How To React To Free Agency
Free Agency is here! How did your team do this week?
I usually don’t pay attention to other teams outside major names so I welcome comments about your team below. Are you happy? Are you frustrated? Are you the Cowboys and didn’t do shit?
The major not Giants news I noticed:
-Wow, the guards got PAID this year. Lots of free agency guards and they all got big deals. Linemen are getting their dues, I like it.
-Justin Fields is still a Bear as of this writing, and the list of places to send him has gotten remarkably thin.
-Jameis Winston will be DeShaun Watson’s backup. The Browns…have a type. We might get a second rapist on the hydra.
-KIRK THE FALCON. Kirk Cousins, entering his late 30’s and coming off a mid-season Achilles tear, once again got paid the big bucks. Kirk belongs in the “Getting the bag” hall of fame.
-Baker Mayfield and Mike Evans run it back in Tampa
-Sam Darnold to the Vikings, lmao, hope they are drafting someone because that’s dire
-Derrick Henry to the Ravens. This is a fantastic move and I’m insanely jealous. He went to a team that already knows how to block for him.
-Josh Jacobs to the Packers for a big bag, which sends Aaron Jones to the Vikings, speed-running the “disgruntled Packers to Vikings” pipeline.
-Feels like the Bills lost a lot of people
-There is no goddamn point to a “legal” tampering period. It just moved the actual tampering that always happens up a bit. We’re not fooling anybody here.
So, Giants reaction: It started bad, but it got much better!
-Barkley to the Eagles: I want to save this for a comic next week because this became far more of a story than I expected and the general reaction was stupid. In case the comic gets overruled though, my thoughts are this in a nutshell: I expected Barkley to leave once it was clear he wasn’t his old self this past season. He’s lost a step with the injuries. I did not want him to go to the Eagles of all teams but I cannot begrudge the man his choice. They offered him a mega deal after we did not. I bear him no ill will as a person but I hope he sucks ass as a player. The Giants fan crybaby reaction to the news is a bunch of nonsense because he’s not betraying anybody and demanding he be some loyal boy to the team that didn’t offer him what he wanted is really pathetic. That said, Saquon handled the move poorly, lashing out on social media at Tiki Barber and taking almost a full week to actually say thank you to the Giants fans after everyone had already turned on him. He’s the enemy now, and it’s partially his own doing.
–Xavier McKinney to the Packers: This one I was mad about. I knew Saquon was gone but I didn’t understand why we didn’t franchise X after that became a possibility. Obviously, the Packers paid a lot of money for the guy and I wish him…well get paid bruh fuck the Packers. This move however made significantly more sense when the big move happened later.
–Jon Runyan Jr and Jermaine Eluemunor, Guard and Tackle: I love it. Yeah, Runyan was an overpay like all the guards, and Eluemunor is meh, but Eluemunor has already endeared himself to the fans about how happy he is to be here. If Evan Neal can finally improve with the new OL coach we poached from the Raiders (Where Eluemunor also came from) we might finally, FINALLY, have a functional offensive line this season. Also it is very funny we are now employing the son of the guy Michael Strahan tormented for a decade. If Strahan was Jon Runyan’s daddy, does this make Jr Strahan’s grandson?
–Devin Singletary: Hey, had to replace Barkley with somebody. Singletary is fine.
–BRIAN FUCKING BURNS BAYBEEEEE: What a surprise. Well, now it makes sense why Schoen didn’t throw money at an RB or a Safety. He instead threw all that money at a legitimate stud defensive end. Thats smart! DE is a premium position and now we have a D-line of Thibs, Lawrence, and Burns. That rules. I’m stoked. Better yet, while Burns obviously got paid a massive amount of money, he’s still young and the Giants only gave up a 2nd and a 5th for him, which is essentially what they got from Seattle for Leonard Williams last year. It’s also a much lower cost than the reported “multiple firsts” the Rams offered last year and were turned down on because the Panthers previous GM was a monumental idiot.
–Drew Lock: Tyrod went to the Jets because he realized he has a very good chance of playing there once Rodgers dies/leaves football for a failed political campaign. We got Horse Cock Lock to replace him, and that’s fine. Lock is backup caliber but depending on how the draft goes might end up our starter anyway in what is going to be the “wait out the Danny Dimes contract” season.
–Jalen Mills: He’s a safety to replace McKinney, I dunno anything about him, tell me how to feel Pats fans
Kirko Chainz getting yet another bag at 35 is legendary shit. Over $200 mil in career earnings for a qb that most people put in like, B- tier.
Oh and as far as my team goes, seeing Derrick Henry in purple greatly eases the pain of having to see Patrick Queen in black and yellow. Our line is looking mighty thin though with some key guys either getting traded or walking, I hope EDC’s plan there, whatever it is, comes to fruition.
