tukafan21

Burns being our best player actually probably hurts us right now more than it helps us. Teams are able to formulate their entire offensive gameplan around Burns and taking him out of the game because they aren't afraid of the rest of our defense in the slightest. No matter how elite a pass rusher is, unless you have other quality pass rushers to make the blocking scheme account for them and/or quality DB's to make the QB hold onto the ball longer, they are going to be minimized when they send double and triple teams at that pass rusher on every pass play. In a vacuum I'd love to keep Burns long term, but when you factor in the contract situation and the state of the rest of the team, keeping him isn't the smart play for the long term success of the franchise, no other way around it at this point unfortunately.

For someone who has been screaming about opening up the piggy bank to sign Higgins in the offseaosn (assuming he doesn't get tagged and traded, which is most likely anyways)... You sure seem to not grasp that tagging Burns instead of having that cap space available will likely take us out of the Higgins running from the jump.

C'mon guy, it's been explained so many times, there is only a small portion of the fan base who doesn't want to pay him. It's just become clear that he wants much more than the team is willing to pay him or else they'd have been able to get a deal done before the season started. At this point it's not about "not paying him" as much as it is moving getting much needed assets while avoiding a messy situation. If we have to franchise tag him in the offseason, I don't think he'll ever play another down for us again, as I don't see him playing on the tag and if we still can't get a deal done by that point, we just won't be. That means if we tag him, we then have to keep about at least $20 Million of the cap open instead of being able to use it to sign other top free agents once FA begins. All for a player that we'll end up having to trade in the end anyways. Much better to trade him now, get those picks, and then be able to use that cap space on day 1 of free agency. Again man, as I've said to you before, you only look at the surface of things, do we want this player or that player, not at the functional dynamics about how the real life NFL operates. If you want your opinions to be taken seriously, you need to start factoring in things such as that, as it's critically important in a scenario such as this. Particularly because if we have to tag Burns and he somehow does sign it and play, that will almost assuredly carry a larger cap hit for 2024 than if we were to sign him to a long term deal with how cap hits get worked out in contract details. So if we tag him, then we actually need to allocate more cap room for him in 2024 than we would if we just had him under long term contract. Sure, if we then got a deal done for him, it would lower his cap hit for the season, but that wouldn't do us any good on day 1 of free agency, as we'd lose out on guys we could have signed with the cap space.

Most people here played college football?!?!?! I'll bet less than 1% of the people on this site played any college sport, let alone football. And if you mean playing HS football, the locker room dynamic from that compared to what an NFL QB does to mentor a rookie, isn't even in the same galaxy of comparison. Also, no, not any vet QB can properly teach a rookie QB all the dynamics that go into their job, at least not to the level you'd like to support your #1 draft pick at. You need someone who has been in the league for 10+ years as an occasional starter (like a Colt McCoy) or an actual longtime starter like Dalton. A 5th round pick isn't worth more than the mentorship that Dalton provides Bryce, which is why I'd do it if we also could swap TMJ for KJ Osborn, but not just Dalton for a pick.

TOTALLY different things to hear things from a teammate than it is a coach, have always seen coaches/players talk about how different it is. A coach needs to be hard on the player at times, the teammate is the one to then put their arm around them, pull them to the side, and re-lift their spirits, it's an entirely different dynamic. Coaches also don't spend a lot of time in the locker room, they have their own lockers/area and let the players have their own. That's where Dalton is most beneficial to Bryce, just being there for him and for Bryce to watch how a vet QB goes about his business on a day to day basis. It might seem dumb, especially for the #1 pick in the draft, but it's the little things like that, that can help rookies grow and learn faster than if they're trying to figure it out on their own or from an inexperienced backup/teammate. I'd guarantee if they traded Dalton (which in itself still seems very unlikely), they'd end up then signing someone like Colt McCoy to come in and replace Dalton's role of mentor, you don't leave that job to a Jake Luton type.

