Thurman#1

Agreed, this is a move aimed mostly at the long term. May lower his cap this year fractionally, but not significantly. Past few days they did a few deals to free up money. This is why. That's a really pessimistic look at how he's been. "Trash" is nonsense. Basically, when healthy he's been good. His first year he was really looking good at times, particularly for a rookie and particularly late in the season when he started to get used to the speed in the NFL. He's trended up and is continuing to do so. No guarantee this works, of course, but IMO smart getting him early for a discount. We got some bookends.

These days you can't get a decent one for less than that. Price of doing business lately. I like the move, myself. I'm sure they got a serious discount for signing him this early. Not at all, they've had pretty good pass protection from early on.

KC was way better than you're saying here. 2nd in both scoring defense and yards allowed last year, they're a damn good D. https://www.pro-football-reference.com/years/2023/opp.htm Where are you seeing that KC's D last year was so bad at home? If they were 24th best at home, it would've been almost impossible to be 2nd best overall, which they were.

It isn't Trevor that has one playoff berth. It's his team. There isn't one QB that has a playoff berth. It's a team stat, one that a QB has a major input on, but a team stat nonetheless. Maybe I'm misreading you but you appear to be disparaging him here. But IMO Lawrence still has a chance to have an excellent career. I agree with everything else you said here, though. QB is a really really difficult thing to predict results in the pros from college performance.

He's better than you're saying here. But he does have problems in the passing game, no question. On the other hand he's not so weak there that they can't win an SB with him behind center. But they'd be better off with 5 - 7 other QBs, IMO, including Allen or Mahomes. KC's line outplayed the Ravens OL and it made it awfully hard. This wasn't a good game, in passing anyway, but every QB has some bad games. He deserved the MVPs.

Ha ha ha ha! Nice! He always manages to crack me up. In a good way.

This is a good thought too. We've got a lot of tall WRs this year. Put one of them out there on the coverage units some measure of the time, 20% - 40%? Teams would have to get used to seeing him out there, so he'd have to be good at part of the ordinary job of covering kicks. Then when they're used to seeing him, you run it to his side. I always remember onside kick in the comeback game against Houston. Marv didn't just snag an extra possession there, he told the whole team, we're still in it and we'll do anything to make it happen.

Yeah, they do have a good success rate. That's exactly the point I was making. But you don't stop trying a play that gives you a further advantage because the other play is already pretty good. Fakes are essentially an attempt to cause a brain fart. This would be an even better way to do that. It would work far better at an unexpected time, but that's half the game with fakes.

It would absolutely stand a chance and arguably a pretty good one. You're right that there are systems in place to guard against it. There were systems in place to guard against onside kicks back when it was a thing, and while they produced very low success rates when everyone knew they were coming, they succeeded at high rates in non-obvious situations when only used once in a great great while. Same with fake punts of other types. When expected, not much success. When unexpected, they stood and stand a great chance. This only increases the chance of a brain fart from the receiving team because it's a method that hasn't been seen before. The problem is that SNS means now every STs coach in the league will have heard of it. But in 2025, maybe even late 2024, we'll see someone try it, and if they handle it right they'll have a great shot at totally surprising and outwitting the receiving team. The problem is that even if the runback guy has no idea what's happening - very likely - he'll still be trying to catch it. The kicking team has to actually make the catch rather than just knock it down and recover it. That'll be tough. My guess is that when they do it they'll use film study to find an area that the receiving team habitually doesn't cover well, perhaps five to ten yards off to the side and fifteen yards beyond the LOS for instance. Try it too close to the LOS for the returner to get there and expect most of the return team to overrun it. It's thoughtful and interesting. Me likey. I bet we see a success or three over the next few years, with some failures too, of course. If I remember correctly it would have worked but one guy blew his block. You're right, that's a painful memory. Jeez.

Rice 68 targets from Week 8 - 18. Shakir 36 targets over the same time. IMO it wasn't because Shakir wasn't getting open as much, though we may see.

Better yet, watch what happens during this year, and then make those decisions when you have a ton more info than you do now. I don't think extending Diggs was a big mistake. More like a reasonable risk that didn't work out. Looking back, you sure wouldn't do it again, but at the time, if Diggs had gotten motivated, which easily might have happened if Dorsey had worked out better, because he was going to continue to get Diggs open and keep him happy, it probably would have worked out very well. Sometimes reasonable risks don't work out. IMO this was one of those. The Miller move I might not have made, as older guys do tend to get injured at higher rates. But if he hadn't gotten injured, my guess is there's a Lombardi trophy in the case at OBD right now.

It actually is. Diggs is $31M of it. They'd like to have kept him, but he made it awfully tough. They could have pushed back a lot of that dead cap and had it weigh down the team for years to come. Instead he took it all this year and will be cap healthy next. It is smart cap management under some tough circumstances.

Good post. I was about to look it up. Nice job.

