Jay Roosevelt

I can't fathom there is a living human man between the ages of 20-40 with two arms and two legs that wouldn't be better than Jack Plummer.

If I were a bubble player I wouldn't consider myself to have made the team unless I'm still on the roster at the end of September. Always a lot of movement during that first month or so.

Well, you'd like to think there's a better plan in place for QB1 but if you don't have one, yeah.

I wouldn't assume Fitzgerald has won the kicker job just yet. We could very well opt to bring in someone else once the cuts start coming in.

I'd rather hang onto "pretty good" players than trade all the "pretty good" players we have for picks that we'll use to draft players that are "pretty shitty."

We should be cycling through QB3s every 1-2 seasons until we find one worth developing into our QB2. Bring in the most talented UDFA or late-round options available until we find a functional backup. Jack Plummer was... not it.

Hopefully the Jack Plummer experiment is over.

I'm suggesting they're just as likely to be scrubs as they are to be good players. That's just the nature of mid-round draft picks. You're as likely to get an Troy Pride, Jr. as you are a Chuba Hubbard. Realistically, you're probably less likely to get a starter after round 3 than you are to get a guy who will end up cut after year 2. We're entering a season that is crucial for Bryce in terms of either ascending to franchise QB or being a confirmed bust. Now is not the time to take away the one known quantity at WR that we have, no matter how confident we may be in the young guys.

As opposed to having a roster full of random 6th round scrubs who can't play?

Keeping good players surely isn't the problem. Neither is not having more late-round draft picks.

My take on this is basically this: why give up a quality player for the NFL equivalent of a half-empty bag of peanuts and a $1 scratch-off ticket? An aging player, yes. In a contract year? Yes. But still a quality player that can help us win. If they come with a serious offer that provides good value for us then it should be considered, but 5th and 6th rounders are cut every day. Even 4th rounders are coin-flips most of the time. Now, if we get closer to the trade deadline and are floundering and have little to no shot at the playoffs, then you have to consider even a lowball offer at that point, if for no other reason than giving a respected veteran player a chance to play meaningful football in what could be his last year. But right now? Teams that trade away starting WRs a week before opening day for crumbs aren't serious about competing, let alone winning. We traded Christian McCaffrey for below market value; we were forced to trade Brian Burns for less than market value because Fitterer threw any leverage we had out the window when he turned down the Rams insane offer and then failed to get an extension done. This after we traded away D.J. Moore as part of the Bryce Young trade instead of Burns, who we'd end up trading for just a 2nd rounder anyway. We've seen way too many talented starters traded away by this team over the last several years. Is Adam Thielen in the same category as McCaffrey, Burns and Moore? Obviously no, based on his age alone. But he's a good and dependable player who has been penciled in as a starting WR all offseason and if nothing else is a very good slot receiver. Why give a player like that up for a late-round pick that will most likely end up being used a player who will end up being a backup at best? Not only does it send a horrible message to the locker room, but it sends a message to the rest of the league: we'll trade our starters for peanuts. Give us your worst offer!

Tyler Huntley wouldn't be a bad option at QB2 if Dalton is expected to miss a good amount of time.

If it's a top-100 like the one NFL Network does that's based entirely on the previous season, not having Derrick Brown would make sense considering he only played in 1 game. But if it's a general top-100 player list? Yeah, no question Brown should have made it. You can make a good argument for Jaycee Horn, Robert Hunt, Damien Lewis and Chuba Hubbard but I don't know that any of those guys are full-on locks either.

Zero reason Ransom shouldn't be starting, but I fully expect them to trot out Nick Scott.

They shouldn't. Coker is a legit #2 WR and should get those targets.

A considerable turn for the worst? Seriously? How do you figure? He played very well and only missed one game due to his knee. And he likely would have played that one had we still been in the playoff hunt. I'm sorry, but you're reaching here.

You do know that most NFL players have to manage chronic wear-and-tear-related injuries once they get into their late 20s, right? This isn't unusual. There's a difference between long-term management and dealing with a major injury. Do you think they'd have paid him this much if they hadn't had the knee thoroughly examined and were comfortable with what they found? Honestly?

Yeah, I think you are. In terms of how professional athletes think about these things another contract and years of play are basically the same thing. And I'm not saying it's not a concern; just that I don't think we decide to extend him without thoroughly examining his knee and having confidence it wouldn't be a major issue for the life of the contract.

Oh, I gotcha. I mean, for once we appear to actually have some viable depth on the OL. So I'm not going to freak out too much over that.

And yet he played and played well. I'm reasonably positive they're comfortable with his knee situation if they decided to extend him. I can understand if we signed him for 5-6 years, but it's a 2-year extension. We have plenty of things on this team to be legitimately worried about; Taylor Moton is not one of them.

I don't see any reason to think he doesn't have 2 more good years left. I think the knee issue has been overblown. My only question is why we didn't do this in February or March. We could have used the extra cap space to sign more help on defense.

The only reason I'd be open to this is because I feel like Hunter Renfrow can play the same role that Thielen has the last couple years. But I certainly wouldn't ship him off for a late round pick or anything. He's far more valuable to us than that.

Oh, from a betting POV so would I. That's where the value would be. But from a real world on-field POV, I think 7 wins is only slightly more likely than 9.

What's wrong with Damien Lewis? He played pretty well last year.

I'll say 6/10. I don't know that we learned a whole lot about this team during preseason that we didn't already know. We didn't play the starters enough to really get a feel for what to expect. We had one good drive against the Browns, one 3-and-out and two 3-and-outs against the Texans. That's an extremely small sample size across 3 games regardless of performance. My camp/preseason takeaways: Jalen Coker might be the best WR on this team and is certainly no worse than #2. Nic Scourton is going to be a good player for us. Possibly very good. Bobby Brown was our best free agent addition. Jack Plummer isn't an NFL QB. Not even a practice squad guy. Having anyone other than Canales and Evero call plays was a really stupid and pointless idea. Our depth is largely non-existent, especially on defense. The three areas we actually DO have depth are on the OL, in the WR corp. and at RB. I can't fathom why Dan Morgan didn't do more to upgrade ILB during the offseason. We better hope Lathan Ransom steps up at FS because if he doesn't we have a massive hole. For all the hype surrounding Sanders/Evans, Tommy Tremble is still the best TE on the roster. I'm only slightly less enthusiastic going into the regular season than I was a month ago. I think our starters on offense are solid and we should be pretty good there unless Bryce totally regresses. On defense, we're probably bottom 3rd in the league if 100% healthy and significantly worse than that if injuries become an issue. We badly need at least two of our rookies to become high-level players early (ideally one of the pass rushers + Ransom) and at least 2 of our free agent additions (ideally Moehrig + Bobby Brown) to be significant upgrades over last year. Call me pessimistically optimistic