NFL 2017 - The Afterdraft

[Maithanet]

12 minutes ago, Rhom said:

Shoulda traded for Kaepernick when you had the chance. 

ETA:  I also agree on Luck.  Something is not right with him and he needs to get it fixed.  Sit the year, somehow outsuck the Browns and Jets and get another top pick you can trade for a haul.  Get that man an offensive line.

Nah, if they're going to do that, they should just draft Sam Darnold and trade Luck.  It's the Colts way. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

16 minutes ago, Maithanet said:

Nah, if they're going to do that, they should just draft Sam Darnold and trade Luck.  It's the Colts way. 

What's the going rate on a broken werewolf? 

[SkynJay]

I think Denver made the playoffs last year if tbey had traded for Kaep.  Hell, i think they make the playoffs THIS year with him.  I dont know why they have not at least tried him out.  Elway has the stature to ride any backlash and the gas stood by Brandon Marshall who joined tbe protest.

Make it happen John!

[Maithanet]

8 minutes ago, SkynJay said:

I think Denver made the playoffs last year if tbey had traded for Kaep.  Hell, i think they make the playoffs THIS year with him.  I dont know why they have not at least tried him out.  Elway has the stature to ride any backlash and the gas stood by Brandon Marshall who joined tbe protest.

Make it happen John!

I agree that does seem like an obvious choice.  Denver's SB caliber defense isn't going to last forever.  They're one of the 4 best teams in the AFC if they can get even league average qb play.  If they get any better than that, they're a SB contender.

[Rockroi]

I have always believed that Kaep not being signed to a NFL roster was probably a mixture of "Don't need the attention" with "He's not that good." 

Two days ago the Miami Dolphins signed Jay Cutler as their starting QB.

So, yeah, the NFL owners are just racist scumbags.  They changed me on this issue completely.  Good job, fucktards.  

[Jace, Extat]

2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Is Wilson still top 7? It feels like his stock has dropped over the last few seasons. 

Hmmm, fair question. Gotta do brunch, but I'll get back to you on that.

52 minutes ago, Rhom said:

Shoulda traded for Kaepernick when you had the chance. 

ETA:  I also agree on Luck.  Something is not right with him and he needs to get it fixed.  Sit the year, somehow outsuck the Browns and Jets and get another top pick you can trade for a haul.  Get that man an offensive line.

There's no 'somehow' about it. Without Andrew Luck the only team less talented than Indy is the Jets who have been actively tanking for a calendar year. They'd win 4 games on Vinatieri's leg and T.Y./Moncrief's skill alone, but that's absolute ceiling.

I was thinking about this last night. The dude is fucked, a top-five pick could be in the making. Not sure how I feel about it, but I guess my feelings are irrelevant.

Also, recovery time on basically any shoulder surgery is 4-6 months for full-go medical clearance. Something is seriously wrong, and I doubt it will ever get better. Labrum repair is a tricky thing, a lot of people who have 1 end up coming back for 2 and 3 with diminishing returns each time.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

1 hour ago, Rockroi said:

So, yeah, the NFL owners are just racist scumbags.  They changed me on this issue completely.  Good job, fucktards.  

You've got it backwards. They're afraid that their fan bases are too racist to handle signing Kaep. 

[Rockroi]

20 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

You've got it backwards. They're afraid that their fan bases are too racist to handle signing Kaep. 

Ohhhhh... good point.  In all seriousness, that's a legitimately good point.  

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

24 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

You've got it backwards. They're afraid that their fan bases are too racist to handle signing Kaep. 

It's still cowardly bullshit.

[Trebla]

I heard a good point about Kaep on the radio yesterday: The Cowboys signed Greg Hardy after he beat up his girlfriend and threw her on a bed of guns. There were a couple of days of anger in Cowboys Nation and then it went away and then he played. Poorly. That's the reason he's out of the league. If he could get a team double digit sacks, he'd still be playing.

On the other hand, I think a few years ago teams might have signed Kaep despite his protests. I agree with Rock said about it being more about the fans. This country has seen a huge rise in nationalism that has coded words like "Blue Lives Matter" and "Thugs".

