Danchat

There’s been zero talk of Cousins to the Jets… you’d think teams would want him if he’s as great as the Kirk stand say he is, but I don’t think the Jets think he is going to get them over the hump.

They had to pay the posting fee, which research shows was $12.85M.

That's a concern, as the NFLPA is giving him guidance and some think that they are part of the reason why he's asking for a 100% guaranteed deal, the players want the NFL to become more like the other leagues. The reports I read said that his knee just wasn't healing. It was a PCL sprain, which tend to be on the milder side of knee injuries, but sometimes it happens. I don't question his toughness. Reminds me of Sam Bradford... However, there was some scuttlebutt that other players on the team were frustrated with him, and I believe he didn't show up to their playoff game in January... lol, there's an article about Michael Vick calling him out for it. There seems to be more going on behind the scenes. That is true, though Mark Andrews is a stud. Their plan at WR last year was dumb, they need to go heavy on investing in WRs. Good thing it's a historically bad WR crop in free agency and a below-average WR crop in the draft...

Lamar Jackson can be whisked away for 2 1sts on the non-exclusive franchise tag. No team has reached out, as talk is that he wants a fully guaranteed deal like Watson’s, something like $250M. For a guy who has not been able to finish a season healthy since 2020, that’s a lot to ask. Some are crying collusion, but the Watson deal is not something other teams actually want to do. On Jones, the Giants should have played chicken and let him realize that his price tag would be lower after he hit the market. Its insane he’s now only a few mill a year under Mahomes and Allen now.

Was the price for Castillo that much? I remember commenting in the Other Baseball thread saying that I thought the deal came relatively cheap, but I don't remember the details. I'll have to go back and take a look.

He became a minor league free agent at the end of 2022 and sat around for a bit, until the Twins signed him. If other teams thought anything of him, he’d been signed in an instant.

Oof.

It’s hard to believe they are down to pay Pagan $3.5M… and yet wouldn’t offer Fulmer $4M. And a couple years back they wouldn’t take Wisler for $1M.

Great to see Pagan in midseason form!

I hope they have a plan to relieve Pagan and Megill... and when the injuries inevitably hit.

O'Neill's cap hits could get up to $23M / $25M the next two seasons if you go for the max restructure... so I'd rather not push his salary back too far. The point of the plan was to differentiate from my past two years where I did just that - I traded away Kirk both times, so I feel like it would have been same-y to just do that again, so instead I tried a "all-in" plan. They traded for Hockenson with the intention to extend him, and good TEs can play into their 30s. I think Hock is a good one, so even in a nuclear reboot they should extend him. The alternative is to trade him for less draft capital than what you traded him for at the deadline last year, which doesn't make a lot of sense.

Yup, Rojas was a 2.5 WAR player at SS for Miami last year despite a .605 OPS, and the previous three years combined he was a .732 OPS hitter. He is a fine replacement and Farmer is not an improvement... not to mention, we need him. Gordon is an outfielder who can handle himself at 2B, but is not going to be playing SS again in the majors.

I wrote an extensive Offseason Guide on what the Vikings might do - you can find it here, but here's a preview:

I think we found our next Rand Ball Stu article!! 😜 I can see it now: Squirrel accused of the assault on Balazovic

I don't see them eating $2M after he spends a month with the team, the plan seems to be that he will be a bench bat.