2024 NFL Offseason, Free Agency, and Draft Talk
New thread as the 2023 one is starting to get a bit diffuse...
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Those of us in the simplified FOF world of bonus+salary miss how sticky these situations can get... this is maybe the worst case ever (unless Deshaun Watson's goes equally badly, I suppose):
The Broncos & Russell Wilson's Contract | Spotrac Research |
Thats insane but the Broncos are better just tearing it all down. They play in a conference with Mahomes, Burrow, and Allen, Harbaugh taking over the Chargers, very good young Browns and Texans teams, a dynamic Miami offense, a Jets team a QB away from contending, hell even Indy looked good with Richardson. The AFC is so stacked right now better off tanking for picks and cap room.
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I don't see how you can expect to compete in the AFC without a stud QB. There are just too many to think you'll somehow slip past all of them.
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yes to this |
That’s why it scares me to give a big contract to a guy like Goff after next season. I like him in this offense and behind this line, but he has to have those two things or he won’t be worth anywhere near the money they’re talking about giving him and there’s no Jordan Love waiting to replace him. Market value for QBs are getting more and more ridiculous.
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Well, we can all agree and say they're ridiculous, but as long as the borderline cases (like Goff, Tagovailoa, Cousins) continue to get actual interest at that ridiculous level by either their current team or a new suitor... that seems to suggest it's not so ridiculous. Things are worth what someone will pay for them.
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And I'm willing to pay more for above average in the NFC. Above average is enough to get to the Super Bowl in the NFC.
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Jared Goff definitely has his limitations. He’s terrible under pressure, he needs a roof like Captain America needs a shield, and his complete lack of mobility makes it so he is zero threat as a runner/scrambler (Purdy’s scrambling in the NFC Championship game killed the Lions) and really can’t make a “second play” when things break down. That said, he’s played the best football of his career the last year and a half and has been the leader of a super successful offense. There’s no way the Lions will let him walk and I think that’s the right call, especially in the NFC. He just led the Lions to within a half of the Super Bowl and trying to find another QB at this point would be too huge a gamble even for Dan Campbell. I was very much against Goff being the Lions long term answer for QB when they traded for him. I didn’t like him at all as a QB. Even acknowledging his limitations, he’s totally won me over as a player and I’m fine with the Lions committing to him given the current state of the team and everything they’ve accomplished over the last year and a half. |
If you don't pay Goff, Tagovailoa, Cousins, etc... you'll end up with someone like O'Connell, Howell, Ridder, or Pickett, if you're lucky.
And while theoretically the former group can get you the results of a Mahomes, Allen, Burrow, Jackson, etc... if you also have a complimentary weapon or two and/or an offensive mastermind at HC or OC, that's not going to be true with the latter group. So, super-simple, it's supply and demand, and less than half of the league has QBs that can get their teams to the playoffs and be a somewhat legitimate threat once there. So, you've got to pay those guys or tear it down and try to draft one. But if you've built an otherwise strong team (DET, MIA, MIN are decent examples) that's a lot of sunk cost to punt on. I would imagine it's really hard to tell an owner or a fanbase "yeah, we might be in the top half of the league and with a lucky break or two we're in the Super Bowl, but the chances aren't high, so we're going to get rid of everyone and tank to take our chances on a franchise QB in the draft." |
Here's how I'd rank QBs right now (Top 30 by QBR for 2023 regular season plus Watson):
Tier 1: Brady-esque ability to win regardless of how much his team handicaps him, excels at finding the best plays against the defense and winning consistently without needing to blow other teams away: Mahomes Tier 2: Peyton Manning-esque ability to take over games and bully opposing teams into submission, while also, like Manning, curiously coming undone against specific defenses or running out of steam when the rest of his team can't hold up their end of the bargain: Allen, Jackson Tier 3: Could be Tier 1 or 2 but two seasons with ill-timed injuries contribute to a small sample size: Burrow Tier 4: Probably going to be Tier 1 or Tier 2 but we don't know yet because either a) they've had less than a season or b) they've been playing for the Chargers or c) whatever they hell we think has gone on with Jacksonville: Herbert, Love, Stroud, Richardson, Lawrence Tier 5: Really good with key offensive weapons: Hurts, Prescott Tier 6: Really good with key offensive weapons and an offensive guru at HC or OC: Purdy, Stafford, Tagovailoa, Goff Tier 7: Good with key offensive weapons and no longer actively detrimental to your team's chance to win: Cousins Tier 8: Adequate. You're not going to make the playoffs due to them, but you're also not going to effectively tank with them: Minshew, G. Smith, Carr, Mayfield Tier 9: Who the fuck knows: Watson, Murray Tier 10: You're kidding yourself, start tanking: Dobbs, Wilson, Fields, Howell, O'Connell, Ridder, Pickett, Jones, Young, Wilson |
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Super solid! |
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Yes solid list with one glaring name on there, Richardson. He cant be anywhere near tier 4 with all of 4 games and 3 touchdowns to his name after a mediocre college career and an already major injury. |
I’d probably just take the strategy of play it out/Franchise/Franchise/(maybe) Transition tag with Goff. If he wants some sort of security it’s on him to work out a deal slightly more favorable than that.
