Fans

EAGLES FANS! QUIT WHINING!

Posted by The BEAST on 2019/12/04
Posted in: Conversations, Fans, NFC East, playoffs, Rants, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

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TOUGH guys don’t whine. If you’re one of these jersey burning types, who declared the season over well before it is, then listen up: Stop talking about how tough you are, how bleed green you are, and how you love your team regardless. Honestly, some of you pussies are downright fucking embarrassing.

The media feeds on negativity and so they pump it. They promote it. Controversy sells papers and generates clicks, and some of you just feed right into it. Our team is struggling as it is. Do we REALLY need to kick them when they’re down? Is that how you learned how to be fan. Bail when it’s not rosy? Quit because the road isn’t smooth. 

Is that the sort of blood that you come from?

I’m going to slam some truth down, hard enough to break your fucking dining room table. If the Redskins fans can talk about still having a chance, YOU bailing now is a direct indicator of how yellow your spine is. The only quitter I see, is in your mirror. The Eagles aren’t done until they’re actually, MATHEMATICALLY, done.

As for now, we aren’t done. 

Whole season

The Eagles still need our cheers and positive reinforcement. Athletes lie and say that they don’t read articles, or listen to call-in shows, or things of that nature. And the second that the shit hits the fan, those same athletes say that they have to block all that out. How can they block out what they were already ignoring? Simple. They were never ignoring it.

My point is that they hear us. They hear us on WIP radio. They hear us on Twitter. They hear us when we catch babies at the scene of a fire. They overhear you when they’re out shopping, or eating. They see what gets said about them on shows like ‘Quick Slants’ (Right, Brandon Graham?) They hear me when they come to this blog. (And they do.)

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So if they hear us, then how about we say some shit to INSPIRE them? When you inspire people you get more out of them, than when you shit on their name. Why spend 7 months missing football, only to quit on the season early? Who does that?? Don’t reserve being a fan for game-time only. Quit whining and get to barking. Get to howling.

Remember those dog masks and how much I hated them, because we weren’t really underdogs in 2017? Well NOW we’re honest to god underdogs. Care to buy a mask? Do you have it in you to root for a REAL underdog? If you feel like I’m calling you out, it’s because I am.

Let’s see who the tough, bleed green fans REALLY are.

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ARE YOU IN OR OUT?

Posted by The BEAST on 2019/10/22
Posted in: Defense, Fans, NFC East, NFL, Offense, playoffs, Rants, Rivals, Roster. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

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FELLOW Eagles fans! We’re 7 games into a 16 game season. That’s not even halfway through. We’re a game out of 1st place, with a rematch IN OUR HOUSE coming up at the end of the season. So the question is, are you gearing up for the Sixers season opener, or are you locked in for Sunday in Buffalo?

Don’t answer me. Answer your mirror. As for me…

em12

I’m always locked in. They’ll NEVER clean my cage!

I want to make two things plain right now.

First, I’m picking the Eagles over Buffalo. Not for homerism, or for bullshit “fan support”. The numbers clearly indicate that if the Eagles don’t beat the Eagles, then Buffalo won’t be able to. A couple of bad losses, will never get me to ignore raw data. That would be a sign of panic, and I cannot in 44 years of life, point to a single instance where I have panicked. Football won’t be where I start.

Second, the Cowboys didn’t beat us. We beat us. Nothing about the box score says that they dominated us. QB Dak Prescott, RB Ezekiel Elliott, and WR Amari Cooper all were productive, but none of them had a career day or some shit.

For those of us who watched, it was clear that no one hurt us as badly as we did. So don’t get it into your head that the final score indicates a gulf between how good they are, vs how good we are. It does not. It’s just a lil’ choppy water.

And I’ll say again,

Popeye

The Eagles made a move on Monday that I really really liked. We added DT Anthony Rush to our active roster. Back in June I was still rooting for us to find a way to keep the guy. We’ve long been a team that favored smaller DT’s, and Rush is a horse of a different color.

