nycdan

I am generally skeptical that Pauline has any real sources, but at least I can hope this is true.

If most contracts are fully guaranteed, the amount of dead money on every team's cap will go up. Probably quite a bit. That means players who are either on the bench or not playing at all are eating up more of the cap, leaving less for the guys who are playing. The players will be pissed off about that, When 20% of the total salary cap is unavailable because it was paid out as signing bonuses and guaranteed salary in contracts signed years ago to players who aren't contributing, that's going to cause a lot of hand-wringing. NFLPA should consider that as well but they won't. Good times.

List of QBs I would trade 2 1st round picks for in a heartbeat: Mahomes, Burrow. QBs I would think hard about it for: Allen, Hurts Next tier - I would at least strongly consider it: Herbert and Lawrence I think that's it. Everyone else is either too old, too risky, or too mediocre.

Lamar on Day 1 of legal tampering period: Lamar last week: Lamar now:

I like Saleh, but that sounds like a question he should have not answered at all.

I believe he has confirmed he would rework the deal. The salary cap hits under the current deal are actually very reasonable. I think it's $30M in 2023 and $40M in 2024. It's the dead money after 2024 that would be difficult. I'm sure someone, somewhere has worked out the exact impact, but presumably, we could pay him a little more in the next two years and end up with a lighter dead money number after that which would bring it in line with other high-end QB deals.

No. You THINK CD isn't a difference maker. You could be right. You could be wrong. But there's been a trend in the past few years of people wrapping their opinions with "everybody is saying...". It's called gaslighting and it's not going to convince anyone of anything.

So we agree that the Jets probably shouldn't be that interested in Lamar? If so, all good here! Sure, Lamar can ask for whatever he wants. That's completely cool. But how he reacts to not getting what he wants is going to be a story.

Should we have Zach take that meeting?

Cam Newton is also an NFL MVP QB if that's the only important data point. A lot has changed since 2019.

OMG No! In case that wasn't clear....NO!

It's the Veruca Salt syndrome

For one thing, the injury impact. Becton looked like a home run in his rookie season. Then came the conditioning and injury issues which were not evident from his college career. I'm not sure where to pin that but I'm not sure you lay that on Douglas for not anticipating it. Same for Lawson. He had a very good, injury-free season the year before the Jets signed him. In TC he looked like an all-pro and we were all pumped. Then an ACL which is not predictable. Most of the OL FA signings did not work out well. You can absolutely pin that on Douglas, which is odd because that was supposed to be his sweet spot. As for McGovern and the TEs, you have to factor in what the market looked like. What options were available? Both were clearly positions of need. The choice at Center was McGovern vs. Morse (who went to BUF). Morse got a slightly higher deal. And saying CMG was the 10th highest paid center while playing like the 16th to 20th ignores the fact that newly signed FAs are always paid higher than their value in their first year until the market catches up. Lots of fair notes, but lots of inconsistencies and overlooked factors. Worth a read, but definitely needs a few grains of salt.

The Kyler contract might have been dumber than the Watson deal. I wonder if ARI would love to tear that up (not that they'd admit it publicly) if they could. Hard to say that DEN is happy with the Wilson deal so far. The problem for both teams is that if the QBs don't turn things around, the teams are screwed for YEARS because of the guaranteed money. KC and BUF are probably very happy with their deals. CIN, PHI, and SD are next up. We'll see how those go but fully guaranteed contracts are dumb in every sport from the team's perspective.

What about this made you think 'objective'. It's a completely subjective piece - one writer's opinions. Every FA pickup that was injured gets flagged as an overpay by Douglas. She brushes over the wins by lumping 2 or 3 in one sentence as opposed to a paragraph for each injured player. Some, or most of them might have been slightly above-market, so the opinions aren't invalid by any means, but let's call it what it is.