Harbaugh is already dreaming up 2 TE 3 RB sets
I guess we’ll find out next season if it was a brain dead move or not, but after the absolutely MONUMENTAL collapse in Philly this past season, I don’t think signing an oft-injured RB who is nearly washed from being hammered behind the worst OL in football is going to save them. I don’t follow them, so presumably they made a bunch of other moves, too. But beyond the fact that I loathe the Iggles and they loathe us, I really don’t get whatever they hell they are thinking here. Reminds me of when they stole the lesser known Steve Smith from us, and it blew up in their faces the next season when he still stunk.
So yea, Barkley can go take a long walk off a short pier, I imagine he’ll pull a hammie from all the running he’ll be doing next season, given he won’t be hit behind the line of scrimmage every single play anymore. Probably tear a muscle on the Tush Push.
They needed their own CMC, and he was the closest thing available.
And with much better OLine, QB, WRs, and TE, Saquan won’t have nearly the amount of abuse and load on him that he went through with the Giants. He *was* their offense (does anyone really think Danny Dimes would have looked that good without him?), for the most part, and so was the most targeted player by the opposing defense.
Does that mean he won’t get hurt? No, of course not. But he’s a complementary piece, not the whole thing, so hopefully that means less wear-and-tear.
That’s what confuses me. They’re paying a “complementary piece” with a history of being injured a HECK of a lot of money. He missed ~38% of all games as a Giant due to injury. And while Philly’s OL, QB, WRs, and TE are much better than what the Giants are fronting (not exactly difficult to accomplish this), the Iggles went into the deepest downward spiral I’ve ever seen a team go into last year without even the slightest attempt to pull up before crashing. So I would have some SERIOUS concerns about their entire offense going into next season, and while Barkley has been good-to-very-good for the Giants when available, I don’t see him carrying the team on his back like CMC does for SF (and you could argue even that isn’t working out, as it hasn’t gotten SF a Lombardi yet).
I’ll fully admit I’m biased on this. I thought the Giants should have traded Barkley when Schoen and Daboll were hired. He’s been juuuuust good enough to tantalize you, but then he gets injured at juuuust the right time and misses a chunk. He’s helped them get cupcake wins, but he’s usually missing when the sledding gets rough. At best, it seems like the Eagles are viewing this as a one year Pray-We-Make-the-Super-Bowl-Again loaner. His cap hit is “only” $4m this year, but next year it becomes untenable at $13m. I’m sure they’re hoping the rising cap will make that hurt less, but I can’t imagine them keeping him beyond this season. I imagine this time next year I’ll either be sending people to this post to laugh, or people will be sending me to this post to cry. LOLOL.
Not disagreeing with much of this, but it is a complementary piece salary because of the salary cap increase. The cap has gone up a ways so $12m/year is a 3rd WR or TE salary. He’s making less than Darnell Mooney, who hasn’t done anything in years and a little bit more than Noah Fant. Adjusting for the salary cap, he’s making about what Jerick McKinnon made when he signed with the 49ers in 2018. He got more than any other RB, but that’s just sad.
I really wanna be excited to have Kirk, because one of those Madden training dummies would be better than Ridder had been and Cousins is presumably better than that. For some reason though, I can’t seem to feel good about it. Maybe it’s the fact that we gave a 36 year old QB a 4 year deal, or maybe it’s the Achilles tear. I was really hoping we were gonna give Fields a try, but I’ll be cautiously optimistic about going Kirko Mode this next year.
I’m also interested in seeing what Darnell Mooney can do on this roster, seems like a decent pickup.
Getting Rondale Moore in return for Ridder may prove to be the smartest piece of QB handling so far. Kirk will have weapons and our O-Line is solid, the ingredients are there. With that said, I really hope we pick up a QB like Penix in the draft. If Kirk dies or is old, we have to have a second option that feasibly could compete in the year or two. Not to mention sitting behind Kirk if he does work out would be a godsend to a young(ish) QB’s development. Either way just not having Arthur Smith run the offense should have us competitive in most games.
Let’s turn our attention to the other side of the ball, Grady Jarrett coming off a torn ACL is far and away our best lineman, this seems less than ideal. We have to shore up our DL all the way across if we have a prayer of competing in January. Linebackers and secondary need depth but should be solid enough. Our defense being league average last year was light years better than most of the past 15 years, but it was still average. No improvement there has me worried. Best guess Terry’s plan is to sort through the cap casualties in the 2nd FA wave and pick up a few cheap vets.
