NFL 2018 IV: A Hue, A Cry and now Goodbye

[Jaime L]

1 hour ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

No player of Bells unquestioned dominance has reached the market since Reggie White.

Unquestioned dominance? I got some questions about his dominance considering his backup came in and at the very least played just as well as him if not better. Hell, before this 57 year old DeAngelo Williams would fill in during Bell's yearly suspensions and be a stud the entire time.

Not to say that Bell isn't good. Bell is very good at everything. Just not special at anything. I think a RB with an unreplicable skillset, like Gurley or Kamara would be the more interesting test case for a RB holding out. 

Instead all he ended up proving was how replaceable he is. not great, Bell

[Jace, Extat]

15 minutes ago, Jaime L said:

Unquestioned dominance? I got some questions about his dominance considering his backup came in and at the very least played just as well as him if not better. Hell, before this 57 year old DeAngelo Williams would fill in during Bell's yearly suspensions and be a stud the entire time.

Not to say that Bell isn't good. Bell is very good at everything. Just not special at anything. I think a RB with an unreplicable skillset, like Gurley or Kamara would be the more interesting test case for a RB holding out. 

Instead all he ended up proving was how replaceable he is. not great, Bell

That is the worst take I've ever read from you. I am disappointed. 

[Jaime L]

1 minute ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

That is the worst take I've ever read from you. I am disappointed. 

I object to this. I've had way worse takes. 

[Maithanet]

I don't think Bell's dominance is anything like unquestioned.  He's established himself as one of the best running backs in the league, but there are at least five guys that might be just as good or better than him, and the dropoff between the best and the 10th best running back isn't steep.  It is unusual for an all-pro to hit the open market, but hardly unheard of. 

[Bronn Stone]

2 hours ago, Jace, Basilissa said:

Or he is acknowledging that with the success of Frank Gore and Adrian Peterson the shelf life of a RB may depend less on the age than the amount of damage sustained.

People keep saying how much money he could have made, that fabled $14.5 million. $800,000 A week! 

Fuck your $800,000 A week. In Pennsylvania's tax bracket he ends up pocketing like $500,000 anyway. 

Look at it from the perspective that instead of buying an insurance policy out of the money he could make this year, which would be giving up a hefty chunk of that $500,000, and presumably not match what he could receive on the open market he is instead opting to forgo ALL financial incentive in the shortest term to maximise earnings in the long. It's simultaneously the all-in move AND a protective measure for his body and health.

In other words. It's the right move.

No player of Bells unquestioned dominance has reached the market since Reggie White.

People were falling over themselves for a Peyton manning who couldn't throw a football. Latavious Murray got like 8 mil a year. SAMMY WATKINS GOT 16!!!!

Bell is making the right choice 

The insurance policy would not have cost "a hefty chuck of $500K/week" by any reasonable definition of "a heavy chunk".  You are acting like he'd have had to spend 50% of his take home when it would be almost certainly less than 20%, perhaps by a lot.  $1M for a year buys a LOT of insurance.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

There's one angle I haven't seen discussed much: respect. I'm sure Bell feels highly disrespected and is refusing to work until he gets what he believes to be just compensation. 

If you felt disrespected and underpaid, are you sure you'd take the risks of going through an NFL season with the possibility of being over used, getting injured and having no guarantees on the back end? 

This is after all a labor dispute, and I'm surprised that everyone is just blaming Bell while giving the Steelers a pass. 

[briantw]

7 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

There's one angle I haven't seen discussed much: respect. I'm sure Bell feels highly disrespected and is refusing to work until he gets what he believes to be just compensation. 

If you felt disrespected and underpaid, are you sure you'd take the risks of going through an NFL season with the possibility of being over used, getting injured and having no guarantees on the back end? 

This is after all a labor dispute, and I'm surprised that everyone is just blaming Bell while giving the Steelers a pass. 

When you look at the deal they offered him, it was pretty insulting for someone of his standing.  It only had like ten million guaranteed on a four or five year deal.  Meanwhile, Gurley, a comparably productive player, got 45 million guaranteed.

Not saying Bell should have gotten 45 million guaranteed, as he is two years older than Gurley, but he absolutely should have been offered more than ten.  I'm pretty sure the Steelers just wanted to tag him, run him into the ground for one more year, and then let him walk.  If they actually wanted to keep him, they wouldn't have offered him a contract with such a low amount of guaranteed money.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

19 minutes ago, briantw said:

When you look at the deal they offered him, it was pretty insulting for someone of his standing.  It only had like ten million guaranteed on a four or five year deal.  Meanwhile, Gurley, a comparably productive player, got 45 million guaranteed.