 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

You don't even have to get away from Kaep's protest to find the coding and rationalization. Kaep very clearly articulated that he was protesting the national anthem because he feels, correctly, that his people are being mistreated by the state through racial injustice in the judicial system. Somehow fans morphed this into "you're against the troops," "you're unAmerican," "he doesn't care enough about football," "he hates all police," etc. This is happening because the people who are pushing these narratives either want to undermine his protest and/or want to diminish the fact that there is racial injustice in America rather then confront their own prejudices. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

26 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

It's still cowardly bullshit.

Yep, and it's really unwarranted. That poll that came out a few weeks ago that "found" that 26% of fans stopped watching the NFL over the protests was super misleading. The actual number was 3% of sports fans stop watching the NFL over the protests, and since that's already a sunken cost, what's the harm in signing him if he will make your team better? 

[Maithanet]

1 hour ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

Hmmm, fair question. Gotta do brunch, but I'll get back to you on that.

Wilson had what was pretty unequivocally his best season as a passer in 2015, with 68% comp, 34 tds, 8 ints, 110 rating.  Those are awesome numbers.  His numbers in 2016 were down, but that was mostly because he had a lot of nagging injuries (in spite of never missing a start).  If you saw any of the Seahawks midseason games, he was obviously not himself, but he was still decent even without his signature elusiveness.  He put up a career high in yardage in 2016, but his efficiency went down and interceptions went up. 

WIlson also helps the Seahawks rushing offense tremendously.  Seattle went from #3 in the league in FO rushing offense in 2015 with a healthy Wilson down to #22 in 2016 with Wilson hobbling around.  Both years the O line was very poor (for example, FO has them as #25 in pass protection in 2016, up from #30 in 2015). 

On the whole, there's really no reason to think that Wilson is regressing.  He was still a good quarterback in 2016, even playing injured and behind a terrible O-line.  Only a fool would argue that Wilson should be replaced with Kaepernick, or that bringing Kaep in as a backup would create some sort of "qb competition".  Wilson is a far better player.  In fact, if the Seahawks had Kaepernick last year, they might have been able to give Wilson a couple of weeks off so that he actually healed up, rather than sending him out all 16 games even when he was noticeably hobbling around. 

The Seahawks not signing Kaep strikes me as a pretty chickenshit move.  Kaep plays a similar style as Wilson, Seattle is one of the most liberal cities in the country, and the Seahawks saw firsthand last year how much a qb injury could set them back. 

[Cas Stark]

7 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

You don't even have to get away from Kaep's protest to find the coding and rationalization. Kaep very clearly articulated that he was protesting the national anthem because he feels, correctly, that his people are being mistreated by the state through racial injustice in the judicial system. Somehow fans morphed this into "you're against the troops," "you're unAmerican," "he doesn't care enough about football," "he hates all police," etc. This is happening because the people who are pushing these narratives either want to undermine his protest and/or want to diminish the fact that there is racial injustice in America rather then confront their own prejudices. 

So, you don't think wearing pig socks had anything to do with people feeling he hates the police?  Or wearing a Castro T shirt has anything to do with people considering him to be unAmerican?  Or even, dare I suggest that the National Anthem might be considered by many as a really, really poor way of protesting against police brutality, since it's not about the police, but the country?

I think in fact that Kap has done a very, very poor job in terms of articulating what he's protesting and why.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

2 hours ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

Hmmm, fair question. Gotta do brunch, but I'll get back to you on that.

 Goddamn. I would stab a motherfucker right about now for a Bacon, Egg and Cheese sammich. Lucky dog.

[Rhom]

11 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

 Goddamn. I would stab a motherfucker right about now for a Bacon, Egg and Cheese sammich. Lucky dog.

I went to McAllister's and had a Bacon, Lettuce, Tomato, and Avocado sandwich.  Was glorious.  Didn't have to kill anyone.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

2 minutes ago, Rhom said:

I went to McAllister's and had a Bacon, Lettuce, Tomato, and Avocado sandwich.  Was glorious.  Didn't have to kill anyone.

That is an entirely reasonably solution for my current dilemma, only lunch isn't for another 45 minutes. So I just might have to get stabby. 

[James Arryn]

Re: Kaepernick, glad so any are coming round. But it's not an either/or situation, re: fans or management. It's a mixture. To me his protest has such an over-the-top reaction because it simultaneously pushes a few buttons people prefer not to think they possess.

