theTruthTeller

Tens of fans are clinging to that last filament of hope.

I'm super bummed that NBC is not flexing this to Sunday night.

No need to try to fix this disaster in one season. You're absolutely right, there is no point in getting the QB you want and then have him pounded into submission. Using serious capital to get a QB is at least three years out in my schedule for rebuilding this team.

1993 is the year in which the current system of free agency began and 1994 the salary cap started. Prior to that, it was pretty easy to have relative continuity from one year to the next, and that was true whether you were good or bad. Coaches had a lot bigger say in personnel and were ultimately responsible for finding and developing talent. In the years after 1993, the FO became more involved in personnel because player decisions were also cap decisions. Coaches build teams, GMs build rosters. They need to work together. If your criteria for a coach or a GM is going to the Super Bowl, you are going to diminish team building, which takes years, and favor roster building. I just don't see any plan for the future with the Skins. On offense, it's Guice and Scherff, and Guice hasn't played a regular season down yet. I can't count anyone else as a solid player for the future. Trent has missed four or more games for the last three seasons. I really admire Moses's willingness to play hurt, often when he's in obvious acute pain, but he's always playing hurt. There's really nothing else to look forward to on offense. It's horrible. On defense, I have to assume that Norman is gone after this year, unless he's willing to renegotiate his contract, and I don't think his ego will allow it. I'm hopeful for Payne and Allen, but as a whole we're in the in the middle of the league in run defense in a division that has two teams with young premiere running backs. For the future, we need to be better than average. But that would involve using picks for defense when we have so many holes to fill on offense. Whoever takes over for Bruce, and Bruce is gone for sure, will be left with a mess. And there aren't a lot of top people that like starting out with a mess.

Actually, I think it's a little more complicated as to what's a good decision. First of all, the $10M number is something I just made up. Insurance policies for career ending injuries used to be fairly common, at least for top athletes (not just football), and they were mostly through Lloyd's of London. When someone wants a personal policy like this, Lloyds puts together a syndicate of investors to fund the liability and they split the premium if the injury doesn't occur. So in this case, the syndicate would know that they were insuring a 34 year old quarterback with a line that had a somewhat shaky past itself - everything you would need to evaluate the risk. A while back, there were a spate of injuries for athletes with these types of policies and it became very hard to find investors and, thus, very expensive. So the cost could be pretty high - high enough that it wasn't prudent to take a cap hit on the premiums. If it was a $30M policy and Smith played through his contract injury free, that would go down as a bad decision. And Smith might not want it to be part of his contract - in essence, the Skins would be saying here's your $94M contract and you must agree to take $10M (or whatever) to buy the insurance policy. To be fair, I don't believe I've heard that the injury was completely covered. It could be, for example, just the 2020 season or have a $30M limit. There are an infinite number of possibilities regarding the cost of the policy, what it covers, and what would ameliorate the cap hit. But I'm pretty sure if it covered the cap hit for the entirety of his remaining cap hit, we would have heard it by now. The Skins usually don't keep quite on the good news. In any case, I hope he gets better soon, whether or not he can play again, regardless of the cap hit.

This is me just talking out of my ass, but I think this is how the insurance works: 1) If the Skins purchased an insurance policy which protected Smith's future salary against injury, and the cost of that insurance policy was reported as a benefit to Smith, then only the cost of the policy goes against the cap, not the payout. So, if an injury policy covering Smith to the end of his contract cost $10M (paid upfront) and Smith had $60M future salary at the time of his injury, the $10M would have been a cap hit in 2018 (or maybe a prorated bonus prorated over the life of his contract) and there would be no further cap hits after his last game paycheck against the Texans, because his salary became guaranteed by the insurance policy, not the contract. 2) If the Skins bought a policy for themselves (or didn't report the cost of the policy as a benefit), then the Skins are protected as far as cash flow goes, but the guaranteed money paid to Smith counts against the cap. The difference is whether or not the $10M cost of the policy was part of the compensation reported to the NFL. I don't know the answer to that.

