This den is about anything but basketball…….
— Saw something last week I haven’t seen in years; on Wolf Road, one of the main streets around here, a middle-aged guy was hitch-hiking, around 3:00 on a weekday afternoon.
Can’t remember the last time I saw a hitchhiker; kids today probably don’t even know what it is.
The world has become a stranger place. Giving total strangers a ride in your car seems like a potentially bad idea these days.
— NFL schedule makers probably scrambled to adjust their 2024 schedule when Russell Wilson went to the Steelers; Denver-Pittsburgh wouldn’t normally be a big primetime draw, but you have to think now that it’ll be a Sunday or Monday night game.
As far as Wilson’s departure goes, Denver will take a $53M cap hit this year, $32M in 2025
— There have been some free agents who jumped to divisional rivals; those games figure to get some attention on national TV this fall:
Eagles-Giants (Saquon Barkley)
Aaron Jones (Vikings-Packers)
Steelers-Ravens (Patrick Queen)
Dolphins-Bills (Jordan Poyer)
Also, Panthers-Buccaneers (Baker Mayfield)
— When he was coach of the Houston Texans, Boston College coach Bill O’Brien once told his team “…….welcome to the most competitive business in the world.” There is such a fine line between winning and losing, but some teams are smarter than others.
Take the Carolina Panthers…..in the past three years, they’ve traded/given away:
RB Christian McCaffrey
WR DJ Moore
EDGE Brian Burns
QB Baker Mayfield
Their first-round draft pick in 2023, 2024 AND 2025.
2nd round pick in 2023.
In return, they’ve gotten……
QB Bryce Young
LB DJ Johnson
Two 5th round picks
An extra year of Brian Burns, who they wound up trading away anyway.
In December, 2022, Carolina released Mayfield; their division rival Tampa Bay just gave Mayfield a 3-year contract worth $100M. Slight difference of opinion there.
— Over the last five seasons, Washington Commanders have started 10 different QB’s, the most of any NFL team during that time.
— After signing free-agent QB Kirk Cousins, Atlanta Falcons traded QB Desmond Ridder to Arizona, for WR Rondale Moore.
— NFL Network is going to show 30 or so Arena Football games this spring.
— NFL awarded compensatory draft picks for next month’s draft, 34 in all:
5- Rams, 49ers
4- Eagles
3- Saints, Packers, Jets
2- Jaguars, Cowboys, Bengals
1- Bills, Ravens, Chiefs, Bucs, Chargers
— Milwaukee Brewers’ closer Devin Williams is out for 10-12 weeks with a couple of stress fractures in his back.
— 1B/OF Adam Duvall signed with the Braves, for one year, $3M. Duvall hit .247 with 21 home runs last year for the Red Sox.
— It is March 15; Blake Snell, JD Martinez and Jordan Montgomery are still unsigned; those three players can’t be real happy.
— I’m an A’s fan; how about they pretend they’re trying to win and sign Trevor Bauer to a one-year deal? He can’t be very expensive, at this point, and if he did well for the A’s this year, he could make a whole lot of $$$ next year.
— Arizona doesn’t do Daylight Savings Time, so while spring training games start at 3:00 here in the east early in spring training, after the clocks spring ahead in most of the country, they start at 4:00 from that point on.
— Major League Baseball hasn’t expanded since 1998, when Arizona/Tampa Bay came aboard, but they’ll be going to 32 teams in the next few years. Would be smart if they scrapped the current American/National League set-up and went to geographic realignment.
— Los Angeles Angels’ TV guys were talking the other day how it’ll help their starting pitchers this season to be back in a 5-man rotations, something they never would’ve said last year, when they had a 6-man rotation, because Shohei Ohtani only pitches once a week.
— In case you were wondering, the last villain on the old Batman TV series as Zsa Zsa Gabor, who played Minerva; she then went on to co-star on Green Acres, one of my favorite TV shows when I was a kid.
— I’m off to Las Vegas next month for a vacation, which reminds me…….
In the movie Last Vegas, Morgan Freeman wins $87,000 playing blackjack at Aria.
In The Hangover, Zach Galifianakis wins $85,000 playing blackjack at Caeser’s Palace.
I’m looking forward to sitting down at a table and cashing in……..(ha!!!)
