I bet Fields could throw a football over that mountain.Originally Posted by Frozen Tundra
I bet Fields could throw a football over that mountain.
All I will say is that the whole Bears team is a steaming pile of crap. Caleb Williams or whoever you might want to name would undoubtedly be worse performance-wise. When you don't have much else, it helps to have a QB who can gain yards running. As somebody rooting for their opponents, I'm more scared of somebody who can run like that.
Since you lame-assed truth squaders like to dig up "facts", who exactly do you see as better than Fields? Mahomes, Jackson, Love, Allen, Prescott, Herbert, probably Hurts, maybe Stroud and Lawrence and Murray. That's all I see. NOT Goff, Stafford, Tagvailoa, Cousins, or Mayfield, all of which the website stupidly lists above Love (12), NOT Flacco, Burrow, or Richardson all listed above Fields who is listed 20th.
I got this off a website listing 66 QBs who have started since the beginning of the '23 season (hard to believe there were so many). https://www.nfl.com/news/nfl-qb-inde...023-nfl-season
I didn't go far enough down the list to find another better than Fields - some guy who started one game before getting hurt a couple plays in. Stats be damned - use your brains.
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I disagree, but don't see the value in discussing further with you.
I like facts. They prove things like Jaire is not 6 feet tall, or that Justin Fields is not a winning NFL QB (much less a top 10 QB). It would be nice to ignore facts and just declare the Packers SB Champs every year though.
Anyway, do we think Gute brings back anyone in the secondary? In order of most to least likely I'd guess Keisean, Ford, Ballantine, Savage, Owens.
The problem with facts is mostly it's just "facts".
I've mentioned Wingfield as somebody nice to get, but I doubt it happens. I am a little afraid that Jaire is no longer a shut down Corner, and Stokes is unlikely to be also. If by bring in, you mean draft, yeah, it's almost certain we draft a Safety no later than the 4th round, probably earlier. And I expect a Corner to be taken too, maybe early, but more likely 4th to 6th.
Of the '23 Packers who are FAs that you mentioned, I'd like to see all of them back plus Anthony Johnson (#36). Savage may be the most likely gone since they missed some kind of a deadline yesterday regarding void years. Other than that, I pretty much agree with your order except I'd move Owens ahead of Ballentine and Savage.
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Would Winfield be a nice get? Sure! Problem is, he's not coming to GB. Well, it's about 2% likely to happen.
He's far more likely to stay with TB and its beaches and lack of income tax, else he'll get a fat paycheck from a team looking for a safety with cap space like DET. Hell, CHI has gobs of cap space to overpay him with.
I'm betting they draft 1-2 safeties and sign someone like Jordan Fuller and/or Rudy Ford to be the vets. Even Rudy Ford is doubtful, dude is 29 and Gute will want to get younger at safety. Besides, at one point they essentially benched Ford for Owens and that... didn't do much.
Savage is a great athlete who doesn't tackle or cover all that well, Owens is a slower version of Ford; I wish them well but there's no reason to bring them back.
Ballantine would be my choice for depth as an end of bench/ST guy, but that's it. He'd be a cheap guy who's a half-step above a Practice Squadder.
The "fact" that Nixon, Savage and Njiman had void money hit the cap does not make their odds of resigning with the team very good. It does NOT eliminate them, but after what we saw in 2023 I doubt they are back.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nfl...ap/ar-BB1iy3Nq
All these guys are meh, and now they are older. You know what you have and it's not great, no point bringing that back regardless of scheme.
The depth at corner isn't great because you don't have Rasul anymore, plus Jaire/Stokes injuries are a concern. If Nixon's not back, your room looks pretty empty.
Now I really hope the Bears don't draft Caleb. Based on your track record he is now officially 90% to make the HoF.
I don't hold Grudges. It's counterproductive.
Hey Fields....you ever par the back nine with nothing but a 7 iron?
I don't hold Grudges. It's counterproductive.
Good post. My summary....there is no reason not to try to upgrade everyone of those spots on the roster with someone younger and cheaper. The only chance of re signing any of them is if we whiff finding a younger cheaper player AND they are available for vet minimum contracts.
I don't hold Grudges. It's counterproductive.
You didn't mention Valentine who (to my knowledge) is on the active roster, not a FA, and who did a damn good job as a starting Corner - arguably as good or better than Jaire last season. With him, Jaire, Stokes, and probably Nixon, we aren't too bad off. Just the same, I'm fairly sure we draft somebody, maybe even in the first round.
