There are a lot of things I don’t realize until I realize them. Perhaps this is the same for you. Perhaps it is true of all things. Enough semantics, though. Let’s talk semitics (JUST KIDDING thankfully Aaron Rodgers has never, to my knowledge, gone down the antisemitic rabbithole and forced us to issue a condemnation).
Bill Barnwell published a paywalled piece this morning over at ESPN+ asking which of the seven teams who made the 2021-22 playoffs but didn’t make the 2022-23 playoffs is likeliest to make the 2023-24 playoffs. I don’t know why he didn’t just say it was an arbitrary choice of seven teams to rank. It’s a simple concept but it takes so much time to explain. Anyway, I’m going to do the thing now where I excerpt it while giving him credit, thereby tacitly helping some among you dodge the paywall. My apologies to the industry. Guess I’m a scab!
Barnwell has a lot to say, and as usual, it’s worthwhile, but a lot of it is things you can surmise. What I didn’t surmise—didn’t previously realize—was that it really doesn’t make sense to keep *both* of Aaron Rodgers and Jordan Love:
“If the Packers pay Rodgers’ option and pick up Love’s fifth-year option, they would owe their two quarterbacks nearly $60 million combined in 2024, which would be untenable for a team already in rough salary-cap shape. It’s also more difficult to get out of Rodgers’ deal after 2023 than it would be in 2022, which is likely by design because the Love decision is coming up.”
Oh.
I thought the reason it was a bad idea to hold onto both Rodgers and Love, if the opportunity was there, was that you’d be limiting yourself to one year of Love as your starter, max, and thereby holding onto an asset you wouldn’t use. Turns out, it’s because it is unaffordable thanks to the nature of Love’s contract as a highly drafted long-term backup quarterback. So, it’s one quarterback or the other now. We’ve reached that point.
Barnwell estimates Love’s trade value with some help from the Sam Darnold trade in 2021, writing:
“The Panthers traded second-, fourth-, and sixth-round picks to the Jets for Sam Darnold two years ago, and Darnold was drafted higher and had more of a track record than Love. My guess is Love would net a pick in the 60-80 range from a team such as the Buccaneers or Titans, who have a need for a starter of the future and would expect Love to start for them in 2024.”
Again, this is worse than I would have guessed. Barnwell isn’t Mark the Evangelist, what he says isn’t Gospel, but he knows more about NFL matters than I do by orders of magnitude, so I’m going to trust him. It doesn’t matter how high on Jordan Love the Packers are or aren’t. There’s a gulf between what they can get for him and what they can get for Rodgers in the trade market, and with major salary cap savings also on their way if they can trade Rodgers, a roster that presently doesn’t look capable of winning a Super Bowl, and Rodgers subject to normal human aging processes, it’s kind of hard to see a case for keeping Rodgers that doesn’t revolve around nostalgia.
I’m a little astonished to be writing this, but from what medium amount I know, the Packers should probably trade Rodgers, draft a mid-round upside option to back up Love this year, and have their Rodgers haul in hand for the 2024 Draft in case they need to pull the fire alarm, having seen that Love and Jake Haener or whoever both aren’t the answer.
Alabama Did It Right
In yesterday’s bets, we asked whether Alabama was “due” for an off night, our reasoning (which we didn’t fully spell out) being that 1) the Tide are young, inexperienced players should be more prone to lapses in focus, and the Tide have a major distraction right now because one of their players was charged with capital murder; and 2) the Tide have been overperforming their November and December expectations, which sometimes hints at a return to a more middle level.
Whether our reasoning was correct or not, the off night happened, and Alabama survived it. Down ten points early in the second half, Nate Oats’s team rallied for a narrow, ugly, home win against NIT-aimed Mississippi State. Alabama remains undefeated in SEC play. Alabama remains aimed at a 1-seed, if not the top overall seed.
I don’t have data to know whether still winning on off nights is “a mark of a special team” or anything like that. But I will say: It’s very useful to win your bad games. If you’re winning your bad games, you’re probably pretty good, and you’re also getting away with bad games. I don’t see any reason for this to become a pattern for Bama—they do face a trap game Saturday in Norman, but after that they get Vanderbilt, LSU, and Florida in a row—so for right now, they’ve done what UConn time and again has failed to do: They’ve survived a bad evening of basketball.
UConn Did It Wrong
UConn might actually be undervalued at this point? The Huskies are 0-3 in games decided by two possessions or fewer, which is a small sample, but win even one of those—like last night’s, when they lost to Xavier—and they’re still a conceivable Big East champion. Instead, they’re scrambling to hold onto a first-round bye at Madison Square Garden, sitting as the sixth team in a five-bid league (they’re going to make the tournament, it’s just that they’re behind Seton Hall in the standings and Seton Hall is not looking like they’ll make the tournament).
The thing with UConn is that they’re still sixth in the country on KenPom, and KenPom’s pretty good at what it does. They’d still probably be favored on a neutral court against any team in their conference, including Xavier, who just beat them at home. They just keep letting their bad games beat them, to the point where they’ve now become ‘a team who could make a run in March’ when they were previously a good team on paper who was unproven. What a weird season in Storrs. They’re 2-6 over their last eight and two of those losses came against teams well below the bubble.
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What’s happening tonight:
College Basketball (the big game)
- 9:00 PM EST: UCLA @ USC (ESPN2)
College Basketball (the good games)
- 7:00 PM EST: Iowa @ Michigan State (FS1)
- 9:00 PM EST: Purdue @ Michigan (FS1)
- 11:00 PM EST: Arizona @ Washington State (FS1)
- 12:00 AM EST: UC-Santa Barbara @ Hawaii (ESPN+)
NBA (best game, plus the Bulls)
- 7:30 PM EST: New York @ Boston (TNT)
- 7:30 PM EST: Bulls @ Charlotte (League Pass)
NHL (best game)
- 7:00 PM EST: Boston @ Tampa Bay (ESPN+)
Australian Open (men’s singles semifinals)
- 10:30 PM EST: Tsitsipas vs. Khachanov (ESPN)
- 3:30 AM EST: Djokovic vs. Paul (ESPN)
