4 comments MMQB Review: The Seahawks Aren't Dead, But the Eagles Are Edition

Peter King used lyrics by The Knack to reveal that he potentially had sexual feelings for Marcus Mariota in last week's MMQB. Either that, or Peter doesn't really understand what "My Sharona" is about, which is probably more likely. Peter also discussed the Week 1 action and still clings hard to the idea there will be plenty of defensive encroachment calls on extra points (despite this not being true last year) that it will leave head coaches in a pickle as to whether to go for the extra point or try the two-point conversion. NFL head coaches are conservative by nature, good luck trying to get that change. This week Peter talks about how the Seahawks should not panic, five things NOBODY saw coming that are really six things that nobody saw coming (counting be hard...also, the Seahawks shouldn't panic but the Eagles should), and defends his friend Scott Pioli just a little bit. 

There is no travel note this week, but Peter does the Adieu Haiku of course. It can't all be perfect I guess.

Moral of the story after two weeks in the NFL: Nobody knows nothin’. 

It seems like every single NFL season Peter writes some variation of the revelation that nobody knows anything. Can we just assume from now on that nobody knows anything and the NFL is unpredictable instead of constantly expecting predictability and then being surprised when it doesn't happen?

I know that, after the second Sunday of the season, it looks an awful lot like a Green Bay-New England Super Bowl.

Because after Week 2 it's in no way incredibly way too early to say "It looks like these two teams will meet in the Super Bowl." Later in the 2015 season Peter will say, "we" thought that the Packers and Patriots would be in the Super Bowl earlier this season, but it turns out that was wrong. Then he'll act shocked his assumption after Week 2 was incorrect and blame "us" for thinking the same thing he did.

But football rarely looks in January the way it did in September; the four teams that played in the conference championship games last year were a combined 8-7 after four weeks.

Welp, nevermind then. It looks like a Packers-Patriots Super Bowl, unless you look at the historical data from last year. In that case, it looks like NOBODY KNOWS who will appear in the Super Bowl after Week 2. This is breaking news.

The Seahawks are not finished. At all.

I don't think anyone is writing the Seahawks off. I will say it is interesting that Peter's main feature in MMQB is how the Seahawks aren't done, while he seems to write-off a few teams later in this MMQB. So it's too early to write Seattle off, but other teams are finished?

But I ask you this: If the first quarter of the Seattle schedule had been reversed—Chicago and Detroit at home to start the season, St. Louis and Green Bay on the road in Weeks 3 and 4—the Seahawks might well be 2-0 right now, and no one would be throwing themselves off the top of Mount Rainier this morning. 

Okay, but the schedule wasn't reversed so this isn't a good point. The Seahawks lost on the road to a decent and really good team. They didn't play at home. If the real world was different, then yes, the Seahawks' record would be different. The real world isn't different, so the Seahawks 0-2 record is their real record. If a frog had wings then it wouldn't bump it's ass on the ground.

The way the schedule fell this season is that Seattle had its toughest two games in Weeks 1 and 2—at St. Louis (1-3 in the last four years there) and at Green Bay (best team in the NFC right now).

Yeah, fuck you Arizona. You aren't a difficult team to play at all. The Seahawks are excited they get to play those easy-to-beat Cardinals. I guess it's no big deal playing at Baltimore anymore. A few weeks ago it was crucial for the Ravens to get a home playoff game because they are so good at home, but now Peter thinks it's harder to play the Rams at home than it is to play the Ravens at home. Things change quickly in Peter's world it seems. Apparently the Ravens homefield advantage is good enough to get them to the Super Bowl, but not as strong as the Rams homefield advantage over the Seahawks.

I’ll be surprised if Seattle isn’t 2-2 when they head to Cincinnati in three weeks. The flawed Seahawks are still a top-10 team, even with the zits that have shown up in the first eight quarters. If I were offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell, I’d be incorporating Jimmy Graham far more into the game plan as a post-up intermediate presence; Graham has been targeted only 10 times in eight quarters. It’s ridiculous that he has only 62 yards worth of catches so far. Wilson’s got to look for him more often. Rookie Tyler Lockett (six catches, 51 yards) needs to be featured more too. 

So let's see...Peter thinks Graham and Lockett need to be featured more, which means the Seahawks need to throw the football more, which means they should hand it off to Lynch less, which means they need to go away from the strength of the team. As a non-Seahawks fan, it sounds great to me. If I were a Seahawks fan, I would probably think it's good to get Graham and Lockett more involved, while also asking whether it's smart for the Seahawks to try and target Graham as much as the Saints did. Don't go away from the strength of the team to target these two guys.

But those are play-calling points of emphasis that can be fixed. Seattle is wounded, but with the Chancellor holdout and the schedule, we could see that coming. So much else around the league, we couldn’t. 

WE HAD NO IDEA THESE OTHER THINGS WOULD OCCUR! PETER DIDN'T SEE IT, WHICH MEANS NO ONE ELSE SAW IT EITHER!

Here is the Super Bowl matchup that it looks like will happen in February, unless it doesn't of course. It's going to be Packers-Patriots in the Super Bowl, unless it isn't. 

The five things we never saw coming

Except Peter lists six things "we" never saw coming. Five things or six things. Either way, just read it. Accuracy be damned. 

1. The NFC East is going to be one bizarre division this year. If you took a poll of fans of a certain knowledge before the season, my guess is that Washington would have been ranked fourth of the four teams in the division. This morning, with the crippling injuries to Dallas (and I think the Cowboys overcome them, because of their good defense and because Tony Romo and Dez Bryant should return for the final five or six weeks), Washington might be first.

I like how it's too early to count some teams out, but it's never too early to count some teams in. Washington has played the Rams and the Dolphins, with both games at home. If we can't count out the Seahawks because the first two games were against decent teams on the road, can't we not count on the Redskins being 1st in the division because they are 1-1 after two games against decent teams? Both teams played the Rams. One beat the Rams at home, one team lost to the Rams on the road. Apparently one result means something and the other result does not mean as much.

2. Incompetent Eagles. How is it possible that nothing works right for a Chip Kelly offense? I mean, nothing?

The Eagles are two games into the season with a new quarterback and a bunch of new personnel. I'm going to make excuses for them because I chose them to be in the Super Bowl, but it's possible nothing works right in Kelly's offense because of all the new personnel.

The second-most efficient running team in the league over the past two years is dead last running now, despite a huge commitment to it in the off-season. There is no more stunning statistic after two weeks than this one: 2014 rushing champion DeMarco Murray has rushed 21 times for 11 yards. The sacrificing of Evan Mathis and Todd Herremans on the offensive line has wounded the running game, and the inability of Sam Bradford, who looked absolutely incapable against Dallas on Sunday (first seven Eagle drives: 9, 6, 0, 2, 4, 12 and 0 yards) is something Kelly has to fix right now. Why? 

It seems like Peter answered this question of "why" when giving this information. Is it fixable? Yes, it definitely is. Will it be fixed? Who knows and that's why it's ridiculous to draw any conclusions after two games. It's too early to count any teams in or out.

3. Broken Baltimore. Something odd about John Harbaugh’s eighth team in Baltimore: It’s his first one to start 0-2. The mantra around the team after the 19-16 loss in Denver in Week 1 was that the loss of Terrell Suggs to season-ending Achilles surgery wouldn’t be deadly, because the defensive depth was good enough to cover up for him. Well, that was before Sunday’s game in Oakland. 

Two losses on the road...BUT ALL THE MORE REASON WHY IT'S SO IMPORTANT THAT THEY GET A HOME PLAYOFF GAME! AM I RIGHT OR WHAT?

Before the year, the Ravens told the league they’d prefer their four western games—at Denver, Oakland, San Francisco and Arizona—be parceled out, two at a time. So the league scheduled Denver and Oakland roadies in Weeks 1 and 2, and Niner and Cardinals games in Weeks 6 and 7. Surely the Ravens didn’t count on being in an 0-2 hole with a brutal five-game stretch coming up beginning Sunday. 

Oh no, I'm sure the Ravens were counting on losing their first two games of the season. They had it all planned out to lose their first two games and then win the rest of their games in order to get homefield advantage and win the Super Bowl. Losing the first two games was crucial to this plan.

4. Atlanta is 2-0. I credit Dan Quinn and the pass-rush he imported, an improving offensive line, a steady Matt Ryan, and the most acrobatic, sure-handed receiver playing today. Julio Jones has twice as many catches (22) as DeMarco Murray has rushing yards.

I am three times as old as DeMarco Murray has rushing yards! Every NFL team has scored more points than DeMarco Murray has rushing yards! I enjoy randomly comparing two statistics that really don't mean too much when compared to each other.

5. It took eight days for Johnny Football to produce a quarterback controversy in Cleveland. As I said on NBC Sunday night, my gut feeling is that if Josh McCown passes his concussion protocol this week—and McCown was not even at the stadium on Sunday, with the team preferring to keep him away from the bright light and noise that can sometimes exacerbate head trauma—he’ll keep his starting job.

McCown can't be near bright light and noise, does he have a hangover or a concussion? Because Johnny Manziel has had similar symptoms before and no one seems to have sympathy for him. 

“Johnny is definitely arrow up right now,” coach Mike Pettine said from Cleveland Sunday night. “He has been very interactive with the coaches, very involved, and those are the things we like. He’s been different, very different, in a positive way. On the other hand, you talk to some of the veterans, Joe Thomas and Brian Hartline, and they’re big fans of Josh too, as a player and a leader.”

Basically, the veterans want McCown to start, so no matter whether this is good for the current or future state of the franchise this is what is happening. 

6. The Bengals are Old Man River.

So what are we to make of the Bengals’ 2-0 start, and Dalton’s terrific start? Dalton has completed 68.3% of his throws in wins over Oakland and San Diego, with five touchdowns and no interceptions. The difference for Dalton this year could end up being a tight end the offense trusts instead of the inconsistent Jermaine Gresham. Tyler Eifert leads the team with 13 catches on 17 targets, 153 yards and three touchdowns—more, in each count, than star wideout A.J. Green.

Tyler Eifert has more catches than DeMarco Murray has rushing yards and has almost 15 times the number of receiving yards as Murray has rushing yards. 

With Green, Marvin Jones and Mohamed Sanu, and a very good receiving back in Gio Bernard, Dalton has five legitimate threats. If they stay upright, Dalton might finally break his January schneid this year. Might, mind you; might.

Or maybe not. Sure, Dalton had all five of these threats last year and wasn't able to win a playoff game, but things could be totally different this year. Maybe, it could happen. Might. Potentially, but not surely. It's uncertain. 

While it’s true the Bengals have to get the playoff thing off their backs, what they’ve done in the first two games shows it’s not something that beats them down. The next three weeks—at Baltimore, and Kansas City and Seattle at home, all defenses that can pressure the quarterback well—will give a good indication whether Dalton has enough weapons and can rise to the pressure he has to be feeling.

I like how Peter King has all along insisted the Bengals play well during the regular season, but it's the playoffs when they struggle, yet this year the Bengals are playing well during the regular season and Peter thinks this could mean something for the playoffs. Using Peter's past logic that the Bengals play well during the regular season then choke out in the playoffs, why would he be impressed regarding the Bengals playing well during the regular season? Why would things be different this year in the playoffs for the Bengals just because they are playing well in the regular season?

It’s the most worrisome time of the year

For the Romo-less Cowboys. Owner Jerry Jones is the sunniest guy in the NFL. Losses always have silver linings. But it was a sign of how down the Cowboys were, even after making the Eagles look like a bunch of Bad News Bears Sunday in boo-happy Philly, that Jones said he felt “as low as a crippled cricket’s ass.” (Raise your hand if you’ve ever heard that one

(Bengoodfella raises his hand)

… I didn’t think I’d see any hands.)

I just raised my hand. Just because Peter hasn't heard of this phrase doesn't mean no one else hasn't heard of the phrase. 

Dallas doesn’t have a strong backup (Brandon Weeden), and may be in the market for quarterback help this week. (Matt Cassel? Chad Henne?)

Do either of these players count as "quarterback help" really? 

