NFL Half Way MLB Comes to an End NBA End of an Era.  College football is past its halfway point.  The polls start to become more important now.  The NFL is at the half way for every team now.  What have we learned so far?   Baseball came to an interesting end.  An end that no one saw coming.  Even if you thought the Nationals were going to win.  No one thought that they would win it the way they did.  The NBA is seeing the end of a dynasty.  They may be able to get it back next year but the run of the Warriors has come to an end.  It is going to be a historically bad year for the Warriors.  Not sure that anyone saw this kind of year coming.

NFL At the Half

Hard to believe that the NFL season is already at the half way point.  So far it has been a pretty interesting season.  Of course it had.  Every NFL season is interesting.  I know I said that last week was the half way point.  It was for a large number of teams.   After this past weekend every one has played in at least eight games.  It was a difficult week for some of the top teams.  That is the nature of the NFL beast.  Does not matter how good you are there is a chance you can lose.  On the other end.  That end being the bottom end.  It does not matter how bad you are you can somehow manage to win a game.  There is a reason that there has only been a few teams in the 100 years of the NFL to go with out a win.  No matter how bad you are as a team there will always be players that want to win.  Of course then there are players like Jermaine Whitehead who just don’t get it.  Bad player on what turned out to be a bad team.  He got what he deserved when the Browns released him Monday morning.  Of course he probably just game them a convenient excuse to open a roster spot to activate Kareen Hunt.  So they replace someone who made verbal threats with someone that physically assaulted a woman and kicked her while she was on the ground.  Both bad both playing for the Browns in the 2019 season.

Five biglakesports key NFL observations for the week

1. Down to one undefeated team.  The Ravens took out the Patriots with what looked like some relative ease.  The game was closer than the score indicated.  IF not for that fumble return for a touchdown this game could have went the other way.  It is difficult to win in the NFL.  Going undefeated in the regular season has only happened twice.  It was highly unlikely the Patriots were going to do it again.  It is also unlikely that the 49ers will go the second half of the season with out at least one loss.  The 49ers have games coming up against the Seahawks, Packers, Ravens and Saints.  All of those will be difficult games.
2. The Jets are BAD.  They lost to a Miami team that management did almost all they could to ensure they could not field a competitive team.  The Jets made no indication that they were actively trying to lose.  I think they even were thinking that they had a shot for the playoffs.  Well that ship has sailed.  They lost to the Dolphins and they looked really bad doing it.  Adam Gase showed that all the people that thought his being hired as Jets head was a mistake, were correct.  The whole thing in Jetsville has been strange.  Not sure the Jets can get out of this one now.  It is probably too late and the moves of this season have probably set them back years.
3. Freddie Kitchens saw what Adam Gase did to the Jets and said you think that is something Adam hold my beer let me show you how it is done.  With all the talent that the Browns have no one could have guessed that eight games in the Browns would have a worse record at this point than they did at this point last year.  The Browns are a half game behind where they were last year.  That is pretty bad since being at that point last year got their coach fired.  I am not a Browns fan but this is really painful to watch.  i can not imagine what is going through the minds of Browns Fans.  I am sure there are a large number of fans that are calling for some changes.  They should.  Browns fans are extremely loyal fans and deserve better than what they are getting.
4. The NFC North who at one point was the only division with no team under .500 has completely fallen off the rails.  Every team in the NFC North lost last week.  It is time to admit in Chicago that drafting Mitchell Trubisky was a huge fail.  A fail that almost everyone could see except for the Bears.  They traded first round spots and two other picks to move up one spot to snag Trubisky from…. NO ONE.  No one was going to take him that high.  They could have stayed where there were.  Kept those other picks and drafted Deshaun Watson.  A pick that made a heck of a lot of sense.  Now if you are a Packers, Vikings or Lions fan you were really happy about this pick.  If you are a Texans Fan you were ecstatic.  Anyway it is time for the Bears to realize that this pick did not work out.
5. The Bengals are now the lone team with out a win.  It really is too bad that the Dolphins won.  It would have been an interesting Bengals vs Dolphins game week 16  if both teams were with out a a win.  It still could be for who gets the first pick in the draft.  It would be pretty amazing if the Dolphins ended up with two wins after trying to lose and win against teams that just historically know how to lose better.

