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These are excerpts. The combine and draft part of the article is posted on this thread over in the NFL Draft section: http://www.ramsondemand.com/forums/nfl-draft-college-football.52/.
The NFL news is on this thread. To read the whole article click the link below. Btw since Peter King didn't write this article and one of his employees did, I'm guessing there's a quota of Patriot's butt-kissing that has to occur in each article.
***********************************************************************************
http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2017/03/06/myles-garrett-combine-cleveland-browns-nfl-draft
Myles Garrett and the Browns’ Difficult Decision
The top draft prospect put on a show in Indianapolis, making the No. 1 choice pretty easy—or that much harder. Here’s a look at the Cleveland dilemma. Plus items on the D.C. drama, the Patriots’ new DVD and more
By Albert Breer
Photo: Toni L. Sandys/ The Washington Post via Getty Images
A year ago it seemed like the old Redskins circus had finally closed up shop. Jay Gruden grew into a very good head coach with a rock-solid staff behind him, and Washington had a potential long-term answer at quarterback and arguably the best talent-evaluator of the past decade as their GM. The team was coming off a playoff berth. There was no drama.
Not anymore. It’s been a strange offseason already in Washington. Here’s a quick synopsis.
• Staff: Gruden lost offensive coordinator Sean McVay to the Rams as head coach, and the Skins fired defensive coordinator Joe Barry. The team wound up elevating quarterbacks coach Matt Cavanaugh and linebackers coach Greg Manusky to replace them.
• Quarterback: Kirk Cousins has been franchised again, and there’s legitimate uncertainty about his immediate future.
• Scot McCloughan: The third-year GM was left home from Indy amid a twister of speculation. The given reason: His 100-year-old grandmother died Feb. 6. His past demons were raised on D.C. radio by ex-Redskins tight end Chris Cooley. Given that no one in football is better/more passionate about scouting the draft than McCloughan, his absence was glaring, and the future here looks murkier than it did.
• Free agents: The offense could look significantly different next year with receivers Pierre Garçon and DeSean Jackson both expected to draw robust interest as free agents.
One source described the vibe in DC succinctly: “Just a bunch of strange s---.”
There are lots of dominoes that have to fall soon. As for the big one, I don’t think the Skins are afraid to lose Cousins, and the reason is Colt McCoy. Is the 30-year-old McCoy a 10-year answer for Washington at the position?
No. But he can be what Cousins can’t be at this point, and that’s a bridge quarterback, which is why the question isn’t Cousins versus McCoy in a vacuum. It’s the brass buying Cousins and hitching its job security to his successes and failures, versus renting McCoy while looking for a younger upgrade at the position.
The latter would be risky as hell, to be sure, and I wouldn’t call it likely. But the Redskins do believe they can win in the short term with McCoy, and there’s a feeling that it’d be better to just resolve the Cousins situation now—whether it’s giving him a new deal or trading him—and not setting up to be in this position again in spring 2018.
Of course, the brass and the team could look a lot different by then. Stay tuned.
* * *
A New Look at the Patriots’ Title Season
Photo: Getty Images :: NFL Productions
If you thought the wires coming out of the Super Bowl—whether it was on SoundFX on NFL Network or Inside the NFL on Showtime—were particularly strong this year, you aren’t alone. The people who shot it at NFL Films feel the same way.
And this week you’ll get another way to enjoy all of that with Cinedigm and NFL Films’ release of “Super Bowl LI Champions: New England Patriots” Tuesday on Blu-Ray Combo Pack, DVD and Digital HD.
They were nice enough to send me an advance copy. Here are a few things I hadn’t seen previously but got to see thanks to the work of all the NFL Films cameramen and sound people.
1. Before the Patriots’ Week 3 win over the Texans, Bill Belichick showed a little worry as rookie Jacoby Brissett readied for his first NFL start at quarterback. “He looks a little wild here in warmups,” the head coach said to offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels, who then responded, “Eh, a couple. He threw the ball well to the receivers. He’ll be fine, he’ll settle into it.” (Brissett went 11 for 19 for 103 yards—no TDs, no INTs—and ran for a touchdown in a 27-0 win over the Texans.)
2. During the highlights of the team’s comeback win over Jets in November, someone who sounds like Belichick is voicing over a shot of Brady saying, “He’s as good a situational football player as I’ve ever been around.”