For the 0-2 Giants. Sunday was the 50th game since their Super Bowl 46 win over New England. They’re 22-28, with zero playoff trips, since. Team president John Mara, seething at the end of the last season, has to be apoplectic after the Giants, who have now blown 13-point and 10-point leads—both in the fourth quarter—

It’s New York, so it won’t be long before the drumbeats increase for Tom Coughlin’s job.

It's any NFL city, so the drumbeats increase for the head coach's job in this situation no matter what city the team plays in. Wanting the head coach to be under fire or just fired isn't specific to New York. Most cities with an NFL team would have increased drumbeats for the head coach to lose his job if that team has a losing record over the last three seasons and starts off blowing two leads during the first two weeks of this season. 

For Matthew Stafford and the winless Lions. Detroit is 0-2, and this is the Lions’ reward: consecutive prime-time dates with Peyton Manning and the 2-0 Broncos Sunday at home, then at Seattle eight nights later in a game the Seahawks will have to have.

It is too early to draw conclusions, but remember how I was so skeptical the Jim Caldwell hire was a good one? Well, I was. I don't believe he is capable of sustaining a team's success when he's the head coach. I will say the Lions struggles this year is part of what I think to be an ongoing trend with Caldwell as the head coach.

Three questions with a UNC

Even the most rabid NFL fans will say, in response to that header, “Why are you asking questions to a University of North Carolina?”

Even the most ignorant resident of North Carolina will say there is no such thing as a University of North Carolina.

This UNC stands for unaffiliated neurotrauma consultant. There are two of these at each NFL game, one on each sideline. During a game they stand on the sideline. They have the power to stop the game if they see a player struggling with what appears to be a head injury.

They have "the power" to do this. Much like I have "the power" to do a lot of things at my job, except for the whole part when I get overruled. You can read some of the answers from this UNC and see that he seems to be very pro-NFL and very pro-"The NFL is doing all they can to help stop head trauma and I think they are doing a great job," which makes me wonder how much power this person truly has. 

The MMQB: In your time doing this, have you felt any subtle or overt pressure from teams to get a player back in the game?

Manley: I have never felt any pressure to keep a player in the game. I have been treated with the utmost respect. All I have felt is the teams are very proactive to do the right thing on the sidelines. I really have the ability to have a second opinion. Believe me, I wouldn’t do this if I felt I was being marginalized.

This is just the answer the NFL would want this gentleman to give. Roger Goodell is pleased.

The MMQB: Do you feel this is helping the league get players off the field who would otherwise be staying on the field with a head injury?

Manley: I know the NFL gets a bad rap in this area, but I can tell you they’re trying really hard. Guys who come to the sidelines get some of the best medical care that I see.

Guys, the NFL is trying SO HARD to make sure the players that end up with concussions get the best medical care, which is helpful considering doctors aren't entirely sure when a player may have a concussion that affects their brain in some way and there's no telling if a hard hit can jar the brain as much as a hit that doesn't look so hard. This medical care is super-important considering very little seems to be known about concussions and the exact effect they have on the brain. But if a player looks like he might have a concussion, the NFL is totally concerned. So when you see information about how many retired players have brain injuries, just remember how TOTALLY HARD the NFL is trying right now to cover up for  keep their players healthy.

I followed up with a question over the weekend, via email to Manley, about whether he has the power to keep a player out of the game if other medical authorities on-site disagree. In other words, can the UNC trump the other medics at the game?

I'm sure he CAN trump the other medics at the game. Excuse my jadedness (not a word?), but I don't know if I believe he would trump the other medics at the game in certain situations. So his word can trump the word of others, but would it always work this way like it's supposed to?

“It is my understanding,” Manley wrote back, “and it has been my actual experience, that if I believe a player has had a concussion, they cannot return to game.”

I believe this is true. I also believe that whether a player has a concussion or not could be a debate. For example, Jay Cutler clearly had a concussion in last week's game, but the Bears team refused to acknowledge this is true. Tony Siragusa desperately tried to get John Fox to acknowledge Cutler had a concussion (in a halftime interview) and Fox would not confirm. So the debate can lie in whether a player actually has a concussion or not. 

It’s not altogether strange for the top of a draft to crap out. But so fast? That could be the lasting story of the 2013 first round. The first overall pick, tackle Eric Fisher, is on the bench with the Chiefs. Four players in the top half of the first round look like looming busts, and the bottom half of the round looks stronger than the top half already.

These are the things that happen in a draft that is described as being weak by many draft analysts. Depth can be found where top-end talent can not be found. 

Surveying the carnage leads to one overriding conclusion: We hype drafts to a silly level of expectation. We overrate players just because of where they are picked. We can’t wait to see how they play before we rate success and failure. And then, a couple of years later, we look at a draft like the 2013 draft and say with some incredulity, “W-w-w-what happened?”

Yes, "we" hype drafts to a silly level of expectation. I hate how "we" write articles about the draft and post them on "our" NFL site for weeks on end during the months of March and April. I hate how "we" report from the combine and relay information "we" learned about what teams really think about certain players. I guess it's just part of how "we" hype the draft too much. Really, it's a great observation from Peter King about how "we" are responsible for his site's draft coverage. 

I’m going to get to the lesson of why a volume of compensatory picks should be as valuable as first-round picks in a few moments.

We know Peter feels this way because he's always infatuated with what team "owns" the upcoming draft because they have a boatload of picks. I can argue picking players smartly in the first round is much more important than compensatory selections. Here is some anecdotal evidence...in the last five drafts, my favorite team has only had 31 selections. They started as a 2-14 team after the 2010 season and from those 31 selections they have formed the core of their current team. They have 8-9 starters from these drafts. Throwing in the 11 selections from that team that are no longer with the team and you can see it's not the quantity of the selections that improved the team, but the fact they have chosen their first round and late round picks very wisely. A volume of compensatory picks can be valuable, but they are not as valuable as a first round pick that is chosen wisely. Compensatory picks give a team more chances to hit on a good player, but first round picks are generally players with higher-end talent.

If I were to rank the top quarter of that draft’s first round, I’d go this way:

1. Sheldon Richardson (13th overall).
2. Travis Frederick (31st).
3. Desmond Trufant (22nd).
4. Kyle Long (20th).
5. Xavier Rhodes (25th).
6. DeAndre Hopkins (27th).
7. Sharrif Floyd (23rd).
8. Ziggy Ansah (5th).

There are several messages here. The easy thing to say is that scouts stink, and the thought process of teams is flawed. What I would say is that scouting is an incredibly inexact science.

WHAT? Scouting is an inexact science? You don't say, Peter? Have you shared this insight with some of your NFL contacts so they can be as amazed as I am?

Peter then uses this opportunity to defend his friend Scott Pioli, who he thinks got a raw deal in Kansas City. If Scott Pioli was the GM of a team coached by Greg Schiano then I think security would have to physically remove Peter from the premises. Peter would want to be in that team's draft room, sidelines and potentially even disguise himself as a plant in the lobby of that team's building, just so he can be around the team as much as possible.

In this draft-evaluation business, you’ve got to be careful with making absolute statements. For example, GM Scott Pioli was ridden out of Kansas City after four seasons, in early 2013. But from his four drafts come the guts of the current Chiefs defense that looks so good right now: Dontari Poe and Allen Bailey on the line, 2014 NFL sack leader Justin Houston (with the 70th pick in 2011) at outside linebacker, and Eric Berry in the defensive backfield (if he can continue his comeback from lymphoma). The left tackle, Stephenson, was a Pioli third-round pick in 2012.

Yes, Pioli didn't do an awful job in every facet of his job. He hired Todd Haley and Romeo Crennel as his head coaches and the Chiefs went 23-41 during his time as GM. I don't know, that doesn't seem very good. 

Pioli had his share of misses, and didn’t leave Andy Reid with a quarterback of the future. 

The most important jobs that a GM has is to hire the right head coach, find a quarterback, draft well, sign free agents in a smart fashion so the team can win games. Pioli didn't do the first two well, and despite Peter's listing of only the good picks Pioli made, he spent first, second and third round picks on the following players in four drafts.

Tyson Jackson
Alex Magree
Dexter McCluster
Javier Arenas
Jonathan Baldwin
Jeff Allen

Pioli outright missed on two of his first round picks and hit on one second round pick. Oh, and he didn't find a quarterback (in fact, traded a second round pick for Matt Cassel) and never found a good head coach. Yes, he didn't draft terribly, but his team didn't win games. That's how he is judged, regardless of whether Peter King likes it or not.

But his hits go to show you—and the team’s relative success since his dismissal—that the tar-and-feathering business in personnel evaluation can be pretty misleading.

Pioli wasn't tar-and-feathered. He didn't win games, didn't find a quarterback, missed on 50% of his first round picks, and hired Todd Haley and Romeo Crennel as his head coaches. 

Also, I’ve become convinced—and this started with the way Jimmy Johnson/Jerry Jones were wheeling and dealing when Johnson got to the Cowboys—that the number of picks in a draft is far more important than the location of the picks. Johnson proved that, with lots of low-round gems that were drafted, in part, because the Cowboys believed in carpet-bombing drafts, collecting lots of picks because history says teams are bound to be wrong on even some of the seemingly surest things.

The Patriots and 49ers have carpet-bombed on picks over the past few years (much to Peter's glee as they "owned" the draft) and it's had mixed results for them in terms of finding talent. It all depends on how well that team drafts. That's always what a team's success is dependent on though. 

In the past five drafts, the Ravens have had 15 compensatory picks and turned them into two key pieces of the offensive line—starting tackle Ricky Wagner and third guard John Urschel—and starting fullback Kyle Juszczyk and pass-rusher Pernell McPhee. Love this irony: McPhee could net the Ravens a pick at the end of the fourth round in 2016 after he signed a five-year, $39-million contract with the Bears last spring. That’s the kind of personnel discipline, knowing when to let good players leave because you trust you can train new players who cost much less, that consistently good teams have.

Right, but there is a cycle there. Good teams draft well. The Ravens were smart to draft McPhee and then smart to draft his replacement so they could let him go. This isn't just a compensatory pick issue, but an issue for any team drafting. Every NFL team would love to draft a player and then have his replacement handy when he gets expensive. Good teams draft well. We know this already.

In the past five drafts, the Ravens hit on 4 of 15 compensatory picks. They have had five 1st round picks in that time and have hit on three of those picks that form the core of their defense. Compensatory picks are great, but first round picks is where more of the talent will lie. Good teams draft well though. Yes, we know.

“I haven’t heard anyone on our side talk about 18 games in a long time.”

—Steelers president and Management Council executive committee member Art Rooney II, on reports that the league’s owners want an 18-game regular-season schedule.

The reason no one on their side has talked about 18 games is because Roger Goodell is the one doing the talking for the owners AND because Goodell is holding this as a trump card for when he feels it's best to use it. What Rooney forgets is that Goodell does most of the talking for the owners on matters like an 18 game schedule. 

OFFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE WEEK

Derek Carr, quarterback, Oakland. Few young players in the game have gotten puffed up the way the football world has puffed up Carr. Watching Sunday against the Ravens, Carr deserves it.

Who the hell has been puffing up Derek Carr so much? I don't even begin to understand this comment. How did I miss Carr being puffed up? If this is true, which I'm not sure of, then I completely missed it. This feels like a random comment to me. 

GOAT OF THE WEEK
 
Sam Bradford, quarterback, Philadelphia.

Jamaal Charles, RB, Kansas City. I know, I know. Andy Reid called the play with 35 seconds left in a tie game at his own 20, and Charles fumbled the ball, and Denver’s Bradley Roby ran it in for the win. Just kneel down, coach, and play for overtime. I agree. But Charles, to me, is the no-doubt GOTW.

Charles is the no-doubt Goat of the Week, except for the other guy that Peter named co-Goat of the Week. So Charles is no-doubt Goat of the Week, except for the fact there is doubt since he shares this non-honor. You gotta love Peter King.

The CBS/NFL Network telecast of the Thursday night between Denver and Kansas City was 5 hours and 7 minutes long, including a pre-game show and (longer) post-game show, which lasted longer on NFL Network than it did on CBS.

If you think the weekly fantasy football commercials are, say, plentiful, and if you think the competition for your weekly fantasy football dollar is pretty intense, well, you’re right on both counts. The breakdown of the stream of fantasy-game ads in the football telecast:

Total fantasy football spots: 19

Make them stop. Please, make them stop. I'm so tired of these commercials. 

