4th and 5th for Ngata. Whoa. Sam Bradford and a 2nd for Foles. That slightly changes things. Edit: The basic agreement between the Rams and Eagles includes a swap of picks this year and a conditional going to Philly next year. Edit again: WOOT! Most touchdowns since 2011: 1. Marshawn Lynch, 56 2. Dez Bryant, 50 3. Jimmy Graham, 46
Saints are reportedly fielding offers for QB Drew Brees via @NFL Access WHOA. The Graham trade makes soooo much more sense.
The saints are in cap hell, and need to completely unload and rebuild. How about a straight swap: Brees for Cutler. No? Fine. Fuck. I'll show myself out.
Some NFL guy on twitter observed that the Saints now have two first rounders and met with Winston at the combine. Would be interesting if they decided to jettison a bunch of expensive contracts and start fresh with a rookie QB. Fuck, with the pushes that the Bills made this offseason, that defense, and Sammy Watkins catching passes from Drew Brees...? I've got a semi.
If the Saints were smart they'd trade one of those first rounders for a few lower rounds and hoard picks this draft. Play the year out with Brees or trade him and play it out with a stop-gap QB, and wait til next year to draft a QB when the draft class isn't so crappy. Then you have two drafts worth of young guys to build around and you're set up for more long term success, than selling the farm to trade up for Winston or Mariota, both of whom have question marks.
Tebow is talking about making a comeback. Toss him a league minimum contract and see what happens, because why the fuck not? It could be fun. For the rest of us that aren't Saints fans.
Can a 26 year old dude with only 23 starts out of a possible (minimum) 64 be considered retiring? He's can't even be considered a veteran. He's just quitting football.
How is it a minimum of 64 games? He played 4 years and the Titans never made the playoffs. And he was the backup his rookie year. Once he became the starter in Tennessee, he had started every game except 2, he just missed a shit ton of games due to injury. I'm willing to say a player is "retiring" when he could have remained in the league but chose not to for reasons, including injury. He pretty seriously injured both shoulders and his right foot/leg, all in 3 seasons. He might not have been a starter, but he absolutely could have found a job as a second stringer/fringe starter when you look at some of the starters in this league. Quitting is for undrafted free agents who bounce around to practice squads and then decide to hang it up, or players getting no bites in FA.
The thing about that list, though, is that half of those dudes are on contracts the teams regret. If they could without a bunch of dead money and nothing in return, the Bucs, Vikings, and Dolphins would all love to get out of those deals. And Bowe is supposedly going to get cut next week. You take those guys off the list and the only people left are the three best receivers in the league. I still might have done it if I were Chip given the cap space he has, but I can see why he was uneasy giving that much money to someone with one one Pro Bowl caliber year. About McCoy, sure. I think he'll probably snap back into form, although I doubt it will ever be quite as good as 2013. But Alonso is really good if he's healthy and no one likes paying running backs in general.
The Eagles continue to buy into this nonsense. You know why Maclin hasn't had pro bowl caliber years? Because of the guys throwing to him. The Eagles, once again, get rid of a QB with potential for one that has zero chance of saving the franchise, and this franchise needs saving. College coaches are terrible at the pro level. Pete Carrol went through 4 teams? And still makes the most boneheaded call of the decade in the Superbowl? Kelly inherited a great team. Say what you will about Andy Reid, but he puts good teams together. The McCoy trade, just to pick up Gore (another aging back) was stupid. So was the Maxwell signing. So far, Kelly's moves are mirroring Ruben Amaro's on the Phillies: a lot of flash and zero substance.
Ehh... I'd say Bradford is a better QB with a worse deep ball, who can't stay healthy. If Kelly thinks his strength & conditioning programs can keep injury-prone players healthy (since he picked up Mathews who hasn't had a healthy year, and Alonso who is coming off his second ACL surgery) then I'm not sure he got much of a downgrade at talent. The trade was still weird because he has to pay Bradford something like $13m, but I don't think Foles is some kind of irreplaceable franchise QB. Can we please drop this silly idea that it was such a terrible call? He called a passing play to stop the clock. Wilson saw an open receiver on an inside route and threw it. The inside route was a dangerous throw, but I guarantee there were at least 3 other places designed to go with the ball in that one play call.
I thought they could agree to a contract extension and push that number way down. Listen to some of the so-called "experts" and that's what usually happens. One of the popular theories being thrown around is that Kelly is still hoping to be able to trade Bradford + some picks/players and get Mariota. He said in his presser that he'd never mortgage the future for one player but "mortgage the future" could have a variety of meanings. I've been listening to too much sports radio the past 2 days...
I'll tell you what, though: Philly fans will forget Shady real quick if this DeMarco Murray deal happens. Not sure I really see why they would refuse to pay one overworked 27 year old in order to pay another overworked 27 year old, but that's definitely one hell of a capable replacement. I don't really get why you employ both Sanchez and Bradford at sizeable money. Who needs two different bridge quarterbacks?
They can certainly restructure his contract but Bradford has already refused to take one pay cut, so I doubt they'll get it down much in total. They could cut down this year's cap hit, but almost inevitably they'll just end up paying the same or more money and committing to him over a longer term. If they really needed the cap space this year, it might make sense - but as it is, it's probably better to take a one year rental and see if he proves himself. I don't think there's any way they trade up now for Mariota. Bradford isn't going to command enough of a premium. Yep, this doesn't make sense to me. If you want to treat RBs as fungible commodities, that's fine, but Murray is going to command a good contract - and Shady wasn't forced to carry the ball 400 times last year.
Todd Archer just tweeted that there's a significant difference in the amount of guaranteed money between Eagles and Cowboys offers. At this point in time, I'm convinced that Stephen Jones has locked his dad up in a room with a bottle of Blue Label and no communications. The Jerry Jones I know as the GM of the Cowboys would have restructured Romo yet again and vastly overpaid Murray and Dez.
He better hope all of this shit he's doing pays off or the fans will burn him alive on the 50 yard line because, Philly.
If the justification was stopping the clock, there were a lot of other ways to do it that didn't involve losing the game. But I digress. I overheard the following from an Eagle in my lobby two days ago: "Don't lose respect for him yet" in reference to Kelly. Interesting.