Hmmm, now that we have a new CBA…THANK YOU!..it’s time to ponder who it is the Bears need to get over the hump. Ideally I’d like to see them add LB depth with the extra cap room. Probably not Arrington, but a quality veteran OLB would be a godsend. Additionally a quality lockdown CB. Is Ty Law available? What about Woodson…is he worth the potential baggage?
Thanks. I’m so glad that they were able to avoid a work stoppage, and it seems that everybody is happy. I know the Pack will be paying into the pool for the lower income teams, but the GM seemed fine with it, just like Snyder was. Kudos to the NFL.
The Pack resigned Ahman Green to a relatively economical 1 year salary, which made me happy. Now we just have to figger out what’s up with Favre, whether Javon will be back, happy and healthy, and if we can get Kampman signed.
The only benefit from the atrocious last year is that we’re picking in the top 5. I’m a big fan of Mario Williams; he’s a beast, and he should still be there at 5. I’d also be fine with AJ Hawk, who could be a new Nick Barnett (I just can’t bring myself to praise Urlacher). It’ll be an interesting draft this year. By the by, any recommendations on the best in print draft guide? They’re usually a fun read.
nah, i am young (24) but i know they had replacement players once. they’re not above committing suicide over striking, however. no sport is.
and furthermore, i don’t buy that about contracts not being guaranteed because of injury. that means nothing at all. the fact that they got the union to bend for the owners and take it like that doesn’t mean it’s a self fufilling prophecy.
their union should be a bunch stronger. they might actually believe what you’ve said. that is sad.
When did this bending take place?
Gee, let’s see, the leagues with stronger unions, baseball, hockey and basketball. Which league is the best and healthiest sport? You want an NFL with teams having situations like the Knicks? Teams with situations like the Royals? How about losing a entire season?
Clearly things are much better when professional leagues have strong unions and gauranteed contracts. :rolleyes:
Anyways, my original reason for posting…
The fucking Bears. So far we’re what, 5 days into free agency and they’ve not made a single move. They were supposedly targeting Randle El and Archuleta and lost both to the Redskins. Now, I’m not crushed we didn’t get them, I don’t think either is a difference maker, but it doesn’t bode well that we’ve done nothing yet. We’ve only got a couple holes to fill but the crop is only going to get thinner after the draft, I hope they are saving up to move up in the first round to get a certain tight end, but it’d be the first tim ethe Bears did something that smart and proactive.
Shit, I’m getting depressed.
i would assume that the bending took place after the replacement year
(sorry about the delay in response, computer problems)
(hard) salary caps make a GM’s job easier. granted, a great GM can still get ahead, and a bad GM can still fall behind, but ownership then falls into play with how quickly they hold on to crappy GMs or retain good ones.
the redskins always are buyers in the free agent market.
it’s just fishy to me how lavar arrington forefitted 4.4 milloin in his money…just walked away form money he was owed…and the redskins just so happened to be about 4 million OVER the cap.
have your needs/wants as a bears fan changed since your first post or because of the new free agency market?
what’s the deal with the cardinals? don’t they still konw they need an offensive line to protect warner and now james? we’re gonna have some people slurping hardcore on the cardinals if they have a decent draft…even more so than last year.
No problem on the delay; this isn’t a chatroom, thankfully.
My point is that you have no idea what was on the table at the time. Guaranteed contracts aren’t the be-all end-all of labor needs. And it’s not like the players have no guaranteed money at all.
From the union’s perspective, they went on strike, the owners brought in scabs, and the nation basically responded “cool, football!” What would you have the union do?
They got free agency. Which would you rather have? Guaranteed contracts, or a free marketplace to negotiate with other teams? If you could only have one, which would you choose? The union chose free agency.
Noooooooo!
The Pats just took their first major loss of the offseason, as WR David Givens, rated by many as the top free agent WR available, has signed with the Tennessee Titans 
It looks like next year we will really get to see how much the individual WRs matter in Belichick’s offensive system.
I just lost a huge post to the fucking hamsters. I’m fucking livid right now. I’ll try to rewrite some of the comments later when I’m not fucking red in the face…
For now, anyone have thoughts on all the activity of the last day or so?
Well, one thought I had was that I am positive I saw on an ESPN ticker several days ago that Kevin Mawae signed with the Dolphins. Then today, I see he signed with somebody else. (Titans, maybe?) WTF?
My main thought is that it’s interesting how much spending the Redskins are doing. Weren’t they one of the teams in cap hell before the new agreement? They Just handed out five $30 million dollar contracts. (Okay, one of them was only $27 million.) I’m assuming that they were cap unfriendly in the long run, but it’s been the same story going on six years now of bringing in a ton of high priced guys that will put them into “cap hell” down the line. Well, we’re down the line, and their “cap hell” looks remarkably similar to “spending spree” to my eyes.
I saw today in a Givens story that Mawae had verbally committed to the Titans but had not yet signed a contract. As for the 'Skins… the huge salary cap increase and the cutting of a few players (Arrington was about $4 mil alone) are the reason they can do the spending this year, I think. Especially the salary cap increase.
