Sgt Schultz

If I missed something earlier, I apologize. I zipped through the earlier posts. Besides, I love it when I can end a week in violent agreement with somebody!

You guys are being to hard on the idea. I think he is right. In fact, if they don't want to trade Watson, we should trade our next three first rounders for a package of three third rounders and sixth rounders and maybe some random fifth and seventh rounders. That would have been dangerous when Hurney was around, given his track record after the first round, but we should be okay now. Think of the trouble we avoid. But then there is the opposite argument:

The problem with that theory is what does it do to his value to the next team? He is only tradable if others want him. It they see him purposely stinking it up, are they going to take the chance? Sure, he's good, until he doesn't want to be, then he is not only not good, he is purposely bad. He would be cutting his own throat in that sense. Sometimes you can do something that compromises your own integrity so bad, nobody wants to touch you. And that assumes his own teammates don't take their own revenge during practices.

That is certainly true, overall. But, remember KC's offense was busy stepping on its own feet for most of three-plus quarters in the Super Bowl. They would drive, get in scoring position or the edge of it, then make a negative play. Meanwhile, their defense kept the game close enough to allow the offense to come back. They did, in the last 7-10 minutes of the game. So while KC's defense was not to be mistaken for Tampa's, they stepped up when needed in the Super Bowl. They were not a shut down defense int hat game, but they were good enough to control damage until their offense could finally get out of its own way.

And asking "what do you think" or "who do you think we should go after" is a very long way from putting in writing that you will ask "what do you think" or "who do you think we should go after."

That perfectly describes my thinking. There is no breaking point because there is no expectation on my part.

Yes, that is the same Mel Kiper. I think Ancestry.com probably has him linked as some cousin of Hurney.

You guys win. We should rehash the same stuff ad nauseum. Definitely a good use of time. Carry on.

Brees base salary (which was the list I was looking at) was basically minimum wage, so that part is absurd. What people don't seem to get is this: that is done. If you could hire Hurney back to fire him again, great. But we can't even do that. The question is not "why did we sign Teddy" but what we do from here? I swear, this place is like the people I work with. Sometimes things go bad, and they spend more time complaining as assigning blame than they do asking how we make it not bad anymore. In this case, it would be like having one of those meetings after they fired the program manager and spending the time stewing over "what was he thinking?" Who cares, he's gone, how do we fix it? FWIW, I joined one of those meetings once during a feeding frenzy, had enough in short order and spouted out "just blame me. I don't even know what the hell you are talking about or sure, but if we are going to spend this meeting talking about who to blame for 45 minutes instead of taking 5 minutes to figure out how to fix it, blame me so we can move on." They then denied they were trying to blame anybody! So I have a history of questioning what the hell are we doing and why?

Again, pretty much middle of the pack this year. The 2021 lists I see are tainted not only because Dak is absent, but they also contain Brees' renegotiated salary which gets about five asterisks. I have no idea what they will do with Big Ben or Alex Smith, so it about all evens out, I think. Also again, people are jumping off the cliff about a GM who is gone. This is one of the remaining gifts of his that keep on giving, but I highly doubt Teddy will be 10th in 2022 because the way his contract is structured, he is going to have to have people saying he looks Russell Wilson or that they are sure glad we did not trade the farm for Watson (if anybody does) to collect on that money.

I don't think Tepper thought this roster was a winner or close to it, and he gave us every indication he expected it to be While Rhule said (or implied) it was, I doubt he thought so, either. Whether Hurney thought so or not is an entirely different matter, but as much as I pick on him, I doubt he did, either. In each case, I suspect the thought was it was as good as they were going to put on the field after flushing the toilet. But everybody had to know they had just flushed the toilet. Hurney probably thought it was enough to keep his job, but thankfully Tepper did not agree.

True, but not when adjusted for the market conditions in the NFL. It is not like we inked circa 2015 or 16 Cam to a new deal in 2019, released him, and then paid Teddy dramatically more than we paid Cam a year later. What we paid Teddy is pretty much average of the 2020 starting QB market, maybe a little below. He was 19th last year, when a top-level starting QB not on a rookie contract would have been pushing $30M. He is 17th this year. Just by the very nature of the salary cap trend prior to 2021, the contracts handed out in 2020 are likely to be some of the biggest ever handed out. That is simply because they are based on 2020 money, not 2015, or 2010, or 2005. 2021 may be different because the NFL economy has gone into a recession of sorts. I expect to see salaries flat to a decline this year, and a lot of one or two year deals because of it. But I ask again, why do we have a new thread on this seemingly four times a week? Especially when not only has the check been written, but the guy who wrote it no longer has the checkbook, the debit card, or any credit cards.

This. Whether it worked out or not, this was the rationale. We overpaid because we wanted him, largely because of his familiarity with the offense. We know New England was interested in him, so we "bid" high to get him inked, whether smart or not. His contract is basically three years with a relatively cheap out after two. In terms of Hurney contracts, it is cheap. There is probably not team in this league that does not have an acquisition that didn't turn out the way they wanted. He may be our starter in week one of 2021. That was known from day one, and if he is, hopefully we have somebody new (and good) waiting in the wings. We have not had somebody approaching good (or arguably decent), let alone new and good, behind the starter in a while. Now the bigger question: why do we have a thread asking this same question four times a week? We have a lot of people whose motto is "we're not happy unless we're not happy." Instead of looking forward, they are obsessed with what is done.