FanDuel: 11 (including nine in pre- and post-game shows)
Draft Kings: 7 (including five during the game)
NFL.com: 1.

I will give them money to stop running these commercials. I think that's the point actually. FanDuel and Draft Kings want to just have the public pay them money to stop running these commercials. 

Ten Things I Think I Think

1. I think this is what I liked about Week 2:

k. Peterson, with what should be the new normal for him: 29 carries, 134 rushing yards, the most in the league in Week 2.

That's actually the old normal for Peterson isn't it? He's been in the Top 10 of rushing attempts five times during his career and has had more than 300 touches in a season five times. I'm not sure why Peter calls it "the new normal" because Peterson getting that many touches seems old to me. 

g. If anyone makes more physical, tough catches in traffic than Antonio Brown, I don’t know who it is.

v. Julio Jones, who is going to be very sore today. Boy, did he take some shots against the Giants. But he made some very big catches.

Maybe Julio Jones makes as many physical, tough catches as Antonio Brown. Or maybe that was just in one game. 

2. I think this is what I didn’t like about Week 2:

b. Of the many disastrous performances by the Eagles against Dallas, Byron Maxwell, who gave up a sloppy insurance touchdown to the Cowboys (and Brandon Weeden), takes the crown.

I can't believe a free agent cornerback got a ton of money in free agency after playing well on a defense with other good defensive players and then struggles to earn that contract on a new team with lesser defensive players. 

j. Ryan Mallett, a 49 percent passer in relief of Brian Hoyer.

Under things Peter liked, he wrote:

c. Carolina’s defense, through two weeks: 26 points allowed, and four of those quarters were played without Luke Kuechly.

So maybe Ryan Mallett was a 49% passer because the Carolina defense was good and didn't allow him to complete that many passes? Compliment the defense, then blame the quarterback for the defense's great play, that's how Peter rolls. 

k. Hold the ball, Vernon Davis.

l. Hold the bal, Anquan Boldin.

Hir an edito Pete. 

m. Detroit, for all we heard about how the loss of Ndamukong Suh wouldn’t hurt the defense. Lions have allowed 416.5 yards, on average, and 29.5 points, on average, in the first two weeks.

I file this under the same "What the fuck?" line of thinking that Peter had when it comes to thinking a lot of people in football have been puffing up Derek Carr. Who thought the Lions defense wasn't going to be affected by the loss of Ndamukong Suh? Who are these people that Peter is talking to who thinks Derek Carr is overhyped and the Lions won't be negatively affected by losing a few good defensive linemen? I feel like Peter is talking to Greg Schiano and that would explain a lot. 

p. Marcus, Marcus, Marcus. We put you in Canton too fast.

"We" didn't. "You" may have. 

w. Yo Adrian: Three fumbles?

Yo, Peter (there is a comma between "Yo" and "Adrian"...hir an edito), this is a reference to a line that is 40 years old. 

5. I think coaches certainly have the right to change their minds. All do it. But Houston Bill O’Brien yanking Brian Hoyer after three-and-a-half quarters for Ryan Mallett in the opener, and then inserting Mallett to start game two Sunday at Carolina, seems knee-jerk...I mean, I am not at practice, and I don’t see what O’Brien sees. But for Hoyer, a veteran who O’Brien knew as a player intimately from his experience with him over the years, to have lost his job after 12 series of one game is just not fair.

Brian Hoyer is only two years older than Ryan Mallett. I looked up their statistics this season and it shocked the hell out of me to see Hoyer was only two years older than Mallett. I could have sworn it was 4-5 years difference between them.

But I’ve got to hand it to Gary Myers of the New York Daily News: He’s done it with his new book, “Brady vs. Manning: The Untold Story of the Rivalry that Transformed the NFL.” (Crown Archetype, due out Tuesday.) There are stories from on the field, from all the games Tom Brady and Peyton Manning played against each other. There are stories from their relationship, and they are fairly close. But the best chapter in the book, for my money is “Boys will be boys,” the chapter on Brady and Manning the practical jokers—and the victims of practical jokes. One of the few players to play with both Brady and Manning is center Dan Koppen, who, having started at center and had both men’s hands under his rear end for a time, is uniquely qualified to discuss both quarterbacks in depth. Koppen’s best reveal, according to the book, happened as the football relationship between Koppen and Brady lengthened:

He farted on Brady’s hands in practice?

"He did,” Brady said, as if he were providing confirmation in testimony in a courtroom.

It's interesting that Myers refers to Brady "providing confirmation in testimony in a courtroom" given the fact Brady just got done doing that regarding his pissing contest with Roger Goodell. There are a lot of jokes about destroyed cell phones and deflated balls that can be made about Brady testifying as if in court about whether Dan Koppen farted on his hands in practice or not. It's an interesting way of describing how Myers believes Brady sounded. 

10. I think these are my non-NFL thoughts of the week:

d. I guess, also, that America knows Leonard Fournette now.

I knew Leonard Fournette before Saturday. Maybe you didn't Peter, but that doesn't mean other people in the world were as ignorant as you were about how good Fournette is at football. Don't assume your type of ignorance is seen through the football-watching world when it's just localized ignorance. "We" may watch more college football than you. 

f. I’m definitely going to see “Black Mass,” mainly because of my interest in the life and bad times of Whitey Bulger. But after reading A.O. Scott’s review in the New York Times, I’m preparing for it to be B or B-plus at best. After criticizing the portrayal of women in the movie as coming up short, Scott writes: “It’s possible, though, to think of the shortcomings of ‘Black Mass’ as fitting comeuppance for Bulger. He may have thought he was a big deal, but, in the end, all he merits is a minor gangster movie.”

Saw the movie and it was okay. I don't think the movie treated women any worse than any other movie has ever treated women, so I don't understand this criticism from A.O. Scott. It's not like gangster movies have a history of holding women up as great and any more than (1) minor annoyances that get in the way of business or (2) shrill nags who are only good for having children while the male characters go have affairs with other women who are minor annoyances and eventually get in the way of business. 

i. A three-hour debate? Whose idea was that?

Probably the idea of the 10 people on stage who all want time to tell America their ideas for how they can improve the United States. Guess what? If you don't like it, then don't watch the debate. This is especially true since Peter isn't going to be voting for a Republican anyway. 

j. Welcome, Pope Francis. I know you’ll just be getting to town Thursday evening, but if you want to de-snarl traffic Thursday night and take in a different kind of football game, I’d be happy to take you to Meadowlands for Giants-Washington that evening. New York coach Tom Coughlin and Giants owner John Mara, two of the most Catholic men in the National Football League, would love to see you.

I don't even know what to say to this. I know Peter is kidding, but why would the Pope hang out with him just so he can visit two guys who are very Catholic? He's the Pope, all he does is talk to very Catholic men on a daily basis. 

m. Beernerdness: Congratulations, Magnify Brewing (Fairfield, N.J.), for brewing the second-best Saison I’ve tasted, next to The MMQB Saison from Harpoon Brewery in Boston. Magnify’s Saison, called Search Saison, was a gem I found last week eating with friends at De Novo, a restaurant near the Upper Montclair, N.J., train station, just up the street from where the King family lived for 18 years.

I don't dislike Saison beers, but I'm becoming more belligerent about Peter only drinking fruity or non-beer tasting beer. I feel Peter is a few steps away from recommending a Smirnoff Ice or a Mike's Hard Lemonade.

r. Caught a few minutes of the lyrical Vin Scully on Saturday night, waxing about Roberto Clemente. Scully pointed out Clemente was at his best against many Hall of Fame pitchers. Six homers off Sandy Koufax. Batted over .400 against Warren Spahn. Leave it to Scully to tell his viewers why Clemente, who just had a day across major league baseball last week, mattered.

Don't tell Jerry Green that Roberto Clemente mattered. He's angry that advanced statistics don't give Clemente the due that he deserves, even though Green has no idea how to use these advanced statistics to even determine whether his assertion is true or not. 

The Adieu Haiku

Bad day at the Linc.
The Eagles look like fool’s gold.
Chip Kelly, unbowed.

Every Monday is a bad day when I read Peter's Adieu Haiku. What would Peter expect Chip Kelly to say though? "Oh sure, I've made a shit-ton of personnel mistakes this offseason and I'm changing my entire offensive system because I'm a terrible coach who doesn't understand the difference in college and professional coaching"? Is that what Peter thinks Kelly would say?

It's a long way from the "The Wisdom of Chip Kelly" section in MMQB isn't it?

2 comments Apparently Whatever Team Drafted Buster Posey Would Have Won Three World Series Titles By Now

Buster Posey is a great catcher and baseball player. All four teams that didn't draft him probably would have liked to have gotten a chance to look into the future, see what kind of baseball player Posey would become, and then draft him. When he isn't causing consternation based on when he was called up to the majors, Posey is causing (supposed) consternation from the teams that didn't draft him. Bill Shaikin has written a column about how the Royals passed over Posey in the 2008 MLB draft and then talks about the other teams that passed over Posey. There seems to be an...assumption, maybe...perhaps an insinuation...or more like a suggestion that whatever team had drafted Posey would have won one or multiple World Series at this point.

Every team in every sport passes up a great player at some point in that organization's history. It's bound to happen. I guess it's an easy comparison to see that the Royals and Giants were playing in the World Series and the Royals just happened to draft Eric Hosmer over Buster Posey. It's not really news, but it is interesting. It's just...the assumption I feel like I am reading that the Royals and the Rays would have won a World Series (and the Pirates and Orioles to a lesser extent) by now if they had drafted Posey seems speculative. I'm not sure it would have worked that way.

If the Kansas City Royals lose this World Series, none of the decisions they are about to make will be as crucial as one they made six years ago.

They could have had Buster Posey.

Yes, they could have had Buster Posey. The Royals do have Salvador Perez and he is 24 years old and signed for the next five years at $18.5 million, until he is 29 years old. He had the worst batting season of his career this year and hit .260/.289/.403, won a Gold Glove and had a WAR of 3.3. He's definitely not Buster Posey, but he's also not a shitty catcher. I'm sure the Royals regret not drafting Posey, but Posey has also signed a large contract (nine years $164 million) that would not have fit into what the Royals are trying to do. They want to build the team around defense and speed. Perez plays really good defense. Posey was a better selection, but the Royals aren't stuck with chicken shit right now.

With the third pick of the 2008 draft, the Royals picked first baseman Eric Hosmer. With the fifth pick, the Giants happily grabbed Posey, who has led them to three World Series appearances in five years.

Posey was a college player and Hosmer was a high school player. Different situations for both players. Posey is obviously the better player though. 

They won in 2010, when Posey was the National League rookie of the year. They won in 2012, when 

Posey was the NL most valuable player and batting champion.

In their 52 B.P. (Before Posey) years in San Francisco, the Giants never won.

They did make the World Series in 1989 and 2002, so it's not like they were a totally struggling franchise B.P. They weren't great, that's for sure. 

"It is not a coincidence," said Bobby Evans, the Giants' assistant general manager.

It's also not a coincidence that pitchers like Tim Lincecum, Matt Cain, Madison Bumgarner, Jonathan Sanchez (he was good in 2010), and Ryan Vogelsong pitched for the Giants during that time and they had a really good bullpen to help close out games. Buster Posey obviously has something to do with the Giants winning three World Series, but it's not a coincidence that the Giants won a World Series with Posey on the roster like it's not a coincidence they also won three World Series when they had good young pitching. 

The standard major league team has a catcher batting low in the order, and any offense is a bonus. In Posey, the Giants have an elite batter staffing the most arduous defensive position.

It is a plus, but it also doesn't immediately lead to success. The best hitting catchers in the majors this year (300 or more at-bats) were Devin Mesoraco, Buster Posey, Jonathan Lucroy, Yan Gomes, Russell Martin, Derek Norris, Carlos Ruiz, Evan Gattis, Chris Iannetta, and Yadier Molina. Of those players four were in the playoffs and two of them lost in the Wild Card game. It's a bonus to have a great hitting catcher in the lineup. It's also a bonus to have a pitching staff that's ranked in the Top 10 in ERA and quality starts (except for 2014) every year the Giants have won the World Series. I'm not taking anything away from Posey, his good hitting is a plus, but he's not THE REASON the Giants have won three World Series.