 

College Football Down to Business

It was an interesting week in college football.  Interesting for several reasons.  One was that of the top teams Alabama, LSU, Ohio State and Penn State all had a bye.   I am not sure I like the double bye that a lot of these teams are getting.  It may help the teams but it is really annoying for watching the games.  That is alright gave me a chance to watch some other teams this week.  The biggest game of the weekend was the Florida Georgia game.  I really though that Florida was going to win this one.  It was not meant to be as Georgia won and took the lead in the SEC East.  After the early Georgia loss this gets them back on track to be in the SEC championship game against either LSU or Alabama. This is another example of why I did not bet on sports.  It is fun to pick the games but if you are just picking and not placing a bet then when you are wrong it just hurts your pride a bit and not your wallet.  Even with the number of top teams on a bye this week it was still a really interesting weekend.   I was not surprise to lose SMU as an undefeated but did not think that Appalachian State was going to lose this week.

Five things of note in College Football

1. It is a bummer when the top teams all have a bye week.  Four of the top five teams were off last weekend.  I know it is not really something that can be planned to avoid since you have no way to know ahead of time where teams will be ranked.  I am not for the double bye in football but get why teams would want to have two byes.
2. Florida State does not give Willie Taggart two years to turn around the program.  Things really were not moving along so it was probably the right move.  The fact that they will have to pay him $18 million to go away shows that there is more than enough money in college football to start paying the players.
3. Seven undefeated teams are left.  Next week we will lose two of those teams.  Penn State plays Minnesota and LSU plays Alabama.  That will leave us with five teams left undefeated.
4. Oregon and Utah winning gives the PAC – 12 a chance for the playoff.  It is a slim change but there is still a chance.   They could end up moving past the Big 12 depending on what happens with Baylor and Oklahoma.  Baylor next three games are TCU, Oklahoma and Texas.  Those will be three difficult games for them.  If they can make it through that they will probably end up playing a two loss Oklahoma team in the Big 12 championship game.  If Oklahoma wins that game Baylor will be eliminated and a two loss Oklahoma team is not going to get in.  That would leave the opening for the Oregon vs Utah PAC 12 Champion to possibly get in to the playoff.
5. BiglakeSports top five college teams – 1. LSU 2. Ohio State 3 Alabama 4. Clemson.  We will find out what the committee thinks this week when the first College Football Playoff Rankings come out this Tuesday.  I would be surprised if the ranking did not have these teams in the top four.  The order may be different..  I guess I should they more than likely will be different but at this point it really does not matter.  It will give us an idea of how the committee is seeing things this year.

 

The End Of Baseball – Worth the wait

After the World Series looking like it was going to be a sweep.  Things changed and the home team could not win a game.  For the first time in any of the major sport they road team won every game in a seven game series.  Who could have guessed that home field would be a disadvantage in the World Series.  The Washington Nationals are a very unlikely champion.    They lose their best player to free agency before the start of the season.  They started out the season with no signs of life looking content to just muddle through the season.  Then they were able to turn things around.  Get into the post season as a wild card team.  They beat the Brewers in a come from behind win to go on to play what was thought to be the favorite from the National league in the Dodgers.  They took the Dodgers out in five games.  Then swept out the Cardinals in the NLCS.  Then in one of the strangest World Series in history the Nationals won four road games to beat the Astros in seven games.  It was a great end to a really long drawn out season.  Too bad it happened right when football is in full swing.

NBA – All Good Things Come to and End

For The Golden State Warriors it looks like this season is pretty much over.  The Warriors have lost five games already this year.  They have only played seven games so far.  With all the injuries they have I really do not see them winning many more in the short term.  The short term being the 2019- 2020 season.  It is entirely possible that they lose more games this year than they did in the past five seasons combined.  With the way the NBA has become transient it is possible the Warriors could make some changes recover from their injuries and come back next year as a team that is a contender.  On the other side of last years championship series the Toronto Raptors have managed to hold things together after losing their best two players.  They are 4 – 2 and setting themselves up for another playoff run.  It will be interesting to see how things play out in Toronto this year.

 

You can find last weeks post here