2024 NFL Offseason

[Maz]

I don't hate him and want him tarred and feathered like half of Pittsburgh does, but it's hard when someone who preaches "the standard is the standard" hasn't won a playoff game since 2016, and missed the playoffs three of the past six years keeps getting extended because "He HaS nEvEr HaD a LoSiNg SeAsOn." I get the "who else are you going to get" and "players want to play for him" arguments. At the same time, getting winning seasons and wallowing around in the middle of the pack, sometimes getting the last wild card spot (which shouldn't exist), then losing a game you had no business being in, shouldn't be anyone's "standard."

[The_Admiral]

1 hour ago, maz said:

I don't hate him and want him tarred and feathered like half of Pittsburgh does, but it's hard when someone who preaches "the standard is the standard" hasn't won a playoff game since 2016, and missed the playoffs three of the past six years keeps getting extended because "He HaS nEvEr HaD a LoSiNg SeAsOn." I get the "who else are you going to get" and "players want to play for him" arguments. At the same time, getting winning seasons and wallowing around in the middle of the pack, sometimes getting the last wild card spot (which shouldn't exist), then losing a game you had no business being in, shouldn't be anyone's "standard."

When you adjust for most past, present, and future NFL coaches being drooling idiots, a bird in the hand is worth like seven or eight in the bush. The Bears fired Lovie Smith after a 10-6 season and they've been one of the worst franchises in the league ever since. Roll with Tomlin until the wheels fly off.

[BBTV]

I don’t get rolling with a guy because he can take trash to a 9-8 record. Goal isn’t to get to 9-8, it’s to get to 3-0 or 4-0 in the playoffs. It may be the front office’s fault that they haven’t built a great team, but that’s not going to change. No harm at all in rolling the dice on someone that might be better able to turn trash into 13-4 and 4-0, even if the likelihood is extremely low. It’s the same result either way, but the latter might get them a Better draft pick. 

[BBTV]

14 hours ago, SFGiants58 said:

He’s a guy who can take gutter trash to an over-.500 record. He’s earned his extensions, but he should look into a succession plan.

A succession plan isn’t really his job to do, and in the nfl, there’s really no such thing. Whoever is named the heir apparent will just leave when there’s an opening elsewhere rather than sit in waiting behind a guy. 
 

I feel like people talk about this guy like he’s Greg popavich 

[SFGiants58]

2 hours ago, BBTV said:

A succession plan isn’t really his job to do, and in the nfl, there’s really no such thing. Whoever is named the heir apparent will just leave when there’s an opening elsewhere rather than sit in waiting behind a guy. 

 

Yeah, that’s entirely fair.

 

2 hours ago, BBTV said:

I feel like people talk about this guy like he’s Greg popavich 

Some do, but at least Greg’s titles weren’t exclusively won with guys he inherited from his predecessor.

[walkerws]

17 hours ago, SFGiants58 said:

He’s a guy who can take gutter trash to an over-.500 record. He’s earned his extensions, but he should look into a succession plan.

He's 52. As long as he is producing, he has a lot of coaching time left. When he gets that retirement itch, then it makes sense to plan for a successor. 

[Maz]

He can take a garbage team and make them stumble their way into a winning record... and he can take a powerhouse like the Killer B era Steelers, arguably the third-best roster this franchise ever had (behind the 70's and early 2000's eras, both very high bars) and lose to Blake Bortles and the Jaguars in the first round because everyone, him included, was focused on beating the Patriots in the next round, before they even got there. 

 

I would understand pushing for patience and pragmatism if he was a new coach, or if he had only been here for a couple years. But the dude has been coaching here since I was a high school freshman, and I am now 31. The Steelers treat coaches like popes - unless they retire or die, they won't get replaced. They pride themselves on having only three coaches in the Super Bowl era and managing to be one of the most successful franchises during that time, and that's awesome, don't get me wrong. I hesitate to complain about this with fans outside of the Steelers fandom because we, understandably, are looked at as being privileged. But this isn't a lack of Super Bowl rings I am decrying here - it's a lack of even being able to compete for one.

 

I'll just say what I have said every year for a long time now - I want to be wrong. I don't like him all that much, but if there's a parade downtown eight months from now, I will happily eat that crow.

[heavybass]

Falcons lose a 2025 fifth round pick for tampering and the team is docked 250k whilst the GM is docked 500k.... honestly a light punishment for Kirk Cousins.

A sacking would of been more effective.

[Sec19Row53]

6 hours ago, heavybass said:

Falcons lose a 2025 fifth round pick for tampering and the team is docked 250k whilst the GM is docked 500k.... honestly a light punishment for Kirk Cousins.

A sacking would of been more effective.

You've got 1 too many zeroes in the GM fine from what I saw. 50k

[tBBP]

[Reportedly] Sunshine just got PAID.

 

Jaguars QB Trevor Lawrence reportedly agrees to 5-year, $275 million extension.

 

Two things: 1) this QB market needs to equalize and quick. And 2) this is why we're getting all these ads and Color Rushes and whatever the NFL is gonna start letting Nike call whatever city-ish alternates they produce next and...

 

...Anyway, good for Sunshine. I personally like the guy, but at the same time i completely understand if folk say he ain't worth that kind of payday. But the bigger thing is that it seems like Turtleneck Baalke is beginning to understand that you got to quit being cheap to keep your key stalwart players. Between this and the nine digits just given to Josh Allen, it seems like the Jags might be about to turn a little corner here—if Press Taylor (and for that matter Doug Pederson) don't muff it up...

[FriedPickles]

Well Jacksonville, prepare for 5 more years of underachieving and disappointment

[Glover]

 

14 hours ago, maz said:

I hesitate to complain about this with fans outside of the Steelers fandom because we, understandably, are looked at as being privileged. But this isn't a lack of Super Bowl rings I am decrying here - it's a lack of even being able to compete for one.