When we signed the 6’5, 350 pound Rush, after the 2019 Draft, I was all about that move. A big body to bull rush the “A” gap, and not let the Center get out on combo-blocks? All while having the length to possibly bat down passes, and affect field goal attempts?! I was excited about the idea of having someone who exceeds the prototypical 6’4, 320 mold, which the Eagles frequently fall short of.

When DT Malik Jackson went down, I actually thought of Rush, but I was lazy, and didn’t do the the leg-work to find out that he was unavailable anyway. When we later added DT Akeem Spence it seemed like a very mid-season Eagles (aka meh) sort of signing.

Rush however, seems like just the sort of move we need, now that we’re going with smaller LB’s who can’t get off of blocks. At least until OLB Nigel Bradham gets back. Once Bradham gets back, we should get some physicality back in the LB corps. And with Rush eating up space and blockers, those two things alone should go a long way, to changing what we’ve seen over these last two weeks.

It’s been a rough two weeks, but this is nothing we can’t handle. We’re making moves to right the ship. First place in Week 8 was never Step One. It never was. First place in Week 17 was Step One.

The storm be damned! Even at 3 – 4, we’re still on course. 

Popeye EM MAX

I’m all about the “get down”. Let’s chop it up!

FOUR THINGS – WK 6 – EAGLES – VIKINGS

Posted by The BEAST on 2019/10/11
Posted in: Coaching, Conversations, Defense, Fans, Four Things, NFC East, Offense, Preview, Uncategorized, X's and O's. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment

WK6-MIN

THIS is the beginning of an absolutely wicked road trip! I swear, it’s like one of the Eagles slept with the schedule maker’s wife. Hey, speaking of DT Fletcher Cox, QB Kirk Cousins might want to dust off his track shoes. His o-line isn’t the stoutest group of pass blockers, and Homewrecker was the only guy who didn’t eat last week.

This is probably the best team we’ll face until our Bye. That said, after a few days of peeking under their hood, this feels like a “W”. Not like we could win, but like we should win. Look, if I can come up with a game plan to beat Minny, then the Eagles coaching staff has surely already done so.

Unless I’m smarter than they are…

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The Eagles have a statement to make. We need to build up some conference cred, after a couple of early stumbles. A win this week, and we guarantee ourselves another week atop the NFC East.

Also, a loss this week practically invalidates last week’s annihilation of New York. Especially since the division rival right behind us, gets to rag-doll whatever we left of the Jets, this Sunday.

So let’s talk about the Four Things we need to focus on this week versus the Vikings:

2019 Eagles D

1) Stop the run: The idea isn’t to stuff every run. We just need to make it so unreliable that it becomes a liability, and they abandon any real commitment to it. At that point we’ll have taken them out of their wheelhouse, and put them someplace uncomfortable. But how do we do that? What are the nuts and bolts?

Minny likes to give their backs a choice of a high-speed lane, and cutback lane. They do this by getting an extra blocker outside of their Tackles, which triggers defenses to over-pursue. The RB hangs back, reads it and, just picks a hole. The result is every RB on their roster, averaging 5.6 yards per carry or better.

So how do we bring down a charging bull?? We do it with two small, quick tweaks.

Step 1: Staying within our Wide Nine, we use a 4 – 3 Under front with our LB’s. Weakside, Middle and Strongside (WIL, MIKE, SAM).

WIDE NINE 4-3 UNDER

If that Slot WR is worrying you, don’t let it. FB C.J. Ham (yes, Fullback) has 3 starts, and TE Irv Smith has the other 2 so far. So our base Defense may be out there quite a bit until the Vikings scrap the run.

Step 2: Play contain outside of the Tackles, avoid engaging them, and take on the outside blockers, to either force runs back inside, or string them to the sideline.

4-3 UNDER VS MINNY

Again, Minnesota relies on their RB’s to read. That means they can’t hit holes immediately. That will help us trap them in the backfield, and force passing situations. Thus the game will be put in Kirk Cousins’s hands.

