The Consigliere

This is silly. Watch Brady at Michigan in his final college game. Beat back Drew Henson, everyone's favorite multisport star that everyone wanted to wrestle control over the QB job away from him, beat Alabama and Shaun Alexander's career game in an epic bowl finale to his Michigan career, everything that Brady was, could be captured in that final game and his fight to win back and hold onto that gig. Aaron Rodgers was Aaron Rodgers at Cal, just watch his duel with USC in his final year where Cal, Freaking CAL, nearly knocked out Pete Carrol's #1 ranked epic USC side while Rodgers was setting a school record for consecutive completions in the biggest game Cal played in several decades. Ben Roth jumped from Miami of Ohio to a conservative run first Pittsburgh team. Not exactly surprising that it took a bit of time to acclimate to the NFL from the Mid-American Conference. Wilson? You're depiction of him is farcical in the extreme. Seattle was a sub .500 team struggling badly till he got there. He's been a top 12 QB in the league every single season, and four times ranked inside the top 5. The fact that they've basically saddled him with garbage WR's his entire career until '19, and a run first dinosaur incompetent's as the OC's is not on him and the fact that he consistently was either top 6 (4 of 9 years) or 7th-11th (the other 5 years) despite all that tells you all you need to know. But this might help. Three years before Wilson, 5-11, 7-9, 7-9, and the 3 years after he arrived, 11-5, 13-3, 12-4 with only one season of less than double digit wins in his 9 year career (9-7). Coach worship is a problem, pretending that it's coaches making this magic happen, and not coaches taking advantage of elite talent (or failing too) that tells the story is beyond me.

Did anyone see this trade idea from PFF (if anyone already mentioned it, my apologies) : I think the returns a bit light considering Payne still has 1+1 left on his deal, but here's their idea for a Payne trade: We trade Payne to LA for their '21 2nd and their 22 4th. Link: https://www.pff.com/news/nfl-10-trades-that-make-sense-2021-nfl-offseason-deshaun-watson-carson-wentz We trade Payne to LA for their '21 2nd and their 22 4th. ... the Washington Football Team has to start making decisions along this loaded defensive line because the simple truth is they can’t — or shouldn’t — pay everybody. 2017 first-round pick Jonathan Allen is set to play on the fifth-year option in 2021, and he is surely looking for a big-time extension this offseason coming off a career year with an 83.5 pass-rushing grade and 47 pressures (both personal bests). 2018 first-round pick Daron Payne clogging up the middle at nose tackle certainly freed Allen up as a 3- and 5-technique, but Payne offers little by way of generating pressure on the quarterback, making him more of a luxury. The new collective bargaining agreement made it so that all fifth-year options this upcoming offseason (for 2018 first-round picks, like Payne) are fully guaranteed when exercised, so a decision on Payne this offseason just further locks in more cap commitments with big extensions looming for edge defenders Montez Sweat and Chase Young. Washington has fellow 2018 draft pick Tim Settle as a solid, developing player at nose tackle, and the position is just cheaper and easier to address in general.....

You can't keep them all. You can't allocate that much cap space to the line w/o suffering for it at other key positions. Add in the fact that DL is one of the best places to spend draft capital on day one and it makes sense to pull a niners move and trade one of them for a first or as a package to move up for a QB.

No thank you on Toney. Going to be vastly overdrafted. Give me Chase (pipe dream), Bateman, Moore, or a discount w/Terrence Marshall or an even bigger discount w/ T. Terry. If we want slot, Amari Rogers x10000.

I think at least part of it is that Wentz is on a bad contract for what he's been for a few years. Darnold isn't, it's a cheap roll of the dice versus an expensive one. I get the view that the floor is higher with Wentz though, w/protection, Wentz was once a top 10 caliber QB, the best Darnold ever has been was borderline competent under Todd Bowles as a rookie.

I remain baffled. A rental on a bad contract for a backup AND we have to give up a reasonably early day 3 pick. No thank you x10,000.

I don't know what to think of the F.O. at this point if this is what they're thinking, I'm also skeptical of nepotism picks. What is a polian kid doing getting a major gig with us. I sure hope his CV deserves such respect because last time I checked, Jacksonville totally imploded (I give them credit with landing DJ Chark, Laviska Shenault, James Robinson, and Josh Oliver (we'll see) with picks outside of round 1 across the board. Damn impressive when you can build up a nice collection of playmakers for Trevor Lawrence before he arrives w/o having had to use a single first round pick but I don't know his role in any of this. I will say the one thing I liked what Jville did when they imploded was basically spend 3 years going from a contender to a total s show, land the best QB prospect in a decade, build up the talent base for him in terms of playmakers, all while still sucking. Don't think their OL is where it needs to be which could be a catastrophe though. Needless to say, I'm jealous. We sucked infinitely worse than Jville the entire time they collapsed since having that elite D a few years ago, and yet they're getting Lawrence while all we got for our trouble was Haskins destroying his own career lol. Frustrating being a redskins/WFT fan/victim

