Thurman#1

And more dumbage from you. Consistency is a virtue, sometimes. Not so much when it's consistency in not getting it. What happened here is that we renegotiated his deal so that he has nothing guaranteed, actually $75K. He's essentially a camp body. He actually saved a bit of money this year on the cap by re-signing as they also put a void year on the end and moved $350K to that void year, according to overthecap. And you use that to figure that now you know why we don't win Lombardis!! How old are you? Seriously. Are you 12 or below? If you are, I'll definitely treat your brilliant conclusions with much less disdain.

OK, I'm going to pretend that I didn't read this so that I can scream and howl and be angry some more. Because we are doing many many things differently than we did last year? Oh, wait, I forgot I was going to pretend!!! YEAH!!! SCREAM!!! YELL!!! HOWL!!!! From what I understand, now none of his money is guaranteed. Oh, wait, I did it again!!! HOWL!!! BLAME!!!! MOAN!!!!

Sorry, man, your whole argument here has all the logical validity of a guy saying, "Well, this is a fruit. Therefore we've proved that if it isn't an apple, it must be an orange." And then parading around and basking in the imaginary huzzahs he figures that deserves. At this point, it's very clear that you simply don't get it but are willing to argue forever. Honestly worse than talking to my six year old. When she was three years younger. I'm out.

You're doing it again. Refusing to believe the obvious. Enjoy the personal little Bizarro world you're going to be living in.

Seen Moe and Larry lately?

You've put it perfectly. You refuse to believe this. Precisely! That is indeed your problem, that you see something that makes sense and refuse to believe it. After all, finding a scapegoat feels so very much better than listening to reason. No scapegoat means no pitchfork, and that's the fun part for many.

Indeed.

Fire them comes after. First and most important is to find the whipping boy. It's a desperately stupid direction to head in, but wired deep among the worst of human instincts. You're still indulging the need to identify the scapegoat. The screaming and blaming comes later. The order of dumb thinking isn't blame the scapegoat and then find the scapegoat. You gotta find him first.

Yup. Plenty of people won't hear that though. One of the most powerful human logical failures is the desperate urge to find a chump to blame for failures and to then scream about how stupid he is.

What a load of horse crap. Luck is a stone cold fact. Bad luck happens. So does good luck. So does roughly equal luck. What you appear to be doing here is indulging one of the absolute worst human traits, the desperate urge to find a scapegoat and pick up torches. It's a failure in rationality, a glitch in the mental wiring. Is one person sometimes responsible more than others? Sure. But the insistence that everything comes down to failure is pure nonsense and pitchfork hunger. Now, should your higher-ups take responsibility? Sure, as McDermott did. Does that mean that a rational listener should say, "Well, it's a loss, so it has to be blamed on the coach and the GM, quick, get out the pink slips?" Again, hungering for a whipping boy to blame it all on is more a failure of thought, of method, in those desperate to throw blame as fast as they can. It's the urge to scream, "Mommy, mommy, he did it, he did it, everybody, let's hate him!!!"

Not having anywhere near enough talent until the last two years. Thirteen seconds this year, and the coin flip in overtime. Last year, and this year too really, bad matchups and the fact it's really hard to win two or three games in a row against the best teams in the league when luck can go against you and footballs bounce strangely.

Yeah, not a surprise. Guys are going to be interested in coming here. Jones would probably fit well here. If he does give us a bargain price, that'd definitely improve the probability of it happening

If irrationality weren't a factor, you'd be capable of seeing that what you have there isn't "just reality." And not an especially believable opinion. This questionable opinion you have is directly opposed to our GM, and yet you still are so absolutely convinced that you're right and he's wrong that you bring in the always dumb "blinders" thing. They made him captain. Three years running. They say they love him. They guarantee him $12.3M by picking up the option. They have a really good defense three years running with him at MLB. This week Beane says that Edmunds is "definitely" a "long-term building block moving forward" for this team. They have more information than you do about what he's worth to this team by a factor of probably hundreds. And yet you know more than them. Sorry, man, the idea that it's "just reality" is untrue on the face of it. It's an opinion. One that is directly opposed by the people who know best.

Nonsense! Top three is plenty good enough to win it all. The Rams weren't top three. They were probably on the bubble of the top seven. And again, as I said but you left out, the Bills were probably the single best roster. Beane has to put together a roster that makes them competitive consistently. If he does that, they'll win at some point and probably pretty soon. Losing last year was absolutely not Beane's fault. He's been terrific.

Yeah, Beane created the "problem" of bringing in probably the best roster in the league last year and certainly top three. He does certainly need to continue trying to maximize the roster, as does every GM in history.

