philibusters

There is a lot of moving parts, but my instinct would be to bring Leno back unless a really good opportunity presents itself at that position.

For what its worth PFF doesn't even hate Sam Howell. He has a 62 season grade. That is higher than Heinicke in 2021 and both Wentz and Heinicke last year. A 62 is not a good grade, but its not terrible. And their grade does factor in the sacks he is taking. Granted his grade has dropped quite a bit the last six games. After 10 games he had a 69 overall season grade. That is dropped to 62 meaning over the last 6 games his grade would average out to maybe the low 50's. PFF had been fair enough to Howell in my opinion. For example in the Jets game he got benched in they graded him in the high 50's (not good but not terrible) and gave him zero turnover worthy plays despite throwing two interceptions because one interception came off a deflection from Logan Thomas and the other interception came on an inbreaking route where Curtis Samuels slipped. One thing I have learned from the PFF podcast before this season that made view Howell a little differently is that sacks are heavily QB driven. Every sack could be driven be 3 or 4 units, the QB, O-Line, the back and TE's in protection, or the receivers not getting open. But its not a 25%-25%-25%-25% split and the unit that most drives that stat is QB. So it was ingrained in my head that QB heavily contribute to QB sacks coming into this season, so I never really bought the line that Howell was not playing a big part in our big sacks allowed total. All that said, when Howell was taking a lot of sacks, he was playing reasonably well. At about the same time the sack numbers dropped, he stopped playing as well.

I think about 1 generation talent is to be expected per draft. A generation for the NFL is about 10 years in that a good successful NFL career is about 10 years long. 90% of players have turned over in a 10 year period, yeah they are a few exceptions who stay in the league for significantly longer than 10 years but that is not the norm. So 10 years is a generation in the NFL. Then you add in there are QB's, RB's, WR's, TE's, O-Lineman, DT's, DE's, LB's, CB's, and S's (roughly 10 position groups) so yes you would expect about one generational talent per year. Is Marvin Harrison Jr. a generational talent? Maybe its been 3 years since there is been a similar prospect in Jamarr Chase, but before that you have to go back I think 10 years to 2011 (13 from this year) for Julio Jones to find a WR rated as highly as Marvn Harrison Jr.

That seems doable as according to this chart, our 2 second round picks are equal to roughly the 15th or 16th pick. https://www.drafttek.com/NFL-Trade-Value-Chart.asp

That true. We would lose about a million of cap space for next year, but gain a second round pick. In the future years we would have additional cap space. If you trade Payne, you definitely are not maximizing next season, but it could be part of a rebuild where you accrue assets.

Payne's deal makes him hard to trade and thus he is not really on the block. I believe we would be looking at a 22.4 million deadcap hit. His cap hit next year is 21.6 million so we would actually lose cap space by trading him for a second (though that could be a good long term move if say you got a high second for him) Its doable, but people excited about that 100 million of cap space would be disappointed to lose 22.4 million of it. I think we have about 34 guys under contract before trades taht will very likely be on the roster next year which means we have to sign another 20 guys. 100 million divided by 20 million is 5 million per guy, but obviously some guys will be way more expensive than that and others will be much cheaper and with the draft picks it will all be already scheduled.

My bad on the age thing. I was thinking it was 3 years and 3 months because this is Penix's 6th year and Maye's 3rd year, but Maye was 9 months older as a true freshman so the difference is only 2 years and 3 months.

I haven't studied the QB's, but the consensus is Maye is a good deal ahead of Penix. Penix is a sixth year player and is 3 years and 3.5 months older than Maye. 3 years ago when Penix was Maye's age he was having a very good season with Indiana, but the next year he regressed a ton going from a 136 QB college rating to a 101 rating. The other thing about Penix is I do think Washington has good x's and o's playcalling. I don't think that is necessarily true at UNC.

I think you are right. He is not the explosive running back. He is more of a Brian Robinson or Kyren Williams guy. Our running back Brian Robinson Jr. is a decent comp, runs with power, but enough burst for outside zone run. Because he is a little more squat and shorter than Robinson, I think he is a little bit shifty. Should be a good starting RB in the NFL. That said in the NFL the dropoff at RB is not great compare to say Tackle, so you don't worry about missing out on a guy like Corum, so like you I think he is there in the 3rd round if you want him.

I watched the below video of Maye. Its every throw from the Minnesota game this year where he went 29-40 for 414 yards and two td's and two interceptions. I liked what I saw. Handful of really nice throws, handful of good quick game, He was partly to blame for both interceptions. On the first interception he made the right read but didn't get enough loft on it and a linebacker to it on a nice play by the linebacker. On the second interception, he got hit when he was throwing on a comeback route which caused him to be really short with the throw. The interception is mostly on the LT, but if he got the ball out of his hands as quickly as could have on the comeback throw, he probably gets rid of it before getting hit.

We are tied with three other teams at 4-12. We get the tie breaker in the first round. The secocnd worst SOS gets in the second round and the third worst SOS get the tiebreaker in the third round. So we would get the tiebreaker in rounds 1, 4, and 7

Malik Willis also had elite speed. I liked Daniels, when I thought we would be picking in the 3 to 5 range I was very intrigued (and who knows we still may) but I am going Caleb Williams or Drake Maye over him if I have the choice.

Given the cap hit Denver will take for Wilson, I cannot see any realistic way they could afford Cousins. Howell is perfect for Denver because he is cheap. But they are going to take a big cap hit to move on from Wilson. Wilson to Denver could happen, but if they want an expensive veteran QB, why not just bring Cousins back for a couple more years. There was a time Wilson was clearly better than Cousins--that time has passed.

