Will Brinson, senior NFL writer, CBSSports.com, pick six podcast, one of the super friends, my man.
All right. Can we talk about Odell Beckham Jr.? I mean, if you have to. I mean. My God, has anybody, has there ever been this much hype for likely a less impactful signing?
I mean, there probably has been. I can't think about, when I saw the number, I figured that Odell Beckham Jr. clearly, I mean, he wanted to go to the Jets. He wanted to play with Aaron Rodgers.
And apparently. He's not on the Jets yet, by the way. But he will be. I mean, I assume he will be because everybody is talking about him as though he's a Jet.
I just had a 20 minute conversation with Mike Greenberg on Friday. And we're talking about him as already a Jet. We're discussing what number he's going to wear. So the Jets were interested. And then they heard that Odell Beckham Jr. wanted $15 million to play. And the Jets went, no, we're not giving you 50. He's played in basically half the games the last six years.
He didn't play at all last year. If I were an NFL general manager. And like my owner told me, you have to give Odell Beckham $15 million to play on your team.
My legs and knees would start shaking because I would be like, oh, no, we're committing $15 million to a wide receiver who has played, I think, in like 12 games or maybe less games than that in the last two years and is really more, I think, attention based than actual production based. And I love Odell Beckham. Like Odell Beckham has some magical moments. He's done some incredible things on the football field.
But like the Odell Beckham watch that has been going on the last few weeks, in really months has been a bit much. I will say that it may be worth it for the Ravens, the $15 million, just to see the FaceTime picture of him talking to Lamar Jackson. Like if that's what gets Lamar Jackson back in the fold. By all means. All right.
So it was going to lead me to that anyway. Is that going to change Lamar Jackson wanting $250 million of Steve Bishotti's money? No. But I think it may make Lamar Jackson more likely to play on the franchise tag and like sign up right away. The fact that they went out and spent $15 million, I look, does it make sense? Do you think he's playing for $32 million? I don't... Well, I mean, what does he want, $250 million over $5 million? Yeah, makes it tough to say $32 million.
I don't see him. Like, could the Ravens sign him for like one year $45 million? Would he do that? He might do one year $45 million. I don't see him doing one year $32 million. Like rescind the franchise tag and sign him for one for $45 million?
Yeah. I think, Matt, I think the... Can they do that? I think the machinations of that from a, like you would have to rescind the, I don't think you can sign him to a contract, well, I guess you could, before July 17th. Why would he do that though? I don't understand the logic of any of this. That's my point. I don't understand the logic of any of this.
Okay. So here's why you wouldn't do that if you're Lamar Jackson. If you signed a $45 million contract this year, the Ravens could also, they would then be able to franchise tag you.
I don't know how that works actually. So the Drew Brees rule under the new CBA means that you can only franchise tag somebody X number of times. At least it's three, right? Right.
Three. Because Drew Brees was tagged by the Chargers and then came to the Saints and the Saints kept tagging him. He was like, dude, come on.
Like, this is ridiculous. I got tagged by my old team and now I'm being tagged by Steve, I've been on for 10 years. The or seven years, whatever it was, the thing with Odell, I would think with Lamar is that if you, I don't know if it qualifies as using the franchise tag if he doesn't sign it, but I think it does. So in other words, like you would still have two more franchise tags that you could use on him. You just wouldn't want to, you wouldn't want to sign him to a one year deal and then, because he wouldn't want to do that because he's getting tagged again. Right. So I don't, I don't, none of this makes great sense to me. It doesn't make great sense to guarantee Odell Beckham Jr. 15 million dollars a year for a player that he was six years ago.
Right. And Jamison Hemsley of, or Hensley of ESPN, who covers the Ravens, was talking about having a conversation with Todd Monk and the new offensive coordinator of Baltimore, who was his offensive coordinator in Cleveland. And like, he's excited, Mike, why would you be excited? He hated you. He hated that offense. He hated being there. The only thing he liked about it was his friend Jarvis Landry was the other wide receiver. But that was a disaster. So he liked the fact that they gave a brand new contract when he got there.
Sure. Anybody, I'm sure he loves being in Baltimore right now because he got 15 million dollars guaranteed. I mean, 20 seconds, 32 in terms of points scored, was that the, that wasn't the Freddie Kitchens here, wasn't it?