Posey was the only major league catcher to lead his team in home runs, and he amplified the Giants' huge competitive advantage at the position by leading his team in batting average and on-base-plus-slugging percentage, too.

I think this is more of a reflection on the lack of power the Giants had, and the fact Brandon Belt only played in 61 games, than it is a reflection that this is a competitive advantage of some sort. It's good to have a catcher lead the team in home runs, but I'm not sure it's quite the competitive advantage the author thinks it is without other great players around him. I also don't understand why this is a bigger competitive advantage coming from a catcher specifically. There still has to be great players around that catcher. Todd Frazier led the the Reds in batting average, OBP, home runs, hits, and RBI's, PLUS he had the catcher who hit the most home runs in MLB on his team, and the Reds finished 76-86.

"To play the catcher position, put up a .300 average and hit 20 home runs, you should be in the MVP talk every year," Giants pitcher Tim Hudson said. "I don't care how your team finishes."

Finally, an MLB player is on record as saying winning games doesn't matter in terms of whether a player on that team should be in the MVP discussion. Perhaps Tim Hudson thinks this only applies to the position of catcher. 

The Dodgers had the 15th pick of the 2008 draft. But the Giants, who had the fifth pick, hired Barr as scouting director.

With the Giants, Barr had his chance at Posey.

"If he was there when we picked, we were going to take him," Barr said.

This turned out to be a good move and the direct cause for the Giants to win three World Series. 

The Tampa Bay Rays, run by new Dodgers baseball boss Andrew Friedman, had the first pick. In one of the all-time draft blunders, they narrowed their choice to Posey and high school infielder Tim Beckham, then chose Beckham.

I do not approve of the wording of this sentence. One of the all-time draft blunders was drafting Tim Beckham just overall, no matter who the Rays had it narrowed down to. They could have chosen pretty much anyone else drafted in the Top 10 of the 2008 draft and been in better shape than they were in drafting Beckham. So yes, it was an all-time draft blunder to draft Beckham overall, regardless of whether they selected Buster Posey.

"How many World Series would the Rays have won with him instead of Beckham?" one American League scout said. "They're always looking for a catcher."

Oh lord. I don't even know what to say to this comment. It's not like if the Rays had drafted Buster Posey this would have immediately vaulted them into winning several World Series back-to-back. If they had brought Posey up in 2010 then he would have helped that Rays team for sure. I will concede that. The Rays may have a World Series title by now, but that's pure speculation. There's no way to know for sure, but one thing I do know for sure is that if the Rays had drafted Buster Posey, he would possibly not be a member of the Rays during the 2015 season. Based on the fact he didn't sign a team-friendly contract with the Giants, he wouldn't have signed a team-friendly contract with the Rays and would be eligible for arbitration during the 2015 season. The Rays love to trade players and get a solid return in order to keep payroll at a manageable level.

It's way too much speculation to ask, "How many World Series would the Rays have won with him instead of Beckham?" It's impossible to answer and any attempt to push the argument in the direction the author wants the argument to go is arriving to a conclusion based on assumption piled on speculation. Yes, the Rays would have been a better team in 2010 and beyond if they had Posey, but to say they would have won multiple World Series is unknowable.

The Pittsburgh Pirates had the second pick, and they focused on power-hitting Vanderbilt infielder Pedro Alvarez. The Baltimore Orioles had the fourth pick, but they had selected catcher Matt Wieters the previous year, and ultimately they took University of San Diego left-hander Brian Matusz.

Again, saying that a team should NOT have selected Buster Posey is an argument I can't make. Teams in every sport pass up great players all the time. I'm not sure if you have heard, but Michael Jordan was not the #1 draft pick in the 1984 draft. But having selected Matt Wieters, who was also a college catcher, it makes sense the Orioles didn't draft Posey. That is unless they liked them both so much they wanted to see which one made it to the majors first and then trade the other. That doesn't seem like the most efficient use of resources. 

"We were taking the best player available," General Manager Dayton Moore said. "We liked Buster Posey a lot. The thing we liked about Hos, the thing that separated us, was that we felt he was going to be a plus offensive player and a plus defender. Not that we didn't think Buster Posey would. He's a great player.

And Hosmer hasn't been the great offensive player on par with what a corner infielder should be or what Buster Posey has been. He has been a very good defensive first baseman. Hosmer looked like he was going to take off during the 2014 season after hitting .302/.353/.448 with 17 home runs during 2013. This didn't happen. 

Hosmer was drafted out of high school, so his development took longer. That was of little consolation to the Royals in 2012, when Hosmer was batting .232 and Posey was the MVP, batting champion and World Series champion.

Was it consolation to the Royals in 2011 when Hosmer .293/.334/.465 with 19 home runs in 128 games while Buster Posey only played 45 games because he's a fucking catcher who got run over at the plate and injured like happens to catchers? Was it consolation to the Royals during the 2014 postseason when Hosmer hit .351/.439/.544?

I'm not arguing the Royals shouldn't want Buster Posey, it's just the whole assumption and/or gist of this article is "These teams fucked up irreparably because they didn't draft Posey and this cost them at least one World Series" when I'm not sure this is entirely true. Posey is a great player and he's a catcher, which apparently is even more impressive while ignoring he will have to change positions at some point most likely, but the Royals would not have won a World Series by now with Posey and I have no idea how many World Series the Rays would have won with Posey. Maybe one, maybe two, perhaps zero.

The Hosmer pick might yet turn out all right for the Royals. He batted .302 last year. He is batting .448 in the postseason, and he has reached base 20 times in 36 appearances.

That, and he is 25 years old. There is time. 

If Moore had a draft regret, it was not the selection of Hosmer. In 2010, the Royals liked the left-handed pitching in their system and decided to pick Cal State Fullerton infielder Christian Colon. 

They passed on the guy who has turned into the best left-hander in the American League.

"We beat ourselves up on Chris Sale a lot," Moore said.

Now not drafting Sale if the Royals liked Sale a lot, I can't get behind. I'm a fan of "You can never have too much pitching" and "Quality left-handed pitching is so hard to find so get it when you can" that I would have gone with Sale if the Royals had liked Sale the most. That's IF they liked him the most. Colon hasn't been great, but he's not been a bust on a Tim Beckham level either. He's moved slowly through the system. If the Royals had drafted Colon instead of Posey then I could see the issue, but Hosmer should not be a huge draft regret.

In 2005, the Angels selected Posey out of high school, in the 50th and final round. Posey said the Angels never made him an offer.

It was pretty clear that Posey was going to Florida State. A player with the talent that Posey showed in high school doesn't get drafted in the 50th round if MLB teams aren't very, very sure he is going to be completely unsignable and instead choose to go to college. 

Posey had told major league teams that he planned to attend college. Eddie Bane, then the Angels' scouting director, had watched Posey throw 93 mph in high school and wanted to reserve his rights if he blossomed as a pitcher that summer.

Exactly, Posey was going to college. Let's not let the "This team fucked up because they didn't draft Buster Posey" story get out of hand. If Posey was drafted in the 50th round, every MLB team passed on him 40+ times, so it would just be fair to say, "Every MLB team wishes they had drafted Buster Posey."

The Angels' first pick in 2005 was pitcher Trevor Bell, who won four major league games.

Drafting a player in the first round who was clearly going to college would have been a very dumb move for the Angels to make. I get the author wants to show the Angels drafted Posey and didn't sign him, but he wasn't going to sign and they, like every other team did that year, should not have drafted him earlier than he was drafted. The Angels did draft Peter Bourjos in the 10th round of the 2005 draft. They should get credit for that.

"I can't remember who our first pick was that year," Bane said, jokingly. "But it should have been Buster, and we should have given him whatever he wanted."

Well, unless the Angels were willing to turn their MLB team into a college where Posey could play baseball for the Florida State baseball coach with other Florida State baseball players, I don't think the Angels could have given Posey what he wanted.

And guess what else? Mike Trout should have been drafted by every MLB team prior to the point he was drafted by the Angels. Four MLB teams wish they had drafted Buster Posey, but if the Rays, Royals, Pirates, and Orioles had drafted Posey, then that doesn't mean they would have won multiple World Series by now. Posey is important to the Giants winning three World Series, but it's just not his performance that led to those three titles. Madison Bumgarner turned into Sandy Koufax during the 2014 postseason and Pablo Sandoval turned into Babe Ruth during the 2012 World Series. That helped the Giants win those World Series titles. It's pure speculation to just assume the Rays would have won multiple World Series with Posey as their catcher.

5 comments MMQB Review: It's an Unpredictable Draft After All Edition

Last week in MMQB, Peter King passed on all the draft rumors that were in fact lies. Peter also put out a call to get himself a right-hand man, marveled that Billy Joel is 65, began a thought about the NBA with his typical "Now I don't watch the NBA and know nothing about it, but...," and gave the Seahawks advice on trading back (which they took!). This week Peter talks about the INCREDIBLY UNPREDICTABLE AND WHO SAW THIS COMING NFL Draft, the kiss heard around the world (and of course it was Jeff "8-8" Fisher who caused this kiss and it just so happens the Rams had a reporter embedded in with their draft again...how fortuitous!), he discusses Johnny Manziel because Manziel is the guy who gets pageviews, and rues the day he wasn't embedded with the Rams during this draft.

Where do you start after a weekend like this?

I JUST CAN'T BELIEVE THE DRAFT DIDN'T GO EXACTLY LIKE "WE" THOUGHT IT WOULD BACK IN EARLY MARCH! WHAT A SHOCK!

(I've now used my quota of all-caps for this post I believe)

The Michael Sam saga, which couldn’t have been more dramatic if the Coen brothers had scripted it.

But it would be much more quirky with some more indie songs mixed in.

The Johnny Manziel story, which blew every sports story out of the water for two days. Wait until you hear his Twitterverse dominance. It’s something like you’ve never seen.

"We in the media have been shoving a story down your throat and you won't believe how popular it is on Twitter as a result from people complaining about us shoving the story down your throat."

It’s Trent Baalke’s drafting world, and we’re only visiting it.

If only they gave out Super Bowl trophies for drafting, the 49ers would be three-time champions and wouldn't be the second-best team in their own division.

Footsteps by Jimmy Garoppolo. Tom Brady shakes.

Yes, I'm sure Hall of Famer Tom Brady is shaking in his boots at the sign of a rookie quarterback from Eastern Illinois being brought in to back him up. He's probably incredibly frightened and hiding behind Gisele right now.

My pick: Sam. An emotional, cool, explosive moment, with Sam getting the call telling him he’d been drafted with the 249^th pick in the draft from Rams GM Les Snead. “Man, was he emotional,” Snead said Sunday morning.

What a brilliant job the Rams did in drafting Sam. This is why they are Super Bowl favorites this year. What a team on the rise. They had another excellent draft and most likely are now a dynasty.

Snead handed the phone to coach Jeff Fisher, with Sam tearing up and slowly, slowly, slow folding over and weeping, his male partner there to comfort him.

It's called "a boyfriend," Peter. It's called "a boyfriend."

On national TV. It’s a scene we haven’t seen in American TV history (and certainly not in American sports history), thankfully running unedited and uninterrupted by ESPN.

We've never seen two men kiss in American TV history? I feel like this isn't true, unless it's 1988 and "Six Feet Under" (among other shows) hasn't aired yet. It's not like the kiss was live, because Peter makes mention in this very MMQB that it was on a tape delay. So he's confused me.

“I could feel the pivot in history at that moment, with that phone call,’’ Snead said.

No Les, the world changed at that moment. After that moment, nothing will be the same. It's all thanks to Jeff "8-8" Fisher and the Rams organization. The world is now safe for homosexuals to kiss. The world thanks you, Rams organization.

Late Saturday night, after the Rams finished signing their undrafted free agents, COO Kevin Demoff and Jeff Fisher sat in the coach’s office and read through the messages and Tweets of support. 

