Mr. Scot

Is a startup mentality more likely to pay huge money to a veteran quarterback or feature a young draftee on a rookie deal?

Long as we're talking about former coach connections, there's a guy who's connected both to our assistant OL coach and our new GM, specifically Cedric Ogbuehi. He was with the Jaguars two seasons ago, the Seahawks last season. Yeah I know, not that exciting. Sparano has also been coaching our old friend Andrew Norwell for the last few years, for what that's worth.

Kinda surprised nobody mentioned that RG3 has been cut by the Ravens. No, I don't think we should sign him.

I was thinking more along these lines. "Start Up" mentality: They want to make the grown men on the other team cry.

Got Chris Carson out of it, but using that first round pick on Malik McDowell...yikes! This is why I try to be careful about looking at drafts though. The guys in the room are part of the process, but they're not the ones making the final choices. how much blame they deserve for mistakes, and also how much credit they deserve for successes, is something you have to temper.

I've begun to feel like at some point down the road, Dan Morgan is going to be part of the Panthers front office. I'm just not sure when. And yeah Scot McCloughan is a name I ran across a few times while reading up on Fitterer. Heaven knows he's talented, but how willing are you to put yourself in a position of depending on him?

Yep. Personnel people and coaches (especially coaches) want to make the best of the people they've already acquired, not ship them off for the fun and enjoyment of drafting somebody else and starting all over from scratch. This isn't college where you have a whole new team every three or four years. And it sure as hell isn't Madden.

Good thing to remember too: From what I've read, a pretty hefty portion of the trades that occur in the NFL are initiated by a team that trying to acquire a player, not get rid of one. Teams that are trying to trade a player away are typically in a bad spot with that player, perhaps due to combination of age, salary cap, etc. So, sorry folks. Actual NFL personnel people don't look down a roster at their good young players thinking 'Hey, I bet I could get a couple of picks for that guy". More likely, they're thinking about what they need to do to develop that guy even further and maximize their talents to help them win.

And all falling under the category of "In the name.of all that's holy, why would you want to trade these guys?!"

For clarity, the one that Schneider compared to Tony Dungy is Fitterer. he's actually not the first person I've seen make that comparison.

It works well in Franchise Mode. Works best if you turn off the salary cap though. What do you mean you can't do that in real life?

Well that too... But more the case of people wanting to draft a guy with a high pick and develop him for two years just to ship him off to somebody else and start over again. I know fans love the idea of trading away good young players for draft picks or whatever. Actual football professionals aren't generally so high on it. Downloading a roster update is easy. Actually putting real time and effort into a developing a player? Not so much.

Quick clarification: It was actually Matt Rhule who said that. The context was that Fitterer had asked him about playing young players to help them develop. Rhule responded by citing several examples of the team doing this and framing that as "a startup mentality".

It's not necessarily that they're all bad. Some of these guys might actually have been pretty good if they'd gotten better coaching. Heck, look at what happened with Tannehill, or even with Josh Allen. Coaching and development matters...a lot.

Person pointed out that besides Fitterer's good rep, he's also well connected. That's the kind of thing that comes in handy when you're trying to recruit good people to your organization.

Sometimes I think the creators of Madden deserve to be repeatdly kicked in the balls.

Folks who are worried about us trading back as much as the Seahawks have been doing will probably appreciate quote number three.

Snagged Martin Mayhew as well (title unknown as yet) Mayhew's best known here for interviewing the last time we hired Marty. He's best known elsewhere for being the architect of the Lions team that went 0-16 a few years back. Washington's had to close their facility due to Covid issues so Marty getting finalized might still be a few days off.

Dan Campbell..might well bring a guy from the Saints. And yeah, we wanted this guy last year but didn't get him so I'm not really doing a whole lot of "dot connecting".

This time from Seahawks GM John Schneider. Seahawks GM will miss Fitterer's calm, steady approach Excerpts: ... ... ... ... ... ...

Actually just noticed this a few minutes ago and was planning on listening to it...

Regardless of your feelings on trading, the notion that Mike Davis gives you anything close to what McCaffrey does is just goofy. If you paid attention, by seasons end our run game was by committee and Davis was running on fumes.

Apparently this is not a good day to hire a GM...

Speaking of assistant coaches...

The voting process has ended, but the results have not yet been announced. In the meantime, you can view this clip of Saints reporter Jeff Duncan arguing that Sam Mills should be a Hall of Famer.