woahfraze

I think expectations need to be tempered. Darnold likely won't match pretty much any of the numbers being tossed around. But that won't mean he isn't the possible solution at QB. It may take a bit of time to fully fix him. As long as he shows marked improvement over the past few years with the Jets--and that's based more on the eye test that what numbers he puts up--then I'll be OK with rolling with him for Year 2 and seeing if that upward trajectory continues. Edit: Marked improvement means he's playing well enough that you think you can win with him. Yes, I understand that a good bit of improvement from him could still mean he's playing pretty darn poorly. If that's the case, then move on and find your franchise QB elsewhere.

Also early for me. . Shouldn't say 1st in there. I would edit, but since you've quoted the post, I can't.

Just because multiple teams have inquired/shown interest in potentially trading for Teddy doesn't mean he's going to garner a 2nd or 3rd round pick. If that's what the Panthers ask for, these teams will hang up the phone having done their due diligence because Teddy isn't worth that much. Yes, teams are QB desperate this offseason, but with his contract, the best we can hope for from Teddy is going to be a mid- to late-1st round pick. If he's moved, I'd guess we can get a 4th or 5th for him at best.

"A" makes a bit of sense. But if he's shown enough after Year 1 that you feel he could be the real deal even if you're not 100% sure, you can resign him. So I don't understand why you wouldn't see what you have in him after this coming year before making that decision. "B" makes no sense. If he flames out, he's not a competent backup. And even if you want to argue that he's serviceable as a backup, $19MM is way too much to be paying a backup QB. His cap hit absolutely would be prohibitive to trade because all of that amount is guaranteed, but that's a moot point. Because if he flames out, no one is trading for him period even if his salary wasn't so high.

I don't have an issue with the Darnold trade itself. For those of you saying it was Option C or D, well what did you want the man to do once the more preferred options didn't work out? This was a modest investment of draft capital for a guy they see upside in. Whether the coaching staff can help him reach his potential is to be seen. But in the context of the trade itself, it's fairly low risk. Where I have a problem with it is picking up his 5th year option. Why commit to $19MM next year when you have no idea if he'll improve or not? Why not wait until after next year to sign him to an extension if his play warrants it? Are they worried that if he improves that they'll have an issue keeping him because the FA QB market is bonkers? That's the only rationale for executing the 5th year option, but I'd still prefer not to risk that investment when it's more likely than not that Darnold won't prove to be worth that amount of money for next year.

I agree with this. Just bite the bullet and move on next offseason. These folks hoping to "recoup" the 2nd from the Darnold trade by moving Teddy are delusional. He doesn't have the same unfulfilled potential of a Darnold or the proven track record of a Stafford. The market may not require us to give up picks to unload his contract, but at most we're getting a late round pick for him. He's more valuable as a backup who knows the system in the event the Darnold trade blows up in our faces.

I'm fine with the trade. I don't understand picking up the 5th year option. Why not play wait and see with how he plays this year? I know it's only an additional year of commitment, but if Darnold is bad, you're not allocating $18.8MM next year for a backup QB/someone you don't want on the roster. If he's good, you can still extend him next year. It might cost them more than $18.8MM in that initial year, but I prefer to take the risk that we have to pay $10MM or so more than otherwise next year if he's good moreso than the risk of having to pay $18.8MM to him next year if he's bad.

This would be a mistake. The only way to restructure the contract would be to push some of the money onto future years of the cap. We want Teddy off the books as soon as possible.

This. If your scouts like Kellen Mond's upside and the coaching staff thinks they can coach him up to his potential, then taking him in Round 2 or 3 doesn't seem like a terrible idea. Obviously it's a risk-reward decision, but the same is true of taking a guy early in Round 1. There's always going to be a downside. I love Zach Wilson as a prospect, but he's not guaranteed to be a great starter in the NFL. Same goes for Trevor Lawrence.

Of all these QBs, I like Wilson the best. I was watching JT O'Sullivan's QB School on YouTube, and you can see the arm strength obviously, but he really excels at throwing with anticipation. Lots of throws where he threw a guy open by releasing the ball before the WR's route broke. And he's got really good footwork and sneaky athleticism. And for all those reasons, he's probably going #2 and will be out or reach unless we trade a boatload to get up to that spot. I like Fields next best. I think the concerns over not being able to make multiple reads is overblown. He can go through progressions; he just isn't asked to do it all that often. But that's also true of most college QBs. People point to the Indiana game as a red flag, but if you watched Brett Kollman break down that entire tape, Indiana threw a ton of exotic pressures at them and OSU's offensive line had some major issues picking them up consistently, so he dealt with spotty protection all day. He made a few bad decisions in that game too. He'll need to clean that up/get more consistent. But the ability is there. I think Lawrence is really good, but I just don't understand the generational prospect billing that he gets. I like Lance too. Everything I've read about him makes it seem like he'll work to fulfill the promise that his physical potential holds. I'd be happy with all four of these guys. A lot of it just comes down to preference.

This is only a one year deal. In what way, shape, or form does this really provide any "insurance" or intent for including Burns in a trade for Watson?

