Matt Holliday appears to be heading to Oakland. I’ll spend more time looking at this one next spring, but my initial reaction is that this is positive – it’s the first time in a long while that the A’s have been a buyer, not a seller. Oakland fans deserve that. Holliday has to be relieved, too – given that he knew he was leaving Colorado there were certainly less hitter friendly places he could have wound up.
The Cowboys look like they could get a major boost this weekend. Clinton Portis is struggling with injury, and he is reportedly only 50-50 to play against Dallas. Even if he does play then he won’t be at his best. Dallas needs all the help it can get, so not having to play against an opponent’s best player would be a serious gift.
I have tried and tried and tried, but I can’t find a single reason to be truly interested by tonight’s football game. Thank god for beer.
Antonio McDyess has been waived by Denver. I’m not totally surprised, but I admit that I thought it made more sense for Denver to keep him around for depth. Half the teams in the league have reportedly expressed interest in him, but the likely choice seems to be that he will sit for a month and then re-sign with the Pistons – like Brent Barry did in San Antonio last year.
Running against the Packers hasn’t exactly been tough this year, but it just got much easier. Nick Barnett tore a ligament in his knee, and the linebacker will miss the rest of the season. So much for that promising start in Green Bay.
Mehmet Okur has left the Jazz to return to Turkey to tend to a family illness. Okur is Utah’s second best scorer, with 15.5 points and 6.5 boards per game. No word of how long he will be gone, or what the impact will be. For a loose comparison we could look to the Capitals and their loss of Alexander Ovechkin under similar circumstances. The Caps needed a shootout for a win, and were blown out in their other game.
Carson Palmer was reportedly going to return after the bye, but he won’t even be practicing this week. He’s still working on his elbow, and it isn’t going quickly. I’ll personally be a bit surprised if he bothers to come back at all this year. What’s the point on a team this bad?
