NFL Thread 2019-2020

[cheebs09]

NFL Draft tonight. Christmas of the NFL offseason (especially true for Packer fans during the Ted years). Going to be weird tonight - I expect there to be some shenanigans and panicking from the old men using technology for the first time. To say nothing of the cybersecurity risks! Hope no one is suspicious when Joe Burrow drops to Pick 23.

Kind of excited to see if Big Cat and PFT make an appearance like they did on the Rules Committee call.

[BM1090]

Whoever Detroit drafts will be wrong.

Put some $ on Okudah at #3. Don't let me down, Detroit.

[tower912]

We can only hope.   Unless they trade down with Miami for 5 and 19.

[dgies9156]

Going to be weird tonight - I expect there to be some shenanigans and panicking from the old men using technology for the first time. To say nothing of the cybersecurity risks! Hope no one is suspicious when Joe Burrow drops to Pick 23.

Or to the second round, where the Bears quickly draft him! 

Not a chance, even if the Bears traded for Cincinnati's first rounder. No way the Bears would draft a really good quarterback!!!!!!

[Hards Alumni]

Whoever Detroit drafts will be wrong.

As is tradition.

[The Hippie Satan of Hyperbole]

The Burrow family room needs an upgrade. Those curtains are horrid.

[Mr. Nielsen]

The Burrow family room needs an upgrade. Those curtains are horrid.

Lol. I yelled to wife about the terrible curtains.

[GB Warrior]

Gettleman wearing a mask sitting alone at his laptop... Does he think the guys can get it through Microsoft Teams?

[CreightonWarrior]

Cardinals early winners of the draft getting Simmons to fall.

[CreightonWarrior]

McCarthy with his first offense player drafted in the first round since 2011

[CreightonWarrior]

Can’t imagine Aaron’s going to be too happy   

[DegenerateDish]

As a Bears fan, I'm ecstatic the Pack traded up for Love.

[Anti-Dentite]

As a Bears fan, I'm ecstatic the Pack traded up for Love.

Sid Luckman agrees with you. 

[DegenerateDish]

Soooo many thoughts...

Rodgers contract is untradeable until at least after the 2022 season. They're not going to eat $30+ mil this season or next season, so they can't cut him. They'll eventually cut Rodgers in 2023 and then wind up in a weird spot with Love in 2023. They'll then have one season, at age 25 for Love, to decide if they want to pick up his fifth year option, which is head scratching.

This is all outside the fact that I personally thought Love was at best a mid round pick. He wasn't bad in 2019...he was awful.

They gave up an asset to go get him, figuring some other team would make Love the first pick of Day 2.

If you're $40 million cap space committed to a player, and you use your first round pick to take his back up...ugh.

I'll die on this hot take, but that was an awful, awful selection.

[CreightonWarrior]

Couldn’t agree more. This was terrible. Packers manage to move farther away from super bowl caliber with first round pick.

[DegenerateDish]

Sorry, adding more thoughts...

Let's say they play this out, and Rodgers is still good at the end of 2022, then what do the Packers do? You'd have Rodgers at what will then be a fantastic contract going into 2023.

I don't mind them going and getting a backup/rookie QB, but did Gutekunst not realize where Rodgers is on his deal?

Do they hope Love looks like Mahomes 2.0 in camp for a couple years and then try to trade him? If yes, why would they have wasted an additional 4th rounder now?

The window for the Packers is still rignt. damn. now. What are you doing???

The teams in between picks 26 and 30 were the Seahawks (Wilson), Ravens (Jackson), Titans (Tannenhill), none of those teams was taking Love. Unless they had some intel, or they got fleeced into thinking someone was trading up, none of those teams was taking Love.

I'm not killing this pick because it's the Packers, if the Bears did this, I'd be murdering them as well. This actually reminded me of the Trubisky pick, albeit the Packers did this at the back of the first round instead of the beginning like the Bears did.

[Warrior Code]

Soooo many thoughts...

Rodgers contract is untradeable until at least after the 2022 season. They're not going to eat $30+ mil this season or next season, so they can't cut him. They'll eventually cut Rodgers in 2023 and then wind up in a weird spot with Love in 2023. They'll then have one season, at age 25 for Love, to decide if they want to pick up his fifth year option, which is head scratching.