Not that they are proud of themselves or possibly 10% drafted Sam because he was the best player on their board who would also just happen to give them a lot of really good press. I'm very jaded and I try not to be. My initial thought after being happy a team finally drafted Sam went back to my thought prior to the draft that the team that drafted Sam is going to get a lot of really good press. What do you know? It's the team that allows national writers to be embedded in their organization during the draft, the team that doesn't need a PR department because they understand how to use their connections in the media to give access (that the media appreciates and reciprocates their coverage accordingly) to writers that make them look good. It's a smart move to allow writers to be embedded in the organization and it's also a smart move to draft the first gay football player.

They read these words from President Obama: “From the playing field to the corporate boardroom, LGBT Americans prove everyday that you should be judged by what you do and not who you are.” And this Tweet from Ellen Degeneres: “So proud of the @STLouisRams for showing there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

Well, now he has to make the team. If the Rams were really nice they wouldn't have drafted Sam and allowed him to go to a team with a crappier defensive line as an undrafted free agent. That's just me being logical in a football-only context of course.

Fisher and Demoff were moved by the reaction. “It was a reminder of the power of the NFL,” Demoff said, “and how we could use the power for something good.”

“I wish I could have digested it and take it all in,” said Snead. “I’ve never been part of a decision that brought people to tears. But I couldn’t really embrace the moment, because we were so close to the end of the draft, and we had to mute the TV so we could get going on our undrafted free-agent class.”

I'm not going to ruin a moment or what the Rams did, but the jaded part of me knows the Rams knew what the reaction would be. They didn't obviously didn't draft Sam because of the reaction, but this isn't bad press.

And new defensive coordinator Gregg Williams loves the desperate underdog; a seventh-rounder on any roster is an underdog.

Plus, Michael Sam can make a few extra bucks if he hurts any of the opposing teams players. That's always a benefit for playing under Gregg Williams (Don't you think that if a parent names their child "Gregg" with the extra "y" it tells you this person will be annoying in some fashion? Maybe not). You like how the Rams hired Gregg Williams and Peter King hasn't mentioned it yet at least once in-depth? I wonder why that is? He certainly followed up on Sean Payton and Jonathan Vilma after their suspension for their participation in the bounty scandal.

(By the way, I really do not hate the Rams. I don't. I hate Peter's affiliation with them and how I believe it affects his coverage)

But he’ll have a chance. And the Rams are perhaps the best spot for him.

The Rams are the best spot for every player.

It’s two hours from where he went to school, and the media is largely friendly, and wherever he went Wolf Blitzer or Anderson Cooper would have been part of the early days of training camp. The Rams know it, and Jeff Fisher can handle it.

It's not like the negative feedback and comments that Jason Collins experienced playing in the non-media friendly Brooklyn, 3000 miles away from where he went to school...I mean, right Peter?

Preamble to yet more words about Johnny Manziel, the 22^nd pick in the NFL draft Thursday night: Between 7 p.m. and midnight Thursday, Twitter recorded approximately 2.5 million Tweets related to Manziel...Five times as many people Tweeted about Manziel alone as Tweeted about the four most important games of the night and the most charismatic athlete in America playing in one of the games—James.

I wonder how many of these Tweets were a reaction to ESPN and NFL Network's fascination with talking about Manziel continuously on the air? I can't help but think a lot of these Tweets were about the excessive coverage and discussion of Manziel. Peter probably doesn't think about that because he's most likely not self-aware enough to understand people react negatively to the media's saturation of Manziel coverage.

Manziel does not like to let people see him sweat. He knew his every move on this night would be scrutinized closely. But the Rams passing on him hurt. Because now he thought he’d be in for a free-fall. He turned to Burkhardt, and sort of out of the side of his mouth, said this:
 
“E.B., we’re screwed.”

What Manziel really meant is that there were women waiting back at the hotel who would only be there until 10pm and it was already 9:33pm, so there is no way they were going to make it back in time.

“But,’’ I said, “what about Dallas at 16? You didn’t think that might happen?”
“No, not really,’’ he said. “After talking to [owner] Jerry Jones a little bit, I understand why they wouldn’t. I felt it would be crazy for the state, for them, and for me. I thought the whole thing would be hectic. Plus, Tony [Romo] is so great. It just wouldn’t have been a great fit. I knew that, and Jerry knew it too, I think.”

Jerry Jones don't give a crap about "fit," he cares about winning and keeping the Cowboys name out there. These kids are so naive.

And so here’s Johnny. 

I see what you did there, Peter. Uber-creative. 

But the Browns must have really loved the Manziel tape—because his workout with Cleveland brass 19 days before the draft was a mess.

Manziel's workout with the Browns was a mess? I'm surprised Mike Mayock didn't move Manziel off his Top 5 quarterbacks board simply because Manziel had one bad workout. That's how Mayock does quarterback prospects isn't it?

On Good Friday night, Browns coach Mike Pettine, GM Ray Farmer, offensive coordinator Kyle Shanahan and quarterbacks coach Dowell Loggains went to dinner with Manziel and Burkhardt at a country club outside of College Station, near the Texas A&M campus. “We worked out 10 quarterbacks and ate with all with all of them,’’ Pettine said Saturday night. “That’s the only meal we didn’t pay for.”

It helps that Manziel's parents are wealthy, while I'm not sure the wealth status of the other 10 quarterbacks, I'm guessing they don't have the wealthy financial background that Manziel has. So that does help Manziel pick up the tab.

Manziel was in Cleveland Friday and got handed his playbook—on a tablet—and examined the playbook on his trip home from Cleveland. Having a playbook will be different for him, because A&M didn’t give out playbooks, just weekly game plans. “It’s a bigger league and a bigger deal,’’ he said. “But I’m preparing the same way I always would. It’s football.”

I hate to play this card, but I don't hate it so much that I won't play this card, but I can see the fact his college team didn't have a playbook hurting another quarterback prospect coming out of college. I probably isn't a big deal, but this is the type of fact that would just get added on to the litany of things wrong with Teddy Bridgewater or Blake Bortles by a guy like Nolan Nawrocki.

What to do about Josh Gordon?

Is Gordon not going to get the "I hope he gets the help he needs" treatment like Jim Irsay? Weird how that works, isn't it? Peter King wants an owner to just get the help he clearly needs, while he looks at an NFL player's drug use purely on how it affects that player's team down the road during contract negotiations. It's not the first time Peter has done something like this. 

The Browns are trying to establish a winning program, and if they can’t trust their best player, which Gordon clearly is, they’re going to have a tough decision on their hands if and when he’s suspended, and when he returns. Gordon has two years left on his rookie contract. How can the Browns possibly know what to pay him in a second contract, having no idea if they can trust him from one week to the next? If Gordon did test positive, and knowing that a monster contract would likely be coming at the end of this season if he could stay clean, it’s either a measure of the depth of his problem or a measure of his immaturity. Or both.

I think it's better that Gordon's issues come out now rather than after he has signed that monster contract extension, right? Who cares if Gordon has a problem? Let's talk about how it affects his contract situation down the road.

But to get no receiver in a good crop of them, knowing you might not have Josh Gordon all season—and maybe forever—is the problem I have. When you start a draft with 10 picks and get zero wideouts, and have to rely on either a blockbuster trade for a veteran or signing a damaged-goods free-agent like Santonio Holmes or Miles Austin, that’s wrong. 

Yeah, that's wrong. It's wrong for the Browns to not meet Peter's expectations for what they should spend their draft picks on. It's wrong and is something the Browns shouldn't have done. They didn't have a good draft because they didn't spend their draft picks in the way Peter King thought they should have.

I support trading out of the fourth pick, particularly if it means you get two high picks next year and a corner you feel is the best in the draft. So I would have made that deal. If it were me, I’d have taken a Marqise Lee or Jordan Matthews instead of Bitonio.

Maybe that would have been a smart move to take Lee or Matthews. Maybe Gordon won't be suspended all year. Maybe it's the Browns and they didn't feel like putting a curse on any more wide receivers by drafting them. They already cursed Nate Burleson and Josh Gordon after all.

Memo to Dawg Pounders happy with the Manziel pick: Stop cursing Joe Banner and Mike Lombardi. Just stop it. Do you know how much those two men helped you draft Manziel? With Banner and Lombardi running the 2013 draft, the Browns traded their fourth-round pick to Pittsburgh in exchange for the Steelers’ third-round pick in 2014; that was the 83^rd overall pick in this year’s draft. In September, Banner/Lombardi traded running back Trent Richardson to Indianapolis for the Colts’ first-round pick in 2014; that was the 26^th overall pick in this year’s draft. On Thursday, Farmer traded those two picks—26 and 83 overall—to Philadelphia for the 22^nd overall pick, the pick he used to draft Manziel.

Yeah, stop cursing those guys for blowing draft picks and helping to put the Browns in the position where they had a Top 5 selection again. Lombardi and Banner did two whole things right, shouldn't that count for something and help them both avoid criticism? Plus, Peter likes these two guys and it's not nice to be mean to Peter's friends. Mike Lombardi knows Bill Belichick, you know. So he's a genius by extension.

One last point about Manziel: Imagine if he’d been drafted by the Rams at 13. Imagine the TV trucks, news helicopters, and Ellen DeGeneres and Deion Sanders and Chris Berman and Brian Williams at a May practice to see Manziel and Michael Sam.

Yeah Peter, but then you could just buy a condo in St. Louis and cover Manziel, Sam, and do Marvin Demoff's bidding while not even having to leave the city. How great would that be?

And don’t assume Manziel isn’t happy being with the Browns. I certainly don’t. 

Why the hell would I assume that Manziel isn't happy being with the Browns? What indication would have gotten that would cause me or anyone else to think Johnny Manziel didn't want to be a Brown? I don't understand where comments like this come from.

Something he said, seriously, Thursday night when it was over and he was a Brown illustrates the fact that we’re dealing with a different cat here. “I kind of like the fact the Browns had the guts to pass on me twice, then come up to get me,’’ he said.

BREAKING NEWS: An NFL player likes the team who drafted him and thinks it's a good fit.

Now that we see the final product of what the Niners gave away and received in the Alex Smith trade from 14 months ago, we can judge one thing about San Francisco GM Trent Baalke: He is calculating, he is fast, and he knows how to set up his team for the future.

The 49ers win the draft again! That's another trophy in the "Paper Champion" trophy case.

Surrendered
QB Alex Smith  
 
Acquired*
DL Tank Carradine (second round, 2013)
LB Corey Lemonier (third round, 2013)
LB Chris Borland (third round, 2014)
RB Carlos Hyde (second round, 2014)
WR Stevie Johnson (acquired for 2015 fourth-rounder)

This seems like a good trade, but here's one point based on an opinion that I have. All of these players came from big-time programs (Johnson came from the Buffalo Bills of course) and there seems to be a bias towards the media giving more attention and "what a great deal!" status to picks whose name they recognize. It's only natural, but the fact the 49ers selected players with name recognition doesn't mean they will be good NFL players. So what I'm saying is this seems like a good deal, but it's nearly impossible to know for sure based on the fact Peter recognizes these names.

Then Peter goes on about how Trent Baalke made a lot of trades and it all seems positive for the 49ers. Again, time will tell and I feel like every year we get part of MMQB lauding how Trent Baalke did a great job drafting and moving around his picks to get more picks.

One reason why the TV ratings were so high (round one of the draft on ESPN and NFL Network, 8.7 rating; the LeBron playoff game and Bruins-Montreal hockey playoff games, combined, 3.8 rating) was the suspense. The first pick was cloudy until the end, and America was clueless about the third (Jacksonville) and fourth (Cleveland) picks. Could Johnny Manziel land at any of those places? Could he slide way down the board.

I know I personally didn't care who the Panthers drafted. I was just interested to see who drafted Johnny Manziel. After all, everyone on Twitter was interested in Manziel and the interest in Manziel on Twitter wasn't partly commentary aimed at the media's fascination with Manziel. Of course not.

Caldwell has known for some time—months, really—that he wanted to take Central Florida quarterback Blake Bortles with the Jags’ first pick in the draft. But he told only coach Gus Bradley his thoughts, and as the team went through draft meetings, he’d go through the ratings with the coaches and scouts and never tip his hand about who he thought should be the pick.

This is really the only way to keep a secret isn't it, don't tell anyone?