Everybody's got some hot takes. He's like, Freddie Kitchens is the OC, like, you got to keep that guy in place for continuity for baseball. No, no, no, that was, this was the second year of Kevin Stefanski, right? No, no, no, no, Odell's first year was with Freddie.
Right. And then they fired Freddie after his first year. The second year, it all blew up with Kevin Stefanski and they ended up trading him. Todd Munkin, Todd Munkin was the OC when, when Freddie was the coach. Oh, so Stefanski, there was no... He also was the defensive coordinator, actually.
Man. How did that team lose? Oh, right. Freddie Kitchens was the head coach.
That's right, Freddie. None of us could see that coming. If that doesn't happen, Todd Munkin doesn't go to Georgia and Georgia probably doesn't win back-to-back titles.
That's very possible. So how does the Lamar Jackson thing go? Where does it go from here? We're still in the same position where Jackson has contract demands. The Ravens aren't about to meet those contract demands and they can't negotiate because he won't negotiate. So and there is no negotiating because he's not coming off his contract demands, which I don't blame him. I don't blame him for having those demands. If he thinks that Deshaun Watson's contract is the standard bearer, then I don't blame him because I think he's better than Deshaun Watson.
So go get it. But the Ravens don't believe so. Well, and the other problem too is that, you know, we've seen now where, and granted it's different within an open market versus having to give up two first round picks, but we've seen where teams are not willing to go try to give that money to Lamar Jackson. Yeah.
Right. And I do realize, like, if he's out there, you know, as a free agent, he's more likely to get that type of money. But I ultimately, he sort of is right, but if you have to give up two first round picks and give him the money, which is a lot different than, but no, you get them two years earlier, you know, you get two more years of team control. I mean, I think Drew Rosenhaus was on the Pat McAfee show last week and said, you know, there are ways to, if you're an agent, he's like, if I were Lamar Jackson's agent, you know, I'd figure out a way, like, let's get the first three years fully guaranteed or the first four years fully guaranteed and then have, you know, whether it's a player or team option on the back end, guaranteed for injury, something like that. And this is again, why, and it's sort of self-fulfilling, unfortunately, for the players who all the ball won't guarantee contracts, but you know, this is why there aren't guaranteed contracts in the NFL because it's just so difficult to like, you're just not going to get these owners to go all in on guaranteed contracts. They just don't want to do it.
And they're willing to take that hard line stance. I mean, I've said all along, I think Lamar plays two years on the, on the franchise tag and. Yeah, but I don't think he plays on this franchise tag.
That's the thing. If it was the real franchise, the other franchise tag where he was going to make 45, I think he plays, I don't think he plays at 32. I look, well, and that's the other thing is really the Ravens exclusive franchise tag him again next year, I believe in 120% raise of 32. We talked about this months ago that that was the strategy for the Ravens to, to franchise him to franchise tag him at the non-exclusive and let the market let, if somebody else wanted to give him that deal, and I believe the Ravens will match that deal, no matter, they just don't want to be the ones to give it to him.
I'm convinced of that. Nobody wants to go to get, to touch the third rail, even though Jimmy Haslam already did everybody hates him. He hasn't like sprawled across the third rail.
Nobody else was there. I don't know. Right.
So he's looking a little, a little piqued, a little pale down there. A couple of things though, about the, um, the contract situation, I'm, I'm convinced that like, there's no reason why NFL contracts aren't guaranteed other than the ownership won't do it because they are way stronger than the union. Yeah. Right.
If the, if the NFL was willing to miss a year and even extended to threaten to miss part of another year. Yeah. But nobody can do that.
You can't afford to do that. That's because, because it's about 20% of the league. Right. Right. The, can you say rank and file?
That's right. 80%, 80% of the NFL needs the paycheck. And more than likely has a maximum of a three year window in which they can play football and get paid. All the other leagues have more longevity and the disparity between the haves and have nots. And I use that term very loosely here. Uh, the disparity between those two factions of player, uh, the, the dividing line is, is probably closer to even as opposed to 80, 20.
So that they'll, the union is not strong enough to hold out for it. And it's like, you know, it's, I mean, while we like to pretend that, you know, some of us in, you know, like, you know, we're, we're, we're older, older guys, but we, you know, we're still good at our jobs. You can't do that in the NFL, you know, you don't get better with age in the NFL. Like you might in other avenues of life, right? I mean, it's, it's a rarity.