Not saying Bell should have gotten 45 million guaranteed, as he is two years older than Gurley, but he absolutely should have been offered more than ten.  I'm pretty sure the Steelers just wanted to tag him, run him into the ground for one more year, and then let him walk.  If they actually wanted to keep him, they wouldn't have offered him a contract with such a low amount of guaranteed money.

Google says 5 years, $70m with $33m guaranteed. Thing is all the guaranteed money was front loaded. Sounds like they could cut him after two years though and only pay him the $33m. 

It's not as bad a deal as I remembered, but it still has risks, and I'm sure he assumed that he'd get 800 plus touches over those first two years. 

[briantw]

1 minute ago, Tywin et al. said:

Google says 5 years, $70m with $33m guaranteed. Thing is all the guaranteed money was front loaded. Sounds like they could cut him after two years though and only pay him the $33m. 

It's not as bad a deal as I remembered, but it still has risks, and I'm sure he assumed that he'd get 800 plus touches over those first two years. 

This article says ten million guaranteed:

https://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2018/7/18/17585956/leveon-bell-contract-steelers-offer-guaranteed-money-free-agency

I think the 33 million was what he stood to make over the first two years, with the signing bonus being the only guaranteed part of the deal at around 10 million.

Not sure what's accurate, though.

[Jaime L]

21 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

There's one angle I haven't seen discussed much: respect. I'm sure Bell feels highly disrespected and is refusing to work until he gets what he believes to be just compensation. 

If you felt disrespected and underpaid, are you sure you'd take the risks of going through an NFL season with the possibility of being over used, getting injured and having no guarantees on the back end? 

This is after all a labor dispute, and I'm surprised that everyone is just blaming Bell while giving the Steelers a pass. 

I generally side with the player. I just think it's silly to give up $14.5m when your entire career earnings to this point have been...$14m. He also would've been the highest paid RB in the NFL this season. A RB's career is already crazy short and I don't think you're necessarily extending it by sitting out a year. Yes you keep miles off of you, but you're also another year older, another year closer to being in athletic decline. 

Kirk Cousins went through this twice. He both made himself a very rich man in the process and proved the Skins demonstrably wrong for treating him like shit. 

The one thing I do blame the Steelers for is they sent out every indication before the season they were going to run him into the ground. That is absolutely abhorrent. For all the focus on player safety, it's still treated as totally okay for teams to just knowingly ruin a guy through overuse. A little like what the Cowboys did with DeMarco Murray. Sure his career continued on but he was never the same. 

But I don't blame them for not offering him a bigger contract. This season has basically proven them right about how much they needed Bell. 

[briantw]

1 minute ago, Jaime L said:

I generally side with the player. I just think it's silly to give up $14.5m when your entire career earnings to this point have been...$14m. He also would've been the highest paid RB in the NFL this season. A RB's career is already crazy short and I don't think you're necessarily extending it by sitting out a year. Yes you keep miles off of you, but you're also another year older, another year closer to being in athletic decline. 

The way I would look at it, this is probably his first and last chance at a monster contract, so why risk suffering a serious injury for the team that just wants to use you for the year and then cast you aside?  He'll get his guaranteed money this spring regardless.

[Jaime L]

33 minutes ago, briantw said:

The way I would look at it, this is probably his first and last chance at a monster contract, so why risk suffering a serious injury for the team that just wants to use you for the year and then cast you aside?  He'll get his guaranteed money this spring regardless.

Yes, but it'll be less guaranteed than if he played and didn't get hurt. And he's already $14.5m in the hole which is huge. And he's proven his fungibility in a way we didn't fully see until this year. 

I just can't see any rational team giving him the deal he wants based on how things played out. The one exception is the Jets. They, to me, represent the one chance, hail mary to salvage this situation as the one team who might offer him a monster deal. Outside of them, I don't see how this ends up happily for Le'Veon. Everyone else in the RB market is most likely going to either make a team-friendly offer or just draft a rookie. 

And honestly him getting Gurley/DJ money was doomed from the start. Those teams have QBs on rookie deals. Steelers are not in the same position. 

[Bronn Stone]

I have no take either way on whether Bell is doing the right thing. I'm just saying it isn't the smart thing or the savvy business move.  If his pride is more important to him than his bank account, so be it.

[aceluby]

On 11/14/2018 at 10:45 AM, Tywin et al. said:

Which of these stats is more shocking?:

1. In 1999, Kurt Warner led the league in passing accuracy at 65.1%. That would rank 19^th in 2018, right behind Brady at 18^th.