Have to admit, I find the Mariota stuff really bizarre. We are YEARS removed from Mariota completing a season that was successful, like lots of years. There's a reason the Titans let him go w/o a second thought and it's not because they thought he was a really valuable asset. I wish he was better as I wasted way too much draft capital on him a few years ago in a start up, but regardless, it is what it is, after showing growth early on in '15-'16, he tailed off badly and other than some halfway interesting raw # data w/o actual quality results (looks like maybe stat padding in the 4th quarter) of early '19, he's basically been awful for four years. I flat out don't understand this. It seems like dumpster diving in Darnold vein, but w/even fewer pieces of exculpatory evidence (he did have Corey Davis, AJ Brown, Jonnu Smith, and Derek Henry after all, while Darnold had squat). It's one thing to pay a few nickles for Mariota as a theoretical backup w/starter in a pinch upside as a bridge if necessary, but as a solution it makes no sense whatsoever to the QB issue. Just mroe of the same, patching over gaping flaws guaranteed to sink the ship. Just bizarre to me. As depth? Okay, as an asset? No chance. They'd have to give me a pick to take his contract on, no chance would I trade anything.

Next QB up, that's how the system works.

It's next up sets the next price point.

Not if they want QB or RB help, WR is also a weaker draft.

Why? Mariota had one real nice season, and a shortened injured season where the raw #'s look great, but the actual performance of the team was horrific. I was buying Mariota in '16-'18, but at this point, it's nuts to think he's worth much of anything, especially elite DL talent. If they want a DL for Mariota, they can give us a first as a part of the deal.

Piece of evidence 4,384,365,238 why we invest way too much confidence in GM's and F.O.'s, if there is their reason, they are complete fools. Regardless, I'll enjoy watching them eat crow on Fields moving forward. Flat out morons. At least have a sound argument. Wahhh! OSU QB's bust. Wahhhh! We didn't get Josh Allen, he's repeatable in this other guys body. Idiots.

Man you guys are just slamming me with those logic bombs, over and over while I struggle to drag my, "hunch", "Jets ruined him," and, "take lock" ever more slowly forward. I think this is my Thermypolae.

If you want to saddle teams with a coach/gm who can do neither, that will happens as he trades away top 5 WR's for 40th/below ranked, washed RB's and the like. You can tell me any decade, and most years, and I can give out outliers where the F.O. has basically ruined them. Usually their tier 2 guys, but still. Stafford and Detroit, Atlanta and Matt Ryan, Carson Palmer and Cincy, Philip Rivers and San Diego even the Cowboys with Dak. It happens, but generally it's either bad luck, or totally incompetent front offices that manage to waste franchise QB's as Houston has done with Watson. Give them a terrible coach (Nearly all of Rivers coaches were trash), add in a GM screwing things up, and you can fumble away a franchise guy no problem. It's not a panacea, it's not gonna change that we have the worst owner in sports, but it is the only chance we have.

No. '83 was much worse. The Chiefs were in this, repeatedly driving, they just couldn't score, and couldn't block to save their lives. The '83 super bowl was a tour de force of errors: Blocked Punt recovered for a TD, Blocked PAT, Missed FG (you should get a ST's award for that troika), Pick 6 seconds before halftime, million yard, "there's no chance he runs around in circles 5 yards behind the los, then accelerates, turns the corner and makes that, holy ----, no, No, NOOOOO! Marcus Allen TD run, and all of this after we annihilated the Rams 51-7, beat Joe Montana w/some ref help in the playoffs, and beat that same Raider team in the regular season (well, minus Marcus Allen). Let's blame the wind though (which apparently was a major problem and a part of the Lester Hayes/Mike Haynes game plan. '83 was a nightmare where you went from supremely confident, to slowly developing fear, to horror, to inevitably, to emotional collapse. This game was in doubt for some until the fourth quarter when they finally accepted that yeah, the chiefs weren't going to switch to a short passing game fast enough to cope with the pass blocking issues etc (and the exhaustion of the D).

As we're watching one future HOF play another future HOF, and when the Final Four this year was 3 Future HOF's and one guy who turned in a HOF season (Josh Allen)??? I hope it goes w/o saying that the lines matter, hell I've spent the past few years trying to create a new phrase, "being David Carr'd" to explain why you have to give your franchise QB an OL (and I will note, numerous sources gave the Bucs a fighting chance for one reason going in and that was that the chiefs would be starting only one OL from last year's group due to cluster injuries and covid etc and that issue proved out big time against the Bucs front (and shockingly, that secondary too). Regardless though, QB is the end all be all, period. The Bucs were a burning trash can last year, the only major move they made in the offseason was at QB (and getting Wirfs after a bunch of teams idiotically passed on the top 10 talent), and boom, they win a super bowl? Kinda underlines the point.