Said it in the other thread, Dalton is too important to Bryce's development to trade away for a mid to late round pick. However, if we can get KJ Osborn and a 4th for Dalton and TMJ, I'm all in on that trade. I think most likely scenario if they go the trade route would be for Jacoby. Howell is their starter, they're not contending so don't need to keep an experienced QB around in case he gets hurt, and they're in sell mode anyways.

Same reason I struggle to see how the Cardinals are going to be able to trade him very easily, the money owed on his contract. Unless the Cardinals are able to re-structure his contract to pay him a sizable signing bonus before a trade and eat a lot of the cost, he's owed a ton of money over the next few years, I doubt many teams have that cap room to take him on. If I'm reading it correctly, he's owed over $40 next year and over $50 the year after that. I'm not sure he puts them into SB contention this year and they'd just be better off re-signing Cousins again for a much cheaper number. More likely for them would be to go after Jacoby or someone like that.

This is just nonsense Look at our schedule, our 6 losses are against 4 first place teams and the other 2 losses are to teams who are in second place to one of those other losses. Dolphins, Lions, Seahawks, Falcons are all in first, Vikings and Saints are both in 2nd to one of them. Sure, maybe we should have been able to beat one or both of the Falcons or Saints, but realistically, we aren't a good enough team yet to beat the others. I'm not saying we're some amazing team of course, still have lots of holes and I'm not sold on Bryce having true elite potential, but we can be a decent team the rest of the year. Colts, Bears, Titans, Bucs, Saints, Falcons, Packers, Bucs are all winnable games, the Falcons and Saints are the only teams in that group that aren't below .500 and they're only each 4-4 themselves. I think they'll be able to ride this momentum to be up for and win the game against Frank's old team in the Colts at home, then carry that momentum to beat the bad Bears on the road to get to 3-6. Say we lose to the Cowboys and Jags as I figure we will and that is 8 losses. If we then go even just 3-3 in the other 6 games and we finish 6-11. Not quite what we wanted coming into the season, but that would be a more than respectable finish for a team that started 0-6 and looked as bad as we did in doing so.

I think it was right on the borderline of the flag or not. Rookie QB isn't getting that call, the Mahomes, Burrow, Hurts, Allen, etc of the world probably get that one. Would have liked it in the moment, but not one to be upset about

I'd prefer to keep him around to mentor Bryce But if we could maybe send them Dalton and TMJ for KJ Osborn and a 3rd or 4th round pick, I think I'd jump all over that

Just went and looked at his contract, looks like we're probably stuck with him for next year as well, it would cost us about $750k of the cap to cut him. And I don't mean that would be the dead cap hit, that means his dead cap hit is about $750k higher than his cap hit if on the team. Even with as bad as he's been, I can't see them using $8.4 million of the cap next year to ask him to leave, just pay the 7.7 Million to have him be the most expensive backup in the league (and then eat the $3 million dead cap to cut him after next season).

Thielen - A+ Hurst and Chark - D+ Sanders - D- And you left one out... Dalton - A Dalton has more than done his job in being there to mentor Bryce, help him learn how to be a QB in this league, and then step in and play if/when needed. Chark might get a C- if just based on his play itself, but when taken into account that he was given $6 million and supposed to be our #1 on the outside, D+ might even be too generous. Same with Sanders, he's been a D- on the field, but take into account his contract and it's an actual F

I think it was less about trying to freeze the kicker than it was just trying to time the snap perfectly to try and get the block for the win, especially the second one after we got the 15 yarder, at that point the FG was a gimme anyways. So if you don't guess the snap and are offsides, either he still makes it and it doesn't matter, or he misses/blocked because of the offsides and he has to try again. But if you happen to guess perfectly on the snap, you have a chance at a block to win the game, just no downside to trying to guess it and get lucky. The mistake was by the refs blowing the second one dead, should have just let it go and it would have been over since he made it anyways.