I found it surprising that Caldwell and his former boss and mentor, Thomas Dimitroff, were discussing a trade of first-round picks. They had many discussions about swapping the third and sixth picks in the draft, with Atlanta handing Jacksonville a third-round pick to make the move.

That is surprising that two teams whose GM's are familiar with each other would choose to make a trade. Has this ever happened before? More importantly, how could Caldwell and Dimitroff do anything that may risk the top-10 players that Peter King just knew would go in the top-10 back in March? The top-10 was set, don't try to mess with it by trading around in the first round.

Ironically, Atlanta would have picked Jake Matthews at three; the Falcons got him at six. And Bortles would have been Jacksonville’s pick at three or six.

That's an insane fact for one of the most insane drafts in the history of the NFL. I wasn't paying attention to who the Falcons or Jaguars selected because I was so busy worried about where Johnny Manziel would be drafted.

“All along Gus knew, and late in the process, we clued in [owner] Shad [Khan],” said Caldwell. “But there was just too much at stake to risk anyone finding out and possibly jumping us.

Caldwell was worried about a team jumping the Jaguars, but he was perfectly content trading back and letting the Browns or Raiders jump ahead of them to get Bortles. Interesting. But don't worry Jags fans, David Caldwell totally thought about what would happen if the Jags moved back.

“The reason I didn’t take the trade is there were so many teams that wanted quarterbacks—at one, four, five, seven and eight, and they were all within striking distance of us,” Caldwell said. “I just kept thinking, ‘One of those teams has to see what we were seeing in Bortles.’ 

It would be weird if one of those teams didn't see what the Jags saw in Bortles. I mean, it's like how many NFL teams can be so blind to such an obviously talented quarterback? If none of these others teams saw what the Jags saw in Bortles then that would mean these other NFL teams are pretty stupid, right?

A guard? [Jacksonville did use a third-round pick on guard Brandon Linder of Miami.] You can find guards. You can’t find the quarterback you think fits your team best. So in the end it wasn’t a hard decision for us.” 

Bill Polian and Dimitroff trained Caldwell well.

Wasn't it just a few weeks ago that Peter was telling us in MMQB that teams can find quarterbacks later in the draft and used Nick Foles and Russell Wilson as examples of this? But now, Peter is all "...trained Caldwell well" when it pertains to Caldwell's statement you can't find the quarterback you think best fits your team best in the 3rd round. So what is it? Is it possible to find QB's in the third round or not? Just last week Peter was claiming it was possible to find good quarterbacks in the 3rd round.

“If it was A.J. McCarron and Katherine Webb kissing, no one would say anything. But we’ve been documenting the NFL draft for 35 years, and we’ve never seen anything like this. We’ve never seen a man and a man. My instincts were to just let it roll.”

—Veteran ESPN NFL producer Seth Markman, whose job it was to determine what pictures from the draft America got to see over the weekend, and who let the video of Michael Sam and his partner kissing run at length.

Of course if it was A.J. McCarron and Katherine Webb kissing ESPN also wouldn't have kept the camera on them as long as they kept the camera on Michael Sam. The video would have been cut off much earlier than it was cut off by the time Sam came around to kissing his boyfriend. Just to be fair, I have to mention this.

“Mike Glennon is the Bucs’ quarterback of the future here.”

—Tampa Bay coach Lovie Smith, after the Bucs passed on Johnny Manziel in the first round.
 
Wh-wh-wh-what? What about Josh McCown being signed, and what about the serious pursuit of Manziel?

It's almost like McCown isn't "the future" and the Buccaneers' interest in Johnny Manziel was just a smokescreen. That couldn't be true though, could it? Peter is shocked because he believes whatever these sources are telling him around draft time.

“This is gonna be a great relationship. Thanks for pulling the trigger, coach.”

—Giants fourth-round running back Andre Williams of Boston College, taking a call from Giants coaches upon learning he’d been drafted by the team.

The MMQB’s Jenny Vrentas was in the Williams home when he got picked, and she’ll be writing the latest installment in an offseason-long series on Williams in the coming days. As a cute aside, when Williams got off the phone with Tom Coughlin, Vrentas reports, his mom bear-hugged him and said: “Now you’re Andre the Giant!”

What a shockingly precocious series of events!

Slot receivers the Patriots have loved:

In 2009, New England drafted the 5-10, 198-pound Julian Edelman, a former option quarterback who ran a 4.51 40-yard dash, and brought him to camp as a slot receiver and returner candidate. He was a seventh-round pick of New England, 232^nd overall.

In 2014, New England drafted the 5-8, 190-pound Jeremy Gallon, a former option quarterback who ran a 4.49 40-yard dash, and will bring him to camp as a slot receiver and returner candidate. He was a seventh-round pick of New England, 244^th overall.

That's crazy that the Patriots would draft former option quarterbacks in the 7th round twice in a span of five years. The two players are within two inches of each other AND their first names both begin with "J" followed by five other letters. This is eerie and probably the most important factoid in the history of the NFL Draft.

Mr. Starwood Preferred Member Travel Note of the Week

It's between this and the "Adieu Haiku" for the highlight of my MMQB experience.

Last Tuesday afternoon, I was aboard Delta flight 6196 from LaGuardia Airport in New York to Nashville. We had just touched down in Tennessee when the woman in front of me, about 55 I’d guess, began to cry. Evidently, she was looking at her phone upon landing and got some distressing news. The crying was a few little sobs at first, and then it got louder, and a few moments later, she got someone on the phone and lost control.

“I just can’t believe it!” she said between sobs. “I should have gotten here yesterday! I’m too late. Oh, noooooo! My God! 

Clearly this person just missed seeing Johnny Manziel get drafted. It's all anyone cared about all weekend, which is why Peter talks about Manziel so much, because Manziel is so popular. Manziel isn't popular because the media talks about him all the time, not at all. Anyway, back to the woman crying...

Clearly, someone close to her died within the last couple of hours, and the woman was distraught to have missed the final moments … and the chance to say goodbye. As we got to the gate, her crying continued unabated. The guy next to her acted like nothing was happening. Never even glanced over at the woman. 

What? This man didn't attempt to do anything to make this random woman feel better? What kind of world do we live in that a man would choose to mind his own business while a person is upset beside him? Not a world that Peter would want to live in. Why wouldn't this woman want to share her troubles with a perfect stranger and why wouldn't this guy ask her to do so?

Just then, the flight attendant in front of the aircraft walked down the aisle to her and said, “I am so sorry for you. Do you need a hug?”

“YES!” the woman in mourning said, and nearly collapsed into the flight attendant’s arms. They hugged for maybe 10 seconds, and then it was time to go.

Leaving the plane, I passed the flight attendant and said, “That was one of the nicest things I’ve ever seen a flight attendant do.”

Peter then followed it up with, "But your coffee tastes a little weak. It's a travesty this airline would try to sell such weak coffee on a plane. May God have mercy on your soul and I will never fly this airline again."

Draft Day, it seems, was a documentary.
— Sam Farmer   (@LATimesfarmer) May 9, 2014

 
“Draft Day,” starring Kevin Costner, has as part of its plot the Browns bypassing the best quarterback in the draft, picking another player, then trading back up to a higher pick in the first round. The only thing missing is the parallel story: Costner never picked the quarterback. Ray Farmer did.

Great. Thanks Peter, you ruined the end of the movie for me. Now where else am I going to see a two hour advertisement for the NFL and have to pay $9 for a ticket to do so?

#Bucs GM Jason Licht got some advice from Rays manager Joe Maddon: "The box is a lonely place to be. You’ve got to think outside of it.”
— Rick Stroud (@NFLSTROUD) May 10, 2014

I'm not sure this makes to me. Most people don't think outside the box, so wouldn't "the box" not be a lonely place to be since that's where most people think? Of course Peter believes this statement is brilliant because it sounds brilliant.

Not to be all baseball-centric on a football weekend or anything, but I would read “The Philosophy of Joe Maddon” book. What an interesting guy.

It does sound smart, doesn't it? But I think most people don't think outside the box, so thinking differently from others and not doing the popular thing is probably the more lonely thing to do. But again, don't think about it and this statement sounds great.

Ten Things I Think I Think

I think these are my quick-hit thoughts on the draft:

a. Hey Mike Silver! Good choice, being in St. Louis! Why wasn’t I that smart?

Because if Peter was in the Rams draft room for two straight drafts then it might start to look a little bit suspicious. Of course Peter did write an entire column trying to help Alex Mack get out of Cleveland, then followed it up with a discussion in MMQB where he showed the Browns gave Mack a lot of guaranteed money, while also indicating the Browns disrespected Mack in some way. So basically, Peter has no shame and it wouldn't surprise me if was in the Rams draft room for every draft starting next year until he retires.

b. Ryan Mallett might turn out to be a fine pro, but I don’t know how you’d know that after this three-year disappearing act with New England. He’s one for four, 17 yards, zero touchdowns, one pick. Career rating: 5.2.

c. Thus, Jimmy Garoppolo.

Okay, "Thus, Jimmy Garoppolo" needs to be added to the sentence above in "b." It's not a separate topic from the discussion of Ryan Mallett and is tied into the discussion of Mallett. I don't know why Peter insists on putting three words on a completely separate line.

e. May draft: “I haven’t met anyone in the league who likes it. Not coaches, not scouts, not GMs,” said Mike Mayock on air Saturday evening.

Roger Goodell likes it and the draft still got ratings. So it will probably be pushed back even more. Mayock also added "I didn't like the NFL Draft's Pro Day, it has fallen out of the running of my top-5 favorite professional drafts, except I will say the NFL Draft tied for fifth place so I can say it was in my top-5 favorite drafts when someone tries to call me on this."

i. Thought the Bills overpaid in acquiring running back Bryce Brown from Philly (a fourth-rounder next year that can turn into a third depending on performance), but look at it this way: Buffalo essentially traded Stevie Johnson, who was out the door, and fetched a four from San Francisco, for Brown.

Peter gives his opinion that the Bills overpaid for Bryce Brown and then says, "look at this way" and tells us why the Bills really didn't necessarily overpay for Bryce Brown, because the pick they used to trade for Brown they got from the 49ers in exchange for Stevie Johnson. So Peter basically gave his opinion and then gave us information about why his opinion was wrong, but did it in a way that made it sound like his opinion was the general public's opinion.

2. I think Washington quarterback Robert Griffin III’s season-opener just got a lot more interesting. He’ll have to face J.J. Watt coming from the left, Jadeveon Clowney from the right. On the road, in roaring Reliant Stadium. Yikes. Put on your track shoes, Robert.

But Peter, you said Khalil Mack was going to the Texans in your mock draft and in MMQB. What happened there?

3. I think, speaking of season-openers, I’ll be glued to the super-fast Brandin Cooks, the Saints’ first-rounder, on the rug inside the Georgia Dome. To me, that’s the game of the day on Sunday afternoon in Week 1:

It's May. How about everyone shuts the hell up about any "game of the day" during any certain week in the NFL until training camp is over and it's known what the final roster might look like for many of these NFL teams? I guess it's not presumptive enough to have patience and wait, so Peter has to give his pick for "game of the week" during Week 1 four months before the season is to begin. After all, it's never too early to make assumptions based on which team looks best on paper.

This weekend he was John Stockton to his smart football panelists—Mike Mayock is simply the best, and Daniel Jeremiah was good too (except when giving every team a glowing report card after the draft, because draft report cards the night of day three are the height of folly)—

It's the height of folly to give a draft report card after the draft has happened, but it's never too early during the month of May to pick out which game will be the best game to watch during Week 1 of the NFL season.

Eisen asked, incredulously, how a Marist defensive end (Terrence Fede) could be picked at 234, with the SEC defensive player of the year, Sam, still on the board. The answer is complicated; Fede is a legitimate prospect, and he deserves credit for working his way into being draftable. But it’s a smart question, a question all of America was asking, and good for Eisen for pressing his football men on it.

The Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year undrafted also. Not that Rich Eisen would take the time to point this out of course. Clearly it doesn't merit a mention at all.

