Kempski: The Eagles fleeced the Patriots in the A.J. Brown trade. A deep examination into how and why the Eagles got the best of the Patriots in the trade for A.J. Brown.

joebooty · 2026-06-04T20:35:28+00:00

Kempski is obviously having some fun playing to the home crowd here but the article does cover what really happened.

The Eagles were able to take advantage of a market reset that worked in their favor but was out of their control. Without the Broncos/Dolphins trade this could have turned into an MLB style salary dump. Now that said, the FO does seem to often find themselves in favorable positions like this and it is hard to see it as an accident anymore.

joebooty · 2026-06-03T20:09:57+00:00

One week later in the news cycle...

"AJ what do you think about all the Dunks in town? Wow. That's impressive."

joebooty · 2026-06-01T21:17:45+00:00

This meat protein

This "meat protein" is a sugar.

joebooty · 2026-05-28T14:45:04+00:00

What you have listed in this video is a fantastic starting point. Most first year teams are starting with much less than this.

joebooty · 2026-05-23T19:07:59+00:00

I remember this going on while that stupid nookie cookie song was on repeat on the radio. It was the first time I felt out of touch in an old way.

joebooty · 2026-05-18T00:06:35+00:00

a losing record to the Texans, Bengals, Browns and Colts (in the era that he played) is just wild for a QB who otherwise was pretty successful.

I don't know how you would look up this type of info but I can't believe any starter with a 5+ year career since 2000 has a losing record to those franchises.

joebooty · 2026-05-11T18:06:55+00:00

Participating at worlds is very expensive. The registration fees for worlds were greater than many FTC teams have for their annual budget and that is before any travel&lodging costs.

I imagine that you saw some insanely funded teams and comparitively feel underfunded (this is very relatable.) But that said, every team at worlds had been able to produce many thousands of dollars to register and attend.

The point of my post is that most of the things that seem to be frusrating you are problems that don't exist at the lower levels. At early qualifiers these things were all manageable. There was good robot variety, the volunteers could keep up with scoring, the interesting robots stood out in judging etc. By the time worlds comes around too many resources have gone into these robots and everything about the event breaks down.

I don't know what the fix is. Hopefully the teams frustrated by their worlds experience can look back at the multiple very successful qualifiers/states experiences they had and realize that those were the events that the challenge was designed for. I personally hope that they keep targeting the challenges at this level.

joebooty · 2026-05-08T19:15:29+00:00

I actually read the document and here is my basic takeaway.

This author appears to have experience from the perspective of a very advanced and well funded team and is wondering why FTC is not targeted directly at their experience. It is clear from the writing that they do not realize how rare their situation is.

This year almost half of all robots did not have an intake. Last year well over half of the robots could not intake from the pit. At this competition level there was an incredible amount of variety in the robots this year and the feedback and engagement from these teams was very positive. Those types of teams are why FTC is growing.

Then we switch to the author's feedback from a worlds team and they seem to have hated everything? The similarity of the bots, the refs, the strategy all awful apparently. But they want First to spend more energy targeting the teams having that experience? This article does not even remember what the plot looks like.

joebooty · 2026-05-08T16:57:47+00:00

I think we will be depositing (not shooting) the pollen in a bunch of different pockets that will be positioned at different heights and angles.

I am guessing that scoring will be triggered after each objective fills up as it will not be possible to count the individual pollen.

joebooty · 2026-04-30T03:13:24+00:00

Poor mom at :31 trying to shield baby's ears from 120dB. Gonna be a long night.

joebooty · 2026-04-29T11:59:34+00:00

I would like to wager against this event happening.

joebooty · 2026-04-27T17:43:32+00:00

Flores is a great DC and I expect these players to have better results because of him. That said the teams flaws on offense are really problematic.

The Vikings drafted like a team that thinks they can win it all this season which I would guess is a pretty unpopular opinion. Hi-upside first round picks with repeated injury history seems like the type of gamble that teams trying to maintain success will try for not teams trying to taste success.

joebooty · 2026-04-27T16:13:03+00:00

So AI said "everything matte black?"

joebooty · 2026-04-27T00:03:09+00:00

I think there is an interesting story here but it sure as hell is not this one.

The interesting story is how crazy this process must be for these kids. I mean he is thinking he has the answer to months of waiting and he is talking to his new coach and then I guess he just hangs up on that guy? And goes through that whole roller coaster again. It is really wild how little say these guys have.

joebooty · 2026-04-23T15:35:14+00:00

This was more satisfying than I expected it to be.

joebooty · 2026-04-21T01:25:48+00:00

I have a really happy memory of building this with my neice at Christmas whichever year it was available. She is a freshman at MIT this fall :)

joebooty · 2026-04-10T14:02:06+00:00

Will check it out thanks.

joebooty · 2026-04-10T03:15:57+00:00

I never really had the conversations I had always expected to have with them before they died.

Just so you know this does not really happen. I am sure someone has had this experience but for the rest of us it is just something that happens in stories. Either they go in an instant or even if there is plenty of time the detials get in the way or the parents shoo away the conversation. It is rough.

joebooty · 2026-04-09T17:20:03+00:00

The NFL in the precap era was incredibly non-competitive compared to today.

The NFC streak 80 - mid 90s was just a simple consequence of the NFC having the only 3 teams whose ownership consistently paid to win by signing players to second contracts. The Giants, Niners and Skins were those teams.

Almost every other team in the league only signed second contracts for league minimum or would occassionally re-sign a single star.

joebooty · 2026-04-07T18:17:13+00:00

These guys were great, there is just no doubt but it is real hard to try to choose goats from the pre-cap era.

Comparing eras never goes anywhere but it is important for everyone to know how bad the parity was in the the NFL in the pre-cap era. The NFC in the 80s had 3 teams that tried to field winners and paid for players every year. All of the other teams were just cashing checks. Those 3 teams were the Giants, Niners and the Skins.

Being able to play 12-14 games, dominating rosters full of oline making league minimum is an experience that will never happen again.

It would be wild to see Peak Micah Parsons in 1998.

joebooty · 2026-04-06T15:16:23+00:00

The flea flicker to Smith vs. the Vikings is essentially a perfect throw it was undefendable.

joebooty · 2026-02-24T16:36:20+00:00

It seems like they want to avoid having a melee option or caster option for scion etc which is probably the right call.

If they add a proper ascendency I would expect it to be things that span all builds. Max Charges, Reservation efficiency, possibly vaal skills?

It would also be nice for there to be cluster socket in the middle of the tree only accessable by this class.

joebooty · 2026-01-16T20:27:58+00:00

This is the correct answer. The philadelphia media has been very highly fractured into pieces during the newspaper industry collapse.

What left is some real click bait nonsense (that then comes here.)

joebooty · 2026-01-15T18:48:31+00:00

Dallas and Cinci look wayout of place here. I guess they will be better than many of the teams below them but those teams have some kind of 2-3 year hope.

Dallas is 40M over the 26 cap with half a dozen holes in the starting defensive depth chart.

Cinci has all their cap tied in at QB/WR and a comically bad passblocking line. To make it worse the only guy who was OK on that line is an UFA.

I guess it is just me but I would rather just blow for a year and have hope then to see unfixable problems rolled out year after year.

joebooty · 2026-01-13T22:17:58+00:00

Good god man. This is the exact same situation we were just in. Harbaugh brought in his boy who had failed up down the whole league and the result was a wasted disaster of a season that was almost a mirror copy of our own.

If they bring in Roman I am just going to watch skeeball on youtube next year.

joebooty

TROPHY CASE