3. Rob Gronkowski didn’t wait long to kick off the celebration after setting the Patriots’ team record for career touchdowns on Oct. 30 in Buffalo, nor did he lose track of the number. As he was leaving the field after that 53-yard score, he shouted down the sideline, “That’s 69, baby!” (Not sure what he means.)
4. Julian Edelman is basically the main character. In the Houston playoff game, Edelman is shown bantering with refs. “I get so defensive, I’m sorry,” Edelman said. Chris Hogan then jumped in—“He’s sensitive”—before Edelman added, “My therapist yells at me for that.” Then, in the Steelers playoff game, you see Edelman blocking rookie corner Artie Burns. “I’m here! I’m here!” barked Burns. Edelman coolly shot back: ”The fact that you gotta talk about it means you’re not.”
5. Patriots messaging early in Super Bowl 51 was pretty much how they have said it has been—level. “Just relax, go back out there, we had a nice drive going, we just gotta keep going,” explained long-time line coach Dante Scarnecchia in the first half. “We gotta keep doing the same s--- we do.”
6. McDaniels, similarly, delivered this at halftime: “Do you believe we’re gonna win? I do, too. Let’s just play our best half. I don’t want anyone to do anything that you can’t do. Don’t try to make it all up in one play, just play each play by itself, OK?”
7. And here’s one from defensive tackle Alan Branch in the third quarter: “They ain’t running no more, yo! They ain’t running no more!” The Falcons had 86 rushing yards on nine carries before the break. They went for 18 on nine carries after the break.
Add it up and this is a good, entertaining watch. You can pre-order it here before it’s released on Tuesday.
Just make sure you have a working DVD player. Those, evidently, aren’t as easy to find as you’d expect them to be. I couldn’t locate a place that sells them anywhere in downtown Indianapolis. I had my cab driver stop at places along the way en route to the airport. No dice. And ultimately I had to wait till I got home to watch it anyway. So there’s my advice for the week.
* * *
These are the 22 quarterbacks who are on deals for the 2017 season that average $16 million per or more.
• $22 million-plus: Andrew Luck ($24.6M), Carson Palmer ($24.4M), Drew Brees ($24.3M), Kirk Cousins ($23.94M), Joe Flacco ($22.1M), Aaron Rodgers ($22.0M).
• $19 million to $21.9 million: Russell Wilson ($21.9M), Ben Roethlisberger ($21.8M), Eli Manning ($21.0M), Philip Rivers ($20.8M), Cam Newton ($20.8M), Matt Ryan ($20.8M), Tom Brady ($20.5M), Ryan Tannehill ($19.3M).
• $16 million to $18.9 million: Jay Cutler ($18.1M), Tyrod Taylor ($18.0M), Tony Romo ($18.0M), Brock Osweiler ($18.0M), Matthew Stafford ($17.7M), Sam Bradford ($17.5M), Alex Smith ($17.0M), Andy Dalton ($16.0M)
Now, Cutler is coming off the list, and Taylor and Romo might, too, though they could also just wind up back on soon thereafter. Before too long, Derek Carr—eligible for a second contract this offseason—will be joining the list too, and Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota will be in the not-so-distant future as well. Jimmy Garoppolo is ticketed to land on it too, if he’s traded.
You get the picture. Here’s the point: Quarterbacks aren’t paid like everyone else.
So when this year’s sticker-shock quarterback, Tampa Bay’s Mike Glennon, gets more than $12 million per this week, and gets a lot closer to what Osweiler got last year than most think, don’t react by letting your jaw hit the floor.
Say Glennon goes to Chicago, and the Bears draft a rookie QB with the third overall pick (last year’s third pick, Joey Bosa, makes $6.47 million per year). They’re probably then allotting a little more than $20 million to the position—or less than they did last year at quarterback with Cutler and Brian Hoyer on the roster.
This is just the price of doing business at the most important position in sports.
* * *
Pretty cool to hear that 16 Dolphins players actually paid their own way to New York to take part in owner Stephen Ross’s business combine, especially considering how many guys struggle when football is over. It’s proof positive that the message the league and union have been trying to send those guys about preparing for when the cheering stops is getting through. The Miami Herald’s Armando Salgeuro wrote last week on this particular “combine.”
* * *
Last Friday, Eagles EVP of football operations Howie Roseman joined me on my podcast, and we went deep into the process of identifying a quarterback in the draft, and positioning yourself to get there. Here are a couple snippets...