1) The most obvious one is racism. And studies show that most racists don't think they are racist, but rather that they are somewhat tolerant of racism because _______ is more important/not talked about enough. Think southern argument for ACW being about state rights and not racism/slavery, that's the way most racists frame their racism in their own minds. So Kaep's protest which is clearly, explicitly and only about racism in the c.j.s. gets morphed into all kinds of other arguments where racists feel more comfortable taking a stand and not calling it racism.

2) The second issue, often somewhat linked in ideological groupings with racism but not directly linked is authoritarianism. Again, people who tick all the boxes of being very pro-authoritarianism would largely be surprised and offended to be classified as such. But it's a huge chunk of society blind to this aspect of their own behavioural preferences, and the easiest, most actualized sphere where people are forced to reveal their leaning in the open is with regards to policing. That's where the authoritarian rubber hits the road in 'everyday life' as opposed to more abstract concepts like government, fiscal policy, etc.

And sports in general and football in particular promotes and attracts an authoritarian point of view. Personality is discouraged in individuals for the perceived greater good of the team. Talk in cliches, don't celebrate too much or too colourfully, don't adopt controversial political or ideological positions until your career is over, etc. The 'leaders', ie quarterbacks, are actively expected to be the most bland because they are the example and most publicly recognized. 

So, Kaep's protest also directly challenges this ideology. He's not just calling 'racism', he's calling 'racism in authority'. He's calling for anti-authoritarian non-racist solutions, and the people most publicly supporting him are people already perceived as anti-authoritarian. So, like with the race thing, he's pushing a button most prefer to think they don't have. In the land of the free/home of the brave, few want to openly admit to preferring authoritarian rule, though they get close with jingoism and vague notions of 'strong' leadership equalling intolerant/militant leadership. So, again, the argument's battle line is shifted slightly to accommodate more comfortable resistance. The police are morphed with the troops because that's a well-worn path for defending authority, and of course the flag comes out because it's a day ending in 'y'.

3) Because there's the whole American Exceptionalism thing where, honestly, people are more open about defending but there is some confusion about whether Kaep's protest challenges America's perception of itself or whether his ability to protest without being thrown in the gulag as he would in Canada or Sweden or w/e is a sign of America's Most Freedomest is harder to determine, which is why people on both sides wave the flag to emphasize their point, somehow.

Murderers...including multiple murderers, guys who killed their pregnant gf and were caught with her body in the trunk, people who systematically tortured and killed animals for entertainment, people caught on tape punching their wives, etc. All (much) less 'hated' than the guy taking a knee during a song, according to all the polls/studies I've seen. A lot of the why, imo, is because it's addressing bigotry in denial, and therefore much harder to actually discuss. So we'll keep having arguments about what this isn't about, or only tangentially about because there aren't many who want to openly take the other side of the argument it actually is about. But read any anonymous 'comments' section on any Kaep related piece and you'll quickly see a different line being drawn.

[James Arryn]

Gah, to add to above, a blind belief in 'football reasons' explaining the Kaep thing is linked with the authoritarian thing, ie 'these guys know what they're doing and wouldn't make a decision detrimental to the team due to personal prejudices' is an assumption that, just because of their positions, they are better at either not having prejudices or not letting it interfere with their choices. Not only is that a very tenuous position, but the 'off the record' comments on Kaep made by management since this began would fit very comfortably into any of the previously cited anon comments sections attached to articles, videos etc.

[Joe Pesci]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

You've got it backwards. They're afraid that their fan bases are too racist to handle signing Kaep. 

Do you think it could also be that the casual fan who makes up a large portion of the fan base are just either uniformed or misinformed on the situation? Granted, there are going to be racists in every fan base of every sport, and racism definitely factors into Kaep's situation, but, for example, I'd guess that a sizable group of people saw the pig socks and passed judgement without knowing what issues Kaep was trying to shine light on or even bothered to look into it, and probably don't pay enough attention to the NFL to know that it's still an ongoing issue with him. I'm sure we all know plenty of people who are fans of the league who probably have no clue that any of this is even still going on with Kaep, because they aren't as dedicated to following the NFL as we might be.