Welcome To The "New Normal" In The NFL

 Have you looked at the standings in the National Football League lately?

If so, you're seeing what I'm seeing: A LOT of parity (or incompetence) as only 15 of the league's 32 teams hve a record of better than .500. 

Commissioner Bert Bell (1946-1959) was a HUGE friend to the Green Bay Packers. Fond of saying "on any given Sunday, any team can beat any other team", Bell was a champion for the small town Packers and helped keep the Green Bay franchise in the NFL.

Commissioner Pete Rozelle (1960-1989) oversaw the growth of television's impact on the league (financial as well as fan popularity) along with the merger with the upstart American Football League. Rozelle was big on parity in the NFL, balance between the big city teams and the smaller markets.

Looks like both Bell and Rozelle would be pleased with this year's NFL. Eight weeks into the season and only one unbeaten team (Philadelphia at 6-0). The New York Giants are 6-1 while Buffalo and the hated Minnesota Vikings are 5-1. Close behind are Dallas, the New York Jets and Kansas City at 5-2.

At the bottom are the 1-5 Detroit Lions while Houston is 1-3-1 and Pittsburgh, Cleveland and New Orleans are at 2-5.

Suprising 3-4 clubs are Green Bay, Tampa Bay, Arizona, San Francisco and Chicago. With the exception of DA Bears, the other four were supposed to be Super Bowl worthy clubs.

Fearless Field Leader of the Packers, #12, says it's time to cut down on the mental mistakes, bench/limit playing time for those making said mistakes, etc. Perhaps his own body language could help a bit...

Remember the Lombardi teams ran a limited playbook, but ran plays to perfection. NFL teams have gotten a lot more sophisticated in their offense approach, but mental mistakes have always been a part of the game. Guys miss a check-down, guys miss an assignment. In the 1970s and '80s, as part of the newpaper's Packer beat, I was well aware of a certain wide receiver who seldom ran the called route.

How he stayed employed, I could never understand. (Note, it wasn't one of the stars.)

What's Next For The Milwaukee Brewers?

 The little team in Milwaukee whose Major League Baseball franchise we follow missed the playoffs for the first time in four years. At least Brewer fans can take satisfaction in the fact that those hated St. Louis Cardinals got swept out of the playoffs by Philadelphia.

That Milwaukee playoff streak is pretty respectable, yet everyone from the front office on down to the fan base was expecting more from this squad. Back in April, I thought 97 wins was doable. A final record of 86-76, still pretty damn good by the standards of a small market/small budget team, was frustrating at best. Going 16-17 down the stretch and 3-6 in the final nine home games was more than disappointing, it was aggravating. Especially when the Brewers gave away probably four of those games when the playoff spot was still there for the taking.

The club was 32-18 by Memorial Day, but only 54-58 after.

Can't really fault the pitching staff, though the bullpen suffered mightily down that stretch. It was the offense, or rather, the lack thereof, that doomed manager Craig Counsell's team. All season long, Milwaukee was missing that key hit. You can't load the bases with one out in a late-inning, tie game and NOT come through at the plate. 

Let's face it, this was a team with waaaaayyyy too many guys hitting between .250 and .260. The face of the franchise, Christian Yelich -- he of the nearly $27 million salary -- just hasn't been the same since shattering a kneecap in 2019. There's gotta be more issues than that with Yeli, who hit just .252 with 14 home runs and 57 RBI. Go to have more production out of him than that.

It's not like Yelich has been lights out as a defender these days, either, which makes one wonder about other health issues. Several times this past season, his throws from left field left A LOT to be desired. He just doesn't seem to have that oomph in the arm these days.

Can't trade him (who's gonna pick up that contact?) so it might be he heads to DH on a fulltime basis.

What's ahead for Milwaukee? First off, several current players will be gone. DH/OF Andrew McCutcheon, catcher Omar Narvaez, utility infielder Jace Peterson along with relief pitchers Taylor Rogers and Trevor Rosenthal are free agents. All all be in different uniforms in 2023, tho I like Peterson (have a soft spot for Cajuns, you know). The club holds a $10 million option on 2B Kolten Wong, an option they should pick up just for his lockerroom presence. OF Hunter Renfro gave the team some pop at the plate and could be returning. Might be time to pull the plug on the Keston Hiura experiment, though he could be a good role player.

Arbitration on several players will cost Milwaukee a lot of salary. Hell, they're still on the hook for money to Jackie Bradley Jr. How much money will owner Mark Attanasio let general manager David Stearns work with? Milwaukee had a payroll of $128,581,128 to start the season. Compare that with the Dodgers, Mets, Yankees, Phillies and Padres -- all over $200 million. In the case of the Dodgers and Mets, closer to $300 million.