• On where the process on Carson Wentz was at the combine last year: “We were picking 13th with no second-round pick. We knew we wanted to move up. It was clear to us, with the research we had done, the tape we watched, being able to go to the Senior Bowl and see him throw live and interview him, that we knew we wanted to move up. And the first step? This is like the winter meetings for us, getting us all together. This is where trades take shape.
And we came here with the intent of trying to move up in the draft. And when we started to talk to teams that were picking 1 and 2, it was daunting to them to move back to 13 when we didn’t have a 2. So we kind of then went to this 5-10 range and said, “Maybe we can make two moves. Maybe we can get into that 5-10 range, and be appealing to the teams at 1 and 2.” And say, “Alright, now you don’t have to move back as far, let’s find a way to make this happen.”
• Was there an Oh, crap moment when the Rams acquired the pick you were trying to get: “If an ‘Oh, crap’ moment means getting the news and walking out of the draft room and taking a moment to yourself, then yeah, I think there was an ‘Oh, crap’ moment there. It was, ‘We gotta figure this out.’ And then the conversations were the same with the Browns. If we’re gonna do this, we’re not gonna do it on draft day. We want to understand where we’re at and what we have to do, and working with the Browns to figure out a solution.
That was the definition of a win-win trade for both teams. They get picks that keep on coming, certainly picks in this draft and still have a 2 coming next year. So the price of admission was high, but for us, we felt it was the only to build it the way we saw fit, to build it around a quarterback that we thought could be here for a long time.
It’s interesting, because one of the compelling things for us to make the trade, because it was so many picks, was looking at the teams that drafted quarterbacks in 2004. You may say, why are you looking at teams that drafted quarterbacks in 2004? What’s interesting is those teams—the Giants, the Steelers and the Chargers—are still drafting around those quarterbacks in 2017.”
* * *
Things I Think I Think
1. I think the idea of Tony Romo going to the Texans makes a lot of sense. Peter King mentioned a couple weeks back that, from a personal standpoint, Houston makes the most sense for the Cowboys quarterback for a number of reasons. And my sense is that the Houston staff would view Romo as a very good fit if he became available. Remember, Romo played in an offense that’s a basically a first cousin of Bill O’Brien’s scheme in his first four NFL season under Bill Parcells.
The question, in my mind, is how far the Texans are willing to go to make it happen. Trading for him would be easier than most think. Romo is due $14 million for 2017—a below-average rate for a starting quarterback—and his base salaries of $19.5 million and $20.5 million in 2018 and ’19 would in essence serve as team options, with no guaranteed money left in Romo’s deal. The Texans do, at least as of right now, have sufficient cap space to take on the existing contract.
The question is whether they’ll want to, which would probably be a tougher call for them than parting with a middling draft pick. Burgeoning star corner A.J. Bouye is likely to get upwards of $14 million per on the open market, and bringing in Romo may mean saying goodbye to Bouye and a few other free agents. My feeling is that, if the season started right now, Tom Savage would be under center for the Texans. And Houston feels good about him. But Romo would be an upgrade.
2. I think it also makes sense for the Bills to pick up Tyrod Taylor’s contract option. You’d be doing your new offensive coordinator a favor—Rick Dennison coached Taylor in Baltimore in 2014, and the Ravens offensive staff liked him enough to try to import him to Denver after Gary Kubiak took the Broncos head-coaching job. You’d be sending a positive message to the locker room.
But most of all you’d buy yourself time to find a quarterback of the future. Worst thing you can do is pigeonhole yourself into a single offseason to find a long-term answer at the position. That’s how Christian Ponder goes 12th overall to the Vikings in 2011 and Brock Osweiler gets $18 million per year in Houston. Having Taylor would give the Bills, at the very least, a bridge to the next franchise quarterback. So if they like, say, Watson at 10th overall, they can take him and don’t have to play him right away.
If they don’t like any of the quarterbacks or the one they like doesn’t get to them, they can wait until next year. And the terms for Taylor—it’s really a three-year, $54.1 million deal—are middling for a starting quarterback in 2017. To me, it just makes sense to stabilize the most important position on the field, even if you aren’t answering who your quarterback might be in 2022.
3. I think the Jets are doing what Mike Maccagnan and Todd Bowles probably should’ve done two years ago—swallowing hard and readying for a youth movement. The ousters of Brandon Marshall, Darrelle Revis, Nick Mangold et al signal a purge of the core of the team’s shot at a competitive rebuild, a term used internally to describe the effort to gut the roster from bottom up without bottoming out.