Yes. We have players in the league that have been convicted of domestic violence. Are you actually trying to say that this did not have major negative effects on the players and the teams? Because it did. Plenty of guys never even got the chance. Remember Ray Rice? Please don't pretend that any of your arguments above don't mean that dealing with those abusers didn't have negative effects. It did. As for Roethlisberger, whose name is still consistently misspelled so that the first four letters come out as a sexual crime, he was hurt by that. A lot. So was the team. Your argument that the league is doing well and therefore there were no negative effects from the various domestic violence and sexual violence crimes is completely without merit. Of course there were bad effects. Luckily the league also has many good things going on generating good publicity and good will. Luckily for the NFL, among the large number of NFL players, very few have had these. For every Roethlisberger, there's a Josh Allen. In fact, for every Roethlisberger there are a host of Josh Allens, Lamar Jacksons, Matt Staffords, Harrison Phillipses, Fred Jacksons, Lorenzo Alexanders, Brian Moormans, and on and on. It's not a mistake that the NFL spends so much time publicizing the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year award nominees and winners. They are actively trying to mitigate the damage that guys like Desean Watson do to the NFL's image and brand. How many times do we hear, "considered the league's most prestigious honor, the Walter Payton ..." It's very prestigious, but it's not the most prestigious award. The Lombardi trophy, the MVP, there isn't a player who wouldn't trade those for a Walter Payton. But the NFL flacks that award like crazy. Specifically to give the idea that despite the Watsons and Henry Ruggses and Phillip Adams's, there are also a lot of really good guys out there. They're out there selling that award to fans desperately. But it's the Watsons and Rices and Ruggses who get the headlines and hurt the brand. The Steelers suffered got less bad publicity than whatever team picks up Watson will get, because they could already say, "He's been with us for four years. We love the guy, we've developed a relationship. What we've seen" Much less blame-worthy than a team with no relationship with the guy bringing him in saying, "Yeah, we don't know him personally, I mean, we know he's probably a total perv but he is a good football player, so we're willing to accept any effects this has on the women of our city." But we still see articles today speaking to the bad effects the Pittsburgh thing had. Here's one from the Guardian titled, "Roethlisberger was easy to admire as a quarterback, but not as a man." https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2022/jan/18/ben-roethlisberger-pittsburgh-steelers-quarterback-nfl-sexual-assault-allegations

Doubt away. It will depress demand. It will have negative repercussions for the team. Some will be willing to deal with that. But there will absolutely be problems. Will everyone stay away? No, of course not. Will some? Without question. Will the core fans of the team? Probably very few. But teams don't want to appeal only to those who are already core fans. Will this cause publicity problems for the team that picks him up? Possibly for many years? Yeah, absolutely. Will signing Watson also have positive effects? Sure, in the on-the-field product. It'll go both ways, but there will absolutely be negative effects. He'll have a chance to reform his image gradually over the years. I hope he does so. But this will affect him forever. And it will also affect the image of the team that brings him in. It won't destroy it or anything close, but it will affect the relationship with the community for years.

Yeah, he'd be nuts not to settle. And yet if he'd been operating in his own best interest, he'd have done so long since. He can't want these women to testify in open court. Some of them will be very believable. If he's smart, he'll settle and do it soon. But again, he hasn't been operating in his own best interests so far.

Are you kidding? The public are the ones who buy or don't buy tickets. That is huge to the owners. Huge. He'll play, but this will affect who will be willing to take him, how much he'll get paid .... It'll be part of his public image for the rest of his life.

We have a shot at the championship without any of these. Wouldn't mind one or two of them but thinking they are necessary is flat-out ridiculous.

Trading for a guy - if you really want him - has at least two major advantages over waiting for him to be cut. First, sometimes teams you think are going to cut a guy don't. They could re-negotiate a cheaper deal, for instance. Second, when you trade for a guy you make sure all 31 other teams can't slip in front of you. If you wait for him to be cut, you're one of 32 teams competing for him (it happens that teams cut a guy and then get him back cheaper, happens pretty often, actually). And as Tuco pointed out above, giving Beasley permission to talk to these teams means his agent could work out a salary that might be better than the Bills want to give him. And he's not getting $7m in cash from the Bills this year. His cap hit is $7.6, but he would receive $5.9M from us in cash, or from his new team if he were traded under his current contract. And if nobody wants to give that, his agent will undoubtedly find out which team interested in trading for him would be willing to give Beasley the most cash.

No. The Ravens have the 8th highest odds in the league right now. They are absolutely contenders. Not among the few favorites, but absolutely contenders.

Nonsense. Every team in the league is looking at key positions. Every single one. This is an excellent roster. But even excellent rosters work at improving, and churn through guys as they get older, more expensive or the team can upgrade.

You are a desperate little fella on this issue, aren't you? First post into a Chandler Jones thread and you immediately go into thread-nap mode to share yet again more Edwards hate. Kinda sad.

Beane (this week): I love Tremaine. People don't understand what he does for us. Yes, he is "definitely" a "core building block moving forward."