Wow. That’s super upsetting. Could have had Herbert. Just brutal.

17 out of 32. Clearly I was a cheap date in 1994.

What about Frerotte's debut against the Colts 26 years ago. I still remember that damn game, thinking, "Thank God, Heath's a bust, but we nailed Frerotte," should have known better after my love affairs with Jay Schroeder and Cary Conklin's potential failed horribly (never really a Humphries Truther which is hilarious considering he made a Super Bowl).

But he wasn't, so he hasn't had a year where he was brutalized and then eventually knocked out for the rest of a season with a serious injury. As much as Burrow has the higher grade going into the '20 draft after that '19 season, Herbert isn't carrying forward with a season of shellacking's that can damage a QB's future in the way Burrow was and he also didn't sustain a season ending ACL/MCL injury. Herbert jumps ahead of him both because of the health angle going forward and because Herbert hasn't endured a year of getting smashed in the way Burrow was. Burrow is now damaged by his first professional season. Herbert wasn't in any significant way physically (via injury) or potentially mentally (by getting slaughtered every week). In fariness, Herbert's OL wasn't great or even good, they were barely adequate, but still, Herbert was pressured a touch under 30% less per game than Burrow was, and he was sacked a full 1 sack per game fewer. Herbert comes out with a great season and no lingering issues in terms of injury or getting bashed around non-stop, while Burrow comes out with a serious pair of knee injuries, and did get bashed around non-stop to the point where people were actively talking about "we don't want this guy getting knocked out for the year because the Bengals OL is straight trash for weeks, and then that's exactly what happened" a la Luck. So yeah, I agree that Herbert would've been hit by the same things that would've been out of control, I don't blame Burrow for what happened, he just got drafted by a trash team with a horrible OL (but some legit weapons), and it cost him a serious knee injury and the potential for serious pocket paranoia issues when you see phantom sacks happening left and right due to inept blocking. Herbert managed to avoid that, and that, combined with his performance, elevates him above Burrow, at least for now.

Herbert produced a top 15 season despite playing with a defense that was a mess and an offense that had no playmakers play a full 16 game schedule and all but one only managed a max of 11 starts. Despite that he was excellent for a majority of the season (did have a dip if memory serves around late october to late november), and unlike Burrow, he didn't take a billion hits a game behind horrific blocking (5.1% sack rate to 7.3%). I get nervous when QB's are brutalized by incompetent line play in front of them. Lastly though, seriously? You wouldn't take Herbert now over Young? I'm astonished at that. Young is awesome, no disagreement there, but a locked in franchise QB? There's just zero question what matters more. I guess you're quibbling more with my depiction of Herbert's current status.

Because Herbert hit and a franchise QB is worth vastly more than any other position.

I know this. The poster made reference to him being the best player in the draft. Now, in retrospect, he definitely wouldn't go top 2. Herbert would go 1, and Burrow 2. That's my point. Obviously last year, there were a ton of question marks (though in fairness, going into the season he was the #2 ranked QB in that class, it's just Burrow turned in one of the best, if not the best seasons in the history of college football, while Herbert didn't improve significantly if at all, and so his stock ticked down a touch).

He wasn't the best player, Justin Herbert and Joe Burrow were. No matter what Chase can do (and he can do a lot), Burrow (if he hits and the Bengals don't wreck him) and Herbert right now are infinitely more valuable because one is a franchise QB and one looked like one. I'm a Tua backer, so I believe he'll pan out, but so far he hasn't looked like pre injury Tua so I get the skepticism (whether miami was babying (clearly) or lacked the personel (clearly), or he just isn't the same (possibly), but for all the things Chase does, in the room, with chemistry, and on the field in terms of production, and attention, he still doesn't trump what a franchise QB can do in terms of domino effect, You make a good argument for why I would be scared to include him in a deal for Fields (which is why I wouldn't also give a first). I would include him for Lawrence, because Lawrence is clearly a once a decade, Andrew Luck, Peyton Manning, John Elway top QB talent. I'd trade him for Watson as well due to age. I agree, he's basically a #1 overall pick and a generational type talent, and he hit and he's got four cheap years left on his deal. You only include him for top of the line guys. I would for Fields because I believe in Fields, but I also would've last year for Tua or for Herbert straight up so there's that too. I get why if you trade him, though, he should mitigate a huge portion of the cost for a QB. I also get that it isn't happening anyway.