This is all outside the fact that I personally thought Love was at best a mid round pick. He wasn't bad in 2019...he was awful.

They gave up an asset to go get him, figuring some other team would make Love the first pick of Day 2.

If you're $40 million cap space committed to a player, and you use your first round pick to take his back up...ugh.

I'll die on this hot take, but that was an awful, awful selection.

I hope you're right, but being a Bears fan has conditioned me to feel like they just drafted a guy who will seamlessly replace Rodgers and tear up the Bears for another 10+ years, all while Chicago remains mired in QB purgatory.

[Jockey]

2019 1st round pick - no help.
2020 1st round pick - no help.

Why not draft a guy who can contribute to the team? The team has a lot of holes. Lots of guys who could have been starters next year.

[ZiggysFryBoy]

Dish, fantastic analysis.   Thank you for your work.

[Mr. Nielsen]

The SEC not only broke its own record but -- with 15 of the first 32 picks -- set a new mark for most first-round picks by a single conference in the history of the NFL Draft.

[GB Warrior]

Sorry, adding more thoughts...

Let's say they play this out, and Rodgers is still good at the end of 2022, then what do the Packers do? You'd have Rodgers at what will then be a fantastic contract going into 2023.

I don't mind them going and getting a backup/rookie QB, but did Gutekunst not realize where Rodgers is on his deal?

Do they hope Love looks like Mahomes 2.0 in camp for a couple years and then try to trade him? If yes, why would they have wasted an additional 4th rounder now?

The window for the Packers is still rignt. damn. now. What are you doing???

The teams in between picks 26 and 30 were the Seahawks (Wilson), Ravens (Jackson), Titans (Tannenhill), none of those teams was taking Love. Unless they had some intel, or they got fleeced into thinking someone was trading up, none of those teams was taking Love.

I'm not killing this pick because it's the Packers, if the Bears did this, I'd be murdering them as well. This actually reminded me of the Trubisky pick, albeit the Packers did this at the back of the first round instead of the beginning like the Bears did.

Rumor has it the Colts were trying to move up with Seattle at 27. Seattle and KC both said the trade-up lines died as soon as the trade happened. So if they wanted him, at least that part makes sense.

Now for the pick: What. The. F#CK. Let's be clear, a lot of people said that when Rodgers was drafted. I personally was meh until he came in when Favre got hurt against Dallas and while we lost, the kid could play. He wasn't Aaron Rodgers, but he could play. But when he was drafted, it made sense. He was a potential #1 pick from a big boy program who played big boy football, who just slid. Favre had openly mused about retirement for years. The knock on him was mechanics and the "Jeff Tedford" system that had produced vaunted NFL talents such as Trent Dilfer, Akili Smith and most recently at that point, Kyle Boller. McCarthy got him back when players were allowed to do offseason work and put him through the QB bootcamps.

With Love, the talent is there, but I'm not so sure it's mechanics so much as what's between the ears. He needs to have his mechanics reigned in, but his issues last year were decision making. They better be damn sure it's because he was trying to win them games, because the footage is not good. He has a beautiful deep ball, so it's a good thing the Packers seem to hate receivers that can run, but it really looked like he struggled to read defenses in the middle of the field and on out routes. Those things are correctable, and lord knows he'll have 3 years to correct them. But for all of those who say his ceiling is Mahomes, I look at his game and see Jay Cutler. Give the kid a chance, but man this feels like a missed opportunity. If the children are our future, then what the fck are we doing now?

Some comedic relief: the Pat McAfee (and AJ Hawk apparently) show had fake Mel Kiper on last night, who was a Packer fan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WyAtNBa_-o

[hairy worthen]

Sorry, adding more thoughts...

Let's say they play this out, and Rodgers is still good at the end of 2022, then what do the Packers do? You'd have Rodgers at what will then be a fantastic contract going into 2023.

I don't mind them going and getting a backup/rookie QB, but did Gutekunst not realize where Rodgers is on his deal?

Do they hope Love looks like Mahomes 2.0 in camp for a couple years and then try to trade him? If yes, why would they have wasted an additional 4th rounder now?

The window for the Packers is still rignt. damn. now. What are you doing???

