Khyber53

I could have very well have been wrong about that. So many names swirling around from so many different programs.

I dunno, a lot of folks fought over Watson this past year. Wilson probably got some attention. Sometimes you work hard to bring in a crowd of suckers to sell a lame horse and someone walks out thinking they bought a thoroughbred just to find out they got hosed. This may well be one of those times, or it might not. The cost of it being one of those times far, far outweighs the rewards right now. If he were truly life-changing and perfectly healthy, the team that has built its entire offense around him and made its entire coaching plan based on getting the most out of him would pony up whatever it took to make him happy and keep the ball rolling along. They haven't succeeded in doing that yet. That should give us pause right there. Lamar is a great player, but his style of play requires a team built to suit his skill set, just like Cam Newton did in his day, too. Those teams are harder to build than one for a more traditional pocket passer. And they are very hard to build from scratch if one sixth or more of your salary cap is tied up in one guy's contract.

It's not an analogy, it's an aphorism.

I was going to say that we need to draft one, but you make a good argument here. That new TE coach we snagged though has some connections to the draft this year, so I wouldn't be surprised to see a reuniting moment.

Those big casinos aren't built on winners, they're built on idiots who say gamble big.

Let's just let other teams fight over and overpay for Lamar. Good guy, good player, too rich, too risky for our blood at this time.

I've been pounding on the table over the years that the biggest success factor in a QB is processor speed rather than physical size, speed or arm strength. But I had no idea that anyone had developed a real way to measure it. This is pretty cool and could change a lot of drafting info. I wonder how it changes over time for players, too, especially after taking all the hits (or delivering them). Could this also be a predictor for brain and nerve damage over time? I hope we'll hear more about this and I wonder if during the interviews portion of the Combine if our guys will be asking if the player would be willing to release their score to them...

Someone from this division will probably land Carr and they'll have a two year advantage over the rest of the division, even if another team hits on a good QB in the draft. He's not going to be cheap, though. So is that $35 million a year (and probably more) right now in our cap situation a good investment for a quick run at the division and the playoffs or could the money be spent better? I know what I think, but I wish I knew for sure how it would shake out. He could have a great eight years ahead of him and mesh beautifully with our WR corps and thrive behind our improved offensive line. But I'd said the same thing in hopefulness about Baker Mayfield, too. And that ended up being just tragic and painful to watch. Woof.

So, what you're saying is there's no way in heck that Robbie, errr Chosen, Anderson will make it back onto this roster???

This may prove to be true.

At those prices I'm not sure it wouldn't be smarter for NYG to tag Barkley and enter into the Derek Carr bidding war.

Bozeman has been great here, but that $16.6 million is a huuuuuge hunk of money. He deserves way more than the $2.8 million he got last season if we want to continue with him. If we put him somewhere in the top 10 salaries for centers in the NFL, we're looking between roughly $8 million and $12 million per season. And that's going to require some serious cap massaging and converting a lot of the salary into bonuses... which oftentimes end up as dead cap with us. He's 28, almost 29 by the time the season gets into full swing... could we get enough out of him to roll out a full five year contract and not regret it down the line?

Actually, Daniel Jeremiah has a lot of close ties to North Carolina, and went to Appalachian State, so he's usually one of the better when it comes to assessing things for the Panthers. This time, though, I was like "he's crazy." Then I looked at what Taylor Moton is going to be costing us over the next three seasons. We need him for 2023 (and cutting him would not in any way improve our cap) but in 2024 and 2025 we'd save $10.7 million and $17.5 million by cutting him and letting someone else pick up the tag. And Moton, while still good, hasn't been great and those salaries he's scheduled for really demand greatness. A starting tackle on the first round salary schedule for four years and with a fifth year extension looks really attractive from a dollars and cents sense. Bookending it with another first rounder (Icky) on the same line looks really genius both in cost and impact. Still, I'd rather see a DE or TE in that spot for us.

We shall see.

No, it doesn't. Taking Richardson with so little experience and rough performance based purely on speculated potential is well, just a bad idea.

I really just can't wait to see the free agency moves, the draft, training camp, preseason and finally, the season start again. I haven't been this excited and optimistic about the Panthers in half a decade.

Dude's gone and not missed. I wish him the best but really, he's someone else's headache now. And Arizona has a whole, heaping pile of them. They are the Divas of the Desert.

