betterREDthandead

Yes. I say we get wins against all of those but OSU and PSU.

Friday: NY Islanders @ New Jersey Chicago @ NY Rangers Florida @ Carolina Montreal @ Buffalo Washington @ Atlanta Nashville @ St Louis Columbus @ Dallas Saturday: Montreal @ Toronto Detroit @ Ottawa St Louis @ NY Islanders NY Rangers @ Philadelphia Chicago @ Washington Atlanta @ Florida New Jersey @ Pittsburgh Carolina @ Tampa Bay Dallas @ Nashville Boston @ Minnesota Columbus @ Phoenix Los Angeles @ San Jose Vancouver @ Calgary Sunday: Phoenix @ Anaheim Colorado @ Edmonton San Jose @ Los Angeles

What's to evaluate? All he needs to do is go down the roster, top to bottom: "sucks.... sucks.... sucks.... sucks.... sucks.... sucks.... sucks.... sucks.... halfway decent.... sucks.... sucks.... sucks.... sucks.... sucks.... sucks...." This isn't hard. Team needs: QB, OT, OG, C, DE, DT, OLB, MLB, CB, S. There, that was easy. I left off WR and RB. Millen made damn sure the pantry was stocked at WR. That's his positive legacy. In deference to the fact that Kevin Smith almost sorta broke Barry Sanders' record, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt at RB. There's no line to run behind anyway. The whole team is garbage. It doesn't need evaluating or knowing of needs. It needs blowing up. At the end of the season, players should consider themselves keeping the seat warm for someone else. Maybe a couple of them have secure jobs. Like Jason Hanson, Nick Harris. Calvin Johnson. There are what, 50-odd players on the roster, and maybe three or four of them, tops, will be around the next time the Lions are a playoff team. I'll tell ya who needs to be replaced, if you want an evaluation: Raiola. Linemen have come and linemen have gone and the line continues to suck ass. Who's been the constant? The center. Backus is OK. But I refuse to believe the line's 8-year suckitude has been because all 15 or 20 guards and right tackles we've put in there have been terrible.

Is anyone missing an offensive line? UVA seems to have found one laying around somewhere. It's a little bit used - we borrowed it for the Maryland game since we didn't have one of our own - but the rightful owners should probably have it back, if they'd care to claim it. If not we'll gladly use it for the rest of the year, since it was such a pain not having one for the first four games. Not that I mind finally having one, mind you. Especially against Maryland, whose fans are the trashiest bunch of assholes ever to disgrace a stadium. But not without humor.....this is pretty funny right here: Teams Better At Football Than Maryland

They'll win one or two, just cause that's the nature of the NFL. But they'll get the first pick and do something stupid like draft a quarterback in the thinnest quarterback draft in ages. It's gonna take two, three years at least to dig out of the Millen mess. His official record is 31-84 but make no mistake, this season is all his as well.

Uh, are you serious? The Pens were 2nd seeded last year and totally dominated everyone they played on the way to the Finals. Did you forget last season already?

Floyd Reese is the guy's name. That story is in either the Freep or the News too. I think the Freep.

If your time is limited (i.e. weekend only) then the one thing you want to do is go to the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn. Just follow I-94 west and look for the signs. It's the area's best tourist attraction. Greenfield Village is there too and I think open only on the weekends in winter.

Anyone Anyone Anyone Anyone Though it's always fun beating the Blues. It sets off their insane fanbase.

I'm not gonna throw stones there....Fresno State is a good matchup, and yeah, Wiscy has some weak nonconference games, but then again Bill Martin was almost directly asked "are we ever gonna see a halfway decent nonconference opponent outside of Notre Dame?" and the answer, basically, was "no." In fact they were looking into scheduling Delaware, which would have been interesting for the helmets but is still a I-AA team.

Panthers absolutely do live natively in Florida. In fact there is an actual species named the Florida panther. Making it actually one of the best as far as local meaning. And what's this about cats don't play hockey? Neither do birds, swords, fire, Indians, storms, or bears, yet these are nicknames too....how silly is that? Under that criterion the only allowable ones are Canucks and Canadiens. The worst nicknames are any non-plural ones, IMO. That means Lightning, Wild, and Avalanche. Especially Wild. Minnesota has an abundance of cool animals for using as a name and they copped out. I see a lot of "I hate the team so I will hate their nickname" going on around here.

We really could have used Jair Jurrjens this year. Also, I want to punch in the face anyone calling for Jim Leyland to be fired. In. The. Face.

