My weekly review post of Sports and My Thoughts as they pertain to the "D" and Beyond for the week ending Wednesday 11.16.16 . This was a week filled with all sorts of drama and ups and downs. In the "D":
Lions:
The Detroit Lions woke up on Monday morning to find themselves tied with the Minnesota Vikings for first place in the NFC North. The Lions play their next two games at home and they are must win games if the Lions want to win the Division this year. QB Matthew Stafford is having an MVP season
and has led comeback after comeback this season under the offense of OC
Jim Bob "Gun Slingin" Cooter. Stafford is in the last year of his current contract in which He took less money to help the Lions out, and is seeking a new deal around $25M+ a year. The Lions are quietly becoming a force
in the NFC.
Red Wings: The Red Wings are 17 games
into the season and are currently tied for 6th in the NHL Eastern
Conference .
The season has already seen up and downs with a 5 game winning streak
and 6 game losing streak. Scoring is and will be an issue all season
long but just as it was all of last year, the Red Wings are giving up goals late in games and costing themselves points in the standings. Detroit is looking to once again make the
playoffs for a 26th straight year, the longest in all Professional sports.
Pistons:
The Pistons are currently in 7th place in the NBA Eastern Conference
with a 6-5 record. Detroit is 5-0 at home but only 1-5 on the road this year. The team is still trying to get used to each other and
hopefully will put it all together quickly and start winning on a
regular basis. The Detroit Pistons announced they will move back to the
City of Detroit next year and play in the new Little Caesars Arena with
the Detroit Red Wings starting next season.
Tigers:
The Tigers who finished the 2016 season one game out of the Wild Card
spot has announced it will be trimming payroll this upcoming season and
is looking to finally retool going forward. GM Avila announced the team
in looking to move anyone and everyone in hopes of lowering their
payroll and getting cheaper players and prospects. The Tigers for 6
years had a chance to make the World Series but fell short and now will
ask fans to watch mediocre baseball as the team trades away it marquee
players all the while raising prices for tickets, merchandise,
concessions each year as the team stuff their pockets at the expense of
its fans. This is a huge gamble for the Tigers going into the 2017
baseball season.
Spartans:
The
Spartans play Ohio State on Saturday. Michigan State snapped its 7 game losing streak by walloping Rutgers on Saturday 49-0. It was a much needed win in a year where the MSU has started and played more freshmen and sophomores then any other time under Head Coach Mark Dantonio. This team which is
short on talent this season has also had very questionable play calling
on both sides of the ball and if the Spartans look to rebound next
season and remain an Elite team, they need to put a top OC and DC in
place. I admire HC Mark Dantonio's loyalty, but it has come with a high
price that has cost the team at least 2 games this season. Players love
playing for him so He needs to do the right thing and bring in top
Coaches to round out his Coaching staff. The football team will not
make a bowl game this season so make the changes needed to ensure a Bowl
game every year going forward. The
Spartan basketball team opened its season with 2 straight loses against Top 10 ranked teams Kentucky and Arizona. Playing freshmen right off the start will be a tough task for the Spartans to overcome early on and playing in Hawaii and then off to NYC 4 days later will also offer a test of jet lag on these young players. There is plenty of
excitement as HC Tom Izzo has a team filled with the 3rd best recruiting
class and even though the players are young, MSU has challenged them to
perform with the hardest non conference schedule in the Country. Izzo
will have to work hard to mold this team into a team ready for March
Madness but as always I am sure they will be ready and He will make sure
they will not go out in the 1st round as they did last season. Congrats
to Coach Tom
Izzo for being inducted into the Naismith
Hall of Fame for College Basketball. The Spartans will be a work in
progress this upcoming season but Tom Izzo knows what it takes to win
and I see them winning 22-25 games and another invitation to March
Madness.
Wolverines:
The Wolverines lost their first game of the season to the Iowa Hawkeyes who were 21 point underdogs. In the game, the Wolverines looked sloppy and also lost QB Wilton Speight to a broken collarbone. Michigan has been a dynamic football
team this season both on offense and defense but outside of a game with
Wisconsin they haven't played anyone of real substance. A real good
chance they will end up having to play Wisconsin again in the B1G
Championship game. Once again, a Jim Harbaugh coached football team lost a game in the season they should of won. The Wolverines still have to win a couple of big
games to show their lofty rankings this year. The Wolverines basketball
team opened the season with 2 straight wins over scheduled cream puffs and will have their first real game against Marquette. Coach Beilein has done a good job at Michigan and I see
another 18-20 win season and a possible March Madness berth for the
Wolverines this up coming season.