I'm also pretty sure Ford went out of the lineup due to injury. Ford ran a 4.34 40, although it was a long time ago. He's a different body type than Owens who is the kind of big Safety I tend to prefer. Both Owens and Ford did damn good last year IMO, #36 Johnson too. It seems like you're one of those "grass is greener somewhere else" kind of guys hahahaha. A LOT of teams with better coaching do well with personnel no better than the Packer DBs. Probably we draft a Safety too, though, not very early IMO.
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If they bring back Nixon and you can bank on better health (and performance) from Jaire and Stokes, then I agree CB isn't a big need. I'm not sure how good Nixon is as a man corner in the slot...his agility is poor by NFL CB standards. Valentine is a steal for a R7 guy. I think they need to get better at slot corner, and hope for good health. Hope's not a great strategy, and corners get hurt a lot since they are always running around on the field... and the adage about never having too many good ones is true. I wouldn't spend a high round pick on one unless that's where the BPA is, but I could certainly see them take one in the middle rounds.
The safeties were seen league wide by scouts and evaluators as...not good. You absolutely have to improve on that. Even if I like any of the players from last year, there is plenty of room to improve and upgrade. NFL roster building is different in that you can't just stand pat or be content with your guys - you're either getting younger and better, or older and worse. Ford was hurt, but he was also inconsistent and was briefly benched early in the season. Inconsistent actually describes most of the safeties. Owens is ok depth and had a few good games, but he's not good in coverage and got embarrassed tackling more than he should. Johnson Jr., screwed up on the Kittle TD, by that point of the season he should know where to be on the field. Maybe that's coaching, but he's also in his 2nd year of playing safety, I don't know what you can expect from him.
It's not about "grass is greener" elsewhere, it's that the grass in the back end of the defense had a lot of brown spots, and you have to add water and nutrients (by way of draft/FA) to revitalize it.
If a player enters FA and they were 'just ok' or 'not good', why bring them back unless you HAVE to? You've likely already had enough time with them to gauge the extent of their upside and limitations. If there's someone better or more promising out there you have to take a look. Loyalty is a great quality, but not with roster-building -- GMs have to be ruthless or they end up with old injured Randall Cobbs eating up their cap space and costing them their job.
It's not just loyalty. What I saw from our Safetys this past season was better than I've seen in a lot of past years. You shouldn't get rid of somebody unless you can replace them with as good or better. Safety, as I said, i one of those positions where college success doesn't always translate to NFL success. The other thing is that unlike Corner where a lot of athleticism is required, Safety is more about being instinctive. You can always point to failures. Generally, though, there weren't that many with the guys some of ya'all want to get rid of. The other other thing is that scheme and coaching has more to do with success in the secondary than anything else. Our new DC has a background as a DB position coach. We really ought to get some better performance all the way around with his people.
As I also said, we won a helluva lot of games even with Barry dragging things down. It's not gonna take too much improvement to win even more.
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I think you and I are in the minority, but I completely agree with you here. I'm not sure why so many people don't seem to think this is going to be a factor.
I'm getting more and more excited about Hafley, because I've been reading a lot about his background and basic defensive philosophy the last few weeks, and one thing that just jumps up off of every page is that his ideas about what's supposed to be happening in the defensive backfield could not possibly be more opposite than what we've seen the Packers doing over the past several years. This guy is all about extreme agression and every defensive player taking the fight to the offense on every play from the instant the ball is snapped, and especially the safeties and CBs. And he expects linebackers to fight the receivers, too.
Our defensive backs in 2024 aren't going to be hanging 8-12 yards off the LOS waiting for the receivers to just set up and do whatever they feel like doing. They're going to be on the line, interfering with the route right from the first step and punching the WR on his first stride, jamming him and steering him away from his route and messing up the timing and limiting the options on his route tree. Break up the route within the first 2 or 3 strides; not just wait for the guy to catch the ball and then try to limit the YAC - spoil the designed play and force the quarterback to throw balls he doesn't want to throw, and then contesting every catch. None of what he expects his DBs to do looks anything like what we've had to watch the last few years.
Every one of the DBs on our roster will be expcted to do things we haven't really seen them do before, so we really don't have a very good idea how well they're going to play in their new roles. So we don't have a clear idea of what they'll be capable of in 2024. I really believe that we're going to learn that some of our DBs are a lot more capable than we thought they were.