Hoping for a win today. 1, we don't need to occupy last place outright, and 2, I'd rather see the Twinkies than the Sox in the playoffs. Plus Freddy Garcia is going....hopefully he can be a useful part of the staff next year.

How about "f*** YEAH." Will that do? Thank God for that, too. It rescued my Saturday. That was probably the third-toughest game on the Big Ten schedule. Next week is the 5th toughest. Which sucks....I really wish we could get some Hawkeye and Hoosier action on the schedule, but no, we get scrooged by missing out on the two worst teams.

It is absolutely brilliant that, not only are the three Gibbs Toyotas running 10-11-12 in the Chase, but that it's the Toyota engine that has knocked Kyle Busch right out of Chase contention. Glorious. f*** Toyota.

These are the same people that have had to live all summer with "Jeff Finger, $3.5 million a year." You can hardly blame them if their idea of a good player has been thrown out of whack over the years. That said, Boyd's not that bad. He's just not that good. As long as Leafs fans don't get real used to that first picture of him with the Cup, they should be OK.

I FINALLY snuck down below 180 this weekend. Two weigh-ins now in two days and the scale has twice failed to touch 180 - this is exciting. So about 12, 13 pounds lost since May. God, that's slow. Five or so more pounds and I'll be about where I was at the end of last summer. A couple weeks ago I was around 181, 182 which was nice because that's the size I was last summer when I got fitted for the suit I wore to a wedding that weekend. Still pretty slow going though. I'm almost halfway through the four bottles of Hydroxycut that I planned on. I lost about 10 pounds in 16 weeks before I started on it - the official Hydroxycut experiment starting weight was 182. If you call my weight 179 right now, I need to drop at least three more pounds in two more bottles' worth of pills in order to declare the stuff a success (based on 5 pounds in 8 weeks without it.)

Salary? Save about $2.5 million on the cap, including $1.25M on Klee which is about $1.25M too much. I just can't decide whether I'm really jealous or really happy my name isn't Hot Bread. Probably the latter.

Agreed. I've always found it easy to get into, s***ty to get out of. Second the notion of parking as close to the parking lot exit as possible. It means a bit of a walk to the doors, but who couldn't use the exercise anyway?

1) Downtown may well be the safest part of the city. I would expect no problems there. I really don't believe downtown Detroit is any less safe than any major city. If it really worries you, take the People Mover from the RenCen to the Joe, it's the long way round the loop but it stops at both. But the Joe is a mere ten-minute walk, all you gotta do is walk down the riverfront, it's impossible to miss. 2) The Lions, believe it or not, are a tough ticket. They'll likely be sold out on a wave of support for firing Millen. In fact Ford Field has never not been sold out for a Lions game. Good luck with that. As for getting to the Palace, no problem. Just hop on I-75 (or I-375 which empties into 75) and drive north for about 45 minutes. Sunday traffic is not so bad. 3) Restaurants - any old place in Greektown is good. Just go to Greektown and pick one. And stop at the Coney Islands. Either Lafayette or American. They're not in Greektown, they're on West Lafayette. Greektown is easy to get to, just head up Beaubien from the RenCen and you can't miss it. The Coney Islands are also easy: go to Campus Martius, which is the park in the middle of Woodward, then go up Michigan Ave. about a block and you'll see them. There's also a Hard Rock on Campus Martius, if you're one who likes collecting that stuff.

I like that some conferences do them and some don't. Specifically I like that the ACC does them and the Big Ten does not.....that way I get to watch plenty of games from both conferences.

Most if not all other teams don't stitch the names directly on the jerseys, so it's easy just to use the same nameplates all year round.

To tie the last few posts of sentence fragments together.....yes, that is the "preseason font" which they have done every year since who knows when.

Yeah. They made the playoffs and s***. At least every other year. They were frustrating as hell to watch and horribly inconsistent, but they were still watchable. I don't remember being too terrifically juiced about the Millen hiring. Not saying I saw this coming, but I wasn't exactly dancing in the streets and thinking things were gonna be so good now. They're still not gonna be good. It'll take two years at least to undo this mess. And I don't think Martin Mayhew's the man for the job, because of who he understudied with all this time. After the season, they need to do an actual search around the league for real personnel guys. Hiring from within and hiring from the broadcasting booth won't cut it. As for Millen, I hope he goes back into broadcasting because he was good at it, and there can never be too many good broadcasters because there are definitely too many bad ones.

Why not? Now it's "retro."