2012 NFL Offseason - OTAs and Training Camp

The Game Room
#1

The NFL Draft is over, the first 2 or 3 rounds of Free Agency are over, Undrafted Rookies have been signed, a few big trades have been consummated, NFL owners meetings are concluded, OTAs are just around the corner, yup it’s time for a new Offseason thread.

If you have an opinion on the state of your team that you’d like to share, this is the place. If you want to ask questions about some of the big FA signing or draft day pickups, we are looking forward to spouting off our thoughts.

Here’s the links to the recent 2012 NFL Draft thread and the 2012 NFL Pre-Draft thread. For you gluttons that might have missed it, here’s the SDMB Mock Draft thread too.

I don’t suppose there’s much more intro necessary, everyone knows the drill. The big news of the day is Terrell Suggs blowing out his Achillies tendon either playing basketball or training for his OTA conditioning test. He’s talking tough about being back in 4 months for the start of the NFL season but pretty much everyone with any sense is saying his season is over before it started. Big news for the Ravens, he’s probably their best player though I personally flavor Ngata and think Suggs is more bark than bite. For a defense getting really, really old this could be a major issue. It will be curious to see if this opens the door for Sergio Kindle to finally get back into the mix after that fractured skull injury.

Oh yeah, and Tebow.

#2

All ginger AFC Championship game.

Calling it now.

#3

Who?

#4

Things are not looking good for my Saints. Besides the Bounty-gate issues, they have a contract dispute with Brees. He’s not happy about the franchise tag, has not signed his tender, and is not participating in team activities. To a certain extent, I can’t blame him. He deserves to get paid. I’m afraid the team is going to take a step backwards this year, and may miss the playoffs.

#5

Bucs win the NFC South.

I think Andy Dalton should dye black stripes in his hair.

#6

This is the worst time of year for us football fans. The draft is done, the free agents left are middle of the road at best, and OTA’s don’t really tell you anything. Now comes the painful, tedious, and incredibly boring 3 1/2 months of next to nothing really happening.

Luckily, I have a wife and kids who love me, a golf game to work on, and a huge trip to Europe to enjoy this summer. The NFL shaped hole in my life will easily be filled. But I still want to find out if Price, Worthy, Miller, and Manning are the answers to an anemic pass rush and whether Morgan Burnett or Charles Woodson can replace the great Nick Collins, and if Aaron Rodgers has a chip on his shoulder after last year’s painful loss to the Giants. Unfortunately, those answers, and NFL games, are months away.

#7

And soon the NBA and NHL playoffs will be over, leaving no sports being played at all. :eek:

#8

Where you going?

And, you mean Perry right?

#9

Suggs being out, and Lewis and Reed being a year older, I think this may be the year the Ravens defense takes a noticible step back. Flacco has already peaked. Hopefully they will implode and disband.

#10

My familia y yo vamos a ir a Espana. And Italy, Germany, Austria, France, and Ireland. We’re very excited. I’m just upset that they cancelled NFL Europe, so I can’t even enjoy bad American football there.

Ummm, no, I meant Nick Price. Apparently the Packers have hired him in the hopes he can coach up the front 7 and improve their short game. You know how some coaches have players do yoga to improve flexibility or boxing to improve handwork of the players? The Packers are doing that with Nick Price and golf, hoping to improve chipping and focus. Or was it Vincent Price?

Yeah, I meant Perry.

#11

Damn, that sounds sweet. If you see a high school orchestra performing in Austria, that’ll be my nephew.

I’ll spend my summer moving to Maryland, so there’s that.

#12

That would be pretty damn cool, however unlikely.

:smiley:

I completely agree. That would look badass.

And maybe if we’re lucky they can move to another city!

#13

I’ll just go up to random teenagers in Austria and say “Furt says hi!”. What could possibly go wrong?

Going to become a Ravens fan? I think you need a lobotomy for that.

#14

Well, there’s always baseball, I guess.

I’m just kidding. I’m going to take a 3 month nap until the preseason starts.

#15

What about Arena Football?

#16

Despite having a very good team right here in town, I just can’t get into that.

#17

Awesome, quite the adventure. I’m gonna be in Ireland golfing the week of Memorial Day. If I cross paths with anyone wearing a cheesehead I’ll think twice about swinging on them.

#18

I will take this moment to randomly declare that Andy Dalton is massively overrated. People act as though he were the center of the Bengal’s turnaround, but his play was pretty meh all year. What success he did have was just chucking the ball up to AJ Green - who really is that good. If you look at his stats throwing to everyone but AJ Green, they’re pretty bad. Even with AJ Green, they rise to mediocre game manager type levels.

Which is a decent enough performance for a rookie, but I keep seeing him praised as being unexpectedly great or leading the Bengal’s season, and I just didn’t see anything out of him that was very impressive. He may develop, but right now he’s massively overrated.

#19

I don’t pay much attention at all to Cincinnati football talk, so I don’t know to what extent he is overrated. But I tend to agree with you that he’s a complete “meh” quarterback. That’s fine for a rookie, but I also didn’t see a lot of “Wow” moments that make me think he’s got big upside there. He was the 20th rated QB, he threw for only 6.6 ypc, which is 24th. And, most telling to me, he looked awful against elite defenses (Ravens, Steelers, Texans, and 49ers) and threw 3 interceptions against the Texans in the playoffs. I think it’s folly to mention him in the same sentence as Cam Newton when he’s much more of a Mark Sanchez type QB.

#20

In fairness, he had to step in and fill Carson Palmer’s shoes. Palmer was kind of sucky the last few years but for a while there he was a solid franchise quarterback. That Dalton has the same post-season career as Palmer probably helps to drive any overrating that might be going on.

(Am I remembering right that they both appeared in exactly 1 playoff game? I know Carson went out almost immediately after the game started and was looking good up to then, and Dalton threw 3 picks, but 0-1 = 0-1.)