There are just four draft picks from the John Idzik era under contract for 2017: Sheldon Richardson, Brian Winters, Quincy Enunwa and Calvin Pryor. And Mo Wilkerson is the only one left from Mike Tannenbaum’s time in green. In other words, the Jets are now virtually bereft of homegrown players in their prime earning years. That explains why, no matter how much lipstick they smeared on the 2015 season, this rough path always was bound to come.
4. I think the Seahawks were paying attention when Chiefs safety Eric Berry got paid. Earl Thomas turns 28 in May and has two years left on the extension he did in 2014. Kam Chancellor turns 29 in April and is going into a contract year.
Those two have been central to the Seahawks’ defensive identity—Chancellor as a hybrid thumper and Thomas as silly-rangy centerfielder—over the last half-decade. They were rewarded for it with deals worth $17 million per year combined. Fair to guess, they’ll be more expensive to do third deals and, because of age, are naturally riskier propositions.
5. I think I’ll repeat that offensive linemen figure to get paid on the open market this week—and the final effect could be that guards wind up paid like tackles. Why? The offensive line franchise tag number ($14.271 million) isn’t broken down by position, which means it’s based on what left tackles make. That, in turn, makes it tough to tag even a great guard.
And so premier guards can make it to the market. As of now, there are 14 linemen making eight figures per. Only three of them are guards. Add to all of this that the coming draft class of offensive linemen is weak, and Kevin Zeitler, Ron Leary and Larry Warford could join the group, or at least settle on the fringes of it.
6. I think the flip side is that the market at both corner and receiver—two spots where there’s relative strength (Alshon Jeffery, Brandon Marshall, Kenny Stills, DeSean Jackson at receiver; Bouye, Stephon Gilmore, Dre Kirkpatrick at CB)—could be adversely affected by the historic quality of the draft class at corner and strong depth of the class at receiver.
It’s not out of the question that Jeffery becomes the second- or third-highest-paid receiver in league history, and Bouye and Gilmore easily outdistance the deal Janoris Jenkins got last year. But there’ll be a number of would-be suitors who balk at the prices and sit tight until April, which is one reason why you shouldn’t panic if your team is strangely quiet in filling those needs this week.
The NFL news is on this thread. To read the whole article click the link below. Btw since Peter King didn't write this article and one of his employees did, I'm guessing there's a quota of Patriot's butt-kissing that has to occur in each article.
***********************************************************************************
http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2017/03/06/myles-garrett-combine-cleveland-browns-nfl-draft
Myles Garrett and the Browns’ Difficult Decision
The top draft prospect put on a show in Indianapolis, making the No. 1 choice pretty easy—or that much harder. Here’s a look at the Cleveland dilemma. Plus items on the D.C. drama, the Patriots’ new DVD and more
By Albert Breer
Photo: Toni L. Sandys/ The Washington Post via Getty Images
A year ago it seemed like the old Redskins circus had finally closed up shop. Jay Gruden grew into a very good head coach with a rock-solid staff behind him, and Washington had a potential long-term answer at quarterback and arguably the best talent-evaluator of the past decade as their GM. The team was coming off a playoff berth. There was no drama.
Not anymore. It’s been a strange offseason already in Washington. Here’s a quick synopsis.
• Staff: Gruden lost offensive coordinator Sean McVay to the Rams as head coach, and the Skins fired defensive coordinator Joe Barry. The team wound up elevating quarterbacks coach Matt Cavanaugh and linebackers coach Greg Manusky to replace them.
• Quarterback: Kirk Cousins has been franchised again, and there’s legitimate uncertainty about his immediate future.
• Scot McCloughan: The third-year GM was left home from Indy amid a twister of speculation. The given reason: His 100-year-old grandmother died Feb. 6. His past demons were raised on D.C. radio by ex-Redskins tight end Chris Cooley. Given that no one in football is better/more passionate about scouting the draft than McCloughan, his absence was glaring, and the future here looks murkier than it did.
• Free agents: The offense could look significantly different next year with receivers Pierre Garçon and DeSean Jackson both expected to draw robust interest as free agents.
One source described the vibe in DC succinctly: “Just a bunch of strange s---.”
There are lots of dominoes that have to fall soon. As for the big one, I don’t think the Skins are afraid to lose Cousins, and the reason is Colt McCoy. Is the 30-year-old McCoy a 10-year answer for Washington at the position?