He had his best game of the year and has been improving lately, no denying that. But I still don't see him being an upper echelon QB in this league though, especially with these hits he's taking. Sure, give him all the credit in the world for keeping bouncing back up, but look what the continued hits did to someone like Cam, Bryce won't hold up long term if he keeps taking 4-6 huge hits a game. With him improving though, I may not think he'll be the complete bust I thought he would be a month ago, I'm now reverting back to my pre-draft thoughts of what he'd become. Around the 20th best QB in the league, someone not good enough to carry teams to true SB contention but probably not bad enough for us to cut bait and move on from him. I said before the draft that I thought he'd end up being the Marvin Lewis of QB's, I think that still looks like his ceiling to me.

What about him? I'm still convinced he'll end up on the Bengals before the trade deadline is up, pairing him back up with Burrow/Chase to see if they can help unlock his potential makes too much sense.

If/when we franchise him, if we can't come to a contract by training camp, he can't play a down for us again. Cause we sure as hell won't tag him twice, so if we can't get a deal done with him by then, he just has to be traded for whatever we can get. Which, in turn, is why he just should be traded right now. We couldn't come to a deal with him before all this, I don't see us coming to one at any point down the line, need to get a good return for him and just move on. Also can't look at what we turned down last year and make decisions based on that, sunk cost that we can't go back and do, have to make the best possible decision with the situation at hand currently.

How can we turn down the offer last year, then not get a deal done this offseason, only to now not even be listening to offers?!?!?! It makes no sense, only thing I can think of is that they're saying that hoping someone will make a stupid offer to test our resolve and then jump on it, but that seems like a losing strategy

Nobody is trading for Lockett, he's 5 years older than DK and is owed more money in 2024 thank DK

Not really, we could have afforded him if we waited on getting a #1 instead of giving Chark his contract. Once we did that, we couldn't justify the cost plus lack of snaps it would have given TMJ and Mingo. But now that we see TMJ is a total bust and Chark is kinda trash, it's different, particularly with how poor Bryce as looked, we need to get him improving THIS season and not wait till next.

Seattle has playoff aspirations, they're not trading their best player during the season. Said this in a thread the other day, but if JSN balls out the rest of the season, then DK becomes a likely trade candidate in the offseason. He has 2 years left on his deal after this season, which means he'll be looking for an extension after next season most likely. If they are comfortable with JSN as their #1 moving forward, they could look to trade DK to use that cap room elsewhere (like defense), instead of dishing out a Top 5 WR contract to keep DK. But unless DK walks in the building and punches Pete in the face in the next 10 days, he's not being traded during the season.

Technically not true based on the title of the thread Bucs play Thursday

There's a reason Harbaugh isn't in the NFL right now. I don't know exactly what it is, but with all the issues he's had at Michigan over his time there, the fact that he hasn't jumped at any NFL opportunities is telling. Whether it's that he doesn't like coaching entitled millionaires, that he doesn't think his style of coaching works for them these days (which is the same reason Deion will never coach in the NFL), or because of some other reason, there is something that has kept him in college. I don't want to be the team that overpays him to go to a job/league that he doesn't really want to be in, only likely to end in a disaster, similar to Urban Meyer

He's a worse version of Thielen, would be completely pointless for us to add him. We need outside and speed WRs, the literal opposite of what he is

No CMC had years of never missing games and playing at a HOF level while doing so. Horn hasn’t shown near enough on the field or enough health to slow walk a recovery to try and force a trade. Also, I never felt CMC did that, I thought at the end of both seasons is was more likely the team that shut him down, why risk further injury and hurt our draft position for him to play in a couple meaningless late season games.

No trading a first round pick for anyone until we know what Bryce can be and we're sure we aren't about to be picking in there Top 5 or 10 the year we trade the pick away. Trading a future first for DK would screw us over if Bryce still sucks and it ends up a Top 5 pick as that could either replace Bryce or take whoever is the top WR in that draft (assuming there is one worth it and there usually is) and get them on a fraction of the contract as DK. If we get the 2 firsts for Burns, I'd have no problem sending out one of them though, just not our own until we're sure Bryce is the QB of the future. If we end up in a Josh Rosen/Kyler Murray situation we absolutely bail on Bryce.