Sports beyond the "D":
NFL:
The NFL Season is in week 11. The NFL is in disarray again,
between the botched stance on Domestic Violence, to the continued
mistakes by the Officials, to the low ratings, to the Players not
trusting the NFL or Commissioner Roger Goodell, to so on and so on and
so on, you get the idea!!!! The Patriots and Cowboys are the 2 best teams in the NFL right now as
Dallas is led by 2 rookies in Prescott and Elliott and the Patriots
with Brady and many other veterans. Biggest disappointments so far are
the Carolina Panthers and Arizona Cardinals and the Jacksonville
Jaguars. Severe injuries, especially concussions are rampant nowadays
as almost all the replays show that either a players head is being
driven into the turf and also so many head to head deliberate hits as
well as hitting defenseless players in the head. And it seems the NFL
with all their new Concussion Protocol Procedures, they still cannot get
it right in regards to protecting a Player safely.
Entitlement is the new word for
both the Owners and the Players nowadays and that leaves the fans to pay
the price for this so called "Entitlement. As if the Owners and the
NFL do
not have enough money, the NFL is now going to play games in China as
well as the UK and Mexico. The NFL should concentrate on making the game
better and dealing with its current issues instead of trying to dilute
the game and water it down with thoughts of global expansion on the
horizon just to make more money
MLB Baseball: MLB
is now in the off season and players are already starting to move from
time to time during Free Agency. The Fall Team Meetings just ended in
Arizona and many teams have announced they are looking to trim payroll
and move aging veterans with huge contracts. It will be interesting to
see who the sellers and buyers will be and which teams are looking to
next season as their year to make a run at the World Series and which
teams are looking to shed payroll and retool for 3 or 4 years from
now.
NCAA: CFB Football is in week 12. The
CFB Playoff format has Alabama, Ohio State, Michigan and Clemson.as the
Top 4 right now in the playoff format. This past weekend saw 3 unbeaten teams in the Top 5 lose their first game of the year. Alabama looks totally
unbeatable and Michigan is back as one of the top teams in the Nation.
There are only 2 unbeaten teams now and they are; Alabama and Western Michigan. We are now in the
final month of the season which has just flown by for me and the Top 10
will change allot in the next 4 weeks.
NBA and NHL:
NBA season in underway and it seems like it will be an entertaining
season as most predict a rematch of the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden
State Warriors. A few teams have jumped out early playing good
basketball, they are; Clippers, Thunder, Raptors, Hawks and Hornets. I
want to see as the season progresses how the Warriors will interact as
their is only one basketball to go around to all the players used to
shooting 20 plus times a night.
In the
NHL, the season is now about a month old and the Montreal Canadians are
the best team in the NHL so far with a 12-1 record. The Blackhawks,
Rangers and Oilers all lead their respective Divisions as well and it
looks like their will be a few Canadian teams in the playoffs this
season. The
NHL also announced expansion into Las Vegas in a few years and Seattle
is the next potential city to host an expansion team. I cannot
understand the rationale of expansion when their are quite a few team
struggling financially right now in the NHL.
Miscellaneous;
The biggest surprise so far this year didn't happening in the Sporting
World but it did happen in the 2016 Presidential Election where the
underdog beat the heavily favorite Candidate to become the next
President. Presidential Elect Donald Trump upset Hillary Clinton to
become the 45th President of the United States. The Nation and
the World now are on pins and needles and no one knows what or how the
next POTUS will act in the White House. There are protests all over the
Nation with chants of Trump is not our President but in reality He is
and those who are protesting, need to look at each other and ask which
of you did vote, for only 47% of eligible voters, voted in this election
and once again Polls leading up to the Election were terribly wrong. Now
is the time for all Americans to put away their differences and come
together as one and show the World why we are the greatest Nation but it
starts at the top with the POTUS all the way down to You and Me. Do
the Democrats regret rigging the DNC nomination for Hillary Clinton over
Bernie Sanders? And how do the Republicans feel now that Trump has
proved them all wrong especially those who went against him? And oh yeah Christmas is only 39 days away.
Nascar: Joey Logano wins at Phoenix Speedway
See My NFL and CFB updates www.cupofjoeinthed.blogspot.com @cupofjoeinthed on twitter
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