From below, they apparently are only about $5MM over at this point. No idea how they managed that with all the the restructures, but the "voidable" year stuff is probably fairly emblematic of their whole philosophy. Due to cap inflation, it's smart to just continue kicking the can down the road. The only reason it seemed like an acute issue this year is the cap contracted due to lost revenue due to covid. Also from below, you can see with the new TV deals coming up, pushing money into the future, like the Falcons just did with Matt Ryan makes a lot of sense. https://www.theringer.com/nfl/2021/3/16/22334000/nfl-free-agency-tom-brady-taysom-hill-voidable-years The second: It actually is financially smart to push cap charges into the future. The NFL made less money than usual last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Subsequently, the salary cap figure dropped (because the cap is a percentage of league revenue). Teams have less money to spend this year than they thought—almost $30 million less than previous projections indicated. Naturally, teams want to cut salary cap costs in 2021. But they don’t really need to cut costs; they just need to punt them into future seasons. While this is a down year for the NFL’s finances, the league is also preparing to make more money than ever before—and soon. The main way the NFL makes money is by selling game rights to TV networks. And the league is currently renegotiating all of its preexisting TV contracts. While those deals are not done yet, they are expected to almost double in price. Fox might go from paying the NFL $1.1 billion a year to paying it about $2 billion a year. Teams know their Scrooge McDuck swimming pools will have a lot more gold coins in 2022, 2023, and 2024 than they do right now, so they don’t mind backloading contracts. Hill’s contract is a little more confusing than Brady’s. The details are still murky, but the gist is that Hill was set to cost the Saints $16 million this season, and now that the team has added four voidable years to the deal, he’ll cost just $8.4 million against the cap in 2021. Now, why the team added those four voidable years at the ludicrous cost of $140 million—money that Hill is almost certainly never going to see—is unclear. Jason Fitzgerald at Over the Cap wrote a bonkers explanation of what the Saints might be trying to do that’s worth a read if you want to dive deeper into the subject. It’s possible the Saints have some grander strategy in mind that can help them even more cap-wise. But it’s also possible that this is (at least partially) a public relations move to appease Hill and his agents. Financially, Hill wants to be seen as a quarterback. (Who wouldn’t, honestly?) And a four-year $140 million extension—even if it’s completely and utterly fake—makes it clear he’s a quarterback. Ultimately, though, this comes down to New Orleans needing every dollar of cap space it can get. The team was $75 million over the cap just a month ago. They have already shimmied that down to less than $5 million by cutting players and restructuring deals, but they’ve still got a ways to go. And moves like this one with Hill are how the team can franchise tag safety Marcus Williams at an eight-figure cost even when its salary cap space at the time was technically negative. If NFL contracts are like nailing smoke to a wall, then the Saints are the smoke monster from Lost.

Devonte and Monk with 16/17 points off the bench tonight. With Devonte healthy and Monk emerging as a consistent scorer, our 2nd unit is going to be hard for other teams to handle. That's two microwave, instant offense scorers we can bring off the bench.

Scary Terry! (Or Scarence Terrence for you more formal folks).

If you look at draft boards and first/second year WR production over the past couple of years, it's becoming apparent that the NFL's move toward more completely spread offenses has made it easier for WRs to transition from the college game. If #3 WR is so important to Joe Brady's offense, we can still probably find a decent one in Round 3 or 4. In terms of asset allocation during roster allocation, that's probably how you should be stocking your offensive skill positions outside of QB moving forward--with mid-round picks.

This, this, and more this. You have to view these moves in the context of a season in which the salary cap is contracting 8%. Those contracts perhaps don't need restructuring if COVID doesn't happen and the salary cap for 2021 increased from 2020 just like it has every year since 2011. It makes sense to free up money this year to field a competitive roster and push some money to later years when the salary cap is likely to rise again.

What his Y/A when throwing from a clean pocket? What was the sample size? Also, I'd like to see the reverse stats. In today's NFL, even with a good offensive line, there will come a time when a QB needs to make plays under pressure and/or out of the pocket. The eye test says Teddy was terrible in these situations. Would like to see the stats to back that up.

This, 100%. He's not playable because he has too many downs where he just absolutely whiffs on his assignment in pass blocking. You can get away with that on occasion, but not a couple times a game.

Spotrac has two additional years listed, but says they are 'dummy' years that automatically void and carry $3.6 MM of dead cap--and that's before today's restructure, so I don't know the new dead cap number. Honestly, that seems really weird, so I don't know exactly what's going on with the contract.

Part of the reason this is true is because there are fewer players under contract after this coming year. Every single NFL team has more cap space the further you look into the future. You can't just look at the number in dollars; you have to evaluate that against how many players are on your roster. $100MM with only 30 players under contract isn't good. You'd rather see a $50MM is you had 45 to 50 players under contract. So while what you said may be true, on general principal, I wouldn't necessarily want to be "kicking the can down the road" with guaranteed money unless you truly, truly needed the space in any given season. That's partly how Hurney got us in trouble (his initial contracts were a bit of a problem too of course).

Concerning this year's cap space, I think they're are trying to open up enough that if they were somehow able to pull a trade with Watson, they could absorb his cap hit AND still be able to make some other moves to improve the team. If they don't open up space, they might only be able to do one of those two things.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but by converting the base salary to signing bonus, they are basically taking the amount converted and spreading that out against the cap for the remaining year of the contract. That's the mechanism by which the conversion saves cap space this year--by pushing some of the money that would have applied this year into future years. Which in essence means it would be harder to cut him next year because there's now additional dead cap space that we'd incur. Sounds to me like the staff is either pleased enough with his play to keep him, or they really are concerned about continuity on the offensive line; cutting Paradis would mean they'd have to replace four starters on the line (assuming they tag Moton). On that last point, honestly this move may be part of their efforts to generate enough space to extend Moton long term.

This can't be right. First, he doesn't specify what time period he's talking about. For that low amount of assists, you'd have to assume he means most assists in a single season and not in franchise history. But that's not correct either. Baron Davis has the 10th most assists in a single season in Hornets history with 598. https://www.basketball-reference.com/teams/CHA/leaders_season.html What in the hell is Kyle Bailey talking about

Oh man is this team fun to watch

He's playing Melo a bunch now.... Maybe the more logical answer is that the young bigs aren't ready.