NFL Offseason 2015 - Countdown to the first arrest

On the Steelers front...

chirp, chirp....

They signed Moats, Worilds retires (OUCH) and Troy doesn't know what he's doing.

Wrong year to loose your best LB (and this has to be an unplanned loss)... next year's schedule is brutal.

Good on him, he wasn't an idiot that squandered his millions. One has to wonder how much good he couldn't have done with 15 million more dollars.

the Steelers don't go after Suh or Revis. Sure could have used either one of those two.

Oh, and "The Beard" retires. Thanks for the memories... pretty damn good player on that line.

 

Good luck running the football against the Rams next season. Fairley just signed. The Rams have done a good job building another nasty NFC West defense.

 

The Steelers sign Big Ben to a 5 year 99 million dollar contract.

 

Dolphins sign Jordan Cameron (TE, formerly a Cleveland Brown) and Kenny Stills (WR, formerly a New Orleans Saint)

 

If history has shown me anything it's that this coaching staff will not get the same kind of performance out of him. Every time they bring in a big FA he under performs. That is until we cut him and he signs with another team.

I really hope Charles Clay is retained as well. A 2 TE set would help make up for the loss of all our veteran WR's.

 

^The Bears must think winning two games a year is a good thing.

--Sran

 

Welcome to my world. I root for a team where an untalented piece of garbage (Josh Brent) still has a roster spot for some reason and a team that also just added noted domestic abuser Greg Hardy. Hell, might as well make a run at AP at this point.

 

^There are rumors circulating that they may do just that.

--Sran

 

Oh believe me I don't doubt it. I just don't see how they could make a run for him even if they wanted too given their cap space.

 

the cap is an imaginary thing (up to a point). plenty of ways to play silly games with it, it just kicks the can down the road. do it enough, and eventually you spend the year in cap jail and can't do anything, but plenty of ways to make it happen if you only care about short term.

 

Well that's the problem this year though. It is the so called "year in jail" hence Dez getting franchised and Murray walking. I have a feeling Murray would have gotten paid before AP. They are struggling to resign Rolando McClain right now who was picked up off the scrap heap last year.

 

Not quite cap jail. Look at the steelers the last couple years, or what the Saints are going through right now. That's where it all hits. Kicked things down the road until Brees is like eleventy-million dollars against the cap...

 

Right, definitely not quite Steelers or Saints bad but no real shot at acquiring a major acquisition with a huge price tag. Like I said, Murray would have been resigned before they pony up cash and draft picks for AP.

 

While it's been treated as somewhat less than headline story, looks like the Falcons and Browns will be getting some stiff sanctions for their own cheating scandals that were buried under the Deflategate media hysteria.

http://espn.go.com/boston/nfl/story...olating-league-policies?ex_cid=espnapi_public

Doesn't say what, but says 'severe penalties' and soon, so we'll see. If draft picks are involved, imagine we'd have to know soon so that can be planned for.

Speaking of which, waiting to see what happens with the Jets tampering thing over Revis. That the Jets did it is pretty textbook, even if you pretend that they never actually spoke to Revis until after he was cut from the Pats. Unlikely that they agreed to a giant contract in an hour or two's time, but sure. Moronic owner statements make it textbook tampering either way, so can't be nothing.

Entertainingly, Jets just filed charges of tampering against the Pats in retaliation. Kraft was asked about the negotiations, and he said he'd have liked to have kept him, didn't work out. Hard to see how that pans out, as was in the past tense, but not supposed to talk about other team's players, so who knows. More just Jets being petty IMO, but will see. NFL not exactly consistent with things.

Enjoyed hearing in the owner's meetings that the Patriots' proposal for more cameras on the end zone boundary lines (for review plays) was tabled because the NFL said they can't afford it Not sure it's a billion dollar proposal...

And the whining Ravens got the Patriots' ineligible receiver thing declared illegal going forward. Too stupid to counter it, so got it banned. Colts had it pretty much figured out by the next week, and didn't do it that I'm aware of in the Superbowl, but either way, dead now. Liked the Ravens' twitter feed playing it up that it's banned now, highlighting how their dumb coach couldn't figure it out but now it's gone! Don't worry, Belichick will just come up with some other wrinkle from the rule book to confuse your dumb ass. One ESPN report I saw not too far back was just highlighting how many rules have been because the Pats like tweaking those fine lines in the rulebook, and doing things that other people that aren't as familiar with the rules just can't figure out. Then they remove whatever loophole Bill was hammering, and he picks a new one, rinse and repeat. Part of why Bill isn't the NFL's favorite person, he makes them work a lot

 

The line for the Belicheat d*** suckfest starts here.

 

If you want first dibs, be my guest.

Or you could contribute to the conversation instead of taking a shot, I guess. Don't think I said anything crazy there. It's embarrassing that the Ravens were celebrating the rule change that they were too stupid to understand. Colts did fine with it, and Pats didn't even bother against the Seahawks, but Ravens got confused by it several plays in a row. And then instead of taking a timeout to figure it out, took a penalty first, THEN wasted a timeout. The whining about it being unfair, or illegal, or whatever else they could think of was laughable, especially when no one else came to their defense on that one. I'd have kept quiet when it passed, but they went out of their way to remind everyone that they were made to look foolish by it. Personal choice, I guess.

Or we could point to the Pass Interference/illegal contact rules that were changed entirely because the Colts were mugged by the Pats a while back. Sure I could point at a few more, and read a fun article to that effect, but can't find the link at the moment.

 

Penalties are out for the Falcons (pumping in fake crowd noise) and Browns (GM texting plays to the sidelines):

Falcons fined $350k and lost 5th rounder in 2016
Browns fined $250k, GM suspended 4 games

When they said "severe", guess I thought it would have meant more than that. On the other hand, punishment when the Colts used to pump in crowd noise (check it out, the noise actually skips in one clip I've heard! ) was nothing at all, so guess it's severe by comparison.

Punishment/enforcement is always a funny area for the NFL. they're terrible at it, and can't be consistent to save their lives. Sometimes just feels like they've got a Magic 8 Ball of punishments, and they let it decide whether to punish or not, and then how extreme. Even that might be somewhat consistent after a few tries...

 

The NFL, behind the progressive curve as usual, hires it's first full time female referee. The NBA did this several years ago.

http://www.latimes.com/sports/sport...ale-official-sarah-thomas-20150403-story.html