Too funny

Heh thought the same thing

Can't spell Bombardier without Lombardi

Why do they need to take a plane to any destination? Just hang glide off their fans' high horse.

Cutler giving the zeroest of all ****s is pretty refreshing.

Nice to have cutlahhhh back

Actually think he'll do alright in miami tbh though.

Cutler mvp 2017 book it.

well, hard knocks confirmed what I think about Jameis. Great athlete, but not all there upstairs. Was pretty cool seeing how he grew up. Gotta feel for the guy. Just wondering if he has the intelligence to be a great qb. He's got the mental toughness, but it also takes some smarts in the NFL.

Glad to see him struggling as a Falcons fan :-)

Devonta Freeman 5/$41.25m, $22m guaranteed. Bell salivating

Seems bad to give the 2nd best RB on the team that contract

Devonta's a team first guy who said specifically that he didn't want his contract negotiation to become a distraction, that there's nowhere he'd rather be than getting ready for the next football season.

Unlike Bell who didn't report.

As I said in the Falcons thread a few months back, I thought it would be interesting if the FO decided to pay him. Obviously tying up a huge part of the cap in RB's is Hurney-esque and sub-optimal. The cold, business side is draft somebody in the 4th round like Devonta, watch him explode on a rookie deal, and draft another one 4 years later.

But he's definitely earned his extension. I'm glad he'll be around for a while.

And we did draft a guy in the 5th round, Brian Hill, who looks good. Might return kicks.

I forget who it was that made this observation, maybe it was Bill Simmons, I think Winston has it to be a great leader. When he speaks to the team he's like a preacher. He's magnetic, people will follow him.

That bit about the motivational speaking was revealing, I thought.

Since I'm apparently doing nothing productive this morning other than reading NFL previews and getting ready for fantasy, for discussion,

Who do you think has a better Hall of Fame candidacy, Terrell Owens or Calvin Johnson?

TO by far

wtf is that Devonta contract? ****ing idiots.

once you realize you can grab instantly productive RBs in the 3rd or 4th rounds you gotta lock them down for 8M a year

The new stadium must have come in way under budget

That's hilarious

Nice job Falcons!

Devonta's average annual salary is 8.25M/yr.

Adrian Peterson made 14M/yr a few years ago,

Steven Jackson was making 8M/yr 4 years ago,

In 2004 LaDainian Tomlinson was making 8M/yr.

The cap has gone up a lot since then, I don't think this is in any way crippling the franchise's cap going forward.

And let's not forget, Devonta Freeman is really freaking good, and, knock on wood, durable.

you should never ever ever give a RB $22mm gtd or 5 years period. There is no reason to do it. $8.25mm per year for 2 years would be too much but whatever.

teams overpay RBs. Devonta is not a generational talent and thus you can replace 90% of his productivity for like $1mm/yr.

Also, the other RB in the mix is basically just as good as he is.

Of the 22M gtd, 15M is signing bonus which is all up front, and (I think) spreads out over the length of the deal. So his cap hit in year 5 is 3M + whatever, and who knows what the cap will be in 5 years.

which is exactly why this deal is bad. RBs are cheap, fungible, and plentiful while also playing the position where it is hardest to continuously stay on the field productively for 5 years.

And a lot of his success is just due to the overall offense.

He'd appear much more average (cue waterwolves Freeman hatred) on most other teams.

That said, he does genuinely seem like a hard working, good guy, which is tough to come by in the NFL. That intangible would make me feel better about overpaying, at least.

Well, the length of the contract doesn't matter. The guarantees & the amount of time the guarantee goes on for is what matters.

If the first 2 years are the same either way & the next 3 years aren't guaranteed, the longer the contract the better because they are just team options, & it's always good to have a team option (except for the compensatory pick formula I suppose).

Looking at the position holistically, I agree.

I disagree that any 5th rounder is guaranteed to get 90% of Devonta's production.

There are a lot more Ameer Abdullahs than there are David Johnsons.

I don't know about "generational talent," but the list of 1000 yard 10 TD backs the past two years is 1. Devonta, 2. nobody else.