No. But he can be what Cousins can’t be at this point, and that’s a bridge quarterback, which is why the question isn’t Cousins versus McCoy in a vacuum. It’s the brass buying Cousins and hitching its job security to his successes and failures, versus renting McCoy while looking for a younger upgrade at the position.
The latter would be risky as hell, to be sure, and I wouldn’t call it likely. But the Redskins do believe they can win in the short term with McCoy, and there’s a feeling that it’d be better to just resolve the Cousins situation now—whether it’s giving him a new deal or trading him—and not setting up to be in this position again in spring 2018.
Of course, the brass and the team could look a lot different by then. Stay tuned.
* * *
A New Look at the Patriots’ Title Season
Photo: Getty Images :: NFL Productions
If you thought the wires coming out of the Super Bowl—whether it was on SoundFX on NFL Network or Inside the NFL on Showtime—were particularly strong this year, you aren’t alone. The people who shot it at NFL Films feel the same way.
And this week you’ll get another way to enjoy all of that with Cinedigm and NFL Films’ release of “Super Bowl LI Champions: New England Patriots” Tuesday on Blu-Ray Combo Pack, DVD and Digital HD.
They were nice enough to send me an advance copy. Here are a few things I hadn’t seen previously but got to see thanks to the work of all the NFL Films cameramen and sound people.
1. Before the Patriots’ Week 3 win over the Texans, Bill Belichick showed a little worry as rookie Jacoby Brissett readied for his first NFL start at quarterback. “He looks a little wild here in warmups,” the head coach said to offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels, who then responded, “Eh, a couple. He threw the ball well to the receivers. He’ll be fine, he’ll settle into it.” (Brissett went 11 for 19 for 103 yards—no TDs, no INTs—and ran for a touchdown in a 27-0 win over the Texans.)
2. During the highlights of the team’s comeback win over Jets in November, someone who sounds like Belichick is voicing over a shot of Brady saying, “He’s as good a situational football player as I’ve ever been around.”
3. Rob Gronkowski didn’t wait long to kick off the celebration after setting the Patriots’ team record for career touchdowns on Oct. 30 in Buffalo, nor did he lose track of the number. As he was leaving the field after that 53-yard score, he shouted down the sideline, “That’s 69, baby!” (Not sure what he means.)
4. Julian Edelman is basically the main character. In the Houston playoff game, Edelman is shown bantering with refs. “I get so defensive, I’m sorry,” Edelman said. Chris Hogan then jumped in—“He’s sensitive”—before Edelman added, “My therapist yells at me for that.” Then, in the Steelers playoff game, you see Edelman blocking rookie corner Artie Burns. “I’m here! I’m here!” barked Burns. Edelman coolly shot back: ”The fact that you gotta talk about it means you’re not.”
5. Patriots messaging early in Super Bowl 51 was pretty much how they have said it has been—level. “Just relax, go back out there, we had a nice drive going, we just gotta keep going,” explained long-time line coach Dante Scarnecchia in the first half. “We gotta keep doing the same s--- we do.”
6. McDaniels, similarly, delivered this at halftime: “Do you believe we’re gonna win? I do, too. Let’s just play our best half. I don’t want anyone to do anything that you can’t do. Don’t try to make it all up in one play, just play each play by itself, OK?”
7. And here’s one from defensive tackle Alan Branch in the third quarter: “They ain’t running no more, yo! They ain’t running no more!” The Falcons had 86 rushing yards on nine carries before the break. They went for 18 on nine carries after the break.
Add it up and this is a good, entertaining watch. You can pre-order it here before it’s released on Tuesday.
Just make sure you have a working DVD player. Those, evidently, aren’t as easy to find as you’d expect them to be. I couldn’t locate a place that sells them anywhere in downtown Indianapolis. I had my cab driver stop at places along the way en route to the airport. No dice. And ultimately I had to wait till I got home to watch it anyway. So there’s my advice for the week.
* * *
These are the 22 quarterbacks who are on deals for the 2017 season that average $16 million per or more.
• $22 million-plus: Andrew Luck ($24.6M), Carson Palmer ($24.4M), Drew Brees ($24.3M), Kirk Cousins ($23.94M), Joe Flacco ($22.1M), Aaron Rodgers ($22.0M).
