval among Republicans in the most recent Gallup was 87%; Gallup has never had him below 81% approval among Republicans. A Quinnipiac poll in April had McConnell's approval among Republicans at 35%, with Paul Ryan sitting at 57%. The same poll had other elite GOP figures included, with Mattis being the most popular at 75%; Nikki Haley was at 66% and John Kelly at 64%. A recent Fox News poll (the Fox polling unit, unlike the Fox network, is actually reliable) had John McCain at 42% among Republicans. Republican voters like Trump more than any other major figure in the party, and trying to dump him would absolutely have political consequences. Presidents drive party politics. Such was the case before Trump, and such will be the case after he's gone. On policy, I already noted the tariff thing--it's a secondary issue which is easily reasoned away with something like "well, I don't agree with everything he does, but that's okay." He's capably carrying the torch for the foundations of the Republican coalition with taxes, judges, regulations, guns, voting, immigration, etc.

On the Clinton thing...I hate you for not knowing this ? The map is abominable for the Dems. They have to do things like defend seats in WV that Trump won by 40, and win places like Texas. It's not impossible, but it's not very likely.

1) Sure it is. Trump is more popular among Republican voters than most Republican members of Congress. There's a reason only members who are retiring are willing to speak out. And even they aren't willing to use their power to do anything. 2) Get their party back from what? On the major policy points, Trump is a generic Republican. Taxes, judges, regulation, immigration, etc. So he's different on trade and Russia. Like it or not, those are (and have been) second or third tier issues for decades. All he's really done is take off the thin PR veil most politicians have. But the substance of the policy is not some radical departure.

The short answer is because on their top policy priorities, they're in lock-step: taxes and the judiciary. On both fronts, Trump has done things any other Republican president would do. Now, one could argue they'd get those things from...ya know...any other Republican without also carrying the excess baggage. But that's where the longer answer comes in: it's still electoral poison for Republicans to meaningfully confront Trump. Whether it's opening the possibility of a primary challenge or suppressing general election turnout, there simply isn't a political gain to be had in opposing him. Trump's support among Republican voters is still strong; absent that changing, the behavior of elected Republicans is incredibly unlikely to change.

Come November, you'll think differently ??

Okay, so, without any value was obviously overstating it. But it strikes me that some are starting the parade quite a bit prematurely and are looking to spike the ball. Allen has looked better than I expected him to. I'm encouraged. But it's preseason FFS. Nobody is game planning to take away his strengths. To paraphrase Allen Iverson...I know it's important, but we're talkin 'bout preseason man.

Nobody knows what this post means.

There's a difference between being imperfect and without value. It's pretty useless to evaluate individual performance in a competitive sport when the teams aren't actually competing. Preseason games are essentially extravagant practices. So they can be used to compare performance versus teammates (ie. Allen looks better than McCarron or Miller looks better than Ducasse), but we're not going to glean any useful insights for how good a player is going to perform in the regular season from a league-wide perspective. Sure we can compare Allen to McCarron and Peterman but we really can't compare him to Mayfield et al.