You’ve got to hear Kyle Shanahan’s explanation, all 2 minutes and 37 seconds of it, when I asked him why he fell for Lance, the North Dakota State quarterback.
I set up trips to see the Falcons that I’m using in my column next week.
Rodgers’ discontent, as has been well-documented, is real.
Regardless, this is more, I believe, about the traditional structure of the Packers, a structure that hasn’t bent much to give influence to players, that hasn’t changed much in the last 30 years.
As for Rodgers’ reported feelings about him, Gutekunst said “you never want to see those things or read those things.
Rumors floated Thursday and then over the weekend about multiple teams contacting the Packers to try to deal for Rodgers.
If he feels like he’s been wronged, he could stay away regardless of any external pressure, and losing his scheduled $22-million compensation this year wouldn’t bother him nearly enough to change his mind.
If, as I suspect, Rodgers feels unappreciated by the Packers, is displeased that Gutekunst picked his potential heir instead of a receiver last year, and doesn’t think he’s valued by the franchise as much as a three-time MVP should be, it’s going to be tough to build a bridge to make him return.
Gutekunst wouldn’t discuss the team’s next move, but somehow, the embattled GM said he remains optimistic that bridge can be built.
As ESPN pointed out, no MVP in the 64-year history of the award has ever been traded the following season, and only two have not played the following season.
In the spring of 2011, Carson Palmer decided he would rather not play football than play for the Cincinnati Bengals, his team of seven years.
I would expect Rodgers to not participate in any offseason work with the Packers, and to hope the Packers would change their minds about trading him.
• Pittsburgh used its first pick on a running back, Najee Harris, and he’ll have to be pretty great to succeed behind that offensive line.
Niners factoid: The last piece in the big March 26 trade with Miami that netted the third overall pick was a bonus that fell from the sky.
So Adam Schefter has been close to the Shanahans since he covered the Broncos for the Denver Post, and Chris Simms has been close to Kyle Shanahan since they were teammates at the University of Texas.
“His natural ability to play the quarterback position, just in terms of how he plays in the pocket, how he can go through the progressions, how, when no one’s open, that he gives it a chance, that he recognizes it.
“Then you look into the other attributes, and you’re like ‘Oh, I haven’t even gotten to the running skill set.’ I haven’t gotten to the upside of how much better he can get, the more he plays.
But that’s what was so cool about the kid, that going through this process after we moved up to where I talked to him so many times, to have him go through the number of tests and stuff that we have them all go through .
Well, if I never saw the tape, and I got to hang out with him first, I would’ve felt that same way with him as a person and been like, ‘Man, I hope the tape matches this person!’ You know? That’s kind of what was cool about it.
Most days, he’d do family things for part of the day and watch college quarterbacks for part of the day.
After he finished his pass-through of tape study on Lance, he emailed Lynch between 20 and 40 plays of Lance so he could see what Shanahan was seeing, and he told the GM words to this effect: I’m obsessed with the type of stuff we can do with this guy.
You’ve got to have a guy that can do both.” Shanahan didn’t say this to me, but he had to be thinking about the mobility of Lance and the relative lack of it with Jones, and he had to be thinking of the exquisite accuracy of Jones in college.
Could they have made a better deal than the gargantuan price of first-round picks in ’22 and ’23, plus a three next year, to move just nine spots? Could they have waited and done better? Possibly.
But I kept making the point just watching teams in our division these last few years, watching Seattle trade two ones for a strong safety, watching the Rams do it where they haven’t had one five years in a row, do it for a quarterback and a cornerback.
In his office in Santa Clara, Shanahan would call in coaches and debate the quarterbacks with them, trying to never give a clue who he liked.
In the days before the draft, Fontenot listened to multiple offers for the fourth pick, but none came close to the mega-package he’d need to move out the slot to take the Florida tight end.
“They hired the wrong guys if they thought we were going to lower expectations, take our time, and rebuild,” Smith said.
It doesn’t sound absurd anymore to say, ‘Hey, I want to play till I’m 40.’ If he didn’t want to play, that would be a different set of problems. We still may not have taken a quarterback at 4 because soon as you take one, if you take the wrong guy, there’s some bad unintended consequences because right away, it’s like, ‘There’s your quarterback of the future.’ And if you take the wrong guy just because you want to win the press conference tonight, it’s like .
The fact the Falcons didn’t take a quarterback is even an extra dose of faith in Ryan, whose compensation is an anchor on a bloated cap.
I don’t think drafting Pitts made a big difference in their Jones plans—I think they’d still like to find a taker if the price is right, and my guess is the price would be an unconditional second-round pick.
“My son tells me, ‘You need to trade for this guy, you need to get that guy,’ ” Fontenot said.
This is going to be a great fit for me, because coach has a great reputation for using the end in different places.” An underrated piece of the offensive puzzle could be the versatile receiver/back/returner Cordarrelle Patterson, one of the game’s most intriguing players.
I drove away from the Falcons in the wee hours thinking they needed a GM and coach who understand the business of football can be cold sometimes, and it’s not a business to keep heroes a year too long, and who aren’t married to anyone here.