Steelers fans ARE privileged. That is the thing. I recently moved away from Pittsburgh. Lived in city limits for five years. Their fans are the spoiled rich kids who constantly whine because they  wanted a red sports car for Christmas, but they were given a black one instead. 
 

You can’t compete for a Super Bowl if you don’t make the playoffs. You can’t make the playoffs unless you have a respectable record. Mike Tomlin was able to drag the corpse of Ben Roethlisberger to the playoffs, and then do it again with Kenny Pickett, Mitchell Trubisky, and Mason Rudolph as his quarterback trio. What more do you want from this man? 

[SFGiants58]

On 6/13/2024 at 6:36 PM, FriedPickles said:

Well Jacksonville, prepare for 5 more years of underachieving and disappointment

 

Could the contract just transfer over to AEW? The guy already looks like the secret inbred third member of The Young Bucks.

[Dynasty]

On 6/13/2024 at 8:36 PM, FriedPickles said:

Well Jacksonville, prepare for 5 more years of underachieving and disappointment

 

Lawrence hasn't really turned out all that great. Granted, he's probably the best quarterback they have had since maybe Mark Brunell. They've gone through so many quarterbacks in almost two decades where they likely just wanted to stop and stick to someone who was "good enough". I wouldn't have given Lawrence that much money, but I understand the thought process in trying to keep him aboard, even if I don't fully agree with it. However, I also understand wanting to find someone better... but that can be slim pick'ns.

 

On 6/13/2024 at 11:49 PM, Glover said:

You can’t compete for a Super Bowl if you don’t make the playoffs. You can’t make the playoffs unless you have a respectable record. Mike Tomlin was able to drag the corpse of Ben Roethlisberger to the playoffs, and then do it again with Kenny Pickett, Mitchell Trubisky, and Mason Rudolph as his quarterback trio. What more do you want from this man? 

 

Maybe more playoff wins? At least a divisional round appearance? Even when the Steelers were amongst the best, most talented teams in the 2010's with Roethlisberger still in his good years, they only mustered three playoff wins (excluding 2010 itself). As someone here already said, the standard should be Super Bowl contending. All these people bring up the "non-losing seasons" and how Pittsburgh never fires their coaches (which is not completely true as we saw with Matt Canada) and I just simply don't care. That should be a smaller goal. In competitive sports, teams shouldn't be settling for smaller goals; that's a loser's mentality which a franchise like the Steelers should be better than. Nothing has changed with Tomlin and I'm personally convinced that he'll never sniff the success he had in his first four years in Pittsburgh.

[oldschoolvikings]

5 hours ago, Dynasty said:

 

Even when the Steelers were amongst the best, most talented teams in the 2010's with Roethlisberger still in his good years, they only mustered three playoff wins (excluding 2010 itself). 

This is always my favorite argument qualifier.  “If you discount the time they won, they haven’t won “.   It’s like when someone says if you take away a running backs two long touchdown runs, they really didn’t have a very good game.  Or except for the three times he gave up long bombs, the cornerback had a pretty good game.  

[Dynasty]

I could rephrase it either way. My point still stands.

[BBTV]

17 hours ago, SFGiants58 said:

 

Could the contract just transfer over to AEW? The guy already looks like the secret inbred third member of The Young Bucks.

 

It's in line with the stupid money Khan gives out to people, and it would save the Jaguars from being perpetually mediocre.

 

I'm not going to profess to be a football expert, but while Lawrence is certainly good, he's not a franchise guy and unless you have a GM like Howie who can work contracts in a way to continue to build around guys (or get out of bad deals), it's a potentially franchise-killing deal.

 

In theory, the salary cap gives every team an equal chance at signing top guys, because there's only so much money to give out and someone would theoretically take Jacksonville's share vs whatever is left over elsewhere, but that's simply not how it actually works, and I can't imagine top guys flocking to Jacksonville just to hitch their wagons to Lawrence (and I'm not sure how well they manager their cap or how much actual liquid cash they have to work the loopholes.)

[The_Admiral]

23 hours ago, Dynasty said:

Even when the Steelers were amongst the best, most talented teams in the 2010's with Roethlisberger still in his good years, they only mustered three playoff wins (excluding 2010 itself).

Another way of phrasing this is that in 2015 and 2016, they ran into Peyton Manning and Tom Brady, respectively, both en route to almost supernatural Super Bowl wins. Sometimes it be like that. 

 

Again, I have a front-row seat to what happens when NFL failsons keep deciding to fire everyone and start over. Hope you like taking bad ACC quarterbacks over the presumptive GOAT, coaches getting frog-marched off the premises for watching porn, and preachers thanking God for an incompetent lawyer, because that's what you're getting.

[BBTV]

4 hours ago, The_Admiral said:

Hope you like taking bad ACC quarterbacks over the presumptive GOAT, coaches getting frog-marched off the premises for watching porn, and preachers thanking God for an incompetent lawyer, because that's what you're getting.

 

Because the Bears make bad decisions has no bearing (no pun intended) on anything.  We went through this here with Andy Reid, who was here at least 4 seasons too long when it was clear he couldn't win a championship.  Some people were like "but who are they going to get?  Who else can coach?" as if there's no other coaches out there.

 

 

Eagles won a title with Doug Pederson coaching, and came within a borderline holding call of winning one with Nick freaking Sirianni, who nobody besides his mom had ever heard of.  A team can settle for the assurance of knowing they'll be 9-8 every year, or they can take a risk.  You can invest in the S&P 500 and feel very secure about it and make your 10-ish% every year.  Or you can invest in Nvidia.  Or, like me... Quantumscape (which was up hundreds of %, now down to nearly nothing.)