Superb Owl bound

I saw that, too. It sounded like one of my posts, where I get stuck in between two ways of wording something and what comes out sounds like it is written in Klingon or an incoherent version of Yoda. One casualty of the latest forum upgrade appears to be a limited time to edit such murdering of the King's English. Now, my gaffes can live forever.

Well, if it is any consolation I looked right at it and didn't notice it.....and I usually notice those types of things. Let's hope there is a lesson that sticks here with the kid and it is not just "they made me do it." Contrary to popular belief, kids can learn things! Adults, well, that is more often than not another story. The other lesson is Newton's Third Law applies to everything. I suspect the kid did not expect that dreaded equal and opposite reaction, which sometimes stretches the term "equal."

Assuming we do not do anything stupid with our draft picks, I think the roster will be better. The underlying assumption there is we have Moton back. That said, that improvement in the roster may not translate to much in wins and losses. IF the "big four" QBs are gone by the time #8 rolls around, and IF we are still at #8, there is a bigger likelihood we will find an OL who can step in and provide quality starts. Contrary to popular opinion, I can assure everyone that the top 12-15 players in positions we need will not all be gone by the #8 pick. Somebody said something earlier about it doing no good to make the playoffs and be "one and done" because we don't have a QB. It doesn't do any good to make the playoffs and be "one and done" because we do have a QB but not enough else. We've done the QB with too little else (specifically on offense), now we need to try and get the happy median right.

There are certain things you don't want to have happen in your life Hearing the tornado warning sirens from your trailer in Wichita Falls, TX Sitting in the cabin of an airplane, listening to an announcement from the captain which abruptly ends when he says "oh sh1t" Being projected as a fifth round pick, and late in the second round your phone rings with the caller ID saying "Marty Hurney" Being a QB and having Charlie Weis raving about you

You may have tried this, WarHeel, but I can't play them unless I right click on the link and select either Open Link in New Tab or Window. Otherwise, I get nothing.

Why is it I have a completely different feeling about freeing up cap space now than I did when Hurney still had the checkbook?

Exhibit A: Look at the Atlanta Falcons cap space the next couple of years. Then compare the number of players going into their "top 51" vs. everybody else's, especially those who appear to be in worse cap shape. Spoiler alert: Some teams below them in cap space are in better shape than they are.

You may be correct in that conclusion. Whatever we gained last year in terms of talent could be given up in that or a similar deal and the "rebuild clock" reset. Getting Watson is a value proposition, like any other decision, complete with opportunity costs and unintended consequences. Just because people don't recognize that does not make it less so. Just because they try to shout down people who point that out also does not make it less so. I'm certainly not opposed to putting him in a Panther uniform. What I don't want to do is achieve that in a manner that has us describing our offensive philosophy with "we have Deshaun Watson" as a result. We did that with Cam, only this time instead of pure stupidity it would be pure inability because we handcuffed ourselves. Regardless of why, not much gets added to the trophy case that way. What is going in our favor is that it is totally in character for the Texans to play this hand into a complete washout for them. That is assuming they decide to play it at all.

I am on the year 1.1 train of thought here (even sillier than 1.5). Yes, on the calendar it is year two. But, most new regimes are hired AFTER the cratering year. Rivera took over at the bottom of the fall, not during the fall. He didn't have to ride the team into the ground before the rebuild. But, what happened to the roster during Fox's last year more or less happened last year. The great purge happened under Rhule, not Rivera or an interim. Then add to the picture there was a lot of things that simply could not happen because of the pandemic response, and it is hard to call 2020 a "full year." The added .1 (or maybe it is around .25) is from our draft last year and a stray signing or two. It was too well orchestrated to not consider it at all in this equation.

I don't see us cutting ties with Paradis for the reason many have said. Having to start 3 new OL is tough enough without replacing the center with somebody completely new, as well. I'm not sure why we would restructure him, either. He is 32, on the last year of his contract, and it is almost inconceivable that we would extend him or resign him beyond this year. Whatever we would save this year, when our expectations are not all that high, only gets turned into dead cap next year or later, when we might be in contention.

That came up in some other random thread a few days ago. The Falcons have a lot of money tied up in relatively few players. 2022 is not great for them, either. If people just look at the cap space numbers, they look okay. Then you look at how many players are making up their cap number, and they have some work to do. Spotrac has them at 26th in terms of "top 51 cap" for 2021. Not great, but not panic mode. But, their "top 51" is composed of 39 players. They are probably only ahead of the Saints and the Eagles in terms of the actual cap condition. The Eagles woes are due to a lot of dead cap, almost all of it tied to Wentz. So, they have to add players to get to 51 despite their cap deficit, they have fewer players to maneuver to get cap relief, and they have a couple that even when their dead cap is surpassed by their cap hit staying on the roster, the dead cap is still enough to choke a horse. It is a heck of a mess in Atlanta.