2. Tom Brady has thrown 5 TDs in the last 5 games.

3. Tom Brady has thrown 1 TD in the last 3 games.

I'll definitely be seeing if this continues, Brady has gone through slumps before; but everyone has seen how steep the dropoff can be for aging QBs, especially late in the season.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

23 hours ago, Jaime L said:

The one thing I do blame the Steelers for is they sent out every indication before the season they were going to run him into the ground. That is absolutely abhorrent. For all the focus on player safety, it's still treated as totally okay for teams to just knowingly ruin a guy through overuse. A little like what the Cowboys did with DeMarco Murray. Sure his career continued on but he was never the same. 

But I don't blame them for not offering him a bigger contract. This season has basically proven them right about how much they needed Bell. 

Well it's hard to know what they offered him because Brian and I found two wildly different numbers. But I do think they needed to offer him more guaranteed money. Bell was afraid of the notion of getting run into the ground and then not getting a fair offer from the Steelers, or any other team for that matter. I'm sure he used Murray as his template. And Bell wasn't wrong. Through nine games Conner has over 200 touches (plus another 20 targets), and those numbers would be even higher if he didn't get injured multiple times. This validates his concerns, but it is also fair to say that he left a lot of money on the table. We'll just have to wait and see how it all plays out five years from now. 

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

2 hours ago, aceluby said:

I'll definitely be seeing if this continues, Brady has gone through slumps before; but everyone has seen how steep the dropoff can be for aging QBs, especially late in the season.

Yep. The one caveat to keep in mind though is that Gronk doesn't look like Gronk, and that's huge. 

[Week]

On 11/14/2018 at 4:31 PM, Jaime L said:

I object to this. I've had way worse takes. 

New thread idea. Please repost your worst takes. Tyvmbai!

[briantw]

If the Browns hire Mike McCarthy this spring I'm probably just going to kill myself. 

We've suffered enough.

[Iskaral Pust]

Entertaining game tonight between closely matched teams who both had plenty of flaws on display.  Seattle perhaps should have won by a larger margin — they gifted an early TD and then Wilson missed a wide open Baldwin in the EZ and missed Lockett beyond the coverage.  But once Seattle found some rhythm they had a solid run game, connected on some throws when needed, and crucially got a lot of sacks on third downs.  But at the same time the Seattle LBs were poor/slow in pass coverage, the secondary was no great shakes, so many false starts, and Wilson invited a lot of sacks.  Good news is that the OL is much better this year, which has made the run game reliable. Carson was great apart from the fumble, Penny had some flashes of brilliance but is less consistent than Carson, and Davis is a really solid third RB when needed.  Also Lockett has matured well and recovered from that terrible injury a couple of years ago, and so far really looks worthy of the big contract. And Baldwin is still the perfect foil for Wilson. 

Packers have a good RB at last to provide an option, and the pass rush was solid.  Adams was good again but they need more receiving targets.  The secondary was nothing great and they couldn’t stop the run even when it was predictable. 

Either team or both could get hot and reach the play-offs, both have had only narrow losses to some primary contenders, so it doesn’t require huge improvement to make a big difference.  But so far they are both only ~.500 teams.  Packers need to beat Vikings next or the playoffs look very unlikely. 

[Jace, Extat]

5 hours ago, Triskele said:

Man, that Lockett catch was clearly not a catch on the best angle of the replay.  And now Seattle gets the score.  McCarthy strikes again.  We'll see if Rodgers can bail him out.  

ETA:  And then McCarthy takes it out of Rodger's hands on 4th and 2 to punt with only one timeout, and Seattle promptly gets one 1st down and kneels.  McCarthy has to go.  Rodgers' remaining years cannot be wasted like this.  And I fully acknowledge that you never know for sure what you'll get, but is there any actual reason to think McCarthy is a good coach rather than a guy who had a special QB?  

ETA2:  Here's the case that I'm overreacting.  In the last four weeks the Packers have had @ LA Rams, @ New England, and @ Seattle.  That's about as brutal a month as you could ever imagine in the NFL, and while they lost all three of those games they barely lost all three.  Could you imagine if they'd gone 4-0 in that stretch?  And they're literally only three plays away from having gone 0-4 in that stretch.  

You aren't overreacting. Aaron Rodgers is the artistically spread icing over the turd that is Mike McCarthy. That punt was a fireable offense and this keeps happening! 

Don't talk yourself into tough schedules and "x plays away from19-0". A good coach puts his team in positions so that those few plays DO go their way. Just look at the horror that is the Packers under McCarthy without a top 10 all time QB and the best all time QB

5 hours ago, briantw said:

If the Browns hire Mike McCarthy this spring I'm probably just going to kill myself. 

We've suffered enough.

The amount of times I've heard this connection floated makes me wonder if it the collective will of all men and women that the dim light of a competitive Browns team be forever shuttered under Mike McCarthys shadow.