• $19 million to $21.9 million: Russell Wilson ($21.9M), Ben Roethlisberger ($21.8M), Eli Manning ($21.0M), Philip Rivers ($20.8M), Cam Newton ($20.8M), Matt Ryan ($20.8M), Tom Brady ($20.5M), Ryan Tannehill ($19.3M).
• $16 million to $18.9 million: Jay Cutler ($18.1M), Tyrod Taylor ($18.0M), Tony Romo ($18.0M), Brock Osweiler ($18.0M), Matthew Stafford ($17.7M), Sam Bradford ($17.5M), Alex Smith ($17.0M), Andy Dalton ($16.0M)
Now, Cutler is coming off the list, and Taylor and Romo might, too, though they could also just wind up back on soon thereafter. Before too long, Derek Carr—eligible for a second contract this offseason—will be joining the list too, and Jameis Winston and Marcus Mariota will be in the not-so-distant future as well. Jimmy Garoppolo is ticketed to land on it too, if he’s traded.
You get the picture. Here’s the point: Quarterbacks aren’t paid like everyone else.
So when this year’s sticker-shock quarterback, Tampa Bay’s Mike Glennon, gets more than $12 million per this week, and gets a lot closer to what Osweiler got last year than most think, don’t react by letting your jaw hit the floor.
Say Glennon goes to Chicago, and the Bears draft a rookie QB with the third overall pick (last year’s third pick, Joey Bosa, makes $6.47 million per year). They’re probably then allotting a little more than $20 million to the position—or less than they did last year at quarterback with Cutler and Brian Hoyer on the roster.
This is just the price of doing business at the most important position in sports.
* * *
Pretty cool to hear that 16 Dolphins players actually paid their own way to New York to take part in owner Stephen Ross’s business combine, especially considering how many guys struggle when football is over. It’s proof positive that the message the league and union have been trying to send those guys about preparing for when the cheering stops is getting through. The Miami Herald’s Armando Salgeuro wrote last week on this particular “combine.”
* * *
Last Friday, Eagles EVP of football operations Howie Roseman joined me on my podcast, and we went deep into the process of identifying a quarterback in the draft, and positioning yourself to get there. Here are a couple snippets...
• On where the process on Carson Wentz was at the combine last year: “We were picking 13th with no second-round pick. We knew we wanted to move up. It was clear to us, with the research we had done, the tape we watched, being able to go to the Senior Bowl and see him throw live and interview him, that we knew we wanted to move up. And the first step? This is like the winter meetings for us, getting us all together. This is where trades take shape.
And we came here with the intent of trying to move up in the draft. And when we started to talk to teams that were picking 1 and 2, it was daunting to them to move back to 13 when we didn’t have a 2. So we kind of then went to this 5-10 range and said, “Maybe we can make two moves. Maybe we can get into that 5-10 range, and be appealing to the teams at 1 and 2.” And say, “Alright, now you don’t have to move back as far, let’s find a way to make this happen.”
• Was there an Oh, crap moment when the Rams acquired the pick you were trying to get: “If an ‘Oh, crap’ moment means getting the news and walking out of the draft room and taking a moment to yourself, then yeah, I think there was an ‘Oh, crap’ moment there. It was, ‘We gotta figure this out.’ And then the conversations were the same with the Browns. If we’re gonna do this, we’re not gonna do it on draft day. We want to understand where we’re at and what we have to do, and working with the Browns to figure out a solution.
That was the definition of a win-win trade for both teams. They get picks that keep on coming, certainly picks in this draft and still have a 2 coming next year. So the price of admission was high, but for us, we felt it was the only to build it the way we saw fit, to build it around a quarterback that we thought could be here for a long time.
It’s interesting, because one of the compelling things for us to make the trade, because it was so many picks, was looking at the teams that drafted quarterbacks in 2004. You may say, why are you looking at teams that drafted quarterbacks in 2004? What’s interesting is those teams—the Giants, the Steelers and the Chargers—are still drafting around those quarterbacks in 2017.”
* * *
Things I Think I Think
1. I think the idea of Tony Romo going to the Texans makes a lot of sense. Peter King mentioned a couple weeks back that, from a personal standpoint, Houston makes the most sense for the Cowboys quarterback for a number of reasons. And my sense is that the Houston staff would view Romo as a very good fit if he became available. Remember, Romo played in an offense that’s a basically a first cousin of Bill O’Brien’s scheme in his first four NFL season under Bill Parcells.