2) Protect the ball: Obvious right? For the Vikings this one has more meaning. In their 3 wins, they have forced at least one turnover. In their 2 losses, they don’t have a single one between them. This team needs their opponent to help them. So let’s not do that.

3) Go BIG:

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Three quarters of their secondary is the same one that WR Alshon Jeffery tormented in 2017. They have some tall DB’s, but they’re just tall. They lack the athleticism to play vs size. This would be a nice game to see rookie WR J.J. Arcega-Whiteside emerge as a factor. If not, we still have this guy…

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4) Show fear: That is not a typo. We need to jump on this team, from coin toss to hand shake. We make them play from behind, and then we just keep hitting them.

Early on, we need to be a lioness, desperate to defend her cubs. Later, we need to be a lion ending the next generation of a rival male. At no point should we seem relaxed. Our fear. Our urgency, should be on open display.

If we do all these things, we’re just about guaranteed to win. Now that we’ve covered what should happen, let’s get into what likely will happen:

The Vikings are as desperate as we are. Their only two losses are divisional, so they are 3-2 and STILL in 4th place. They need this win. Probably more than we do. That means they will come out in their Sunday best, giving 110%, leaving it all out on the hackneyed cliché, yadda blah, and so forth.

Philly Hulk

Would now be a shitty time to mention that all of their wins are against teams that have trouble scoring? The highest ranked offense they’ve beaten so far is 18th. We are not Atlanta, Oakland, or the giants. The Eagles are 7th in scoring. And that’s with a run game that we couldn’t count on half the time, and our top receivers injured.

The Vikings are a run reliant team, not a quick-strike team. They’ll make a ton of catches, because our CB’s play 20 yard cushions. Their QB will complete 700% of his passes, and he’ll roll up a lot of pointless yardage to pad his stats. However, once we take the run away, all they will have left, will be Kirk Cousins. And yes, Kirk. We DO like that.

PREDICTION: EAGLES 28 – Vikings 17

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FOUR THINGS REVIEWED – WK PS4 – JETS

Posted by The BEAST on 2019/08/30
Posted in: Conversations, Defense, Fans, Four Things, NFL, Offense, Players, Roster, Special Teams, trade. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

flooded

TOLD you not to watch that game, didn’t I? While watching two episodes of American Dad and channel surfing during commercials, I saw probably 45 to 55 seconds combined, of the entire game, before leaving for work. Meanwhile, many of you ignored my warning, and suffered through that debacle.

EAGLES 0 – Jets 6

I bought a Daily News, an iced mocha, and I took the train from the airport this morning. It gave me time to digest what was reported about the game. When I got home, I looked up the box score for the player stats.

HOLY SHIT! I knew it was going to be a boring shit-show, but c’mon! They just Deebo’d you, for three hours of your life!

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They didn’t even try to be worth your time. How do you lose 0 – 6 in a game where the winner the team that didn’t lose, misses 3 field goals?

The big thing in this game was supposed to be that it would help decide who made the 53 man roster. That’s garbage. I told you in Four Things that the roster was already set.

1) DE: Defensive Coordinator Jim Schwartz like to have five DE’s. The Starters are Brandon Graham and Derek Barnett. Vinny Curry is the third end who can slide inside to DT in the NASCAR package. That means we need two more. Joe Ostman was lost with an injury, leaving Josh Sweat, Daeshon Hall and rookie Shareef Miller.

Hall has outplayed every pass rusher in the NFL this preseason. He made this team weeks ago. That’s four. Miller has out-competed, out-produced, and out-played Sweat, in every single regard this preseason. Unless we make a trade, if we keep five (like we did last year), Miller has to be fifth, with Hall being an automatic fourth.

2) RB: Wendell Smallwood or Josh Adams? Smallwood isn’t explosive and brings nothing to the table that our other backs don’t. Adams at least has the advantages of size, youth, and the possibility of a hidden upside. We’ve already seen Smallwood’s ceiling. If Smallwood makes the team, he has pictures of someone doing something with a dead girl, or a live boy. We don’t keep Adams if the staff decides to go with six receivers.

