2019 NFL off-season thread

To be fair, the Browns 2.0 expansion team brought the NFL back to Cleveland in 1999. Haslam has only been the owner since 2012, though it must seem a lot longer to the team's fans.

 

Anytime you can acquire an older, worse starting quarterback than the one you already have under contract, well, you have to do it.

 

elite mediocrity

 

I heard that if the Steelers trade Brown they can take a 21-22 million dollar cap hit. IF they do, why would Pitt trade him for anything less a 2nd round drat choice. If they cant make a great deal, keep him on the roster and suspend him. Save his salary in cash and the only cap hit is his allocated salary for the year, not the accelerated bonus plus salary.

 

Of the last four owners the Browns have had, Art Modell was the best and it's not close. That's how bad things have been.

 

That is what I've been saying all along. It doesn't make sense to trade him unless they can get something close to fair value. I'm not even sure a second-rounder is enough. I get that he's 30, but he's still an elite receiver. I know the concern is the locker room and letting him get away with too much crap, but isn't rewarding him by giving him the trade that he wants another way of letting him get away with more crap?

Listen to offers, but if they aren't good enough, keep him. Keeping him from producing for some other team has value. Either he stops the crap and helps the team win or he sits and gets fined all season. He can't afford to do what Le'Veon Bell did last season. The argument there was that Bell was saving wear and tear on his body and the money he wanted last year would be available for 2019. Brown is older and even without the wear and tear, a lost year will only decrease his value. If he wants to get paid, he needs to play. If he wants the respect he craves so badly, he needs to keep earning it on the field.

If Tomlin can't make all that work in the locker room, then 2019 needs to be his final season as the Steelers' head coach. The culture is becoming toxic. Tomlin is at least partially responsible for that and he definitely allowed the issues with Brown to get to this point. He should have dealt with Brown's crap sooner and he probably should have addressed Roethlisberger's attitude toward some teammates as well. Brown's social media should have been banned from the locker room the moment he live-streamed from a closed locker room. Roethlisberger's radio show is causing problems, so that should go away, too. If Tomlin no longer has the authority to deal with such issues, he is no longer capable of being the coach.

 

He has another alternative. Play and half-ass it. He gets his money either way, and it will devastate the Steelers until they bench him. Can't fine a player for poor performance.

 

No, but you can bench him for it. Brown is driven by money and recognition. I don't think he would have any moral problem with half-assing it, but I don't think his ego would allow him to do it. It's not as if he can go public and say he is giving less than his best, so he would have to tolerate people saying he is in decline. I highly doubt that his ego could take that. In the worst case scenario, he's on the bench, but they avoided the dead money cap hit, they kept him from helping some other team and they demonstrated that players can't get their way simply by acting like a petulant child.

 

All this bc the players picked JuJu as team MVP over AB. What the hell is it with wide receivers? How can one position have most of the divas in all of sports? It's uncanny. Who was the first? Michael Irvin? Then we had Bad Moon Rison and Keyshawn before TO, Ochocinco and Moss came along. But earlier guys weren't like that, were they? Jerry Rice, Charlie Joiner, Largent, Lynn Swann, Stallworth. Ya never hood squat in a negative sense about those guys.

 

It's rare for a WR to be able to succeed without having a "Fuck you" mentality.

 

Oddly enough - I really think it started in college - maybe even in high school in Florida with the taunting etc. It was just how receivers played the game. It was one on one with the DBs. You have to include Prime Time in this discussion.