I think a DC with a DB background can absolutely help the secondary, and maybe even elevate average players to occasionally good or above average. I don't think Owens et al. are average players. Moreover, I think that while Barry's scheme protected the safeties to an extent and made the CBs look bad by having them so far off, I think Hafley's scheme will do more to elevate the CB's at the expense of the safeties by having the CBs play closer to LOS, press, play man, etc. more -- which is what Jaire, Stokes, and Valentine are good at. If you only have one safety deep they better have range, instincts, and be able to tackle. Savage had one of those abilities, Ford has maybe two of them, Owens I'm not sure has any... you get the idea. Maybe you play them down as the box safety, but none of them were reliable tacklers last year, and box safeties are easier to find. If you don't have a deep safety who with range to the sideline and ability to reliably get a guy onn the ground, you're exposed.
I think Ford, Owens, Savage might be fine depth, but I wouldn't want them starting for 17+ games. I don't think they will perform well in the new scheme.
Do you really think Jaire can still play press man coverage and not get beat most of the time? It sure didn't look that way last year, but looking at it optimistically, maybe it was just the injuries. Valentine did damn good, but I question whether press man is what he's best at. And Stokes? Who knows. You're right, if we play single high safety, the guy better be fast and instinctive. I kinda dread the thought of going to that kind of scheme. I have to agree, Owens isn't fast enough to be that single high guy. I also don't like the thought of putting some rookie back there, even whoever might be available in the first round. If Halfley is dead set on that kind of D, he better be some kind of a magician. I say again, we have had the best defensive success both against the run and the pass playing shell coverage with two or even three safetys deep. I wish they'd do that a lot more.
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Source: The #Bengals informed star WR Tee Higgins that they are franchising him.
Ring the bells that still can ring
Forget your perfect offering
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That's how the light gets in - Leonard Cohen
Not a shock. They aren't going to sign Higgins to a long-term contract before the get Ja'Marr Chase a contract and they can't do that until next year.
It will be interesting to see if Higgins signs the tag.
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What if he don't? Then what happens?
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It's a free country, so they can always refuse. But once their team slaps an exclusive tag on them, they're locked into that team. They can not negotiate with any other club, because their team owns their rights.
If they refuse, they have until July 15 to try to negotiate a better deal with their club. If they're unable to do that, then their next move is to refuse to report to training camp when it begins the following week. At this point, the team can begin to fine them for not reporting. The collective bargaining agreement sets the limits of the fines, but they are progressive and quickly escalate to $50K/day. Every day they sit out. In the past, teams could waive the fines once an agreement was reached, but I'm not sure if that's still the case. Someone else here is bound to know.
If it's an exclusive tag, the original team is the only club who has the right to negotiate with the player. If it's a non exclusive tag, another team can give the player an offer sheet which the first team has the right to match, but there's a risk to that. If the original team refuses to match it, the second team is obligated to sign the player, but they surrender 2 1st round draft choices for the player's rights. That's only happened a couple of times, because it's a hell of a risk. Which is the whole reason it's written in that way.
Also, at any point here, the team can trade the rights to the player who is sitting out. Doesn't happen often, but sometimes they decide they're just not going to meet in the middle no matter what and it's better to get the player off their books now and free up the cap space, because once that tag is applied the offered salary counts against the cap.
The player can hold out as long as Week 10 of the season, but once he hits Week 10 without signing a contract (either with his original team, or a team to which hsi rights may hav ebeen traded), he's done for the year. He's forfeited his rights to negotiate any contract with any team for the rest of the league year. I believe that last happened a few years ago with a Pittsburgh RB who was pissed because he was tagged 2 years in a row and felt that his window for making one last big payday was closig fast.
Last edited by Frozen Tundra; 02-24-2024 at 08:38 PM.
I don't think they can fine him while tagged and not signed. Pretty sure the player doesn't lose a dime until he loses game checks.
The other thing you may have not explained quite right is that they lose the league year if they don't sign by week 10. i.e. the team can tag that player again next year for the exact same thing. In Pitt, whats his name reported and signed in week 10 because that gave him credit for signing and the league year. If they had tagged him a second time the amount was obscene. If he didn't report they tag him as if he had never been tagged a first time.
I don't hold Grudges. It's counterproductive.
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