MONDAY MORNING QUARTERBACK

I can see the Seahawks, Saints and Texans maybe, but its going to be a tough market, in my opinion.

 

No shit. lol! Every thread it's the same thing. I'm glad at least fans of other teams have even noticed.

As transparent as it is, I think he just loves to point out TJ Watt....

Nobody has better hindsight than Gid.

 

I don’t see any Steelers fans upset by what I’m saying, must be that they know it’s true.

 

Lamar Jackson has a social-media message for the world (or at least the Ravens): “I need $”



The Ravens have been ready to give quarterback Lamar Jackson a big pile of money. Until recently, he hasn’t been ready to take it. He apparently has now developed a real sense of urgency.

Both Jackson’s Twitter page and his Instagram page have a photo with this message: “I need $.”


Jackson may not appreciate the attention that the gesture will generate, but what does he expect? After months of not wanting to reach into owner Steve Bisciotti’s wide-ass-open vault, Jackson now seems ready to have the Brink’s truck back up to his doorstep.

He clearly deserves a second contract. The challenge becomes selecting the right dollars and structure. The Browns gave quarterback Deshaun Watson $230 million over five years, fully guaranteed. Why shouldn’t Jackson, the 2019 NFL MVP, expect the same deal — if not more?

The Ravens surely don’t want to fully guarantee five years at $46 million annually, given the possibility that the wear and tear from playing the position in a very physical way will catch up to him before the next five years expire. And that’s one of the biggest drawbacks of long-term, fully-guaranteed contracts. If the player can’t earn the money, the team needs someone else to play. And the team has less cap space for rewarding those other players who are playing, given the resources given to someone who is either too injured to play or no longer on the team.

Regardless, Jackson seems to be ready to get a deal done. The best way to do it would be to hire a good agent. The best way for the Ravens to make that happen could be to offer to gross up the contract value to cover the percentage of the compensation that gets paid as a fee — if as many believe Jackson doesn’t have an agent simply because he doesn’t want to pay one or two or three percent of the total amount to the person who negotiates it.

PFT

 

Lamar needs $... good grief! What and where in the sam hell did all the previous $ go???

Seriously, he needs to get this done and so do the Ravens.

 

Better grasp of offense has Matthew Stafford confident Rams 'can go above and beyond' last year

Expectations were lofty for Matthew Stafford ahead of his first season with the Los Angeles Rams.

Following a 41-touchdown showing and a Super Bowl-winning campaign, Stafford surely lived up to, if not exceeded, those aspirations.

As a bid for a repeat beckons, Stafford believes he's further ahead this year than the last because of his comfortability, making back-to-back ambitions all the more achievable.

"At this point in the year last season, I think to myself what I knew about this team and this offense, and it's just so small in comparison to what I know and understand now," Stafford said, via the team's website's Stu Jackson. "So that gives me great comfort in the fact that we can go above and beyond what we did last year."

Stafford matched a career high with his aforementioned 41 TD tosses, which were complemented by 4,886 yards passing and a 67.2 completion percentage that also matched a career best.

While much was expected of the 12-year Detroit Lions starter upon his Los Angeles debut season, it certainly doesn't diminish the accomplishment of reaching the NFL mountaintop. Stafford led the Rams to a 12-5 record, an NFC West title and then playoff wins over Kyler Murray and the Cardinals, Tom Brady and the Buccaneers, Jimmy Garoppolo and the San Francisco 49ers, and finally Joe Burrow and the Cincinnati Bengals.

"Biggest lesson I learned from last season, I think, is it's never easy," Stafford said. "People see the end product, they see us hoisting the Lombardi Trophy, but it was a struggle."


As much of a struggle as the 2021 season was for Stafford and Co., it was worth it after years of struggles with the Lions.

In his dozen seasons in Detroit, Stafford had played in just three postseason games with nary a victory to show for it. In one season in Los Angeles, Stafford played in four postseason games with four victories to show for it.

Arduous as the road to a Lombardi was, Stafford is all the more excited to reach that mountaintop again.

"I'm excited about it," Stafford said. "When you get a taste of that success, it only makes you want it more."

NFL.com

 

How much money do you need I'm all for the player's to get their money it just seems insane to me

 

Tyreek Hill on Tua Tagovailoa: This is basically his last year to show people what he’s got



Athletes like to say they ignore the noise. And they also like to react to the noise they are ignoring.

