McGinn : Coloring GB, NFC North

[BEARMAN]

I feel like singing "Kumbiya"

[the_idle_threat]

^^^ You obviously didn't click on the link.

[The Leaper]

Barnett and Driver are reds IMO. How is Tom Brady not a blue? Marvin Harrison is no longer a blue.

[MJZiggy]

I think this scout needs a new box of crayons...

[Harlan Huckleby]

^^^ You obviously didn't click on the link.

or maybe he did!

the best part of this forum is making new friends.

[HarveyWallbangers]

Post of the day on the Vikings board. I don't usually post these, but this one was funny, and you have to give the guy some credit for having some perspective.

You know your team sucks when:

Lions fans talk smack to you

You want the offense to hurry up and punt, so you can watch the defense play

The announcers for your game are Matt Vasgersian and J.C. Alpha-Romero

You are actually surprised to see Troy "Rock Lobster" Williamson catch a pass

You catch yourself nodding off when the Vikings are on offense

[Zool]

I like Vasgersian. I miss him doing Brewer games. He calls a good game, and makes random crappy pop-culture references. Its like I'm calling the game myself and my friend who doesn't quite get the jokes is watching with me (Romero).

Remember the Podsednik fanclub who used to sit in the bleachers in bikini tops with Podsednik spelled out on their stomach's? Ahhh 2004, I hardly remember ya.

[Carolina_Packer]

We are rebuilding because we are young and inexperienced at many positions. That doesn't mean we are bad, just that we don't know with a lot of certainty what we are going to get from guys week in and out, like you come to expect from a guy like Favre or Driver. Obviously that takes time. It reminds me of "Happy Days" when the Fonz couldn't bring himself to say the word wrong. "I was wr, wr..."

Call a spade a spade. Brett's not stupid, he knows that if he wanted to play ball with the Pack that it would be with a rebuilding team. So far this season, that has translated to 2-0. Long term, we'll see.

Personally, I would have preferred a GM who took a hybrid approach to team building. Insteading of sitting on 15 million under the cap, actually take a shot. I know developmentally MLB and the NFL are not similar, but I like the Dodgers approach in baseball. They have some veteran, short-term help for leadership and they have all that young talent waiting in the wings for their time to come.

I wish TT had taken a similar approach and taken a chance on a few guys who were cap casualties such as Randy McMichael at TE and Travis Henry at RB. What are their respective deals? I'm sure GB could have competed for them. I love finding diamonds in the rough too, but sometimes in order to compete at a decent level you have to get an experienced guy. I'm not sure what we would have had to give up to get them, but I don't think it would have broken the bank, unless St. Louis and Denver just threw insane cash at them. That's the way I think a team should be built. Somewhere in between having all your major guys come from FA or deciding to go with a bunch of development guys or street, undrafted free agents. There has to be a happy medium. It makes no sense to me to roll the dice on such inexperience hoping to get lucky, instead of trying to ensure their own luck by getting some experience.

We may have dodged the bullet so far, and Travis Henry and McMichael weren't going to ensure a Super Bowl, but again, you have to take a shot sometimes, bring in some veteran leadership at key positions of need and let the young guys develop instead of heaping responsibility on their shoulders and wondering why they aren't up to the task. If TT is enamoured of Denver's O-line, RB success, you first have to establish that system on the O-line before you can interchange parts at RB.

[HarveyWallbangers]

That $15M is often cited, but it's actually around $13M from what I can tell, and a lot of teams have around that same amount of money. It allows the team flexibility if they get injuries or if they want to make a trade or for resigning their own players. Now, I would have liked to see that number closer to $8-10M and had one more solid FA, but it's not like we could have gone out and signed a ton of high-priced FAs. I know the likes of Eric Johnson were available, but money wasn't the issue for that one. Some of the Eric Johnson types would have worked out--while most probably wouldn't have. We could have signed those types, but if we did, we might not have found out that we may have the answer in-house at some positions (Jarrett Bush, Atari Bigby, James Jones, etc.). Unlike some, I don't think we are sitting here at $13M because Thompson didn't want to sign any FAs. He did last year. I think he missed on some guys that he probably thought he could get (Moss, Justin Griffith, Terrelle Smith, etc.). Oh well. It doesn't hurt to have more money down the line or some money to resign their own players. It's not like I think Thompson won't sign FAs in the future. With the Pickett, Woodson, and Manuel signings, he has shown he'll go after players he likes.

[Carolina_Packer]

Sure, love signing our own best guys and drafting and developing and trying to bring a lot of bodies into camp. I just say, if you've got some major question marks at key positions like RB and TE, then you take a shot and use some of your money to get a Chris Brown or a Travis Henry at RB for a year or two, or you get a Randy McMichael or Eric Johnson at TE for hopefully a bargain. As long as you don't go nuts and break the bank, you are at least signaling to your fanbase and your offense that you are trying to get better sooner than later and not leaving it on the shoulders of the likes of Clark Harris and Brandon Jackson. Why take that chance when you have the money and there is some available talent that perhaps would not require long term deals, but more like tender deals? I don't get it. Let the younger guys grow into the system a little more.

[HarveyWallbangers]

I don't disagree, but Eric Johnson is more injury prone than Robert Ferguson and David Martin combined. I'm sure replacing injury prone Martin with more injury prone Johnson was a consideration. McCarthy would have had a lot of insight on Johnson since they were both in San Francisco. I don't know what the deal with McMichael was. I've heard he's a really dink for a teammate. That might have played into it. Nobody went after Chris Brown, and he returned to Tennessee for nothing. He followed up his game game last week with a crappy game this week. Probably will be his MO. He's also injury prone. Henry has been hot and cold in his career, he fumbles a lot, and he's one strike from a year-long suspension, so I don't blame them for not going after him either. It's not as cut and dried as it seems. I would have liked to get Justin Griffith and Ken Hamlin. Now, I'm not so sure that Atari Bigby isn't the answer. As far as the TEs, it looks like Franks and Lee are having the bounce back years that the Packers expected. Would Johnson really be a big upgrade? Maybe not. Still would have liked Griffith, but again, it sounded like there was something there that the Packers couldn't do anything about. They went after him, but he apparently wanted to go to Oakland to play with an old coach. I think the Packers probably went after more guys than we realize.

[BEARMAN]

^^^ You obviously didn't click on the link.

Now I feel dirty, ... eeeewwwwwwwwwwwwwwww, ...