WrigleyField 22

Oh God all the, "the dispresct fueled the 7th best team to upset the 2 seed" takes...

The fun scenario in the "what if the Bears have Fields and a their 1st" is it necessitates an assumption that they retool in 2020 to get a top 10 pick in 2021. No Quinn (and 30M extra dollars and a comp pick) No Foles trade (and 20M extra dollars and a 4th) No Arob tag and extra 18M and comp pick (or maybe a trade). So probably they then spend some of those dollars back in 2021, but say upwards of 50M more free capital and 3-4 extra picks? I'm usually an anti-tank type but especially with hindsight the cost of say 3 wins and a playoff appearance in 2021 cost a pretty penny.

Harbaugh wants to be back in NFL so badly.

_______Demar______MJ 97/98 PPG_____27.6______28.7 FG% ____50.6%_____46.5% 3PA_____2.3________1.5 FTA______7.8________8.8 TS%______59.8%_____53.3% WS/48____ .201______ .238 Updating this one _______Demar______MJ 97/98 PPG_____27.9_______28.7 FG% _____51.5%_____46.5% 3PA______1.8________1.5 FTA______8.1________8.8 TS%______60.0%_____53.3% WS/48___ .190______ .238

Never bad to have ST competition. Brinkley was a mainstay for Tennessee for a while, not sure what happened the past few years except that his Wikipedia says he was on the covid/reserve list in 2020 and then was cut and bounced around some practice squads. But was liked enough to ink a 5 year deal in 2015. Winslow has bounced around a lot in his young career. Interesting if he's real competition or just a body.

Yea well they got that far with a horsefeathers one, so I'll take whatever OLine you give me if I get Ja'Marr Chase too. (and really they just messed up the Round 2 pick. If it's Humphrey are they hoisting the Lombardi trophy?)

I feel like had Burrow not gotten a knee injury, we would have at least had OT. Or if OBJ doesn't get injured, the Rams win by 10 Yea definitely don't feel like Cinci can go down feeling cheating. Each team got some breaks good or bad and had a chance to win.

Rofl

Yeah, that offensive staff is kind of interesting. The OC, QB and TE coaches are each very young and inexperienced. The WR/PGC is very experienced, and the OL coach has a decent amount of experience, but a mixed bag of a resume. I am going to guess they will lean toward an experienced voice as RB coach, but I have no idea if there's been any talks about specific people. The other thing is there hasn't been a lot of title inflation. No assistant head coach, no CoCoordinators. The one example is Tolbert's duel roles. It will also be interesting if they add a name in the summer like when Nagy brought in Tom Herman. He had Childress as a consultant as well from the start, but we haven't really heard of anybody filling that type of role with this staff, yet. So they hired another 50-something with 25 years experience at the RB coach spot. David Walker, 7 years in NFL as RB coach and time at Pitt with Getsy. There's a gap on his resume since 2018, so, what's up with that? Some background about why he stepped away and what he has been up to. https://www.indystar.com/story/sports/nfl/colts/2020/09/02/former-colts-rbs-coach-david-walker-has-built-new-business/3375556001/

Yea I mean assiststant coaches rarely get rave reviews. Building new staffs is just that nature of the beast with HC turnover. On the D side Eberflus basically picked up his whole D staff. That's way better than Nagy's first O staff. And obviously Nagy was luck to inherit his D staff. And for as much as yea Getsy is a first time play caller, 3 teams are hiring first time play callers as their head coach. So comparatively, not so bad.

Funny reply from Wade, who was the DC for Denver, the huge outlier on this stat.

While I agree it's different, find me the team that doesn't have a QB and would turn down a Adams/Rodgers pairing where Adams is the highest paid WR. I doubt that team exists. It might not be an official package deal, but I'm sure they'll make their wishes known to said team. do we know that Adams wants to stay with Rodgers? Maybe hes also sick of A-Arons act maybe I feel like I've heard rumors otherwise, but who knows.

The only rumored team that I think would have some figuring is Titans. They'd really need to find a taker for Tannehill in a trade. Not sure if GB would be willing to run RT out in an effort to stay competetive, but Tannehill and 3 firsts for Rodgers would basically be the Rams-Lions Stafford deal on steroids. Rodgers+Adams+Henry. Good lord.