Dolphins receiver Tyreek Hill has spent plenty of time in the five episodes of his podcast reacting to the noise surrounding quarterback Tua Tagovailoa. In the latest episode, featuring Dolphins receiver Jaylen Waddle, Hill once again defends Tua — and floats an interesting conspiracy theory regarding the thing that sparked the most criticism of Tua during the 2022 offseason.

“It’s gonna be a lot of people taking their words back on what they said about [Tua],” Hill said. His co-host, Julius Collins, tried to get Hill to name names.

“Reporters, analysts, Twitter trolls,” Hill said. “All those people are gonna take their words back on what they said about [Tua]. I’m gonna be sitting there, eating my popcorn.”

It’s easy to forget that the criticism came mainly from a clip that was posted by the Dolphins on social media of Tua underthrowing Hill. Hill now seems to suggest that the Dolphins posted that clip on purpose.

“I really believe they showed that clip of Tua under throwing me just to get people talking,” Hill said. “Because they really know what Tua’s capable of, for real.”

So, to summarize, Hill thinks the Dolphins may have posted a clip of Tua underthrowing Hill in order to get people talking. And it worked. And Hill thinks those people who swallowed the hook that was deliberately baited by the Dolphins will have to take back the words that the Dolphins specifically prompted them to say.

All of this talk about Tua serves only to put more attention, and in turn pressure, on what he does in 2022. Hill also realizes that, right or wrong, it’s up or out for Tua in 2022.

“You know, in the NFL they only give you like two or three years to be a successful quarterback, especially if you’re a first-round draft pick,” Hill said. “And if you don’t succeed after those years, then it’s kick rocks, man. So, basically, they’re going to put Tua into that. So this is basically his last year, man, just to show people what he’s got.”

And that’s the most accurate thing Hill has said about Tua. This is it. No excuses. The team is in place around him. If he doesn’t get it done, the Dolphins will become the most attractive destination for a veteran quarterback looking for a new home in 2023, whether it’s Tom Brady, Lamar Jackson, or someone else who may decide after 2022 to start looking to stack the deck in his favor.

PFT

 

Well, John Dow wants John Smith's money. The standard has been on the increase since the beginning of the NFL's inception. How long this is sustainable has yet to be seen, but apparently, at the moment, the sky is the limit. When they reach the sky... we will see a different type of pay system if there is still a League, lol.

 

Lamar Jackson is going to get paid - no team wants to be in QB hell.

I'm just confused at how all of this has gone down. Let's be real - no one has ever accused Lamar of being the smartest dude. But if he wants to get paid, by all accounts the Ravens have been ready to pay him.

 

I'm also confused by this I just wonder at the money going around the NFL maybe someone can explain it to me it seems crazy to.me

 

The most basic explanation is they are all spending future money. The new television contracts will be paying the NFL over 10 billion per season alone. That doesn't include merchandising, corporate sponsors, ticket sales, licensing, concessions, streaming services, gambling. Goodell is targeting 25 billion of revenue per year by 2027. That's nearly 800 million per team, 48% of which will go to players. Is 50m for a QB a lot of money? Absolutely! But by 2027 that could represent only 13% of a teams total payroll which is not unusual for a team with a vet QB.

 

As kind of postscript to the previous post...

Quarterbacks in line for a 2nd contract would do themselves some favors by being more realistic about how they stack up to their peers. There is a ton of money to be made by guys that play the quarterback position if they are willing to self evaluate. Baker Mayfield went from a guy that probably could have signed a contract last summer in the 25-30M a year range, 50m guaranteed to a guy that will have to play for backup money for at least a couple seasons. Then what happens is anyone's guess but he had a window last summer where he probably could have cashed in.

I think Lamar could be in a similar situation. He's coming off his first injured season but he wasn't playing very well prior to the injury. I bet the Ravens would be ecstatic to pay him 40M+ a year right now with a 100M guaranteed and I bet he wants far more. But that window has already closed somewhat IMO after 2021. He wasn't the same guy he was previously, he was exposed in a few games by the Cover-0 defense and you're never going to be able to run him the way they did early in his career. What if this is his window? How much is he risking by not taking what he can now?

 

Geez

 

Thanks it really is crazy!

 

Lamar Jackson says the “I need $” image on his social-media pages isn’t a message to Ravens



Pro athletes often have no self-awareness. Or they maybe they’re just pretending to be oblivious.

Case in point: Lamar Jackson is perplexed by the fact that his decision to plaster the message “I need $” on his Twitter page and Instagram page has been interpreted by some as a message to the football team that has been trying to give him money for more than a year.