So it all depends on what guidelines Stearns will have.

You have your pitching core (Corbin Burns, Brandon Woodruff, Freddy Peralta and Eric Lauer) under control for 2023, but arbitration may mess with that. Milwaukee needs to tweak that starting lineup a little, but really, really needs to do something with the bullpen. Devin Williams moved into the closers spot after the club traded Josh Hader (and not being in that lockerroom, can't say how that affected the team). Hader's arbitration number may have come in between $16-18 million, so that may have been a factor in the trade.

As to the lineup, it may be time to move some of the youngsters up and give them big league experience. OF Garrett Mitchell showed he can play in the bigs. Mario Feliciano (catcher) and infielder Brice Turang will probably get Opening Day roster spots. Rowdy Tellez gives some home run production (35 this year) and is a good defender at first base. Luis Urias is a solid defender, but it would be nice to get more homers out of him. Willy Adames is solid with the bat (he topped HOFer Robin Yount's home run record in a season by a shortstop) and is a stellar defender.

In the broadcast booth, there could well be changes coming for the Brewers. After all, longtime color man Bob Uecker turns 88 in January. After 52 years in the broadcast booth, the past several only working home games, Ueck just might hang up his microphone.

If he does, that's really the end of an era in Milwaukee. He leaves really REALLY big shoes to fill. Yes, I know he doesn't always give the game score in a timely fashion (looking at you here, Darrell). Still, Ueck has been the voice of the Brewers forever and it's hard to imagine just who they would bring in as the next act. Always thought Jimmy "Gumby" Gantner would be considered. Knowing Jimmy as I do, his "Gumby-isms" rank right up there with Yogi Berra. He'd certainly be entertaining.

Baseball continues to try and speed up pace of play. This year the average was 3 hours, 3 minutes and 44 seconds, down from 3:10:07. Some of the moves coming in 2023 (discussed here Sept. 11, 2022) should help that.

Attendance for MLB was 64.6 million for the 30 teams, that's up from 45.3 million in 2021 (when clubs were still struggling with Covid restrictions), but down from the pre-Covid 68.5 in 2019.

Milwaukee clocked in at 14th in MLB, averaging 30,155 fans and just under 2.5 million overall. That was a drop from nearly 3 million in 2019. Tampa Bay (a playoff team) averaged just 13,977 (28th) -- Miami was 29th with 11,203 and Oakland (in desperate need of a new stadium) was dead last at 9,973.

Los Angeles Dodgers topped attendance with nearly 3.9 million, followed by St. Louis (3.3), the New York Yankees and Atlanta Braves (both just over 3.1).

Cincinnati, the Brewers' Central Division rival, had it's worst year in attendance since 1984, when the club lost 92 games and drew 1,275,887. This year, the Reds dropped 100 games and only averaged 17,447 -- and down the September stretch, was routinely having sub-10,000 crowds.

Taking A Deep Dive Into Jim Thorpe -- Best Athlete Of All Time?

Recently finished a fascinating biography on Jim Thorpe by Madison-born author David Maraniss. His Path Lit By Lightning: The Life Of Jim Thorpe is not a quick read. The 500-plus pager seems to be painstakingly researched.

I Like Maraniss as an author. He takes his time and delves into his topics. He's done bios on baseball's Roberto Clemente, football's Vince Lombardi (When Pride Still Mattered should be required reading for Green Bay Packer fans!), as well as politicians Bill Clinton and Barack Obama. He's also gone deep on non-fiction topics such as the Vietnam War (They Marched Into Sunlight) and the Rome 1960 Olympics (Rome 1960).

Thorpe was an athletic force in the early 1900s in football, track and baseball, Thorpe was the gold medal winner of both the Pentathlon and Decathlon in the 1912 Olympics. Heralded at the time as the world's greatest athlete, that's a title that has seemed to withstand the test of time. As kids, many of us read short bios on Thorpe that pointed out his medals were later stripped from him because he had been paid to pay baseball while in college.

In those times, MANY college athletes were doing just that -- but unlike Thorpe, they were doing so under assumed names. (Read the Maraniss book; it goes into greater detail than I care to here)

In his prime, and often beyond, Thorpe was a featured attraction at the ticket window (as part of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in college) the marquee performer in the early days of the National Football League with the Canton Bulldogs (and, though a figurehead, the first president of the NFL) as well as major league and minor league baseball teams.

The look at his life by Maraniss is a deep dive into Thorpe, who was proud of his heritage as a Sac and Fox Native American, generous to a fault to friends as well as those he deemed "in worse shape than me" financially. The latter trait seemed to keep Thorpe always on the brink of, and often in, money troubles.