Jaguars factoid: All prospective draft choices were given private phone numbers for draft weekend, so teams could contact them directly without worry about cell phone issues.
In 30 minutes, Khan would meet his new franchise quarterback for the first time, and forget the fact that Khan, 70, is worth something like $8 billion.
Then, after the misery of last season, I think, ‘Oh my God, this is almost too good to believe.’ How the gods of football smiled on us.
The morning Florida Times-Union showed what northeast Florida felt 15 hours earlier—four teen boys, all giddy, at the team’s draft party on the field the previous night, exulting as Roger Goodell announced the Lawrence pick on the video board.
Jacksonville seems a good fit for Lawrence, with veteran pro coaches Darrell Bevell the most hands-on coaches with him.
The Jags’ second pick was explosive back Travis Etienne, who played 40 games alongside Lawrence in the Clemson backfield over the last three years and caught 85 passes over the last two years.
Jacksonville exited the draft with a need still at tight end, with one of Meyer’s old recruits at Ohio State, Luke Farrell, picked to supplement Tyler Eifert; Meyer sounded post-draft like he wished they’d gotten more of an offensive threat there.
He’s been the number one quarterback on all levels since he was 14 years old, being catered to at every level.
Khan owns Fulham in the English Premier League, so he knows a bit about the world sport landscape.
My job now especially is to come in and to win games and to get ready to be the best I can be and to make the team as good as we can be.
It’s just doing what I know that I’m good at and bringing that here and improving on all the things I need to improve on.
But there will be tough days for the quarterback who lost two games in three years, and the coach who never had a three-game losing streak in 17 years of college football.
I told him, ‘This is where it all started.’ He’s an awesome pilot.” Collins was the valedictorian in his 47-person senior class at Hominy High, and he said growing up in the little town was a blessing, because he knew everyone and everyone knew him.
In the draft process, he’s heard all the excessive praise that comes with being one of the best tight-end prospects ever.
I doubt the Ravens would be a suitor for Julio Jones this summer, but if the price is right, GM Eric DeCosta has shown he’ll find a way to squeeze another good player under the cap.
I never have understood the criticism of Justin Fields, who threw 67 touchdowns with nine interceptions in college, who took one of the biggest hits of the 2020 season and missed one play in the college football playoffs against Clemson and returned to throw four touchdown passes.
Then to hear him? Man, Sewell was fired up to be a Lion: “Yes sir! We in the D!” No idea if the Lions will win big.
He and the Texans will say all the right things about the legal process running its course or Deshaun Watson still being their guy, and Caserio’s words about the pick Friday night—“It doesn’t impact any one player individually.”—strains credulity.
The Rams are hoping for Tyreek Hill, but his durability may make him more Percy Harvin—who had some lightning-strike moments but missed 41 percent of his team’s games in eight NFL seasons.
Leatherwood will have his chance to prove everyone wrong, but part of the reason the pick didn’t get the benefit of the doubt was because of the franchise’s first-round picks in 2019 .
But what the selection of Kellen Mond says to me is the Vikings might not be paying premier-QB money much longer to Kirk Cousins, who’s four games over .500 in his three Minnesota seasons, and who has a $45-million cap number in his last contractual season, 2022.
Remember the last minute of the game, when Bill Belichick stood on the Patriots sidelines while America screamed, “TAKE A TIMEOUT BILL!!!” at the TV? He did not take a timeout, which would have allowed Seattle to calmly consider its option down near the goal line.
Think of Tom Brady, and think of what the Patriots value in a quarterback: intelligence, a quick info-processor on the field, accuracy, performs well under pressure.
Uneasy lies the starting quarterback in New Orleans, whether it be Jameis Winston or Taysom Hill.
Wideout Kadarius Toney at 20 was an okay pick, but pass-rusher Azeez Ojulari, even with health questions, was a value home run at 50.
Moore: 189 catches at Ole Miss, and scouts think he’ll be a better pro because he wasn’t used in the deep game enough in college.
Quite a reaction from running back Najee Harris, the first-round pick charged with revitalizing a Steeler run game that played a huge role in ruining the season last year in Pittsburgh.
I asked Harris—who gained 4,624 scrimmage yards and scored 57 touchdowns, most ever for an Alabama player—about the devaluation of the running back in recent football history.
Could WFT have its left tackle for the next few years in Samuel Cosmi? And with the value pick at 51? Interesting to note that WFT did not use its first-round pick next year to move up for a quarterback this year—as the Bears did with Justin Fields.
“If he wants out, he needs to say something more than ‘my future is a beautiful mystery’ or whatever else he has said in a vague way before acting like he didn’t drop a proverbial turd in the punch bowl.
Most impressive performance by a GM: Denver’s George Paton.
But no one who loves the Broncos knows who they are, and before Paton talked about the players the Broncos drafted, he talked about his support staff.
Brian Stark did a great job of managing our scouts—he is our college director, as well as Darren Mougey, who is our assistant college director.
They had to be creative, ‘How are we going to get the information? How are we going to get the background?’ Again, doing this at home with your kids and with your family.
I was developing the new structure, new protocol, and these guys grabbed the bull by the horns.