I can't believe people are arguing about the playcalling last night. When Colt went down, so did the rest of the season. The multiple injuries to the OL and QB positions are unfortunate, but not Gruden's fault. The only race we're in now is with the Giants for last place. If we can poach a QB off someone's practice squad and give him some snaps, that would at least be a step in having a young backup QB for next year. Pretty much everything else is just because we have an obligation to play all of the games. Whether Gruden gets fired or not really doesn't move me one way or the other. He's an average coach with an average team having average results. His replacement, if he gets fired, will probably be average as well. I don't know why anyone would want to be a head coach here if they could go somewhere else.

I'm not sure what they could have offered McVay without firing Gruden. I'm not a huge Gruden fan, but even I have to admit he has brought stability to the team even though he's been stuck with some pretty bad rosters and some horrible coordinators. Young OC's don't turn down HC jobs without some pretty good assurance that they'll be taking over. Plus, for whatever faults the Rams may have had in the preceding 5 years, they were willing to stick with Fischer as HC. McVay would have been on the hot seat from day 1. When Payton left Dallas for NO, Garrett was finishing his first year as quarterbacks coach for Miami. Payton was already the assistant HC, and he had turned down one head coaching job (Raiders) already in lieu of a big pay raise. There was really nothing left to offer him in Dallas.

He went to the 2009 AFCCG with Thomas Jones as his leading back and Jericho Cotchery as his leading receiver. Not exactly HOF material. He also took them to an 8-8 record in 2011 with Shonn Greene as his leading back and Dustin Keller as his leading receiver. And they were 13th in scoring that year. After Sanchez was replaced, the Jets ranked 29th and 28th with Ryan as coach, so I have a hard time placing the blame entirely on Sanchez. Tomlinson only played two years for the Jets (2010 and 2011) and he only ran for 280 yards in 2011. He wasn't carrying the team.

Given what we know, about the worst thing that could come out is that she was lying about lying. But what if it just drags on? I would expect Foster to come off the exempt list once the NFL has gathered information on the incident, which shouldn't take more than a few weeks. It's not out of the question that the NFL will drop Foster from the exempt list without making a decision on the act itself or the punishment (they waited over a year on Elliot) and the Tampa DA could take up to a year to make charges on a misdemeanor (not sure of what the law is in Florida, but a limit of one year is typical). And then, depending upon whether Foster asks for a speedy trial, the case may not be heard for an indefinite time - months to years. This move isn't going to look so great if Foster is taking up a roster spot and $1.3M in cap space next year. The Skins have said he won't be wearing the burgundy and gold unless he is cleared - does that mean they pay him but don't play him for the 2019 season if necessary? Would they extend him at the end of 2019 if he has little or no playing time? This is definitely not just a PR hit with not much to lose if he is eventually found guilty. There are a lot of things in play that simply can't be accounted for right now. The idea that this is a smart move by the FO remains to be seen.

At least part of the reason is that no one has been able to contact the girl who was hit in the video, if they even know who she is. The big unknown in this case is what was going on in the room, why the girl was booted from the room, why she wanted to get back in so badly, and what she will say publicly if found. I suspect that they weren't having a backgammon tournament. Waiting on more info would seem to be a good move given the heat that the Skins have taken, even if it means paying more or missing out completely.

Foster is on the "exempt" list. He is not suspended. He gets paychecks and can come to certain activities while on the exempt list. Being on the exempt list is a benefit to the Skins while information is being gathered about the incident. When Foster comes off of the exempt list, someone will need to be cut from the team.

It's prime time and I'm thinking of which player will step up and be prime time.... and I honestly can't think of one. Maybe Kerrigan. I'm sticking with my prediction that Colt gets sacked 8 times. Philly will bring the heat early and not stop until they get burned by it. There's just nothing left to fear about our offense.

Doug William's recipe for Reubens Foster: 3 small potatoes (fingerling work well), half-backed cover up small potatoes with burgundy gravy (saute onions over medium heat, add 3 T flour, heat for 3 minutes, add one cup burgundy, stir until thickened) cover with layer of mashed potatoes top with more burgundy gravy keep adding layers of mashed potatoes and gravy until small potatoes are no longer apparent serve to guests

We're paying him now. He'll get a paycheck for this week's game.