“I don’t know why people are blowing it up,” Jackson told Safid Deen of USA Today during Jackson’s fourth annual Funday with LJ event. “I just saw Bleacher Report post it. They just take anything that’s posted on social media and just blow it up, and try to think for you. I don’t take it too seriously. . . . They’re making it seem like I’m talking to the Ravens when I’m not. Our contract discussion is going on already. But it ain’t about that though. I’m not putting my business life on social media. I won’t ever do that. I won’t put my personal life on social media. I’ll show stuff, but I won’t throw subliminal [messages] out. That’s not me.”

Jackson claims he saw the image in a movie, he thought it was funny, so he added it to his social-media pages. That’s fine, but he needs to realize that people are paying attention, and that people will reasonably react to his gestures. It’s hardly unreasonable for people to respond to Jackson’s “I need $” by wondering whether he’s letting the one entity currently in position to give him a bunch of money that he, well, needs it.

Pro athletes and celebrities crave attention. But most of them want it on their own terms. They want everyone to look at them, and then they want to be able to say, “What’s everybody looking at?”

That’s the best explanation for Jackson’s reaction to people reacting to things he says and does, whether it’s posting “I need $” or skipping offseason workouts with his teammates at a time when he’s supposedly determined to have the best season of his career. It’s impossible for someone of his profile to do something like that and spark no reaction. There’s simply no way he can be surprised by any of it.

PFT

 

Sounds like a back-peddle to me.

 

Larry Fitzgerald confident Kyler Murray will 'be able to lift' Cardinals during DeAndre Hopkins' absence

It has been a clamorous offseason for the Arizona Cardinals, most notably due to quarterback Kyler Murray's contract squabbles and wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins' suspension for the 2022 season's first six games.

However, the greatest Cardinal of them all, former wideout Larry Fitzgerald, expressed his confidence that Murray would be able to hoist the Cardinals beyond the tumult in the upcoming campaign.

"Obviously, the schedule's really tough early in the season, I know they're going to be without Hop, but I know Kyler has the ability and the fortitude to be able to lift this team up," Fitzgerald told MJ Acosta-Ruiz on Friday's edition of NFL Total Access.

Speaking from Nevada where he is playing in the annual American Century Championship celebrity golf tournament, Fitzgerald praised his former quarterback mightily and also underscored his belief that the offense is in good hands and a good place despite Hopkins' absence.

Hopkins was suspended for six games for violating the NFL's performance-enhancing drug policy. Murray, meanwhile, has been looking for a contract extension that has largely played out on social media.

"There's nobody in the game as talented as, as diverse an array of abilities in terms of his athleticism, his ability to throw the ball going left or right," said Fitzgerald of Murray, who was his teammate in Fitzgerald's last two seasons of 2019, 2020. "He's immensely talented. He's a guy that everybody around the league has to prepare differently for. You bring in [Marquise Brown], Zach Ertz is now coming into his second year, better acclimated with the system. James Conner is fully healthy going back into the year. I really like where they are positioned."

Still, the Cards went 3-4 without Hopkins (due to injury) in 2021 and are slated to face the Kansas City Chiefs, Las Vegas Raiders, Los Angeles Rams, Carolina Panthers, Philadelphia Eagles and Seattle Seahawks over the first six weeks.


Despite Hopkins' impending absence, the Cardinals certainly do not have a bare offensive cupboard with the aforementioned Ertz and Conner back in the fold and complimented by the newly acquired Brown to go along with receivers Rondale Moore and A.J. Green, and rookie tight end Trey McBride.

Then there's Murray, whose dual-threat abilities and production back up Fitzgerald's kind words as more than just hyperbole.

Murray, according to NFL Research, is the only player in NFL history with 70 touchdown passes and 20 rushing touchdowns in his first three seasons, and joins Cam Newton as one of only two players in history to post 10,000-plus passing yards and more than 1,500 rushing yards in his first three seasons. In total, Murray, a two-time Pro Bowler, has collected 11,480 yards passing, 70 passing TDs, 1,786 yards rushing and 20 rushing scores.

However, Murray is not expected to play for Arizona without a new deal. How this all plays out remains uncertain, but Fitzgerald remains confident that Murray will be there to keep the Cardinals flying high.

NFL.com

 

The relationship of Murray and the Cardinals seems strained to me and thats not good. They need to get a deal done and have a 'happy' QB in Camp. Time is growing shorter.

I like Kyler Murray. I think he is explosive/athletic... and has put up plenty of good numbers and deserves a contract ASAP. They seem to just keep stringing him along. Something has got to give... and very soon.

 

The problem probably is that Murray wants Watson money and a parachute season in case he gets suspended