People realize he’s been done wrong by an organization that doesn’t go all-in to win.
Najee Harris, running back, Pittsburgh.
There were three networks there, and I think seeing me there, relating to where I was I was in my life after being there, might have given some people hope.
Only once in four seasons of the Shanahan-Lynch era has a quarterback started all the way through a season, and that was the Super Bowl season.
The trend toward big corners is increasing in the league, and the Lions got one of the biggest, Syracuse’s 6-2½ Ifeatu Melifonwu, who played 29 college games and should develop into a serviceable starter.
I think the best thing that could happen for Chicago is for Andy Dalton to steer the team out of the gate for six games or so, and when Fields is ready, put him in and don’t pull him out unless he proves totally incapable.
But now what becomes of it? Does the NFL think Rodgers will get over his tantrum and stay a Packer? Does the NFL perhaps put the game in a Sunday late-afternoon window and backstop the game with a couple of potentially strong NFC games in the early window that it could move into the 4:25 p.m.
• The continued insistence on virtual instruction, and limited capacity in draft rooms. “We can have hundreds of thousands of people in Cleveland but we still can’t meet in person,” Vegas GM Mike Mayock said Saturday.
But this year? Not even being able to meet with prospects at Pro Days? Sending out stern notices that teams are not to converse at length with players at Pro Days, or anywhere, in person? Imagine you’re about to commit $35 million to a quarterback you hope will lead your team for the next 15 years, and you go to his Pro Day but can’t talk to him, and you can’t sit down with him, and all you can do, legally, is have five Zoom meetings with any one player.
Seems they’re public enemies after the failure of the Super League in Europe, with the locals in England believing they’re far more interested in money than the sport of soccer.
He’ll require help for mounting medical, therapy and home-infrastructure bills, and there’s been a Go Fund Me page set up, with a $500-per-person private fundraiser schedule for May 17 at a Wrigley Field rooftop facility.
In homes, isolated, with scenes like this: Saints picked Cesar Ruiz 25th, he wept, his mother enveloped him, a league-provided iPhone camera captured it in his modest living room in south Jersey.
When the Jets picked Mekhi Becton, GM Joe Douglas had his family burst into the room where he was drafting in his home, and his 13-year-old daughter told him how proud of him she was, and he said, “Addison, you’re making me misty here.” I was able to eavesdrop on Tampa GM Jason Licht’s draft night in his home, and when he was trying to get trade talks going with GM Mike Mayock of the Raiders, a very loud, “MOMMY!” was heard from just outside the door of the Licht Toy Room—converted into his draft den.
Roger Goodell, by rounds two and three in sweater and easy chair in his Westchester basement north of Manhattan, looked like he might be close to a nap by late in the third round.
GM Dave Gettleman, in eschewing linebacker Micah Parsons and ready-made tackle Rashawn Slater when he was set to pick at 11 , traded down nine slots and picked up three extra picks, including a first-rounder next year.
I think the video of the weekend came from the Lions draft room, when, after drafting Penei Sewell with the seventh pick, the braintrust jumped around like the Wisconsin students at Camp Randall during “Jump Around.” The Lions are going to be a very interesting team to watch.
Moral of the story: Don’t guarantee a ton of money to a quarterback you’re not sure about.
You may remember Culley got the Texans’ job so late in his coaching life, at 65, and one of the first things he did was travel to Tennessee to share the news with his dad.
That was a fantastic Kentucky Derby, with Medina Spirit leading virtually the whole way but never leading by more than a length, which made the race exhilarating.
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He grabbed a baseball and an old glove, and took the subway to a deserted train car on the Long Island Rail Road.
It had been more than a half century since they won the World Series, but he was still getting 10-20 fan letters a week.
When Harrelson learned of his teammate’s death, he cried out “No!” But a few hours later he had forgotten about it.
Harrelson’s ex-wife Kim Battaglia, one of his caregivers, met Shamsky at the train station.
Beernerdness: Had a tasty pilsner the night before leaving on my draft trip, Ball Lighting Pilsner , a pils from a brewery I’d never sampled.
Reynolds writes that a study in mice found a marked difference in recovery between mice that were iced and those that were not iced.
It took seven days in these tissues to reach the same levels of pro-inflammatory cells as on day three in the unchilled muscle, with both the clearance of debris and arrival of anti-inflammatory cells similarly slowed.
Arakawa points out, their experimental model simulates serious muscle damage, such as a strain or tear, and not simple soreness or fatigue.
He made them from the right side, the left side, downfield, on the line of scrimmage, behind the line of scrimmage.
Brandt: We flew back to New York from Greenville, South Carolina, on Eastern Air Lines, and George and I sat in the same row next to each other and never mentioned a word about it.
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Just a redshirt freshman, Maya, 19, can hit the ball farther than any of UCLA’s players, except maybe Garcia.
When Maya takes practice swings, teammates like junior Briana Perez stand in the outfield to shag fly balls but instead just admire the shots as they fly over the fence.
FWIW, my mock results: nine direct hits of player to team in proper slot, 10 hits of player in slot , then went cold, and missed on Mac Jones to the Niners.