Mark Long Beach

http://espn.go.com/blog/nfceast/post/_/id/28008/free-agency-in-the-east-tight-ends Not a bad little summary. I want a Tight end who's at least a good to very good blocker and good to very good receiver. I'd rather have that then one who's just a very good/elite receiver. From what I understand, an elite receiving TE comes at the expense of the receiving corp as there are still only so many balls being thrown per game. I think we have a good young set of receivers. For the first time in a long time I really like them and have high expectations of them getting better. We also have a much harder time protecting our QB. Fitz does a good job helping them out, but the OL is still not a strength of our team. So I'd rather have help with a very good blocking TE who can also relieve pressure by making the defense account for his receiving skills as well. To me, Boss or Miller fit that description well. Here's a description of Miller from year before: That's what I want. No more one dimensional TE's please.

Thanks for your write-up and interpretations! It was good and appreciated.

We do... We do.

In the comments someone noted that the stripe is the same as on the invitation to the uniform party: Which I think is a Nice touch. http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2730/5785993841_46cf2f316f.jpg

yes, and the opportunity cost of using that money elsewhere.

I think it's just frustration speaking. We're all sad that we drafted a big-time boom or bust prospect who is doing an amazing impression of a bust. Not that I condone it, but some people can't keep their vitriol inside.

A pretty reasonable answer for this. I don't know if it'll account for the (estimated) $100m+ estimated debt, but it absolutely could. Remember signing bonuses were one of the ways that Snyder was abusing the salary cap limitation. Giving large amounts of hard cash up front as opposed to promises in future years. But you need a boatload of cash to do this. Ralph doesn't have that kind of $cash$ to burn.

Rarely does a post make me laugh out loud as much as this one did. Well done! Especially appreciated after a rough day.

Also, other teams will run a similar scheme to some of our preseason opponents. It's good to understand that scheme (even though it's likely a pretty vanilla version of it) so that you can test a couple things out with your players to see how they'll work for the future.

Well Spiller's out-performed McGahee for his first year.

I completely agree. I also didn't like but hoped Green would be "serviceable" as a temporary RT. He sure wasn't. Most people if they were in over their heads.

I agree with the optimism when some of those events happened, but Optimism didn't linger for me so much. Optimism has gotten stronger for me with Buddy running the show. It's really funny that you said a pig in slop because that was the exact image I had when I was writing the thread!

NFL Week one on schedule (OVER=After or not at all) UNDER CJ Spiller 800 yds RUSHING UNDER CJ Spiller 1500 yds from scrimmage UNDER FITZ TDs 23.5 OVER # Fitz game winning drives 1.5 OVER Stevie Johnson TDs 8.5 UNDER Terence McGee missed games due to injury 2.5 OVER Chris Hairston starts at RT 3.5 UNDER Michael Jasper games dressed 2.5 UNDER Wang starts 2.5 UNDER Merriman sacks 3.5 OVER Bills wins 6.5 (optimism is high right now) UNDER Division wins 2.5 OVER Moats sacks 4.5 OVER Defensive Total Rank 18 (under is better) UNDER # home wins 4.5 (Oak, PHI, WASH-TOR, DEN, TEN, MIA, NYJ, NE) UNDER Easley yds 475 OVER Easley tds 3.5 UNDER # Games Dareus makes tackle for loss 6.5 OVER # Games K Will makes tackle for loss 9.5 OVER Maybin sacks .5 UNDER Fitz beard length week 17: 1/8 inch (will he grow one again?) OVER Bills Probowlers 2.5 UNDER # rooks start by game 5: 2.5 (williams, dareus, shepperd, hairston, searcy, white, white, jasper, rogers) OVER

I've really been enjoying his recent interviews and in my eyes it sure looks like he's having a grand time being in charge of football. He came out of retirement but he doesn't show signs of weariness or regret of that decision. (unlike Levy IMO) He looks more comfortable than when he first took the job and at this point it looks to me like there is nothing else in the world that he'd rather be doing. I have grown to really like him as our GM.

He's by all accounts a work-a-holic. What he's doing is preperation for stepping up one more rung in the ladder to be the GM where he'll be responsible for even more things. I have no worries that he can't handle it. He's getting good hands-on experience with his scouts in preparation for him to delegate more when he moves up. He'll know more about them, how to interpret their results and what things he can trust about them.

Agreed, but they got the best FA tackles out there. The best piece of junk is still a piece of junk. Definitely a disappointment, but his career is hardly over. He certainly has talent. Well according to most reports that I hear of, you hope to get 4 good players out of a draft with the average being less than 3. It was clear from the draft that they were not expecting a quick results from their first draft class. It's tough to make the transition from college to pros and even harder for small school guys to do it. They drafted a lot of small school guys. Clearly indicating that they were looking for long term value rather than a short term fix. As for being a bad team, their record was bad for sure, but what I saw was a team that struggled mightily to make the transition to the 3-4, but got better the second half of the season (finishing 4-4). Yep, RT was a disaster and we wasted several games highlighting Marshawn Lynch so that we could trade him. (The correct decision IMO) Rough transition to 3-4. Some people can never make the transition, others like Kyle Williams excel no matter what. Besides years of poor drafting had left our cupboard bare. We were already getting worse before last year. Totally agree. DeHaven is not as good as Bobby April. But April was as good as gone since we didn't pick him for interim coach. I have NO idea if he'd be a good head coach, but he's a damn fine ST coach. He's the only recent coach that I miss. It's called humility or self-deprecation and most people consider it a virtue.

Nope. I'd say it's the entitlement of the players and their union to take as much as they can get even at the expense of a company. See US car companies over the last 30 years.

Great interview! Thanks very much for posting. I could totally listen to Nix all day. I hope that we can look back on the Nix era with him being the best GM we've ever had.

I swear, every time I see that picture it looks like the front of his jersey says "EATS"! I think yup, no joke.

The bad news is that the Redskins want to trade DOWN to pick up one of the second tier QB's at the bottom of round 1 or the top of round 2 NOT up. Alas.

Eric Woods (our second 1st rounder from the 2009 draft) Still not a good percentage of hits on our first rounders. Jeesh.

Sometimes percentages can be misleading when you have a small set of data. We've only got one year for Cam Newton vs the other QB's on that list who've got 2-4 years of data. Most of them have good percentages for at least one year. (Except Locker who sucks) For example, in his Junior year, Ponder threw 330 times for 68.8%, 7% higher than his overall percentage from all 4 years. He's not a throwing QB and I'm not comfortable drafting a running QB.

I'm surprised that nobody mentioned the quality of the two clips with Mooch. He does a great job of communicating (both to the QB's and to us the audience). I really enjoyed them.

Disagree. He'd be our best TACKLE.

Because we're looking for a needle in a haystack with late round picks. Sometimes you find one.