dave mcbride

They paid Mario something like $66 million for one good season, one terrific season season, and one monster season. For a player at a premier position (pass rushing DE), that's not a bad deal at all. Stars get paid. He played like a star for those three seasons. He also had a dog season too, worth about maybe 2.5 million. You figure that he got paid about $21 million per season for his three good seasons. I'll take than any day.

Fitz is a qb that get you to 2-2 if your starter goes down for a four-game stretch. That's what you want in a backup, and I'd sign him in a second. He played reasonably well for TB, this season, and the team went 2-1 in the games he started (and the one they lost went down to the last minute).

He'll get paid and the Bills will get the best deal they can on the salary cap logisitics. It's pretty simple. They can't force him to pay them back or forego guaranteed money because he was very obviously forced out because of injury. The team doctors barred him from playing again! It's pretty simple.

Actually, at 10:30 am, Rosen wasn't there on the list. He must have just added him. Darnold is going to go before Rosen. I've been saying it all along. He's the prospect out there.

Great analysis, Kzoo; much appreciated. That said, I fell out of love with this sort of thing when Brian Brohm happened. By pretty much every measure, his college stats projected him to Canton.

"Degenerative" doesn't mean it started it years ago; it could have kicked in in the middle of this past season due to what seemed like a minor injury. Please, please don't assume that his neck was a problem before signing of his most recent contract. That's just dumb (because blind and uninformed) speculation.

You make some good points in this thread, but it really comes down to the Giants' own evaluation of the qbs. My relatively thin knowledge of Gettleman (hardass) suggests to me that he might be one of those GMs who simply doesn't like Rosen.

I think people need to think hard about whether Eli Manning has physically declined. To my inexpert eye, he looks like the exact same player he was in 2010 with regard to his throwing ability and mobility. The cast around him has changed, however. He can obviously succeed if he has a good cast around him.

Wood averaged 13.33 games per season for nine years. That's quite high for the NFL. Just about everyone who plays for an extended period in the NFL gets a significant injury at some point.

Hard to say. This league is about difference makers, and the signs point to him being a big difference maker. I don't think Dallas has any regrets about drafting Elliott, and it is the case that the Giants' running game has been moribund for far too long. But to be fair, I don't know. I'm just reporting what I'm hearing here -- that the Giants love Barkley. Plus I really do think that the Giants are in win-now mode. They are not your typical 3-13 team.

Yeah, I think they take a QB at one too, but I don't know their grades and they may think that the there are three guys who are all more or less the same. They have so many damn picks that they take Barkley at one and then trade back up from the #4 slot!

That's a fair point. But they also need LBs and DTs. Players like Vita Vea, Da'Ron Payne, and Marcus Davenport can help any team out. Al Woods and Jonathan Hankins are JAGs. They need a lot of help.

PS - if you look at Barkley's #s, it's almost as if Penn State showcased him as a receiver this year to show how good he was at it to NFL personnel guys. His receiving #s this past season were pretty incredible for an RB (~12 yards per reception on 50+ catches). https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/players/saquon-barkley-1.html

Yeah, but I like Barkley a LOT better because I think he's ten times the receiver that Guice is (who is a good player, no doubt). The numbers show it too. Just my opinion, but I think passing game ability for RBs is what separates the good players from the elite players.

Fair enough. That said, they want to pass the ball, and Orleans Darkwa is no better of a receiver than Gillislee. Vereen is a decent receiver, but not a good rusher. An all-purpose threat like Barkley would open up things massively for that offense. The arrival of Bell in Pitt coincided with a steep rise in offensive productivity in Pitt, after all.

We'll see. My sense tells me that this is a team in win-now mode. They were good in 2016, after all. They aren't nearly as bad as their record. But even with 2016, just look at these RBs. That's a terrible group, and it dragged the entire offense down with it. https://www.pro-football-reference.com/teams/nyg/2016.htm

Yup. What team has gone 7-9, 8-8, and 9-7 in the last three seasons? Only one I can think of! More seriously, it's less about them trading down in my view than them not taking a qb and going with Barkley. The Colts strike me as the ideal trade candidate because they really need help on their front seven and it seems to me that the #21 and #22 slots are the sweet spot for front-seven talent depth in this draft.

What do you make of that quote, CB? I personally think that Eli's obit has been written prematurely. He's still a quality qb who can make the throws and simply needs a much, much better running game, o-line, and healthy receivers.

There's a decent amount of chatter here in NYC that Barkley is truly the guy the Giants want. At first, I thought that'd be crazy because they need a future qb, but then I thought about it a little. Eli really isn't that bad at all at present, and physically, he hasn't declined as far as I can tell (I see a lot of Giants games). Last season they had a horrible running game (and a bad stable of RBs), a bad o-line, and a hurt OBJ. OBJ will be back next season and presumably fine, they are going to target o-line in FA, and Barkley really is that good. What separates him from the typical talented RB (e.g., AP) is that he has Leveon Bell and Shady-like ability in the passing game. He's a massive asset to a passing game, and don't think that what Kamara did for the Saints offense this season has gone unnoticed. And by most of the accounts I've seen, Barkley is the highest rated player in the entire draft. In the right situation, Manning can easily be a 30-TD passer for the next couple of years. The talent is there on defense, and they are the one team in the league that I think has the capability to turn around their fortunes on a dime. They are and always have been a good organization. My larger point is that the #2, #3 and #4 will not be QBs (assuming the Browns take a qb at #1). Trades will be available. The one wild card is that I could see the Browns taking Barkley at #1 and then taking a qb at #4.

He's genuinely injured! Paying him shouldn't be controversial.

He's already hard at work moving forward with his education:

Yep, I well remember. To be sure, he wasn't as good as Peters, but he was the opposite of a stiff and the trade wasn't all that lopsided at the end of the day given Peters' own injuries over the years.

If they have to pay him, they should pay him. That $5 million is hardly going to bust their cap.

He had a good career and was a good pick.

He had a good 9-year career and made a lot of money, and I'm glad he's leaving on his own terms. He's rich, soon to be 32, in a presumably happy family situation, and has the bulk of his life in front of him. He was a better player than a lot here gave him credit for even though he wasn't the best center in the league. He was, however, better than average and quite reliable, averaging over 13 games played per season over the course of his career. As for the Bills: I think that this is a bigger deal than many might think because he was a rock-solid center (again, not the best, but pretty good) whose general reliability made the center position one the Bills' brass figured they didn't have to worry about for a couple of years. This creates a pretty big hole for them, and they are going to need to address it early on unless they think Groy is capable of being a league-average starter.