Uh, you can have like a resurgent year, maybe it's better with age, but like we might, we might, like some of us might get better at our jobs as we age or get better at various things that we do in life as you age, NFL players typically peak out pretty early and do not get better. All right. Final thing for you, Will Brinson, because there aren't that many people that have gotten this right. Oh boy.
No, you got it right. I looked at your mock draft on cbssports.com. And you're one every week now that I'm writing again, you know, I don't hear that writing every day.
I know you are. And I actually, I think I believe, I think I said senior NFL writer, exactly the, uh, you have Bryce young going to the Panthers number one. Why do you have Bryce young and our friend, Ryan Wilson, whose job it is to mock drafts has CJ Stroud. I, well, I think that CJ Stroud is a consensus favorite.
I mean, he is the consensus favorite. Like you go and look at the sports books and he's minus 200 minus two 25, whatever, whatever it is, my two 15 sub spots. Don't ever take what is, whatever you see, like if you see something in a sports book in terms of the NFL draft and assume that that is what the reality is, because those are reactionary markets. Right now, I think a lot of people are reading too much into CJ Stroud and versus Bryce young and the height involved here and the differential there and how Frank Reich has never started a quarterback. That's under just six feet four. Well, CJ Stroud is under six feet, four, two, six, three, and I realize that's just an inch that matters.
Right. So it might be like, well, he's never started a quarterback under six four it's like, well, then CJ Stroud would not qualify. Bryce Young is just, to me, the way that this sets up is the Panthers have some continuity on the offensive line. They stay, you know, they drafted Iquani last year, they brought back everybody that started for them last year, and they were a better offensive line than they've been in a few years. And I think that continuity is a big, big deal in the NFL that people overlook a lot of times year to year for NFL teams where you have the same five guys starting from last year as you do this year. And when you have that continuity, it's going to result in better offensive line play. You have a owner and David Tepper, who's extremely impatient, you have a coach and Frank Reich who never actually drafted any of the guys that you know, he started over four. And you have a quarterback and Bryce Young, who can with a with a with a solid pocket, a solid protection up front, some decent weapons, and I think they got them in terms of like Adam Thielen, Hayden Hurst and veteran guy, DJ shark in now with him, and I think that's the biggest key for the for the Panthers and Frank Reich. And why you want Bryce Young is, you know, you can win now, his floor is really high.
You think you can go out there and have success in year one. And if you do that, you're going to buy yourself so much time with David Tepper, like go out there and go nine and eight. And David Tepper is going to basically build a statue in front of the stadium. Look, I just believe that I watched Bryce Young for two years, have no problem moving the ball down the field at Alabama. If he's six four, he's being it's like we're not even having a conversation about the number one pick. I think if he's six one, we're not having a conversation about Aaron Rodgers, only six to if Bryce Young is six one with the same body type.
We are. It is a no brainer. And that's what if CJ Stroud was as good a thrower as good a quarterback as Bryce Young. This would have been a no brainer a long time ago. CJ Stroud would have been we would have been signed already. And I've said this before, whether it's Bryce Young being taller or CJ Stroud being as good, the Bears would have kept the pick.
I think I absolutely believe they would have kept the pick. All right. Well, just really quickly, I'd say to you, like it'd be a little bit more like Joe Burrow to and Justin Herbert, where we know the guy who's going one, but we know that there's like there's a chance that one of the other guys is close enough. But no one's giving up that opportunity to get that guy at one.
No question about it. You're the man. Will Brinson at Will Brinson on Twitter, pick six podcast, which I believe is being recorded in just a few minutes. We're going to talk.
We're going to compare songs to draft. I don't know. You know, I got some work I got to do. Okay. All right. It's the cat. Yeah. I don't know. You see that? Oh, look at that.
Very, very nice. It's the year of the cat because the Panthers have the first pick. Is it? It's a tiger year, I think.
I have no idea. It's an Al Stewart song. You're the cat. Don't use that on the podcast. I will. All right. I'm sorry.
Whisper: medium.en / 2023-04-10 16:28:34 / 2023-04-10 16:36:04 / 8