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That’s a very well thought out tier list.
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dola: Carr is so frustrating to watch. You’ll watch the whole game, and he’ll play badly and lose. Then you look at his stats at the end, and he’ll have 300+ yards and 2 TDs and no picks.
But it will be the emptiest stat line possible. All garbage yards. All non-clutch. |
Do you think that GMs are starting to figure out that young untested QBs are not worth giving superbig buvcks to yet?
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LOVE the detail of this list. |
Sounds like Carr is this years recipient of the Phillip Rivers memorial trophy, which is shaped like a broken condom and has shitty trash talk inscribed all around the base.
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wait wait there needs to be a category for both Flacco as well as a "QB that has potential but will inevitably be replaced by Flacco"
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are any of the injured starting QBs actually going to get well enough to play a full season next year? Did any of them have injuries so major there are doubts?
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I think that fear of losing something overmotivates them. Daniel Jones is a good example. There was maybe a 5% chance that he'd become a franchise QB after that one good season with Daboll. But I can see the fear the Giants had of letting him walk and then he wins Super Bowls with some other team. That's a Bowie over Jordan level mistake. So you sign him for way too much money. The Giants should have let him hit free agency and made him a good but not great offer. And if some other team wanted to surpass it? Then he becomes their problem. |
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I think this is very true, GMs seem to treat the QB position like they in a vacuum rather than truly supply and demand. Nobody else was going to pay Jones that and if they were going to, then there's one other team in the league you don't have to worry about finding that affordable QB on a rookie deal or elite QB that is a must for competing. With that being said, there is also something to say for job security. You don't get sacked going 9-7 and a wildcard berth 2 out of 3 years. You get sacked when you let a QB go who leads another team to the playoffs while the one you picked busts, and the <1% chance that Jones turns into Drew Brees on another team doesn't just get you sacked, it makes you a punchline for the next 30 years. |
I dunno. I'm no Daniel Jones fan but he was 9-6-1 with a 92.5 passer rating before the signing. There's something to be said for consistency and development and knowing what you have to work with. What was the obvious QB replacement if they didn't bank on Jones? Was that the Baker, Mariota, Jimmy G, etc. class of free agent QBs?
At the time to me, it felt like a no-win situation. You get clowned for paying him or clowned for not having a plan at QB. |
I think the most difficult decision as a GM is the guy that likely won't take you to a championship but the team will be immediately worse without them.
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Sort of but Rivers is way better than Carr. I always wanted him to take that next step but he never did and was glad to see him cut. He has a lot of 4th quarter comebacks but thats largely due to playing empty ball for 3 quarters and always being down. For the majority of the game he puts up some yards and maybe a couple field goals but doesnt put the ball in the endzone but then does somethings at the end of the game to maybe win. |
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That’s exactly the point though. Yes, consistency and development is important. That doesn’t have to come with $160m and $92m in guarantees just because of the timing and the fact you feel like you’ve got to show he’s your no doubt guy. You can find a generic Daniel Jones for half that. Outside of the vacuum no other team would have given a player of that talent that contract. And if they would have the Giants should have been happy that a competitor was not really a threat. |
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Can you though? Can you for sure get generic Daniel Jones this offseason when other teams are trying to do the same? Or, do you risk being the team that gets stuck with Trubisky, Dobbs, Foles, or someone like that? I think that's the question. How much of a gamble do you take at QB when you have 9-win team that made the playoffs? |
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I don't see why not. The guy threw 15 TDs in 16 games in his "breakout" season. That should have been a giant red flag pun intended. I know they liked his legs and all that, but having a guy playing QB that isn't productive passing the ball is a such a handicap that if I were the owner I be firing this GM and moving on the next one. And before someone tosses out Lamar I'd like to point out that Lamar has been able to produce more points with his arm than Jones did in his "breakout" season basically every season of his career. |
If you think the discourse is bad now regarding QB contracts, wait until next season when Brock Purdy is eligible to sign an extension. If he wins you a Super Bowl, is he worth $50 million a year? What if he wins MVP?
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Nick Foles has a higher QB rating over his career than Daniel Jones does, FWIW. So yeah, I’m pretty comfortable I can find that without guaranteeing $92m to at best a middling QB. |
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Over his career, sure. The version of Nick Foles you could have picked up in that offseason to replace Jones was ... not great. Anywho, it certainly hasn't turned out to be a great decision to keep Jones but I just don't think it was a slam-dunk, no-doubt mistake at the time. YMMV, AFAIK, IMHO, etc. |
I agree with Bobble. I'm also often wrong about all things sports-related.
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I have to say that every time a conversation about QBs comes up, I find myself still baffled that no one made any sort of run at Lamar Jackson last year.