3) WR: Everyone wants to say we’re keeping five here. I like six. If Smallwood is cut then Special Teams needs a guy. Mack Hollins was injured last year, but he’s back now. Greg Ward is a slot guy we need to keep around, if Nelson Agholor is going to be trade bait. It’s easier to keep Ward and then elevate him, rather than cut him, hope no one grabs him, and then have a hole if Aggie is traded.

4) QB: Are we keeping three or four? Who is the back-up? Has the depth chart changed? Nobody cares. Carson Wentz will play until our season ends, and render his back-ups irrelevant.

On The Whole:

I’m just glad this travesty of a preseason is over.

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Better still, with the 8 – 4:30 hours at my new job, I’ll be able to catch ALL the games, without watching on a shitty tablet, with a shitty wifi signal that keeps dropping. And no more cramming these articles between the end of work, and desperately needed sleep. (Like I’m doing right now!)

FOUR THINGS – WK PS4 – EAGLES-JETS

Posted by The BEAST on 2019/08/28
Posted in: Conversations, Fans, Four Things, NFL, Preview, Rants, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

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LET’S talk about what’s at stake this week. Nothing. We know who the Starters are. We know who the second units are. The third stringers will spend the year being activated and deactivated. Is that what we’re watching too see?

Besides, we play the Jets in like six weeks. We’re not showing them anything worth seeing. We won’t even be hinting at anything in this game. 

I mean c’mon, rookie OT Brett Toth, who signed a three year deal a week ago, is currently a liability as a pass blocker, and has yet to see any preseason action. Even if he doesn’t play a snap in this game, we already KNOW he’s guaranteed a spot on the practice squad.

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So there are zero stakes for the team, and the final score is a shrug to the team. Aside from a handful of guys who want more audition tape, all anyone wants, is to avoid getting hurt. That’s it. That’s what everyone is playing for. (BTW: If a player is still compiling tape in preseason week four, they’ve already told teams enough.)

I spent from Sunday until Wednesday trying to figure out why any of us should care about this last preseason game, when it’s evident that the team itself is just going through the motions, due to obligation. Here’s what I came up with: Just don’t watch it.

Why pump direct ratings via cable boxes, Nielsen boxes, and satellite receivers, to a league that doesn’t see fit to offer you a decent product? “Here piggy piggy. You’ll consume it because it’s sort of football.” Really?

Between football players who don’t have to play, baseball players who don’t have to hustle, and basketball players who think it’s cool to go years without being able to shoot a basketball, teams just don’t worry about giving fans quality anymore.

Are we their bitches? Are we their whores? I can’t speak for you, but I for one, am certainly not. If we the fans don’t send some sort of message, we’re going to keep seeing this. Or worse. So I’m taking this week off, and I’m asking you to do the same.

So let’s talk about the Four Things we need to focus on this week versus the Jets:

1) Work: If you work nights, don’t bother trying to find places watch the game out of the view of your supervisor. Why risk a write-up for a game that doesn’t matter? Wait until the games count, to run that kind of risk. Right Carson?

2) A night out: While lots of fans will crowd into sports bars, and stay home to catch the game, so the theaters should have fewer people in them. Same with restaurants that don’t have televisions in them. Take advantage of the extra elbow room.

3) Grocery shopping: If your favorite supermarket is open until 10p.m. or later, then by 7:30 or so, sports fans with talking pets (small kids), have generally cleared out of the building. If you show up at 8:00, you should be able to have an almost leisurely experience shopping. It’s not as good as 10a.m. on a Tuesday, but it’s pretty close. (Note: This may permanently change when you shop.)

4) Decorate: Spend the night decorating for Thanksgiving. Turkey Day is a huge football holiday, and it seldom gets the attention it deserves, since Christmas always waylays it’s mojo. Friday August 30th is still very much Summer. I can hardly think of a better end to Summer next month, than barbecuing in 80 degree weather, with Pilgrims in your window, and a giant inflatable turkey behind you.