I've said it elsewhere, many times over. Here we go again. I'd stay out of the Carr, Lamar and probably Aaron Rodgers kerfuffle that is going to see at least two teams overpay and get cheated. Look for another vet to fall out of contention who can serve as a good bridge/backup. Let the coaching staff take a good, solid look at Matt Corral -- which I am sure they have already done at this point. If they think there is a possibility there, go with him and look to add that veteran presence to help him mature quickly. If he's not the guy, then move to the draft. In the draft, forget about the massive manboy crushes the four top QBs are attracting right now. Two out of four are statistically going to wash out and cost teams mightily. There's a chance that it's three out of four. Let someone else waste good potential on bad returns. One out of the four will most likely be excellent, but which one... no one knows. In the first round, we set back and let the worst teams pursue those QBs, leaving much better players on the board at #9 than one would normally expect. We take the best player available. My pecking order for this would be DE, TE, LB, CB. At number nine it is almost guaranteed that at least one of bona fide best at their position players will be left in one of those spots. Take them. In our first pick in the second round, grab the best of the remaining positional guys from what is left from that list of four. Stay out of the quarterback race at all until the end of the second, probably the early third round. There are going to be some very good QBs there... Tennessee, Georgia and TCU will all have QBs out there still, perhaps not Madden-darlings, but solid, battle tested and championship earning guys. There's where the finds of the draft will be. Grab the one that best suits our coaching staff's long-term vision. Go into camp with them and Corral competing for the job, spurred along and cushioned by a good journeyman vet. Wish PJ Walker the best and maybe give Darnold a chance for back-up QB money, perhaps with some incentives for playoff performance. Build the team they want and give some QBs a chance. If those QBs don't clear the bar, we still have high picks out there and the perennially bad teams will have probably four high pick QBs filling their rosters and won't be in the immediate running next year.

You realize that by your own statement, grabbing those moves in the first round neither helped nor harmed them. But they did hurt the teams. Most of them have had changes of coaching since then (or are on the cusp of it). In each case, it was opportunities squandered. And in the 49ers case, it was just blind luck that the injury to Lance panned out so well, between Jimmy G and Purdy. Opportunity cost is a real, real thing. We shouldn't trade up, particularly when we are in a cap crunch like we are. We need to bring in multiple new guys on draft contracts to help us offset some really bad contracts and the lingering dead cap money from others. If anything, we should be willing to trade back and pick up more capital to spend less capital. Trading up into the first four picks of the draft, by the actual choices made historically over the last 8-9 years is just a terrible decision. The results don't lie.

Moore, by cost, should be our star player right now. And I've said for years, if your star player is a WR, you've got major issues. They cost too much, they don't touch the ball on every play and if they become unmotivated or just feel not as competitive, it will wreck your gameplan. Or one good DB can ruin it for you.

Doesn't it always end badly for the Cardinals? Not even just recently, but historically.

There's some very, very important information here that is missing. So, let me fill you in. Who got picked with those trade ups??? For the first example, the number 1 pick was used to get Jared Goff. Whew, not great. For the second example, pick number two was for Mitch Trubisky. Roundly considered a massive bust. For the third example, pick number two was for Carson Wentz. He couldn't outplay Taylor Heinicke. At all. For the fourth example, pick number three was for Trey Lance. Injured, so incomplete, but will probably be carrying a clip board behind last pick in the same draft... who played very well For the fifth example, pick number three went for Sam Darnold. Y'all know him. For the sixth example, the pick number four went to grab WR Sammy Watkins. He's been on six teams since he was drafted, the longest stint in Kansas City. Not worth the trade.. None of these guys were worth what was traded away for them. Keep that in mind when we look at the possibility of giving away a lot to move up in the draft.

This ^ 100%. And even the part about it feeling weird. If he's on the table for them, then he's there for a really good reason. If he's not, then there's a really good reason. We aren't approaching this like we're trying to recruit some guy with the promise of a scholarship and a starting gig vs some SEC team. Right now, even if they decide that Darnold will be the starter, I'm going to go, okay... you guys know better than me.

There are a load of excellent TEs in this class. I've even said I wouldn't hate taking one in the 1st round if he was still the BPA at 9 or even trade back a few spots to do so.