I don't think it is anything like Brady/Gronk. Gronk was a retired dude falling apart physically. Nobody was looking to sign him until Brady went to Tampa. Adams is the best of the best free agents. He'll go where the money goes, not where just where daddy goes. Yeah, I can't imagine Rodgers would want to go somewhere where they aren't already a playoff caliber team. Are there any playoff caliber teams that need a QB and can also afford $30m for Rodgers and $30 for Adams? The rumors I've read is that Adams wants $35m. Doubt anyone gives him that. But, if he really wants money like that, some crappy team with money to burn just might give him a ridiculous contract. Jacksonville? 30 was the latest rumor. Conventional wisdom probably puts an estimate at like 25, just based on setting a new high watermark in the market. But it's exceedingly easy to squeeze in a big deal. You could give Adams a 150/5 deal and make the year one hit like 7M without even being that funky of a structure (basically 28M bonus and Y1 minim salary). Rodgers contract will be pretty easy to absorb as well. 26M base salary, but that can then be restructured and free up easily 15M with a new backloaded extension. So any team that can have 26M in space, 60-80M cash on hand, and willing to part with 2+ first rounders can make it happen. Not a super high bar. You could even drop that cap number if you were able to convince GB to eat some salary in exchange for more picks.

I kind of think that's exactly what he'll do. Seems comfortable walking if not. i dont buy that. Any team that trades for Rodgers will also have to fork over a ton for Adams, and that team will mightily struggle to get them both under the cap unless they have lots of caps pace. I could see Rodgers and Adams going to different teams easier then I could see them both going to the same team not named GB There probably isn't a team who could trade for Rodgers who couldn't also fit Adams on a mega deal. And if there is one team like that, Rodgers probably eliminates them from contention through back channels.

Do you think Rodgers would deliberately consider only teams that can afford / have desire to also bring on Adams? I think it's a good question, although I don't know we'd ever have visibility into that. It's kind of like Brady/Gronk. If he's going to make that move, he takes someone else he knows for a fact he can be successful with. I don't think it is anything like Brady/Gronk. Gronk was a retired dude falling apart physically. Nobody was looking to sign him until Brady went to Tampa. Adams is the best of the best free agents. He'll go where the money goes, not where just where daddy goes. While I agree it's different, find me the team that doesn't have a QB and would turn down a Adams/Rodgers pairing where Adams is the highest paid WR. I doubt that team exists. It might not be an official package deal, but I'm sure they'll make their wishes known to said team.

I kind of think that's exactly what he'll do. Seems comfortable walking if not. It also answers people who might say, well X team doesn't have receivers so why would Rodgers go there? Because Adams is coming with him. Yea. As long as Rodgers is willing to retire, he can basically name his landing spot. If he's not actually willing to retire, only to the extent he can make GB believe it.

Do you think Rodgers would deliberately consider only teams that can afford / have desire to also bring on Adams? I think it's a good question, although I don't know we'd ever have visibility into that. It's kind of like Brady/Gronk. If he's going to make that move, he takes someone else he knows for a fact he can be successful with. I kind of think that's exactly what he'll do. Seems comfortable walking if not.

It ain't happening. Unless Rodgers retires I think he goes where he goes. And there's plenty of good young QBs he can go pair with who are further along than the Bears.

Two hypothetical extremes. Cut everyone over 29. Restructure everyone under 28. 12M of space for 2022 and 96M of projected space in 2023. Or just restructure everyone : 24M in cap spade in 2022 and negative 10M of space in 2023. Now they'll have plenty of room to defer and restructure more deals in 2023 so that's not necessarily problematic, but there's definitely some room between those extremes where some of those cuts may make sense. The specifically operate in a way where they plan to do these restructures. I'm actually a huge fan of Loomis' cap management, but at a certain point can verse should with cap decisions is a legit question IMO.

Cut Taysom Hill for sure (this simply has to be done). Try and trade Armstead or maybe even Kamara to both free up money and move up enough in the draft to ensure you get one of the QB's. Winston is only due 3 million so I think you may as well keep him. But the credit card bill is finally due for the Saints. Hell, keep Winston as the back up next season and play the rookie. May as well. Eh, they're kind of stuck with Hill. 90% of his hit is guarantees for 2022. Armstead they can't trade unless they franchise tag which would be incredibly tough. If they keep Armstead its on a back loaded deal. Winston has a 3M cap hit, but it's a void deal. So he is actually a FA unless they agree to an extension. The "credit card bill" (I hate that term) isn't due due, but if I was them I'd priortize by restructing mostly the young guys and cut some of the older ones. They can explore trades too, but they have a hard deadline to get under the cap before the league year starts, and they cant make trades until them. So timing can get dicey.