If we do all these things, we’re just about guaranteed to win. Now that we’ve covered what should happen, let’s get into what likely will happen:

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You will watch the game. You can’t help it. You’ve missed football for too long, to ignore it for a week. The season is just too finite, and you don’t want to waste a second of it.

I on the other hand, am dead ass serious about not watching this game. (I may see a few seconds here or there while channel surfing, but I will not be staying. By no means.) Because I won’t be watching it, Head Coach Doug Pederson will elect to play his Starters for a series or two. Rest assured I will nod in amused irony when you all tell me about, it the following day.

(Side note: The Eagles have been putting a LOT of emphasis on adding to that RT spot recently. Halapoulivaati Vaitai, Jordan Mailata, Brett Toth… They don’t keep taking swings like this, at any other spot on the line. We might want to keep an eye on Lane Johnson this season.)

PREDICTION: EAGLES 20 – Jets 17

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FUCK YOU, NICK FOLES.

Posted by The BEAST on 2019/08/21
Posted in: Coaching, Crazy Talk, Fans, Front Office (F.O.), Offense, Players, playoffs, Rants, Rivals, Roster. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment
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This used to be my avatar when I wrote on Yardbarker. This is before I learned how to use Photoshop. (Which today I never use.)

“FUCK you, Nick Foles.” Every Eagles back-up QB has to think that at least twice a day. From the moment that QB Nick Foles’s fingertips made contact with a Lombardi trophy (not THE Lombardi Trophy), a disturbingly large percentage of Eagles fans began a bizarre fascination with the back-up QB position on this roster. This has added undue pressure to a position that really should be devoid of it, and is on 31 other rosters

Don’t get it twisted. I love the guy, but unlike most fans, I recognize, and can admit that what Foles did in 2017, was an anomaly. However last year in 2018, when fractures were detected in QB Carson Wentz’s back, the coaching staff (over Wentz’s protests), decided to shut him down for the last five games of the year. Fans here hardly blinked. “Foles won one Super Bowl, now he’ll do it again” seemed to be the consensus.

That’s really weird for three reasons. First, back in 2017 when Foles didn’t look so hot vs the Raiders (as opposed to his record setting day in 2013), he had plenty of doubters in the fan base. I on the other hand, pumped him up, while putting out stuff like:

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The original meme had ‘back-up’ in quotation marks, but it made the words space funny. It also had the numeral 6 instead of the word.

The second thing that makes it weird is, even with Foles gone now, there is still a ton of focus on the back-up spot. In fact, right now it’s getting more press than the starting role. That’s a fact. Some of that has to do with Wentz not playing in the preseason, some of it is due to injuries, but a lot of it is full-on interest in the back-ups here.

The third thing that makes this weird is, the perception that’s overriding reality. The narrative is that back-up QB Nick Foles won the Super Bowl. It’s a cute story, but it’s a myth. It’s a complete and total fabrication. An outright, bold-faced LIE. Foles was never a back-up here. He was our second starter. I explained that in an article from last year. (If you didn’t read that one, please do. As an Eagles fan you’re missing out if you don’t.)

The reality is that only one QB per year will win the Super Bowl. In most cases it will be an Opening Day starting QB who does so. The 31 other Opening Day starters, will fail in their annual mission. For a back-up to win that game is rare. It’s happened for every team in the NFC East, and yet it is still not the norm. Far from it. However, this is the lens that our back-ups are now viewed through.

One last thing, and someone has to have the balls say this. The scrutiny on back-ups wouldn’t be so sharp if Eagles fans were as confident about Wentz not getting hurt, as many profess to be. Basically I’m saying: 

don't fake the funk

I see a lot of Eagles fans verbally sparring with rival fans. Then later on, I see those same Eagles fans discussing whether or not our back-up can win games in the playoffs. I feel like Eagles fans need to either trust Wentz, or PUBLICLY own up to not trusting him. If you trust your starter, the back-up discussions should evaporate.