"Why did an offense featuring Christian McCaffrey and DJ Moore fail to produce," you ask? Lemme fill you in on the biggest part of it ... because that offense featured Christian McCaffrey for a grand total of three games. The other huge part of it was that Teddy Bridgewater was the QB throwing to DJ Moore, except for the five games when PJ Walker was instead. The third part was that the OL just was not good. Maybe if Okung had stayed healthy or if Paradis had played in Carolina like he did in Denver, but neither of those things happened. Paying that much for Bridgewater was a mistake. You can't say that he's good because a team paid a lot for him, that simply doesn't make sense. They paid a lot for him because they hoped he'd be a lot better than he was. He wasn't. Oh, and Bridgewater didn't go 5-1 the year before in New Orleans. That was a team, the New Orleans Saints. Wins and losses are a team stat. Bridgewater was the QB at that point, but he didn't win the games, the Saints did. Bridgewater played quarterback. He did it pretty well. But pretending that Teddy's play was the major factor in the 12-10 win over the Cowboys or the 13-6 win over Jax is just silly, nor did the offense look very good in the 27-9 loss to the Rams. The three games where the offense performed well were Tampa, Seattle and Chicago, and the Bears were a pretty good defense that year at #8, but Tampa was average at #15 and Seattle was #26. Bridgewater seemed a decent bet at that time, but it was a bet that did not pan out, and it wasn't like the offense was dragging Bridgewater down and when he went elsewhere he started dominating. Does Brady get some of the blame? Absolutely. As does Daboll get some of the blame for the times he was awful with bad QBs before surprisingly turning out to be damn good when he got a good one. The OL absolutely gets some of the blame. But expecting great offensive production from a team without a good QB isn't going to get you much of anywhere. 10-12 is precisely my guess as well. But I agree that there's far more uncertainty this year than in the recent past for this team.

Win-loss record isn't an offensive stat, it's a team stat. Brady isn't responsible for the D or the STs, and pretending he is just doesn't make sense. The offense did perform better under Brady. That is something he can hang his hat on, but he still has a lot to prove. As would anyone after 10 games.

This!! This, exactly. You can say a lot about the NFL and how it's run. Much of it fairly bad. But they're not stupid enough to risk hundreds of billions over time to win tens of millions. They're just not. Is it possible that an individual here and there does something venal and stupid? Yup, absolutely. But that they're stupid enough to risk it all for such a relatively small return? No, you'd have to be stupid to a massive, massive degree. It'd be like a guy crawling out to the Wallenda's highwire across Niagara Falls to pick up a nickel taped to the middle of the wire. They make bad decisions, reasonably often, as do most or all of us. But they're just not that clueless.

Yes, it's KC in the playoffs, that's right. The Cincy game looked like the whole team being emotionally deadened by that bizarre season with Hamlin dying on the field, Knox's brother dying, the shooting at the supermarket, the dozens of deaths in the two terrible storms and on and on and on. One bad game. That's what it looked like and the Bills themselves said they just didn't have any juice, which isn't something they've ever said otherwise. The Chiefs offense hasn't been stopped by much of anybody in the playoffs. That's why they've won three of the last five SBs. KC's offense has a history of performing like this, not too well until they need to, and then doing what needs to be done. All Pros are not particularly a good measure of overall roster talent. It's a measure of how many elite players are on the team. That's only one particular way to look at talent. The D does NOT suck in the postseason. Against everyone but KC they've been very good in the postseason. And again, not many teams have stopped that KC offense in the postseason. You said it yourself. It's the inability to handle KC in the playoffs so far. That's the problem. Or put much more quickly and better ... this.

This is a pretty weird post, IMO. This is unlikely to be one of the NFL's weakest divisions. More likely well stronger than average, though the Pats don't look likely to be pulling in their share of the plaudits. And as others have said Josh has had strong weapons through most of his career here. Beasley, Diggs, Cook, Kincaid, Knox, Singletary, John Brown, Sanders, Gabe Davis, all "important offensive weapons." Probably none but Diggs and a year or two of Beasley played at elite levels. But a lot of good players there. The D has been damn good as well, except against KC in the playoffs. There are plenty of games when Josh needed defensive help and got it. When we beat the Giants 14-9 last year for instance. When we beat the Chiefs in season last year 20 - 17. When we beat the Dolphins 21-14. Those are just last year. The D had many good games but plenty came on days when Josh also had good days, which isn't surprising since Josh has a bunch of good days. But so did the D despite a horrendous year for injuries.

I'm of the opinion that I have a semi-reasonable idea what's likely this year. But I've been wrong before. We'll see. And I'm ready too.

Well, if there's ever a sign that you're talking with a person who's not worth spending time on, it's that he constantly repeats your meaning back to you and completely misstates it. You've done that two posts in a row. I'm not interested in folks who relentlessly pull straw men out of the ether. Have fun playing with yourself.

Yeah, this is what it looks like, though the details are what it is all about.

What is with you people? Do you seriously believe nobody goes to jail in San Francisco? Or that there's no crime in places like Houston? Enough with the knee-jerk nonsense. Let's just hope for the best for Pearsall

Unless he loses the locker room, McDermott is here for awhile. Some people don't want to hear it, but that is simply the most likely and the most reasonable result.

Where does anyone say he's awesome? Not including sarcasm? I'll wait. Good signing to the PS does not equal awesome player.

This is what the anti-STs guys always say on here. "Is the extra guy on STs going to win games?" The actual answer is that it's more likely to help the team than what a different 53rd man would add to the offense or defense. Where are all the 52nd and 53rd men winning all these games that you folks seem to assume are all over the place among teams that don't do what we do with our STs guys. Fact is you do see guys on the last couple of guys on the roster make a difference on O or D but it is extremely unusual. Generally if the 52nd or 53rd guy has to play one week, the team is picking up someone better on waivers to use the next week. Whereas the specialty STs guys on the contrary play a bunch of snaps and sometimes make big plays, a nice tackle on a kick, a good block that though usually unnoticed may spring a guy for extra yards, and occasionally a Matakevich will make a beautiful play by recovering that surprise onside kick the way he did or forcing a fumble, or just a guy like Codrington not fumbling, which nobody notices, but it can nonetheless be hugely important. You're right that Codrington is unlikely to score against the Jets. Even more unlikely to make any impact would be a #53 guy sitting on the bench. And again, we didn't trade a 2024 6th. They're already used. We didn't even trade next year's 6th, a 2025. We traded a 2026 pick!!!!!!!!! 2026!!! Hell, we got back a 7th in the same year. This was a tiny price to pay, and it's not like it would likely have brought us a starter or a quality backup if used elsewhere.