Ed Reed has reportedly reached a deal with the Texans. He’s irreplaceable so that sucks, but in Ozzie we trust and so on. The fan is sad, but the realist understands. He’s getting old, slow, his injuries prevent him from tackling, and he was a problem in the locker room, but he was ours. So good luck Django. I’m sure, if he wanted to, management will let him retire as a Raven.
I guess they’ll try to sign Michael Huff now. I don’t know a damn thing about him besides he can play CB/FS.
It’s officially the end of the Urlacher era in Chicago. According to the Chicago Tribune, the Bears gave him a $2 million ultimatum while he was asking for around $11 for two years. Up until now, Urlacher said that he would give a “hometown discount” for the Bears but that still seems like an awful lot. I don’t know where else he would go but I hope that he could still return and retire a Bear if he plays elsewhere for a year or two.
Nobody is going to give Urlacher $11 million for 2 years. He started 12 games last year and had 53 tackles and one splash play.
Yeah, I read somewhere that that was Urlacher’s “opening bid” and he was going to come down after the counter from the Bears, but you’re right. If he does go to another team, he will get paid $2 mil by that team if he’s lucky. I can’t see him wanting to play on any team that doesn’t have a legit shot at the Superbowl but who would want him? Could he plug in at SF, Baltimore, or New England? I dunno.
He may have a year or two left and with an offseason removed from his issues last year, he may be able to play closer to his norm than he did last year. Maybe be a two down linebacker, which almost sounds like an insult to me.
He’s played Mike his entire career, so I can’t see him moving outside (or even playing in a non-Cover 2 scheme for that matter).
SF has a younger, better MLB in Patrick Willis, and plays a 3-4. New England plays a weird 4-3/3-4 hybrid which Urlacher isn’t suited for at all. The Ravens… well, maybe. They’ve lost all three of their starting linebackers and Urlacher is probably an adequate replacement for even-older Ray Lewis.
They need to buck tradition and take a receiver with their first pick.
"“It got a little personal there at the end,” Urlacher said, “just because I think I have so much passion for the team. I wanted to be a Bear. I wanted to play here, finish my career here. I think that’s what made me mad, too. The Bears kept saying, ‘We want to make Brian a Bear, retire a Bear,’ blah, blah, blah. It was a lip service in my mind. They said that, but they never acted on it. It was like they had a handbook on how to handle the situation that they all passed around over there.”
Sure, Brian. You wanted to be a Bear so much you said no to their contract offer. You wanted to play for the Bears AND get paid more than they offered. Nothing wrong with that, but let’s not pretend you’re not in it for the money too.
The Bears are certainly playing hardball by not overpaying for an older, slower, injured franchise icon, but he is a franchise icon. But Urlacher has to realize he’s not going to get much more on the open market, and that the Bears, with a new administration and a new coach, may not want the kind of locker room presence Urlacher brings to the table.
Tough, non-sentimental call by the Bears, which is good for the bottom line business of the NFL.
I don’t really like this new “ballcarrier lowering the head” rule, particularly because it isn’t reviewable and because there’s too much room for human error on the part of the ref determining where exactly the tackle box is, was the runner further than three yards down field, was the helmet used at all, etc. We’ve already seen refs blow calls for leading with the helmet on the part of a tackler when replays clearly show the actual hit was led with the shoulder, etc.
It’s just another rule that is too open to judgement calls that will screw a team out of an important play eventually.
I still don’t understand why everything isn’t reviewable. “Hey, we’re going to have instant replay so we screw up fewer calls, but- and you guys are going to love this- we’ll only allow it for a random set of plays!”
I’m with you. I think the stance is “but it’ll slow down the game!”. Well golly gee, that doesn’t seem to stop the NFL from interrupting my game to bombard me with advertisements for piss beer!
Anyway, I am sure most football fans would rather a brief interruption in the game to make certain the call was made correctly rather than see their favorite team get shafted out of a win due to a blown call.
The game is too slow already. I really don’t want to sit around waiting even more.
Why would you be sitting around more? No reason it would take longer to review a holding call than, say, whether a runner stepped out of bounds.
I’ve been saying that shit for years. If you still only get 2 (or 3) challenges, why can’t you use them whenever you want? If I want to challenge something seemingly pointless, why can’t I? What’s the difference?
By having reviewable plays at all, they’re admitting that the officials make mistakes, except on these specific plays where they are somehow completely infallible. The standard answer is “because those are judgement calls” and to that my reply is “If ANY play needs to be reviewed, it’s the judgement calls!” Maybe the side judge had a bad angle on that PI call (or non-call). Maybe the back judge had a bad angle on that alleged facemask.
