Super bowl is over. Trades, rumors, the upcoming draft, all those thugs running rampant throughout the league. Discuss it all here.
Of course the big story right now is prospect Michael Sam coming out as gay. He's projected to go somewhere around the 5th round, which is somewhat late considering his college production. Apparently the concerns revolve around his size and his less than impressive performances in post season work outs. I would be pretty surprised if he didn't get drafted considering he has a lot of upside for how late he's going to get taken.
He'll get drafted, if he can get after the QB at all. Someone will take him based on how he rolls with all the media attention and come out on the other side. Maybe my Patriots will pick him up. Who knows?
I would love it if Seattle drafted him. Sam is essentially the size of Chris Clemons, who is a prime candidate to be released this offseason. With the opposition he played against and the numbers he put up, I can see Seattle making a monster out of him. Seattle's locker room has strong leadership and most of their players are going to be around the same age. Washington state is one of the most gay friendly places in America. It just makes a lot of sense to me.
Funny how in a league full of criminally insane retards who beat their wives, fatally drink and drive, do drugs, sell drugs, murder and/or cover up murders, etc. nobody will be given a harder time than Sam. Bet on that.
Or maybe they don't do anything in average over the norm? You really need to stop talking in hyperbole all the time, it's fucking annoying. Also gay players have been around forever, and by the time they get to the NFL many people knew. The only issue now isn't how the locker room will handle it, but rather how the media will handle it since people making a mountain out of a molehill will make it worse than it needs to be. Sure there will be idiots but that's true of anyone coming out in any workplace.
The worst part is that a team's front office is going to decide if he's good enough to justify putting up with the media spending all year trying to bait their players into saying something controversial. He's probably going to have a hard time fitting in because everyone will be scared of interacting with him. You can't joke with him, because the media will make it out as bullying. There's no way he's going to be part of any rookie hazing. People are going to have to walk on eggshells around him or risk a media shitstorm. He's going to be the kid in school who never gets invited to stuff because everyone is scared of his insane helicopter parents. Hell, Vilma is getting raked over the coals, but pretend he's talking about a straight man being in a women's locker room and what he said sounds perfectly reasonable.
This actually sums it up perfectly. Few people are going to have an actual problem with him, as I said in any locker room everyone is fully aware of who's on the down low. It's the accompanying media bullshit that will be the issue.
By the "norm" you mean men who aren't in the media spotlight, majority of whom went to college and make six or seven yearly incomes? Maybe you should accept the fact that for the past decade it has become a problem in the NFL, and those select assholes who actually DO get out of line should know better.
Or "norm" given where many of them grew up and came from, they are well below it. Its easy to cherry pick stats. The media spotlight shouldn't have anything to do with how they behave, but it has everything to do with bringing to light their little misdeeds that Larry from Accounting may have done in his 20s that you never knew about. A more salient point is the fact that they can get away with a DUI or other charge and not have it affect their employability, whereas in some white collar jobs that's not the case.
Am I the only one who thinks the NFL is at it's peak and will decline within the next few years? The Super Bowl, by all accounts was meh. It was won, at least in part, by Seattle reading Manning's hand signals. Whatever your opinions on sportsmanship may be, it made for a lame ass game. Meanwhile, the game isn't getting any safer, it's farm system (the NCAA) is under attack. The NFL can endure the non-profit status and concussion scandals, but the NCAA probably cannot and high school football certainly will not. I don't see the NFL getting better in the next few years. Given that the injury rate has been increasing, it makes each game a bit less exciting. "Yeah, they won but if XXX hadn't been hurt" shouldn't be the mantra of a professional sports league. Also, the games seem that much slower than when I was younger. The only way to save football is to make it more like rugby, which will make the games faster with less time for ads, which the NFL isn't about to do. Good for Sam for coming out. I am hopeful it will not be the shitstorm that everyone is predicting it will be. Just a dude who plays football, and apparently a football locker room isn't the erotic hotbed we all thought it was: <a class="postlink" href="http://www.outsports.com/2014/2/12/5403620/gay-football-player-reveals-what-showering-with-teammates-is-really?utm_source=outsports&utm_medium=nextclicks&utm_campaign=blogs" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.outsports.com/2014/2/12/5403 ... aign=blogs</a>
Yes. Its such a cash juggernaut that it will overrule any factors that may diminish it. Just cause the Super Bowl was a snoozer doesn't mean the majority of the season was. Interest in the NFL is higher than ever, especially with the proliferation of viewing and online options. You contradicted yourself. I don't know the injury rate comparisons era to era, but part of the reason for the increased injury severity is because the game has become so much faster and players so much stronger. It may just be a bias in your memory. Oh, now I'm realizing you mean the actual gametime due to stoppages and commercials. Then yea, maybe a bit, but again, see above. C.R.E.A.M. I can see less people going to games due to better TV options, cost, etc... But interest waning in the biggest professional sport in the country cause games are 3:30 instead of 3:15? No chance.
