Quote Originally Posted by Craic View Post
I didn't know forums existed for the sole reason of second-guessing management. I thought they existed for fans to talk about their team and the previous games and excitement over the coming season and where to tailgate when in Pittsburgh and how the Browns suck and the thousand other things we talk about. Silly me.

And the fact that you limited your response to that of contracts and salary cap simply supports my point. Tell me, how many of the developmental players have you watched during practice? How many of the 2nd and 3rd stringers have you watched throughout the week, each week? How many players have you spoke to privately that are going through something they don't want made public, but is affecting their game, and once it's behind them, their game should pick up tremendously? When was the last time you got an injury report that wasn't made public a la Mitchell last year? How many players have hinted to you about retirement? How many players have you received reports on concerning positive results for drugs (which are not made public according to the CBA)? How many coaches have sat with you and shared what they see in a player, and if they can get it developed, X Millions will be a steal for their services?

But yeah, it's just about contracts and caps.

Because talent evaluation, ability to understand a player's ability to participate according to a game plan, an ability to project possible drafts for position, etcetera has nothing to do with keeping or letting players go, right? I'm sorry, but it's a pretty simplistic view. Yes, it's a business, and a business in which you must know your product extremely well before you buy or extend, and also know how that product will fit with the rest of the products. If it were as easy as you make it out to be, the NFL franchises would just go hire some accountants at 80k a year and be done with it.


... and yet somehow, in spite of all that, I generally know a good deal when I see one and a bad deal when I see one.

"We paid Woodley way too much, that contract is going to be trouble." "We shouldn't keep restructuring Timmons' contract like that or eventually it's going to come back and bite us." "Brown's contract is a risk, but the kind of risk worth taking." "If we can get Allen for a medium contract like $5M or $6M, that's a gamble but it won't kill us if it goes bad." "If Wallace wants that much money, let him go." "No, $7M isn't too much for Miller, he can still play at a high level." "Worilds isn't worth a big long-term contract." "It's not going to be some record-breaking $25 million megablockbuster deal for Ben; he'll sign for $20M on the nose."

I mean - HOLY SHIT! How the fuck did I come up with all that? I must have some kind of crystal ball, or else it's the luckiest thing, like, EVER. Luckier than a blind guy winning the Olympic gold medal for tennis.

That, or else it's really not all such a huge fucking mystery, and you can ballpark it pretty well as long as you're paying attention.

Once you get past the "Trade Ben, fire Tomlin, tank the season for the #1 draft pick" nonsense, most people here have some pretty good points about that stuff. They're not all the same (thank god), and they're not always right, but the front office isn't always right either. Once in a while there's a real surprise, like Landry Jones turning out to be an idiot-savant (though I get the feeling that caught the coaches by surprise too), but for the most part it's all reasonable.

IMO falling back to the old line of "You're not a professional football coach so you're not qualified to judge" is a pretty cheap way out of an argument and doesn't do anything to bring about interesting conversation. The people it's directed at are generally well aware that they don't work in the NFL and don't need it repeated for the thousandth time, so it just comes off as sort of condescending background noise.

If a message board is just for standing around and gawking at the blinding light that is the team and the league, I guess that's one thing you can do, but it's not really a full experience for everyone.