I think somebody usually does. No hard and fast rules, though.
Feel free to do one if you want to discuss a mock
There will be zero blowback. He’s a coach who did well last season, and he’s male. Consequences are for the women.
On Vrabel’s side, I’m not even sure what blowback there should be. While there’s the moral judgment around potential marital infidelity, that’s weak sauce for any consequences except in the court of public opinion.
On Russini’s side, I could see the potential bind. If the staff guidelines for the Athletic include maintaining impartiality in reporting or perhaps even the appearance of it, that’s actually job related.
That said, if these particular photos were of two men in a hot tub, one who happened to be a reporter covering the NFL and the other a coach, I doubt it would have gotten much coverage at all and probably no consequences for anybody unless they were photographed being physically intimate. And those types of double standards are stupid.
and now Niners are looking at the Syracuse punter–please, please, don’t draft him!
The sum total of my research on this is what I heard on sports radio so of course it’s 100% correct.
From a professional point of view it’s much worse for Russini. She reported on the possibility of AJ Brown going to the Patriots. AJ has denied what was in the report. If Vrabel gave her information true or not that helped his team that’s just gamesmanship. If she reported compromised information just because of her romantic relationship that’s very damaging to her journalistic integrity and to whoever published it.
If it were the same particular photos but the reporter was a dude, given that Vrabel is married to a woman, it very well may have been a story.
(Bad voice translations usually irritate me, but for some reason I kind of liked seeing it mistranslate Vrabel as “variable.” You know what? Good effort!)
After being unable to reach terms with DT Dexter Lawrence on a contract extension, the Giants have traded him to the Bengals, in exchange for Cincinnati’s first-round pick (#10 overall) in next weekend’s draft.
Lawrence is a two-time second-team All-Pro (2022 and 2023), and a three-time Pro Bowler; he’ll turn 29 this season. The Giants now have the #5 and #10 picks in the first round.
As a Giants fan I’m ok with this. Getting another 1st rounder gives them a lot of flexibility. Dexter made it clear that he was going to be a problem next season if he wasn’t traded. If he had a good year asking for a big extension would make sense. Instead he was fat and mediocre all season. It didn’t make sense for the team and for the cap.
I’m going to call it a win for the Giants, and maybe also a win for the Bengals if being traded gives Lawrence the motivation to get back into form.
I think they will wind up taking an offensive skills player with one of those picks. Maybe Love at 5 if he’s still there. There’s grumblings about the return of Malik Nabors. Who knows if he’ll ever be back 100%.
so the Niners finally agreed with TW on 2 year deal, 2 yrs, $50M.
But after reading this deal by Cowboys, looks like kickers are now a premium position:
The [Dallas Cowboyscowboys) have made [Brandon Aubrey] the highest-paid kicker in NFL history.
Aubrey agreed to a four-year extension that makes him the first kicker to earn $7 million per year and includes $20 million guaranteed,
Well bless their hearts.
Aubrey is a very good kicker: in his three years in the league, he’s been named to the Pro Bowl every year, and first- or second-team All Pro every year.
But, and I say this as a longtime student of the kicking game, and someone who aspired to be a kicker when I was younger: that’s a lot of money (and a lot of guaranteed money) for a position that has a high degree of variability, and at which a player can very quickly lose their mojo.
In a given season, there are 3 to 5 great kickers, and 25 or so adequate-to-good kickers. You definitely don’t want to be one of the teams which winds up with a bad one (which can cost you games, and leads to churn and uncertainty once you start trying out new guys), but the difference between a good one and a great one is probably not so great that it’s worth a large salary premium.
It’s not a terrible number.
It’s definitely big money by kicker standards but not huge in the grand scheme of things. It’s going to average about 2% of their cap over the next few years. Maybe less. With the cap exceeding $300 million and solidly growing every year, it’s perhaps a slight overpayment as long as he’s a reliable kicker.
More than the money, I’m thinking the length of the contract is more of a gamble, but they were probably going to have to accept a 3-4 year deal or risk playing the game of kicker of the week
Also, I had not realized how old Brandon Aubrey was: despite only having played in the NFL for three years, he’s 31 years old.
He played professional soccer for two years (2017 and 2018), then was working as a software engineer. He spent several years (2019-2022) working with a special-teams coach to learn how to kick a football, then played 2 seasons (2022-2023) with Birmingham of the USFL, before signing with the Cowboys.
The fact that he’s already over 30, and will be 35 when that contract expires, probably puts a bit more risk to it.
A little bit more risk but kickers can have longer careers into their 40s. That is, as long as their accuracy stays up.
At the very least, a slight overpayment for a kicker would not be the worst decision they’ve ever made. At least they didn’t pull an Al Davis and waste a first round pick on a kicker or punter.
And that’s the trick, of course. There absolutely have been kickers who have been effective well into their late 30s and 40s (Morten Anderson, Adam Vinatieri, Jan Steneurd, etc.). OTOH, there are guys like Justin Tucker, who was great until age 34, when he suddenly got the yips.
Aubrey could be All-Pro for the next decade; he could go into the tank next year. Kicking is, frankly, a little weird and a little inexplicable.