2019 NFL off-season thread

I do think many people are overplaying the various "feuds" in sports locker rooms. While many in the sportsjournalism industry grew up with an idea of the "one for all and all for one" kind of ethos with team sports, athletes today see themselves as entertainers/performers and use twitter like some people would use a diss track. One person's "beef" is another person's brand extension, gaining attention for themselves. Nobody is throwing passes in the off-season, so you take it to twitter.

 

It is the height of folly for a wideout to diss his quarterback. Or any quarterback. Without the passer, he's a guy running wind sprints out there. Brown going after Smith-Schuster kind of ruined his beef with Ben. Before that, a reasonable person could conclude Brown and his QB just didn't get along, so best if one of them moved along. Now, Brown just looks like a grievance junkie -- an asshole.

 

Somebody needs to give Antonio Brown a hug. And I know just the guy...

 

And now many in the league are turning on AB

https://nypost.com/2019/04/08/nfl-turns-on-antonio-brown-after-petty-tweet-smash-this-dude/

Mwaa-haha.

 

Man, that'll win people to AB's side in his beef with JuJu!

 

Some talking head I'd never heard of before put it perfectly on the radio. (I wish I had caught his name, but I did not.)

"Brown really exposed JuJu for what he is....a really respectful, hard-working kid."

I also heard Chris Carter rip Brown for the way he is going after Smith-Schuster and for the way he embarrassed Mike Tomlin. He went so far as to say that he was "embarrassed as a black man" by the way Brown is handling things, basically saying that he should show more respect for Tomlin because he should understand the challenges a black man faces in an NFL head coaching job.

Edit: Even Shannon Sharpe has turned on Brown, and he had been blaming Roethlisberger for the whole thing. Now he said he wouldn't want to play with Brown.

 

Pretty good list

NFL draft's 100 biggest busts: Which picks, trades proved to be whiffs?

 

The fact that the Patriots show up only 2 times is a minor miracle considering some of their screwups.

 

What bugs me about the term "bust" is that almost all of the players were universally expected to be drafted at or near where they were. The teams they end up with get to live with the decision - Russell was viewed as a Culpepper or Roethlisberger - big dude, big arm.

 

Leaf was a good pick, but a bust as a player. Russell was drafted too high and couldn't live up to his draft spot -- or any draft spot.

Lists like this have to be looked in the context of when the picks were made. You can't just say three Hall of Famers were drafted later so it was a bad pick because obviously some players exceed expectations and others don't. And some get injured. See Bowie-Jordan and Oden-Durant.

 

I am curious how involved ownership is in the first round pick. As much as most like to claim to be hands off, I imagine they want to at least give the green light to the pick. There have to be stories about owners "falling in love" with a certain pick and ordering the GM to reach for him.

 

That's a point I always make when people talk about Leaf. Some talk like the Chargers took him knowing he'd be crap. I was in San Diego at the time and there was no way the Bolts weren't going to take Leaf or Manning (there were actually whispers that the Colts might go for Leaf, which turned out to be unadulterated BS).
He may have been a disaster, but at the time Leaf was the only choice they could have made. If they went elsewhere, the Chargers front office would have been raked over the coals, and people probably would have ended up fired before they were proven right.