WTKA Roundtable 10/10/2024: The Dry Pellets Conspiracy

Things Discussed:

• Pre-show Tiger Talk: The trick is blowing out arms and managing your pitching staff. Tigers lost 4/5 starters from their expected rotation so they had to do the Bill James thing and do away with them. The way: counter the top of the order with a reliever, have your "starter" pitch 1.5 times through the lineup, go to your bullpen when you get back to the top of the order so the best hitters are never seeing the same pitcher twice.
• What a year: Tigers, Lions, and Michigan won playoff games in 2024 and the Wings and Pistons did not.
• Washington slip-ups: What can you fix, what can you not? Time to replace Evan Link—Persi is fine. Gonna go with Tuttle; that won't be a panacea but apparently they were preparing for him all along. Get Jyaire Hill some cleats.
• Defensively what's the problem? On standard downs they're elite, on passing downs they get too creative, and they're creating busts. Zeke Berry is not Mike Sainristil. You don't play Jyaire Hill like he's Aamir Hall: have him roll up and play some man. Makari Paige: he's a senior but he's not a Peppers who can line up at the LB level and run with Giles Jackson.
• Mitigating factors: Minter and Mac had long ramp-ups not Texas, USC and @Washington in their first three games. Wink came in thinking he gets to run an NFL defense and he's not used to playing with guys who have major holes in their games.
• Similarity to early Mac defenses: It wasn't until Week 8 that they could adjust to tempo (and even then they got caught in late changes). Macdonald came in running weird stuff and then learned to trust his best players.
• Evan Link: Brian still has him grading out terribly, Craig thought he's been better. Sam thinks Persi deserves a shot to start at RT.
• The "HOT coverage"—coach Twitter can come up with some reason it makes sense, but if you're running something you can't run that's on the coaches. Also it was tempo and Guy didn't know what was happening.
• Wink dialed it back for Arkansas State and Minnesota, but when he's under pressure he reverts to his weird stuff. Gotta know you don't have to be the answer; you can let your guys be the answer.
• Last offseason was a failure. This offseason is going to make or break this staff.
• Tuttle is not going to fix everything. He had a two-man route and a "you gotta throw that" to Amorion Walker in single coverage and didn't pull the trigger, then fumbled. His interception was way behind his target.
• Washington was slipping too. But when they fell over it's just because they suck at this. Did they not water the turf? Was it on purpose to give UW an edge? Let's create a pellets conspiracy!
• THAT WAS A JOKE; READERS I SWEAR TO G-D DO NOT CREATE A WET PELLETS CONSPIRACY.