They have a ton of guarantees and roster bonuses they'll restructure to push out. I mean, yea at some point they have to pay the piper so to speak. They probably will have to make some tough cuts this year. If Loomis wants to reign it in and not hand out too many back loaded contracts this year, they could probably be back well under the cap for 2023. Using OTCs calculator I got them to about 7M in space with 78M projected for next year. Maybe need to free up a little more space than that. A guy like Thomas is the interesting type of choice. Only 2M in immediate cap relief, but 16M in base salary you can save. And you can June 1 him to give yourself all the in season room you'd need. Granted that is with plenty of holes for 2022, but this would be the perfect year for a reset right? Let every good FA walk, replace them with minimum players, and collect some comp picks for 2023. That said, you can do stuff like restructure Thomas and laugh at the idea of resetting the cap all while handing out the type of FA deals they been known to do and keep most of their good players and figure out later where the exit ramp is. They've done it this long. Last I looked they have 261M in unaccrued guarantees and dead hits whereas the median team has about 150M and the smallest is at about 115M (Philly actually has even more future dead hits and guarantees to accrue). The Saints cap woes are nothing compared to last season when they had to let Trey Hendrickson walk. The will do what they always do, restructure deals and give out salaries as roster bonuses. A lot of local writers are predicting that they won't have to let anyone at all walk this year. The one real question is if they're going to pay Armstead, who is an All-Pro type LT but can't stay healthy. That defense is Super Bowl caliber, and the offense when healthy can be enough. My prediction is that they sign Jameis Winston on a 2 to 3 year incentive laden deal, draft a WR and sign a Ridley type WR from Atlanta, draft an OL and run it back out there. I mean Armstead would be the big one. But if they just go straight restructure route they'll end up eating into all their space again next year. If they make a few cuts, they can actually operate with some space in 2023. I don't know how much they believe in the D, but they don't have any real answer at QB and with Payton gone, now would be the year to kind of tank it a little. They still have plenty of younger pieces they could build back around as quickly as 2023 if they find a QB over the next 2 offseasons. Take it from a fan of a team who had a SB caliber D one year, it can be awfully fleeting.

How are they going to get under the cap? I know they’ve been excellent at maneuvering contracts to make it under the cap but at some point they have to pay the Piper. Figured it would be this season. The NFC South may be wide open but do they have a super bowl contending roster? They have a ton of guarantees and roster bonuses they'll restructure to push out. I mean, yea at some point they have to pay the piper so to speak. They probably will have to make some tough cuts this year. If Loomis wants to reign it in and not hand out too many back loaded contracts this year, they could probably be back well under the cap for 2023. Using OTCs calculator I got them to about 7M in space with 78M projected for next year. Maybe need to free up a little more space than that. A guy like Thomas is the interesting type of choice. Only 2M in immediate cap relief, but 16M in base salary you can save. And you can June 1 him to give yourself all the in season room you'd need. Granted that is with plenty of holes for 2022, but this would be the perfect year for a reset right? Let every good FA walk, replace them with minimum players, and collect some comp picks for 2023. That said, you can do stuff like restructure Thomas and laugh at the idea of resetting the cap all while handing out the type of FA deals they been known to do and keep most of their good players and figure out later where the exit ramp is. They've done it this long. Last I looked they have 261M in unaccrued guarantees and dead hits whereas the median team has about 150M and the smallest is at about 115M (Philly actually has even more future dead hits and guarantees to accrue).

I thought I read they would save $5 mil if they cut him in June? I'd agree, $2 mil savings is probably worth taking a flyer on him. Cash savings vs salary cap savings? Aka real savings vs fake savings. But I think it's actually 4M v 2.25M. Unless there are some injury guarantees which there might be, but maybe not.

I took "athletic" to mean more just a scrambler, and Moon was one of the all time best QB's, period I believe the comment was more about how people assumed Byron Leftwich was a mobile QB, because of reasons, when he really wasn't much of one. Yes. Also the "Old enough to remember" joke format typically is meant to be something not that old. Honestly I underdid it. *that's the joke.gif*