He was always chasing a better payday, be it with six difference NFL teams, his six years in Major League Baseball or his countless years traveling from town to town, playing football or basketball or baseball to earn a buck.

Perhaps that wanderlust is what brought him to play for the Milwaukee Brewers.

Yes, you read that right, the Milwaukee Brewers. Well, not the team we currently follow, but their minor league predecessor.

Thorpe played for the 1916 Milwaukee Brewers of the American Association. Based on the statistics, he was more than adequate as well, hitting .274 with 48 stolen bases, 10 home runs (in a deadball era when entire teams didn't hit that total) and driving in 85 runs.

With the regular season ending this week, Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees broke the American League record for most home runs in a single season, getting his 62nd in game 161.  Rodger Maris of the Yankees had held the record of 61 for 61 years (how's that for irony?) When Maris was chasing Babe Ruth's record of 60 homers, the pressure was so great he was losing hair in clumps -- perhaps because the New York fans wanted their preferred choice, Mickey Mantle to get the mark. Mantel clubbed 54 homers that season.

Baseball fans are well-aware that the single season mark for the MLB, set in the steroid era and often going unacknowledged by fans, is 73 by Barry.

Judge finished the year just shy of winning baseball's triple crown as he led the AL in homers (62) and RBI (131) but finished second in batting average (.311) behind Minnesota's Luis Arraez (.316).

Kudos to Albert Pujols of the hated St. Louis Cardinals for passing the 700 home run barrier for his long and successful career. Only the afore-mentioned Bonds and Hammerin' Hank Aaron hit more in their careers. Aaron, still considered by many to be THE home run king, is also top of the heap in Runs Batted In, a category where Pujols ends his career in second.

Coaches Are 'Hired To Be Fired"

 Can't say it came as a total shock yesterday during the Green Bay Packer game, when the scroll across the top of the screen reported Paul Chryst had been released as head coach of the University of Wisconsin Badgers football team.

Released. Now there's a polite, Midwest way of saying fired, isn't it? And this just days after Chryst got a vote of confidence from Athletic Director Chris McIntosh (in many circles, pro and college, that's usually the kiss of death and code to start packing.) Wisconsin is not a school that takes firing a coach lightly. This is only the first in 33 years, since Don Morton deservedly got the axe in 1989. Other colleges seem to have revolving doors for the position (Nebraska, for example), but it's just not the Wisconsin Way.

My thinking is that Chryst had lost the locker room and gave his boss no choice. The lack of effort in the 34-10 loss to Illinois at home Saturday was just plain embarrassing. Have never seen a Badger team get so man-handled (by someone other than Ohio State) before. Just seemed like the heart went right out of them

Here's a Badger team that features one of the best running backs in college football picking up just two yards in 24 attempts (quarterback sack yardage comes off running totals in college, not passing totals as in the NFL). And sophomore Braylon Allen, that stellar runner, accounted for two yards on eight carries!

It's no wonder that McIntosh, on the job for all of 15 month, pulled the trigger five games into Chryst's seventh season. A Badger alum, Chryst had posted a 67-26 record in those seven-plus seasons (43-18 in the Big 10). In the world of coaching, it's more what have you done for me lately than history. Keep in mind that, tho he had won 72% of his games (third-best in Wisconsin history), he was 34-7 in his first 41 games and just 33-19 since.

Still, he'll get a good buyout from the UW and will land on his feet, I'm confident of that.

Which brings us to the next man up, interim head coach Jimmy Leonard, the highly successful and respected defensive coordinator now given the reins of the program and the tough task of pulling it together.

No doubt in my mind that Leonard was Wisconsin's head coach in waiting, and I've expressed that opinion before. Here's a guy who loves the Badgers, went from walk-on as a player to three-time All-American safety to a solid 10-year career (as an undrafted player) in the National Football League. Hired as defensive backs coach straight from the NFL, the Tony, WI native then stepped into the D-Coordinator job the very next season -- with great success.

Keep in mind that, whenever a college job came up, so did Leonard's name, He was even bandied about as a D-Coordinator with the Packers when that spot opened a couple years back.

Naming Leonard as interim head coach accomplishes several things. It gives him a chance to prove himself, and right the Badger ship in the process. It gives the school some stability on the recruiting trail. AND it perhaps takes him off the job market, as it's clear some school was going to come along and pile up so much cash that it would have been hard for Leonard to walk away from it.

I suspect the Badgers will rally around Leonard, a straight shooter respected by his players. The season can still be salvaged. A lesser bowl game can be reached, but a bowl game none the less.

On Wisconsin!