Khyber53

Really looking forward to this Friday's episode. This series wayyyy exceeded my expectations.

Dude, we were friend zoned way early into this courtship. Any interest paid to us is just to make others jealous and run up the price.

The read sounds interesting and isn't one of the big OT prospects out there from Northwestern as well?

Bezos Bozos.

Like I said, we still could be in that mode and I don't think I'd have any trouble with that.

The guy has a lot of money to get rid of. He strikes me as the give most of it away rather than hand it down to his kids kind of guy. Of course, if he just left 10% of his estimated $2 billion estate to his family, they'd have to somehow make it through life after splitting a measly $200 million. It'll be tough, but they'll somehow pull through.

If a team had a good offensive line and a strong defense, Teddy can work for them. We had neither of those last season and he just couldn't operate outside of that window. He could also be a prime prospect for someone like Jacksonville to take as a warm-up act and bench coach for their QB. That's what I thought we would be doing with him here and we still could be looking at that possibility. A good part of the problem we had with Teddy last season was Teddy, but it wasn't the entire problem. Our o-line was taken from the cast of Little Giants and our defense was Swiss cheese in cleats. We had receivers like no other team and a fairly okay running game, but no TE work and an offensive coordinator who literally could not watch the entire field. And don't get me started on not having CMC for most of the year -- that alone probably cost us four or more games.

A couple of flashes, but a lot of time on the bench while we fielded the "Last Lap All-Stars" on defense. Maybe he'll come back, get a chance and make the most of it. If not, meh.

Good for him. And yeah, he looked the part on the show.

I've been saying it for a while now and I'm going to keep saying it: Mac Jones will be our pick. And he'll be the right pick. I know, a lot of folks more in the know are saying he's a bust, doesn't have it, would be a wasted pick. Heard the same thing, from a lot of the same people, when I said CMC would be our pick at #8. They were wrong, so wrong, then and they are wrong again. People point at Jones and say he is a product of the system. He had a pro quality O-line. Pro-level receivers and RB. Had pro-level coaching and game planning. Pro-type program all around. He had everything a professional football team should be able to provide him, right? So how did he do? The guy was accurate (311-422, 77.4%, 4500 yards in 13 games, 11.7 yds avg, 41 TD, 4 INT), won every game he played in last season (including a playoff game AND the national championship) and even Nick Saban praised the guy's maturity and leadership. He's not a gym rat, he's not the tallest guy out there and he's certainly not the fastest. But he wins. He works. He does the film study. He reads the defense. He spreads the ball around. To the right team. He's the pick. If not, then we will live to regret it big time.

If we decide that there isn't a franchise QB at our pick in the draft, then we pick the best player available and continue the rebuild. If that means Bridgewater gets another season, I'm not upset with that. There is a chance with better protection and another year as a starter we would see some improvement with Teddy. It would be a better move than investing big in a reclamation project like Darnold, Carr or someone of their stripe. In the end, Teddy would have a year's head start on upgrading and we'd only have his contract to deal with rather than two contracts of that level to pay at once.

They got rid of Cam because this was Cam's team. There was no doubt about it, any new coach coming in would either be beholding to Cam's wishes or he'd have to move him away. Cam's diminishing capabilities on the field (his charisma was completely unaffected by injuries) only made the decision easier. For a complete rebuild, Cam had to be shown the door. New coach had to be the biggest dog in the yard, just like Steve Smith had to be moved out to let Cam take the leadership role.

Oh bother.

Nope. Nope. Nope. Someone will. Someone may find there's an injury lurking unseen, though, something soft tissue that won't be easy to catch on medical exams.

I could see Teddy working out really well for Belichick. Better than he did here. There was something nearly collegiate about Brady's calling the offense at the later part of the season. Hopefully he learned a lot (and will get up into the danged coach's box for a good view). Not saying it hurt Bridgewater's performance, but yeah, I am. It hurt the team for the coordinator to not have a good view of the entire field. He couldn't see defensive movement tendencies and had to rely on what the receivers were telling them about how open they were on any given play (never trust a receiver on this -- they are always open).

Give me Peyton's arm, Brady's vision and Tarkenton's ability to move. Let Luke teach him to read defenses. I'm not asking for much.

I think he'll have his best season to date this coming year. I think he has a personal need to put up hall of fame numbers and set records. He'll knock down at least one more record this coming season. The kid is just that good.

Yanno, I'm just hoping that accuracy, leadership and reading a defense are higher priorities than athleticism for our next starting QB. He can be as immobile as a second generation Manning as long as he can get the ball out quick, accurately and to the receiver who can make the most of it. A Mahomes or Wilson is fantastic if you've got one, but there sure are a lot of QBs who've been touted as the next ones who were just second rate versions of them. Great mobile QBs aren't the norm, no matter how sought after they are, they are rare finds.

If Cam were still healthy and able to actually compete, then this would be a big deal. Honestly, Carolina wouldn't have moved on from him. He wasn't healthy 2018, he was really bad off in 2019, he got cut here and performed poorly in New England for the 2020 season. I hate that it worked out that way, but almost every great football player's career ends earlier than they want and mostly due to injuries if they were ever really good. Cam's at that point. Has been at it. Did Rivera ruin his career? Quit trying to blame anything but the fact that football is a massively dangerous contact sport. What do you think "leave everything out on the field" means? This is the nature of the game, and it's rough when it takes out one of your heroes. It's rough every time.

Here's the deal. I still think pursuing Watson is a bad idea. It's like being at a used car lot and telling them, nope it's just too much money for a car I really shouldn't buy. The next thing you know, everyone comes out of the woodwork to explain how we can afford it by jiggling the numbers, getting some easy financing, put some additional money down now to ease it up later. And yet, it still comes down to it being a used car, with some very rough mileage (sure, it is just a couple of years old, but...) with long-term payments that I'm saddled with. Sure, it looks fancy, it'll impress the neighbors and all the other people want it sooo bad... I'm just not buying it. I get a bad feeling about it and what it will do for me (or won't) down the road.

It's easy for you and I to negotiate millions of dollars away from contracts, since they are pretty imaginary for us. For guys who actually have contracts that pay out $35 million, they may be a bit more reticent to waive those earnings in the effort to be a good guy.

And that's an awful lot to work with. Watson's expected to cost $35 million, which doesn't sound bad, but if we picked say a QB at #8, we're looking at I believe a contract of $2.8 million... leaving us about $32 million to work with for say O-line, retaining DJ, Burns' contract, etc... Just saying, Watson might be worth that $35 million on the open market, but the opportunity cost of us taking him gets steep considering the other things we can do with that money.

Once we basically sell the farm to by Watson's favor, you can pretty much write off everyone else on the team. When DJ's contract time comes around, he'll be too expensive based on what little, tiny bit of cap space we have left. Pretty much the same for anyone else we don't trade away to get Watson. Really, let's just keep working at building our team and quit trying to buy something off the shelf at a wild premium. And that's even if Houston is willing to give him up. Heck, prices might fall amazingly if he has another season playing for the Texans.

Lol. I'm not triggered, just amazed. There's a difference between price and value. You're hung up on price, but don't really appreciate the value. There wasn't a guy on that list who had turned in a single season like CMC had.

Let's see, so the Panthers would be Watson, a single-syllable last named DT, a couple of linebackers a few folks have heard of and 49 JAGs after making that trade. Oh yeah, with an unproven coach and a team owner who "knows football." Yeah, that worked well in Houston last year. How about we don't trade our rebuild in progress for someone's broken down plans?