The question, in my mind, is how far the Texans are willing to go to make it happen. Trading for him would be easier than most think. Romo is due $14 million for 2017—a below-average rate for a starting quarterback—and his base salaries of $19.5 million and $20.5 million in 2018 and ’19 would in essence serve as team options, with no guaranteed money left in Romo’s deal. The Texans do, at least as of right now, have sufficient cap space to take on the existing contract.
The question is whether they’ll want to, which would probably be a tougher call for them than parting with a middling draft pick. Burgeoning star corner A.J. Bouye is likely to get upwards of $14 million per on the open market, and bringing in Romo may mean saying goodbye to Bouye and a few other free agents. My feeling is that, if the season started right now, Tom Savage would be under center for the Texans. And Houston feels good about him. But Romo would be an upgrade.
2. I think it also makes sense for the Bills to pick up Tyrod Taylor’s contract option. You’d be doing your new offensive coordinator a favor—Rick Dennison coached Taylor in Baltimore in 2014, and the Ravens offensive staff liked him enough to try to import him to Denver after Gary Kubiak took the Broncos head-coaching job. You’d be sending a positive message to the locker room.
But most of all you’d buy yourself time to find a quarterback of the future. Worst thing you can do is pigeonhole yourself into a single offseason to find a long-term answer at the position. That’s how Christian Ponder goes 12th overall to the Vikings in 2011 and Brock Osweiler gets $18 million per year in Houston. Having Taylor would give the Bills, at the very least, a bridge to the next franchise quarterback. So if they like, say, Watson at 10th overall, they can take him and don’t have to play him right away.
If they don’t like any of the quarterbacks or the one they like doesn’t get to them, they can wait until next year. And the terms for Taylor—it’s really a three-year, $54.1 million deal—are middling for a starting quarterback in 2017. To me, it just makes sense to stabilize the most important position on the field, even if you aren’t answering who your quarterback might be in 2022.
3. I think the Jets are doing what Mike Maccagnan and Todd Bowles probably should’ve done two years ago—swallowing hard and readying for a youth movement. The ousters of Brandon Marshall, Darrelle Revis, Nick Mangold et al signal a purge of the core of the team’s shot at a competitive rebuild, a term used internally to describe the effort to gut the roster from bottom up without bottoming out.
There are just four draft picks from the John Idzik era under contract for 2017: Sheldon Richardson, Brian Winters, Quincy Enunwa and Calvin Pryor. And Mo Wilkerson is the only one left from Mike Tannenbaum’s time in green. In other words, the Jets are now virtually bereft of homegrown players in their prime earning years. That explains why, no matter how much lipstick they smeared on the 2015 season, this rough path always was bound to come.
4. I think the Seahawks were paying attention when Chiefs safety Eric Berry got paid. Earl Thomas turns 28 in May and has two years left on the extension he did in 2014. Kam Chancellor turns 29 in April and is going into a contract year.
Those two have been central to the Seahawks’ defensive identity—Chancellor as a hybrid thumper and Thomas as silly-rangy centerfielder—over the last half-decade. They were rewarded for it with deals worth $17 million per year combined. Fair to guess, they’ll be more expensive to do third deals and, because of age, are naturally riskier propositions.
5. I think I’ll repeat that offensive linemen figure to get paid on the open market this week—and the final effect could be that guards wind up paid like tackles. Why? The offensive line franchise tag number ($14.271 million) isn’t broken down by position, which means it’s based on what left tackles make. That, in turn, makes it tough to tag even a great guard.
And so premier guards can make it to the market. As of now, there are 14 linemen making eight figures per. Only three of them are guards. Add to all of this that the coming draft class of offensive linemen is weak, and Kevin Zeitler, Ron Leary and Larry Warford could join the group, or at least settle on the fringes of it.
6. I think the flip side is that the market at both corner and receiver—two spots where there’s relative strength (Alshon Jeffery, Brandon Marshall, Kenny Stills, DeSean Jackson at receiver; Bouye, Stephon Gilmore, Dre Kirkpatrick at CB)—could be adversely affected by the historic quality of the draft class at corner and strong depth of the class at receiver.
It’s not out of the question that Jeffery becomes the second- or third-highest-paid receiver in league history, and Bouye and Gilmore easily outdistance the deal Janoris Jenkins got last year. But there’ll be a number of would-be suitors who balk at the prices and sit tight until April, which is one reason why you shouldn’t panic if your team is strangely quiet in filling those needs this week.