The teams in between picks 26 and 30 were the Seahawks (Wilson), Ravens (Jackson), Titans (Tannenhill), none of those teams was taking Love. Unless they had some intel, or they got fleeced into thinking someone was trading up, none of those teams was taking Love.

I'm not killing this pick because it's the Packers, if the Bears did this, I'd be murdering them as well. This actually reminded me of the Trubisky pick, albeit the Packers did this at the back of the first round instead of the beginning like the Bears did.

Not crazy about the pick either because it doesn’t help them the next 3 to 5 years. Having said that we will have to see how it plays out. Many people were saying the same things when the Packers picked Rodgers, albeit a different set of circumstances.

This kid isn’t ready to play for at least two or three years anyway, Rodgers will be pushing 40 by then and there are already signs of decline in his game. I know you think Love was a mid round pick, but most actual experts had him as first round talent. I saw a couple of mocks with him going in the middle of the first round. He has the physical ability and huge upside, his decision making was poor at best last year, but he also had a coaching change and players change. Some of his problems are fixable. We will see how it plays out. For the near-term future bad. If the kid turns out to be a top tier quarterback then it’s a good pick in the long run.

[DegenerateDish]

I wanted to sleep on it and play contrarian on this as well, and try to see why the Love pick makes sense.

Potentially, the Pack could walk away from Rodgers after 2021, it would be a fascinating roster maneuver to watch play out. Cutting Rodgers after 2021 would free up $40 million, but the Pack would carry a $17 mil dead cap hit against it. The good news is you'd have Love on his rookie deal, and they probably could make that happen. On the surface they don't have any egregious deals elsewhere that they'd have to eat going into 2022.

If the above happens, it makes much more sense. You then get much more time to decide on the fifth year option. I can understand why they wanted Love in the first to get the fifth year option, if (big if) they do the above scenario. If they play Rodgers three more years, that puts them in a really interesting spot for Love in year 4.

And maybe Love might be really good? There's definitely some Mahomes there. His "football athleticism" is off the charts. I think the problem is there's a lot of Winston there too, where Love just has a lot of trouble reading defenses, which will be much more difficult at the NFL level.

Finally, I can see where their draft board was set up with players there at 26-30, they weren't enamored with any of the safeties, wideouts, lineman for the value at those spots, and they thought the price of the 4th rounder made sense to secure their top player on their board. I personally don't like that philosophy, but I certainly get it.

Fascinating pick by the Pack, I still don't like the pick, if they would have moved up to Atlanta's spot and gotten Lamb, I'd have been very nervous for the rest of the NFC North (it would have cost them #30, their 2nd, and probably next years 3rd to do that).

[The Hippie Satan of Hyperbole]

The Packers used a similar value pick on Rodgers back in 2005.  The Packers were coming off a Wild Card playoff loss, and the time was ticking on Favre's career.  The next year sucked, going 4-12 in Sherman's last year, but they were in the NFC Championship Game two year after that.  And Rodgers had no impact in any of those years.

Moral of the story?  It doesn't matter if their window is right now.  Not every player has to be in that window.  Let's see what happens the right of the draft and the rest of the off-season.

I have no idea if Love is the guy or not.  I'm not smart enough to know if that's the case or not.  But Rodgers has 2, maybe 3 years left in a Packers uniform in my opinion.  If they feel *that* strongly about Love, it's not a terrible pick.

[cheebs09]

The Packers used a similar value pick on Rodgers back in 2005.  The Packers were coming off a Wild Card playoff loss, and the time was ticking on Favre's career.  The next year sucked, going 4-12 in Sherman's last year, but they were in the NFC Championship Game two year after that.  And Rodgers had no impact in any of those years.

Moral of the story?  It doesn't matter if their window is right now.  Not every player has to be in that window.  Let's see what happens the right of the draft and the rest of the off-season.

I have no idea if Love is the guy or not.  I'm not smart enough to know if that's the case or not.  But Rodgers has 2, maybe 3 years left in a Packers uniform in my opinion.  If they feel *that* strongly about Love, it's not a terrible pick.

I’m starting to wonder if he’s someone that wants to play into his 40s. Based on the concussions and collarbone injuries, he may one day announce retirement out of the blue.

I don’t think he’s distracted from football, but just wondering if he’s ready to move onto the next phase of his life.