That’s all part of the legacy that Foles has left here. He has exited stage right, and left a spotlight on that role. For that, I’m sure that a couple times a day, those who now have to assume his mantle, must either think or say very quietly “Fuck you, Nick Foles.”

And thank you.

Foles holds the trophy aloft approaching LOVE Park

WHO NEEDS A RIVALRY?

Posted by The BEAST on 2019/07/16
Posted in: Conversations, Fans, Front Office (F.O.), NFL, Players, playoffs, Rants, Rivals, Uncategorized. Tagged: , , , , , , , , , . Leave a comment

lovers rivalry

RECENTLY a pair of questions were posed to me: “Who is the rivalry between our teams more important to: the fans or the players? Have the fans just hated each other for so long, (that) it’s in our DNA now?”

The answer to Question One is tricky. However, just to pick a side and give an you answer, I’d have to lean towards it being more important to players.

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Slightly.

Used to be, a player spent most (if not all), of his career with one team. Often he’d spend years going against the same guy, twice a year. He got to know his enemy. He got to either truly respect the guy, or absolutely hate his guts.

Up and down the line, on both sides of the ball, match-ups were battles. In some cases, real battles. Not just to win the game, but often to settle old scores. Mounting scores. Men threw hands that landed loaded with real hatred. It was a different age back then. Player mobility has killed that.

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Rare now is the gladiator who will only don one helmet. Knowing this as a rookie, it’s no longer automatic for a player to cultivate a hatred for a player he sees twice a year. Too often there are situations like Oakland’s, where formerly bitter rivals (like WR Antonio Brown and LB Vontaze Burfict), end up teammates, who make a point of publicly “squashing past beefs”.

Still, players need the rivalries more than fans. Players need to make sure that when “(Insert Team) Week” comes around, that they say all the things fan want to hear. This is because fan-favorite players have more leverage come contract time. Especially if their jersey sells well. And nothing endears a player to fans faster, than trash talk that gets backed-up.

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November 12th, 1990. MLB Byron Evans lets QB Stan Humphries know what the fuck time it is, during “The Body Bag Game.”

For fans, rivalries are a sliding scale. For instance, most Eagles fans view the Cowboys as the bane of their existence. Not me. For me, it’s the Redskins. Stems from back to the 1990’s. The Cowboys frequently had strokes of luck that made me roll my eyes. The Redskins however, used to flat-out play dirty during games, and refs would act blind to it, then that prissy fa- …the effeminate Mark Rypien, would be so smug. GOD! They were so easy to hate.

As for Question Two, on whether rival fan hatred is now genetic… Ask any Eagles fan with a kid who roots for a rival. It’s not genetic. I know for a fact, because my Mom was a Cowboys fan, and she didn’t hate me (an Eagles fan), or my brother (a giants fan). So it’s not genetic. It’s not. (FTR: I happen to love my brother and I also like him.)

Who really benefits, are sports franchises. They make a ton of bank off of our Blood vs Crips mentality. “Yo homes! You can’t be wearin’ them colors, in this stadium…”

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Rivalries make the season more dramatic. They serve as a moralistic rally point, concentrate feelings of tribalism, and ultimately drive sales through the roof. Fans, players… pffft! No one needs rivalries more than the franchises themselves.

Understanding how important rivalries are, I’m still perplexed by the 2001 NFL realignment, which broke up divisions with five teams in them, and made every division a four team division.

While only 6 rivalry games per year seems more special(?), it means that it’s only 6/16 or 37.5% of the schedule. When there were 8 rivalry games it was 8/16 or 50% of the schedule. So while the division games are now more special, they now impact the schedule less. You can still go 10-6, and not need much Wild Card help, even if you lose every division game.

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Fail.

I miss there being five teams in the division. The top and bottom of a division are now too starkly defined. I miss that nebulous middle, and the frustrated players that came with it. So much bad blood. Helped fuel rivalries. I miss that.