And they keep adding shit that’s “automatically reviewed.” Isn’t that why they got rid of replay in the first place (then went to the challenge system)?
Yeah they should at least make rules like that challengeable. No coach except Marvin Lewis would cavalierly toss a valuable challenge flag for no good reason.
Nah, I don’t think so. If the Ravens were going to overpay an aging veteran, they would have resigned Ed Reed. They lost three of the four LBs who started the Super Bowl, but there are still some decent young linebackers on the roster - Courtney Upshaw and Albert McClellan have both started on the outside, and Jameel McClain’s started 44 games for Baltimore over the last three years. McClain’s 2012 season ended on IR with a spinal injury, but reports are that he’s on track to come back next year, and the team plans to move McClellan inside. Even with the roster losses, the Ravens have four linebackers with starting experience.
I’d like to see them sign Elvis Dumervil to play opposite Suggs, giving Upshaw another year of seasoning before he moves into a full-time starting job. Signing Marcus Spears and Chris Canty shores up the run defense (a glaring weakness last year), and Lardarius Webb returns from IR at CB. They have to replace both Reed and Pollard at safety, but the Ravens’ defensive situation is not nearly as dire as it’s been made out to be.
The offensive line is a different story. Flacco’s playoff revival came when Bryant McKinnie replace Oher at LT, and he’s still unsigned. Losing both McKinnie and Matt Birk leaves the o-line pretty shaky, and Flacco has some bad games behind shaky lines. If they don’t get a decent LT, Flacco’s gazillion dollar contract is just money down the drain.
Please keep Dumervil out of the AFCN, thanks!
Obviously, I hated this move but it’s probably the right one. Urlacher’s $11M/2 proposal was clearly insane and was every bit as insulting as the Bears $2M/1 offer. I know a $5.5M salary would be a big pay cut, but it’s not reflective of either the market or his value on the field. I’m still holding out hope that he calms down and the two sides re-engage and come to an agreement that’s fair, maybe something like $2.5-3M per year since I think he’s still a valuable player in this scheme. If not the Bears will have to sort something out at LB.
I hated the McClellin pick from the get go and he’s just not a NFL caliber 4-down DE. As a pass rusher he’s nothing more than a specialist, but lots of fans have freely speculated about moving him to LB from the day he was drafted and some on draft day thought he might be the eventual successor to Urlacher. I don’t think he can play MLB in a Tampa-2 since he doesn’t have the skills to drop into the deep middle zone, but maybe the new scheme will be more accommodating to this type of shift. The organization has poo-pooed any talk of McClellin to LB but you never know. Personally I don’t think it will work, but at Sam it could be a different story. There his pass rush skills could be used on blitzes and he could probably settle into a curl zone as good an anyone.
In other news the Bears signed a journeyman TE in Steve Maneri which is not that shocking. They needed another warm body who could block and Maneri is that, not sure if it means anything that he and Rodriguez were teammates. Maybe Emery has a hard on for Temple. He’ll replace Spaeth for half the price.
They also signed DE Turk McBride which seems a little odd. The price was right and I guess they needed to hedge in case Izzy leaves, but I’m not sure how he fits. If they expect him to be a low cost replacement for Izzy they are going to be in a unhappy place, Izzy is a rock. If I want to continue the conspiracy theory you could view this as a hint that McClellin can’t be slotted as a DE, but that’s probably just bullshit.
My main reaction here is that Emery and Kromer thus far have been a little too eager to grab guys they are familiar with. Between Bushrod, McBride and Maneri that’s 3 guys. Now, maybe they just see these guys as under-appreciated due to their closeness with them but the teams they came from certainly didn’t value them much. Lovie and Angelo always had “their guys” who were disproportionately paid and “developed” and perhaps this is typical in the NFL, but I hope this isn’t a sign of the team being risk-averse or having tunnel vision in free agency.
Forgot to mention that this move to let Urlacher walk makes drafting Alec Ogletree in the first round sound awfully enticing. Love the guy’s skill and he’s insanely perfect for the Tampa-2 (assuming Tucker’s scheme retains the basic tenets). I have a bit of a hard-on for Austin, but Ogletree is a much safer pick at a much more needed position. Naturally both guys could be gone come pick 20, so who knows.
This is a great post. They’re reportedly talking to McKinnie, so maybe he’ll be back but he doesn’t want to take a pay cut so…probably not.
Can’t remember if I mentioned it in this thread, but the new Browns FO are big on analytics. They put out job listing for some full time analytics guys. I’m happy to hear it, if they do it right they could pull ahead of the backwards-ass NFL on this issue. I only hope they apply it to coaching too. There’s serious ground in the NFL ripe for the easy pickings by just not being a conservative old punt on 4th and 2 95% of the time typical nfl coach.