In terms of trading spots for Sam Howell if we do trade him, Denver is now on my radar. Denver will be picking 14th. They just benched Russell Wilson. If they choose not to go with him next year, they will be on a real tight cap and need a cheap option at QB. At 14, Williams, Maye, and Daniels are very likely all off the board. Nix and Penix will likely be on the board, but 14 is a **** rich for them as they are more second round talents. What would be a fair trade with Denver. Ideally from our perspective a second. Second best scenario would be a pair of thirds. Third best case would be we get a second rounder and give them a 4th. Fourth best would be we get one third and one fourth rounder. Since Sean McVay spoke well of Howell, I could see that being another trading spot. But they will have at least one more year of Stafford so they don't have a desperate need. Probably realistically the best we could do from the Rams is a third rounder. They get a trial to see if he can be Stafford's heir. Either trade would be good for Howell as working with McVay or Payton is likely to help him improve. I think they would both really appreciate his work ethic and maturity.

RGIII failed for a lot of reasons, but two big factors were the injuries and his request that a lot of running plays be taken out of the playbook (which was done at the suggestion of Dan Synder). Kyle Shannahan is pretty ingenious and he had figured out how to open pretty big passing lane using the threat of RGIII's running ability. When that running threat disappeared the passing lanes got smaller. Starting in 2013 he also lost his confidence. He became afraid to throw the ball into tight windows and didn't trust what he was seeing near as much as in 2012 when his confidence was sky high.

I just looked at Payne's contract at OvertheCap and I agree it would be hard to trade him. Essentially trading him would give us a deadcap hit of 22 million and the team trading for him wouldn't even be getting great value themselves as they would have a cap hit of around 60 million over 3 seasons. Payne is a good player, but I still believe resigning him on the contract he got was the wrong move.

Tytus Howard is an interesting case. They drafted him 23rd overall and he was meh his first three years. Essentially a low end starter. In year 4 he took a nice step forward and was solid. The Texans then gave him that 3 year 56 million extension. Unfortuantely for the Texans he went back to meh this season. He is a Andrew Wylie level starter. However, winning kind of fixes everything, so right now nobody is upset that the extension looks like a bad one. But if they stay like a 9-8 or 10-7 team and struggle to take the next step, their fanbase will start complaining about that extension if he continues to be a low end starter.

That is likely correct. But if the Jets beat the Patriots all those games will matter.

Every GM and every former GM is a subject matter expert. Some of them are better than others. I don't know what your job. But it probably involves some technical expertise. Now the odds are there are people in the world better than you at your job. It doesn't make you an idiot though whose opinion regarding your work is worthless.

Yeah because it is not as simple as giving a guy a look. First you probably trade a day 2 pick to get him. Then you have to give him the starting job for a year which means we don't draft a guy with our first round pick this year when we actually may end up with a pick to get a top guy or we don't give Howell another year. All that investment when the most likely outcome is Justin Fields is decent, but not a franchise QB (a low level starter like Daniel Jones). Plus because Fields is decent, just not good, we probably go something like 7-10 with him at QB and are not in a position to get a QB the following year. I agree with ntotoro, keep what we have or draft a QB.

Possibly. Not sure what the market will be for him. Salvage projects only work if you can the player relatively cheap.

I definitely agree its not a given. And if the FO believes Sam is the guy, they absolutely should trade down if they end with pick 2 or something like that. But that all hinges on the fact they think Sam can be the guy. Sure the rebuild will get off the ground quicker if they can build around Sam, but the ultimate goal of the rebuild is to build a team that is a Superbowl contender year in and year out like the Chiefs, Bills, Bengals, Eagles, and even teams like the Cowboys. And in order to do that you have to have the QB. Its more important that the rebuild be successful rather than get off to a quick start in my opinion, so everything hinges on their take on Howell. For example the Lions had a quick rebuild, but I kind of feel like we don't know if it will be successful. They chose to stick with Goff and doing so allowed them to become a playoff team sooner, but the goal is not to become a playoff team for a year or two but to build a stable super bowl contender.

I think it was a little bit pessimistic. Jamin Davis is a starting caliber LB. Not a good one, but starting caliber. Like Forbes he was a bit of a trainwreck as a rookie, but in year 3, both the beat reporters who watch the tape and PFF say he is a starter level player (PFF Grade 67). I think Curl who is a free agent is a good S. I am a bit higher on the O-Line. Though I do agree we are not a contender next year.

Based on my evaluation of Stroud before the season started they were comparable prospects, though I like Daniels a little more than I liked Stroud at draft time this past draft, though as the poster above noted they are very different QB's. Stroud strength in the draft assessment was his easy accuracy at all three levels. Daniels by contrast is a heck of an athlete who has developed into a good passer over the past 5 season in college (he first became a starting QB in 2019). All that said, I way underestimated Stroud. My impression of Stroud was that he was really good at throwing the ball, but his ability to go through his reads or make plays outside of structure were meh. I basically saw Stroud as Jared Goff. If you put him an offense where his first read will usually be open he'll be great because he throws a beautiful accurate ball and can throw with anticipation (leading the receiver open). By contrast if you put him in a bad situation, I thought his pocket presence was average (not bad but not good), that his ability to get through his reads was average, and his ability to make plays outside the structure of the offense was average. I was wrong on my take on Stroud, but I still saw Stroud as a starting QB in the NFL just not a high end one. But he is a fundamentally different play style than Stroud. As others have noted, Deshaun Watson or even Lamar Jackson would be better comparisons in terms of playstyle.

I like Rivera so I hope Harris handles it in a classy way. This was a make or break season for Rivera after his first years were lukewarm. Clearly the season broke bad and Rivera has to go, but I think they should treat him with respect on the way out.