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Exactly. I don't think it was realistic that anyone other than the Ravens was going to sign Lamar Jackson. They have a similar RFA system in hockey, where when a player is a restricted agent, teams can offer that player a contract and the other team can either accept that contract and keep the player, or let the player go for draft pick compensation. It's very, very rare that these players ever get contracts from another team and, if they do, they are often matched. So, teams rarely feel the need to "do the work" for a rival. That being said, every once in a while it happens and it's pretty fun! It creates a lot of bad blood between the franchises and teams can get pretty creative with their offers. A few decades ago Red Wings forward Sergei Fedorov was a RFA and Carolina eventually offered him a deal. There was a $14 million signing bonus upfront, and about $12 million in bonuses that would be paid throughout the remaining years of the contract. However, there was the caveat that if Fedorov’s team reached the conference finals, he would be paid all $12 million upfront. The actual salary worked out to only $2 million per year. That would mean that there was the potential of having to pay Sergei Fedorov $28 million for one season. Carolina wasn't making the Conference Finals, but the Wings were coming off a Stanley Cup win. The Wings matched it and Fedorov was paid $28 million for all of four months of hockey. |
Isn't a long shot at a franchise QB worth the work when there's no downside?
I guess unless you have an established QB that's going to be mad at you if you fail and have to stick with him. But otherwise, I didn't understand the "didn't want to do the work" rhetoric back then. Did everyone have a hot date they had to get to on time? |
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It's just a prediction and speculation that it was never going to happen. I don't know how we established that was just a fact. Obviously there was some number the Ravens didn't want to pay, the negotiations went on for a while and seemed to be contentious. He didn't even get a fully guaranteed contract. But even if it's true that the Ravens would have automatically matched any offer no matter what, a conference rival should have made them spend more money. Make them pay Watson money, or even Burroughs/Herbert/Mahomes money. But because it just would have been too much work, a Super Bowl contender gets a bargain at QB. Seems like an opportunity, rather than annoying busy work that's not worth doing, to be able to draft a rival team's most important player contract. A lot of this seems made up after the fact. I remember a lot of stuff about Lamar not being worth it, being injured, missing playoff games he could have played in, etc. A lot of questions about whether he was worth all the guaranteed money. And he didn't end up getting it. But now his value is infinite and that was obvious all along. |
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I think you are underestimating how much work and energy would have been involved with him having no agent. All the while you have to clear tons of cap room to even be able to make the offer and miss out on any other free agents.
And GM's in the know probably knew Baltimore was going to match regardless. |
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The Ravens would have had to match within 5 days, and they would have gotten the offering teams next 2 first round picks. Which both made him less desirable to other teams, and created a lot of speculation back then that Ravens would be OK to take the picks and move on at a certain number.
Edit: Best I can tell from reading the stuff back then, it was a calculated risk. The Ravens could narrow down which teams had the space to begin with, and could project what an offer might be. They thought the risk was low that somebody would go over what they were willing to pay, there just wasn't many teams in play. The consensus of the time was that around $200 million guaranteed would have gotten it done, and nobody was willing to offer that AND give up 2 first round picks. But I wonder if any teams who could have, would take that now. His perceived value is much higher now than it was then. There's not a lot of professional athletes I can think of that played better immediately AFTER getting a massive amount of money. |
I read three things today that I'm choosing to believe are true, even of none of them are:
1. Russell Wilson put his Denver mansion up for sale 2. It has more bathrooms than he had wins in Denver 3. His house in Seattle is still on the market |
What happened to him?
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The Lions have released veteran safety Tracy Walker. He was one of the few holdovers from the Quinntricia era. He was set to be a leader and key piece for the defense two years ago, tore his Achilles and then got surpassed on the depth chart.
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I don’t know. My theory is that his game, for whatever reason, was more reliant on his athleticism than most quarterbacks. And once he inevitably lost some of that, everything came crashing down. |
Does Wilson even play in the league next season? Just don't see a lot of great starting options available and I can't imagine him or a team want him as a backup. Maybe he'll wait till preseason to see if anyone gets hurt.
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Rumor is the steelers are interested if he's released. |
Saw these elsewhere on the internet. Don't know if they're all true, but it would be a hoot if they were.
Eli Manning and Peyton Manning have the exact same career passer rating in the playoffs(87.4) Matt Ryan won 120 games with the falcons, the player that is second in wins with the falcons started 121 games. In flacco's first 5 playoff games, he had a 47.5 completion percentage, threw 1 TD 6 INT averaged 132 yards per game, the ravens went 3-2 in those games. In 2018, the Browns started the season 0-0-1, that was their best start in 14 years. The Panthers have never had back to back winning seasons, but they won the NFC South 3 years in a row. The oilers/titans franchise has the same amount of AFC East titles as the jets(4), they haven't been in the afc East since 1969. In Brady's first 7 super bowls, he didn't score any points in the first quarter. Jerry Rice had 2169 receiving yards after turning 40, everyone else combined has 4 yards(6 from Brady). In the 2006 game against the Cardinals, Rex Grossman was 14-37 144 yards 0 TD 4 INT 2 lost fumbles, the Bears won. Hester also had more punt return yards than Grossman had passing yards. |
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