<a class="postlink" href="http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_/id/10414822/out-route" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://espn.go.com/espn/feature/story/_ ... /out-route</a> Worth a read. Gonzalez is legit, I hated he couldn't jump ship to KC and at least stand a chance of getting a ring last year.
Seems like very few franchise tags got used this year. Only 6 teams even used a tag at all, and two were transition tags which is basically free agency with the tagging team being able to match offers, since there's no exclusivity and no compensation for losing the player. Even the tags that did get used seemed like mostly extensions to the negotiating period rather than real retention tags for next season. Do franchise tagged salary averages take into account other franchise tagged players from the last year? Or do they only count averages from real contract salaries?
I believe it's only the average of the top 5 salaries at the position. Which is why Jimmy Graham is fighting to be designated as a WR not a TE.
Right, what I'm wondering is if the top 5 salaries include the people who, last year, were franchise tagged and thus either made the top-5 salary average or 120% of their previous year's pay? For instance, this year the cornerback franchise tag looks to be about $8.9m. If a couple of the CBs got tagged for this upcoming year (and tagged player salaries count towards the tag value), the tag could easily be worth $1-2m more even though nobody's contract salary changed, since Revis' salary pulls up the average... and Revis/Champ getting tagged would pull it up even more @ 120% of their existing salary.
That's a good question and I don't know for sure, although I would guess no since exclusive franchise tags use averages up to a certain date of the current year, while non-exclusive use averages for the past year. If the scenario you described was true nobody would use non-exclusive tags since, as you mentioned, the franchise designation (or more than one player at the same position being designated) would drive the average up for the previous year. Could be wrong though.
Ok, I'm really late to this, but I can't help it. There is no way your prediction happens. So many reasons, here's a few - - On injury safety you're wrong. The game has definitely been getting safer. Please don't make me list the several dozen rule changes and medical advances. - Increasing injuries actually means it is getting safer. Sounds counter intuitive, right? A concussion used to mean a kick in the ass to get back on the field. Players used to play through practically anything that wasn't a broken bone. - An injured player doesn't really cripple a team unless it's the QB. Sure if it's something insane like 11 starters, but usually the better roster/game plan will win. - The super bowl sucked, but fans have been pretty spoiled with the big game if you look at the last 7 years or so. Most were great games. Besides, shitty championship games/series happen in all sports. Why would this singularly hurt football? - The NCAA being under attack isn't going to hurt the NFL. It's going to hurt the NCAA... - If making it more like rugby would help rugby would already be more popular in the states. - I don't think making games faster is going to matter. Those sports already exist and if people were going to turn away from football for them in droves it would have happened already. On Sam, I hope it turns out to be just a non-story. That will NOT happen, but it's just such a boring non-issue in my mind. I don't give a flying fuck what players do off the field, and I only marginally care that it's so great for gays or whatever the fuck that an NFL player came out. I actually don't think the NFL is as homophobic as people like to think. I also think homophobia is mainly in three brackets these days. The super religious, people under 22, and the poor. Maybe I'm giving the country too much credit, but I don't think it's quite the wide spread hatred it was 20 years ago. Whatever. It's a lame ass story and the media is going to make 500x larger than it needs to be.
<a class="postlink" href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rashard-mendenhall/rashard-mendenhall-retirement-_b_4931316.html" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;">http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rashard-m ... 31316.html</a> I thought this was a pretty insightful piece. Worth a look.
Frankly, what's astonishing to me is that more players don't do this. A few years of playing ball and smart spending/investing could easily mean you don't have to work another day in your life, and that includes stepping away from a job whose hallmark is the destruction of your body.