I assume Omni’s post was probably centered on today’s QB orgy. I actually like Brees better than Culpepper going forward, but I think the latter is going into a MUCH better situation in Miami. The Dolphins will push the Pats next year for sure, IMO.
The other interesting thing I’ve been hearing is the possibility of some top prospects dropping down the draft board based on need (or lack thereof): one of the top QBs (likely Young) could drop well out of the top 5, and the top RBs could be trickling down much further than expected with Arizona and Baltimore out of the RB market.
I’m of the opinion that the teams striking early are going to come out of free agency the best; this year’s crop doesn’t seem to be particularly deep, especially as the increased cap has allowed teams to keep and/or restructure with some players they otherwise would have had to cut. Everyone else is going to find themselves overpaying for average to above-average talent. Or, worse yet, for Terrell Owens.
Why did James go to the Cards? Even though Manning tends to choke, the Colts still have a much, much better shot of winning the Super Bowl than the Cards. I thought the goal of this team game was to win championships. James is a star and I’m sure made plenty of money with Indy.
Is the pay raise that significant to leave a winning team for a poorer team with no O-line?
To be fair, if Green wasn’t the coach, the Cards would probably be one of the absolute NFC favorites at this point. And apparently a bunch of players buy into Green. Heck, pundits tend to buy into teams with shiny skill position players and ignore terrible line play and suspect coaching from a “good guy”, so they’ll probably be one of the NFC favorites anyways.
I do know that the competition to GET to the Super Bowl has been a lot tougher in the AFC than the NFC for the past few years… I’m not really sure Edge is dropping his “chance to get a ring” THAT much with this move, and I think it’s extremely possible that HE thinks he’s moving laterally while pocketing a bunch of extra cash.
In the end, though, he’s still playing for the Cardinals, so he might have found the only way to be LESS likely to win a meaningful game than by having Peyton as his QB 
well, i didn’t mean to pump up guaranteed contracts as a cure all to the labor
situation. i had just wondered why in the hell the contracts weren’t guaranteed (aside from signing bonuses) for these guys. of course owners want no guaranteed contracts because of the nature of the game. but because , if my memory serves me right, the avrerage nfl lifespan for a person is 3 years, they’ve got to get money while they’re in the league.
was the old strike based primarily on guaranteed contracts vs. free agency?
you would think that the union would bide the time until they got the upper hand in negotiation until they figured they’d bring it up again, which they had with this most recent happening. besides, i think the labor union would be smart to strike a balance between strict guaranteed contracts and a more fluid free agency in which they can drive up the salary of the upper tier.
To be fair, if Green wasn’t the coach, the Cards would probably be one of the absolute NFC favorites at this point. And apparently a bunch of players buy into Green. Heck, pundits tend to buy into teams with shiny skill position players and ignore terrible line play and suspect coaching from a “good guy”, so they’ll probably be one of the NFC favorites anyways.
I do know that the competition to GET to the Super Bowl has been a lot tougher in the AFC than the NFC for the past few years… I’m not really sure Edge is dropping his “chance to get a ring” THAT much with this move, and I think it’s extremely possible that HE thinks he’s moving laterally while pocketing a bunch of extra cash.
In the end, though, he’s still playing for the Cardinals, so he might have found the only way to be LESS likely to win a meaningful game than by having Peyton as his QB
Wow, weirdness. Sorry for the double post!
outside of money, i don’t know.
i don’t know if indy could have paid james that kind of scratch, but certainly comparable scratch, no? indy has more pieces in place to contend, and if it’s contending that he wanted, then he should have stayed, right? then again, so should have david givens. but who in the hell knows anymore.
In all honesty, I thought it was but now I’m seriously doubting it, because the last strike was in 87 but I just heard Golic say that free agency began in 93. I’ll see if I can’t dig up any (unfortunately pre-internet era) cites, as now I’m interested in what the actual original thinking was. But one thing I firmly believe is that the non-guaranteed aspect of the contracts is a bit of a red herring. Contracts are widely recognized as having 3 “actual” years, with all other years being “paper” years that neither side ever intended to honor to begin with. Their only purpose is to prorate the guaranteed signing bonus. As I said above, guaranteeing contracts would likely make no difference whatsoever in the vast majority of players’ contracts. They’d just end up with a 3 year guaranteed contract that would be worth whatever the non-guaranteed counterparts’ first 3 years plus signing bonus totalled.
Agreed that the union had a slight upper hand, but they did get at least one concession: “Keyshawning” is no longer allowed. The new CBA prohibits teams from deactivating a player with pay. What this means is that if you have a disruptive locker room cancer like Keyshawn or Owens, you cannot bar him from the locker room, practice field, or game sideline. Your choices now are to either let him continue to show up and poison the team, or outright cut (or trade) him. While the cynic might say that this rule would have only applied to two guys in the history of the modern era, a more nuanced perspective is that it had just recently become the de-facto punitive measure for teams to enact on a player out of spite. (The idea being that even though you had to pay him, you were in effect hurting his marketability by not playing him. Also, preventing other teams from signing him so you didn’t have to worry about him coming back to haunt you, ala Lawyer Milloy in that 31-0 opener a few years back.)