6. I think Oakland GM Reggie McKenzie might have gotten two of the 10 best players in this draft, when history looks at it. Buffalo pass rusher Khalil Mack (who didn’t look too thrilled to be a Raider, by the way)

Okay, maybe there is one player who didn't want to be drafted by the team who drafted him, but Peter doesn't want it to get twisted, Johnny Manziel is very happy to be a Brown.

and Fresno State quarterback Derek Carr are going to be franchise cornerstones. The Carr part, of course, assumes that he can be protected,

Well of course. We wouldn't want Derek Carr to turn into the new David Carr.

9. I think I am so pleased that Bill Nunn, who scouted for the Steelers for 46 years and died last Tuesday night at 89,

You are pleased Bill Nunn died? You heartless son of a bitch...

had his moment in the sun on draft weekend. One of his protégés, Buffalo GM Doug Whaley, used advice from Nunn (“Do not ever be afraid to make a big move if you believe in it strongly”) as one of the spurs to deal his 2015 first- and fourth-round picks to simply move up five spots to take the No. 1 player on the Bills’ draft board, wideout Sammy Watkins of Clemson. Think of the significance. The biggest trade of the 2014 draft happened 48 hours after Nunn died—and it was pulled off by two African-American general managers …. Whaley and Ray Farmer of the Cleveland Browns.

I'm sure Bill Nunn would be proud to know his advice was used to move up and make a move that many people considered bone-headed.

Whaley knows he has taken a colossal gamble by dealing so much to simply move up five spots. But he’s okay with it. At first I was not...They used two prime picks next year to move up five spot to get him, and let’s face it—the first-round pick, judging by recent Bills history, could be a top 10 pick. This is not a move I would have made,

Peter is fine with this move, but he would not have made this move. He doesn't like the move, but he officially approves of it so this trade can go through.

10. I think these are my non-football thoughts of the week:

b. We need to care about Boko Haram and the Nigerian abductions. We’re a civilized society, and we need to act.

Perhaps "we" do care about the Nigerian abductions already and maybe "you" need to act. Fly over there now, Peter. Do it. Or you could continue to say "we" need to do something while not even vaguely attempting to explain how "we" need to act.

e. Saw “The Grand Hotel Budapest.” Very cute and quirky. Not the best movie of the year, but two hours well spent.

It would have been much more dramatic if the Coen brothers had scripted it.

g. Coffeenerdness: Thanks, Bongo Java in Nashville, for the great latte the other day. Artfully done.

Consider yourself considered "artful" Bongo Java in Nashville! Peter looks forward to coming back to Nashville in 10 years and giving you his business and you should look forward to it as well. 

i. Did ump Laz Diaz embarrass himself the other night in the Yankees-Angels game or what? Amazing tht baseball

Yes, "tht" is amazing.

j. May 7 in Atlanta: 94 degrees on my rental car’s dashboard. Did I miss spring?

Yes, spring happened while you were having coffee at Bongo Java.

The Adieu Haiku

Sam’s a Ram. What now?
The buzz will die down. And then:
Can he sack QBs?

The pointlessness of this haiku can't be overstated, though I have repeatedly tried. 

4 comments MMQB Review: Who Wants to Buy the Bullshit GM's are Peddling This Time of Year? Edition

Last time he wrote MMQB, Peter King brought us down with the story of Jim Kelly fighting cancer and the news his brother (who didn't like coffee and was a Yankees fan) also passing away during the previous week. Peter also made his predictions for the 2014 MLB season, told McDonald's their coffee can't stand up to that of Starbucks and reminded us all that the RAMS ARE OPEN FOR BUSINESS AT THE #2 PICK. Sure, the Rams really like a bunch of players at that spot, but they will totally trade out of the spot if it helps another team. Not that the Rams want to trade out of the spot, but if it helps another team they will be willing to take on more draft picks in a deep NFL Draft to help another NFL team out. Not that the Rams want to trade out of that pick, but if an NFL team does want that #2 pick make the Rams an offer now. In fact, feel free to blow them away with an offer. This is obviously a standard thing Peter does for most teams, helping them drum up some business for picks in the NFL Draft. He just hasn't gotten around to drumming up business for any other teams drafting in the Top 10 who want to trade back.

This week Peter tells us the five things we need to know about the NFL Draft (which obviously wouldn't include which players will go in the top 10, because Peter told us back in early March the top 10 players in the draft has already been decided, it's just a matter of where they go), interviews the new head of NFL Media because apparently he thinks his readers care about that, reveals a picture which shows him having a beard with a whi-fro (that's an afro for a white person), and most likely at Marvin Demoff's request follows up on his failed attempt to get Alex Mack out of Cleveland. 

I still laugh at Peter's blatant pimping out of Alex Mack. His motives were very transparent.

Five things you should know about the draft, 24 days before the first round begins:

Other than the names of the players that will be drafted in the top-10. That was decided months ago. I really can't wait until the top-10 players taken in the draft are different from what Peter stated a month or so ago and then he'll rave about how this draft was so unexpected and everyone thought one thing would happen but it didn't. What a shock that the predictability was ruined!

The Clowney camp has told at least three teams he won’t be working out for teams before the draft, preferring to let his on-campus Pro Day April 2 at South Carolina stand. I spoke to two general managers over the weekend about this, and one took exception to Clowney taking a pass on pre-draft team workouts and one didn’t.

In other words, one GM pretended this was a big deal when he knew it wasn't and one GM was honest and said he didn't care if Clowney participated in individual workouts.

He still will visit teams and interview with coaches and GMs, but his next show-and-tell football performance will be after the draft in a mini-camp, with whichever team picks him. Now, I don’t think this will prevent a team that loves him from picking him, but it might be a small factor in the decision by a team on the fence about Clowney.

If a GM can't look at Clowney's tape and see what kind of football player he is, then that GM needs to be fired. It's all there. Three seasons worth of tape. Go watch it.

As one of the general managers said, “I’d want the guy who’s going to be coaching him to put him through some of our drills, and see how he responds.”

He'll probably quit because Clowney is a quitter, right? Isn't that the narrative that he quits and takes plays off?

That’s how draft guru Gil Brandt sees it. Four quarterbacks and six wideouts in the top 32 for Brandt, if he had to pick it today. Contrast that to last year, when there was one quarterback, wideout or running back in the top 15—receiver/returner Tavon Austin, who went eighth to St. Louis. This year a very similar player in size and production, Brandin Cooks of Oregon State, could be the sixth wideout picked. 

But this wasn't a bad pick by the Rams nor did they get bad value for Tavon Austin. He was the best receiver last year, so the Rams took him. Peter was in the Rams draft room and he knows Tavon Austin will probably be the best receiver in the history of the Rams organization. I actually like Austin, but the bottom line is the Rams picked a slot receiver 8th overall in last year's draft.

Regarding the passers, Derek Carr of Fresno State joins the big three quarterbacks, and at receiver, the depth is so good that former unheralded guys like Cody Latimer of Indiana are creeping into view high in the second round now.

If the depth was good wouldn't that mean players like Cody Latimer would be creeping backwards in the draft? Wouldn't logic dictate that if the draft is deep at wide receiver then teams can get a quality wide receiver later in the draft, as opposed to if the draft wasn't deep at wide receiver, then it would make sense that Latimer was creeping up draft boards.

The stunner this draft season is a quarterback who threw 83 passes as a Rutgers sophomore in 2010, then didn’t play college football in 2011 or 2012 as he transferred from Rutgers to Arizona to Pitt. “The hottest guy in the draft,” Brandt of Tom Savage. How hot is he? Late last week Savage’s agent, Neil Schwartz, had to tell two teams who wanted to set up a visit or meeting with the quarterback that he didn’t have any time left to do so. “There are literally no days left on his calendar for him to go see any other teams,” Schwartz said Saturday.

Oh, there's literally no days left. This isn't figurative? My head literally just exploded.

What I find most interesting is Peter is reporting Latimer is creeping up and Savage is creeping up, yet this is the time of the year when GM's lie and mislead everyone on which player(s) they are and aren't interested in. Almost nothing can be believed that GM's are saying around draft time. It's all lies. I'm not saying Peter shouldn't report what he hears, but everything that is being said this time of year should be taken with a grain of salt and not considered fact. Tom Savage is "the hottest guy in the draft" right now. Maybe, maybe not.

Savage is popular because he’s got an above-average NFL arm right now—some are calling it the best in the draft

"Some" means Tom Savage, Tom Savage's agent and Tom Savage's mom. It's always fun this time of year when NFL teams ignore film a player has and start focusing on physical attributes. Then next year they will TOTALLY not make that mistake again, until they do.

He spent Friday with the Oakland staff, and that’s a place he’d fit in well.

Why? Because Savage is a quarterback and the Raiders need a quarterback. Brilliant analysis.

Amazing to think a player so itinerant and with so little college success could be leap-frogging A.J. McCarron, Aaron Murray and Zach Mettenberger. But there’s a good chance Savage will.

That is amazing isn't it? It's almost like it's too good to be true or these GM's are out-thinking themselves. They watch film of a player, aren't impressed, then see that player in workouts and think, "Golly, he's probably a lot better than his film showed." Next thing you know, Darrius Heyward-Bey is drafted over Michael Crabtree or Christian Ponder is drafted in the first round of any draft that isn't the CFL Draft.

Todd McShay had Houston taking Savage with the 33rd overall pick.

Todd McShay is also guessing like everyone else. The difference is he gets paid to guess.

5. A few teams with quarterback needs have an interesting strategy. I’ve heard that at least four quarterback-needy teams—Houston (first pick),  Jacksonville (3), Cleveland (4) and Oakland (5)—are strongly considering passing on quarterbacks with their first picks and waiting until their second or third selections. Simple reason: They’re not in love with any of the quarterbacks, and there are too many other good players who are surer things than a quarterback you have sincere doubts about.

And there's no way this could be a smoke screen in an effort to get one team that does like these quarterbacks to try and trade up in order to acquire additional draft picks.

For that reason, there could be more quarterbacks taken in round two than round one. For instance, Jacksonville really likes Jimmy Garoppolo of Eastern Illinois, and he’d likely be there high in the second round when the Jags pick again, at 39.

And of course there's no way this can be a smoke screen at all. I'm sure the Jags want everyone to know the exact quarterback they are interested in so another NFL team can swoop in and draft him before they can.

One more thing: The great value in this draft will be from about 20 to 50. So guess what team is in great position to capitalize on the depth in rounds one and two? San Francisco, with the ability and the recent history of moving around so well. The rich-get-richer Niners hold the 30th, 56th, 61st, and 77th overall picks. If they want someone in the forties, they’ve got the currency to get him. The Browns are in good shape to do some damage too, with picks 26, 35, 71 and 83.

So that means the Browns could trade up to pick 38 and nab the quarterback the Jags didn't want in the first place!

The chief operating officer of NFL Media is 41, a Mormon, a Brigham Young grad, checks Twitter before he does anything else in the morning, and you’ve probably never heard of him. But you need to know Brian Rolapp.

No, no we don't. 

Rolapp is behind the invention of a new media tool the NFL will launch in August called NFL Now, which will be able to customize your NFL consumption to your favorite team, your fantasy team, your favorite NFL Films stuff from its vast vault—so that every day, multiple times, you’ll be able to check back and see the latest from all sources NFL.

I do this already using revolutionary technology called "Twitter" and "the Internet" where I bookmark my favorite sites that give me information about my favorite team.

The MMQB: How do you get your news?
 
Rolapp: My news source—and I’m just a focus group of one—my routine is I check Twitter first to figure out what’s going on. I look at that, then I look at some of the other news feeds that I have, and my email for things like ratings on the NFL Network, and then I get to the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times. It’s all on my tablet.

Look at Mr. Fancy Pants who uses several multimedia devices to get his information. 

The newspapers are delivered to my office, but essentially I put my feet on them. They serve different purposes. They’re coasters for my Diet Coke at lunch. Then there’s other sites that I’ll go to.

What a sick burn on the newspaper industry. How about Rolapp unsubscribes to these newspapers and then goes out and buys coasters for his Diet Coke? Seems like a better use of funds than buying a paper just to use as a coaster. 

The MMQB: What is the future of NFL Network? Does it stay in L.A. or does it eventually come to the East Coast, to the NFL Films’ home in New Jersey?

Peter is obsessed with the idea of NFL Network being in L.A. He just doesn't get why every business doesn't move to New Jersey. It's unfathomable to him that's 2014 and every single separate entity of a large business don't have to be located in the exact same city as each other. Plus, it's New Jersey. Why not move there over having your business in L.A.:? 

Rolapp: We haven’t really looked actively at moving. It’s an expensive proposition. We’ll look at it. There’s a lot of advantages to being in L.A. There’s great access to the people you need to run a network—producers to talent and everything else.

Wait, so there's actual talent out in L.A.? Peter doesn't believe this. He thought all of the talent in the United States resides on the East Coast and more specifically within a 50 mile radius from where he lives.

The MMQB: Will games on free TV ever go away?

Rolapp: Look, we have built a very good thing here by making NFL football available to as many people as possible. I don’t see free TV going away.

Free games won't go away as long as the television contracts with NBC/ESPN/FOX/CBS make the NFL more money than going with a network that will ask fans to pay to watch NFL games. As long as it is in the best financial interests of the NFL to make the games free, they will stay free. It's about making the NFL available to as many people as possible as much as it is about finding a way to make a ton of money while making the NFL available to as many people as possible.

Mr. Starwood Preferred Member Travel Note of the Week

England is such a wonderful place, with kind and considerate people and the loveliest landscape. I rediscovered that on our trip to England for the burial of my brother Ken last week.

England is such a great place, Peter probably wonders why it doesn't move to New Jersey where all the talent is? Move to New Jersey and I'm sure England will be much happier.

Peter then discusses his brother's funeral and the big takeaway from this is he posts a picture of himself and his two brothers all with neckbeards. Maybe that's why Peter loves Andrew Luck so much, they are all part of the Neckbeards of America Society.

If you don't click on the MMQB link when I post MMQB you will want to click on the link to see the picture of Peter with a neckbeard. The picture Peter posts (alliteration!) is taken of a young, lofty Peter King who is only beginning to learn through his collegiate experiences how to make himself an older, more haughty version of Peter King who criticizes tourists for taking pictures of the Apple logo. Here is the link to the picture.

I can't shake the feeling Peter is talking down to his audience and to the people he met in England. It may just be me, but he writes things like...

“Where ye from?” said one of the locals at the bar.

“New York,” I said. “The city.”

“This must be prettih slow,” he said.

“I love it,” I said. “Love your village.” Which made him happy.

and...

The bar’s 11-year-old black lab, Jake, burrowed into us for some of our crisps. (Potato chips.)

Where it seems like Peter is talking down to his audience. He even puts the local's words in quotes in the exact accent that person used, while not putting his words in quotes using his own New Jersey-ish accent.

“I don’t really buy ‘Draft Day’—it’s a shallow and evasive movie …”
 
—Highly respected movie critic A.O. Scott of the New York Times, on the new movie about the NFL draft. Scott reports the movie was made “with what appears to be the very enthusiastic—not to say domineering—cooperation of the NFL.”

Would I rather watch "Draft Day" or actually watch all of the 2014 NFL Draft weekend with the volume as high as possible so I can hear Chris Berman's annoying baying seal voice in my ears at all times ? It's a tough choice. 

“We have talked about keeping our own players and this is a positive for us. Alex is a quality person and player that truly brings to life what playing like a Brown means.”
 
—Cleveland GM Ray Farmer, upon matching Jacksonville’s five-year, $42 million offer sheet for center Alex Mack, meaning Mack will remain a Brown for at least the next two seasons.

If you remember, Peter tried very hard to get Alex Mack away from the Browns by essentially saying if the Jaguars (hint, hint Jaguars...which is a hint they took) tried to sign Mack to an offer sheet, then the Browns would not match the sheet in the way Marvin Demoff had the offer constructed. Whoops, I guess it didn't work out that way. So Peter has to back track and save face by pointing out Demoff got Mack $18 million guaranteed (that's 100% of his earnings in the first two years!) in the first two years of his deal and forgetting that he was trying like hell to get Mack out of Cleveland by essentially writing an entire column stating Demoff can construct an offer sheet the Browns wouldn't match.

Nothing to see here. Mack wanted out, Peter tried to help his and Mack's agent get Mack out of Cleveland, and it didn't work. Time to focus on how much Mack will be making.

Then Peter provides a graph so everyone can know what a great job Demoff did getting Mack paid. Unfortunately, the point seemed to be to get Mack paid by a team who wasn't the Cleveland Browns.

It also appears Peter has learned how to embed a Tweet, so he is embedding Tweets of the Week now. I'm sure the new NFL Media chief showed him how to do this.

4 years a slave
— BrandonSpikes51 (@BrandonSpikes51) April 9, 2014

Perhaps Brandon Spike is being a little over-dramatic here. Of course I'm sure there are some idiot sportswriters who will point to this Tweet as further proof The Patriot Way is no longer working.

Jennifer Garner isn't doing a very good job of managing the Browns' salary-cap room.
— Bart Hubbuch (@HubbuchNYP) April 9, 2014

What Peter is saying by including this Tweet is the Browns have hurt their salary cap room by signing Alex Mack. They should have just let him go to Jacksonville and then they would have more cap room, Peter wouldn't have gotten yelled at by Marvin Demoff for not doing a good enough job of pimping Mack out, and Mack could be out of Cleveland.

Ten Things I Think I Think

2. I think this is the way Jacksonville could have forged a contract that Cleveland would not have matched with center Alex Mack: agree to pay him $15 million in the first year, fully guaranteed, with the option to quit the deal after one year.

I'm serious when I think Peter wrote that article to pimp out Alex Mack on behalf of Marvin Demoff. I absolutely believe this happened. He's not happy his attempts to pimp Mack out to the Jaguars didn't work. I'm not sure why the Jags would have paid Mack $15 million for one year and then allowed him to be a free agent after that, but logic doesn't apply when King/Demoff need to work together and get Mack out of Cleveland. Why would the Jaguars essentially sign Mack to a one year contract for $15 million? Mack could just opt-out and become a free agent after one year.

If you don't believe me that Peter was trying to get Mack out of Cleveland, notice how obsessed with this contract Peter is in the back-half of this MMQB.

Many of you on Twitter have made the point over the past couple of days that Cleveland matching Jacksonville’s offer sheet means there couldn’t have been an offer to entice Cleveland to let Mack go.

3. I think all three sides in this deal won.

Of course you do, Peter. You wouldn't criticize your own agent for failing to get his client a contract he wants with a team he wants. The clear intent of that original column by Peter was that Demoff was going to write a contract the Browns wouldn't match. That was the intent. It didn't happen. So how in the hell did all three sides win?

a. Mack won, because he gets $18 million fully guaranteed over two years and the chance to be an unrestricted free agent at age 30 in 2016 (he’s never missed a start in five years), and he will have his third season at $8 million guaranteed if he gets a disabling injury in either of 2014 or ’15.

Right, but his agent was trying to get him to sign with another team. This idea had to originate with Mack, so he didn't completely get what he wanted.

b. Cleveland won, because the Browns keep a rock-solid player and leader in the middle of their offensive line for what will be about 7.8 percent of their 2014 cap and 6 percent of their cap in 2015. Now the Browns don’t have to explain to their fan base why they let a top player at his position, a home-grown one, walk.

c. Jacksonville won, because the Jags showed their fan base they’re serious about bidding, reasonably, for good players.

Yeah, but they failed. I guess that's a win. It sort of feels like a no-decision to me.

In two years, if the Jags find and develop a quarterback and are a contender, Mack could look at them and remember the favor they did him by offering him $18 million fully guaranteed for two seasons, and he could think about opting out of the last three years in Cleveland to sign in Jacksonville. We shall see.

See, Peter is ALREADY laying the groundwork to get Mack out of Cleveland. I will not believe he isn't doing Marvin Demoff's bidding. I refuse to believe it. The ink isn't dry on this contract that Mack "won" and Peter is still trying to lay the groundwork to get Mack out of Cleveland in two years.

4. I think the only blip on the Cleveland radar from this issue is Mack had to put himself out on the market and force the Browns to pay him market value for a top-five center,

Three of the "things he thinks he thinks" are about Alex Mack and his new contract. I can not be told Peter didn't have an ulterior motive when writing about Mack's free agent. I don't care what kind of slow news week in the NFL it was.

and if you’re Mack, a smart guy, you have to be thinking: The team I’ve played every game for at a high level had a ton of cap room available and didn’t choose to pay me until its hand was forced. I’ll remember that in two years.

I mean, seriously. Is it possible that Peter could have an ulterior motive more so than he does now? He clearly is disappointed his attempt to get Mack away from the evil Browns did not work. Peter first brags about the contract Mack signs, lays the groundwork to say Mack can leave the Browns in two years, and now is acting like the Browns did Mack wrong by giving him $18 million guaranteed over two years. Unbelievable.

6. I think the news nugget of the week—reported by NFL Media’s Albert Breer—was Johnny Manziel scoring a 32 on the Wonderlic test. That’s five points higher than Peyton Manning and Russell Wilson scored once upon a time, and probably goes a way toward confirming that Manziel could digest any offense.

Because we all know the Wonderlic is the best determinant of how well a quarterback will digest a team's offense. Obviously if Manziel knows if Bob has 19 apples and gives half of them away to Susie who gives him 7 of her 8 oranges, then this would give Bob 9.5 apples and 7 oranges with Susie having 9.5 apples and 1 orange he will be able to understand an execute an NFL playbook. It's nearly the same thing. 

9. I think more teams should do the human thing, the thing GM Doug Whaley and the Buffalo Bills are doing with the Easter holiday coming up and the draft pushed back two weeks on the calendar from last year: The Bills are giving their scouts and draft personnel a week off to be with their families, and to halt this paralysis-by-over-analysis that happens when you give more time to a process that already lasts a month too long.

Maybe this means the Bills won't over-think the draft like half of the NFL teams end up doing this time of year. 

10. I think these are my non-football thoughts of the week:

c. I am a Nutmegger. The first 18 years of my life I lived in Connecticut. And so I have followed UConn sports closely over the years. I saw none of either basketball championship game, but the Huskies of both genders did their state proud last week. Congrats to the UConn men and women. Nine titles for the women now, and four for the men in the last 15 years. That is pretty amazing for a university in Storrs, Conn.

When has any business or school in Connecticut ever succeeded at anything right? The entire state is a dead area for business and education due to there being very few wealthy people located in the state.

d. Atlantic Coast Conference fathers must be so pleased about excluding UConn from the ACC. What a smart decision, listening to Boston College, which never wanted a rival as dangerous in recruiting and in games as UConn in the ACC. BC got its wish, and UConn now toils in some conference invented to give some athletic orphans a port in the NCAA storm.

The ACC chose to admit Boston College over UConn in 2005 and was a decision made completely about football (much to the chagrin of coaches like Coach K). That was almost a decade ago. The decision was also about football and the thought Boston College could bring in more money to the ACC than UConn ever could when it comes to football. It was a purely football decision (have I made that clear enough yet?), so Peter's criticism while accurate in terms of football, misses the mark for what the ACC was trying to accomplish when it came to improving the conference in terms of football revenue.

h. Coffeenerdness: I couldn’t drink Starbucks while in the hinterlands of England. My brother worked for three decades for Whitbread, which bought Costa Coffee. So I drank Costa. “Starbucks had a chance,” Ken told me on our visit in March. “We went looking for a coffee company a few years ago, and Starbucks could have been it. But they drove too hard a bargain, and so we bought Costa.”

Wait, I thought Peter said in his MMQB two weeks ago that his brother didn't drink coffee? Why would his brother go looking for a coffee company? I'm guessing the "we" is the hinterlands of England? I don't understand how they "bought" Costa though. 

m. I am a basketball doofus, but if you gave me a vote for the professional team of the century, I’d pick the San Antonio Spurs. Gregg Popovich and his guys are amazing. You can’t keep them down.

"I know nothing about this sport, but here's an opinion I expect you to take seriously."

Peter does this sort of shit all the time.

The Adieu Haiku

Bedard can’t Haiku.
But what a job last Monday.
I got Wally Pipped!

But if you got Wally Pipped then that means you wouldn't be back writing this week and Greg Bedard would be writing MMQB from now on. It seems Peter still doesn't understand being "Wally Pipped" means. He used it incorrect a few months ago as well.