Coming from a Vikings fan, Kirk is far from the worst you could do. You’ll likely be very quickly frustrated, however, by how much flak he gets from EVERYWHERE. He’ll never be as bad as they make him out to be and it’ll drive you fucking nuts. I’m not heartbroken that he’s gone, especially with the contract the Falcons gave him which wouldn’t have been a good idea for us to match. However, I fully expect our QB play won’t rise to match his level for another year or two at least. Best of luck to you guys down there (except against us).
Barkley lashing out at Tiki barber (who attacked him first) was the right thing to do. Lashing out at tiki barber is always the morally correct option.
I can’t even believe I’m going to do this… *deep breath*. Tiki was CLEARLY joking. If you watch the footage, he’s even laughing when he says it. I can’t even believe I’m remotely in a position of defending Tiki, lol, but I definitely think Barkley DRASTICALLY overreacted on this one. It makes him appear thin-skinned and defensive. He should have taken the Eli route, and killed him with politeness.
I think he probably is defensive, tons of people said (correctly) he shouldn’t have been drafted that high, I’d bet he has that chip on his shoulder his entire career.
I suppose I can see it from your POV, but tiki is still the absolutely last person I want to hear it from, and also barkley’s return barb was joyous to watch because tiki is a POS and it was correct. Even if it was an overreaction, it was still witty and a correct criticism, which I’m down for.
I’ll always take a shit on ol’ Tiki but I agree with Blueberries, he was mostly being facetious when he said Barkley “was dead to them” because Tiki has to play the role of a Giants homer now because it’s all he’s got left after he torpedoed his career. I think it’s telling that Barkley’s first public reaction was to take that moment dead serious and go after him like that.
Tiki sucks and Saquon is right about his loyalty being a joke but it’s telling that’s what he did first. No thank yous to the Giants, no thank yous to the fans, especially to the younger ones who adore him, just immediate assault on a guy mostly joking on a radio show.
I mean, I don’t know how widespread it was among the giants fandom but you said yourself there were crybabies who had turned on him for the move alone. If those people were a large portion of the base, I don’t blame him for not wanting to thank them if the act of leaving was the sore point for them.
If you’re saying “him telling them thank you would’ve prevented a lot of the bad reaction,” I defer to you on that, but the way he was so aggressive makes me think he had already heard a lot of crap from fans about loyalty starting from when he refused to sign a long-term deal, and tiki was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
I don’t care if he has a chip on his shoulder from being drafted too high. I don’t care if a moron like Tiki is taking shots at him, jokingly or serious. I don’t care if Giants fans had already turned on him. To Dave’s point, I care about his initial response and lack of class he showed.
He has always WANTED to be seen as this positive force that is always going to take the high road and be graceful, and in one swift move – his reaction, not his decision to sign with a hated rival – he took a steaming dump all over his public persona.
It seems pretty clear to me now that he’s a thin-skinned and petty kinda guy, and I think he intentionally signed with Philly (at least in part) because he wants to stick it to the Giants. I don’t blame him for being hurt that the Giants didn’t want him that badly anymore. I don’t blame him for signing somewhere else that was willing to pay him more. I DO blame him for going out with absolutely zero class.
Hell, the first joke I made to friends after hearing about him going to Philly was, “Well, he’s dead to me now.” That’s what ANY fan would say after a move like this. It’s what Dallas fans said when Chris Canty signed with us. It’s what we said when Carl Banks went to the WTFers. It’s what Packers fans said when Favre ended up with the Vikings.
If Barkley is even half as smart as he pretends to be, he would have SEEN this coming while the Iggles were illegally tampering with him, which would have given him PLENTY of time to prepare how to meet the reactions with a smile and a joke. Something about moving into his heel phase, or that he’s turned to the dark side… there are many ways to play it off light-heartedly without taking a steam hot pee all over the fans who supported you the last few years. Hell, OBJ did a better job moving on from NY than this chud. I can’t believe I’m defending HIM now, either, lol.
He opted to be the petty spiteful a-hole that many (myself including) now see him as.
Well to your point, Barkley himself apparently came out and admitted that he handled it poorly, not that that likely fixes anything but I guess he at least realizes he acted as you guys say.
Its good that he acknowledged his poor handling of it and eventually made a thank you statement but it definitely felt like it was trying to calm the shitstorm he stirred by being petty out of the gate. He was always going to get some degree of shit for leaving even if he went to, like, Houston, but if he’d been classier or even just said nothing I think most reasonable fans would have understood and not blamed him at all. I certainly don’t blame him for the move. He made himself the enemy. I almost wonder if there was behind the scenes beef between the two of them because to go after Tiki Barber specifically was kinda odd. Most Giants fans still dont care for Tiki very much.
He’s not the first Giants guy to go to Philly (Steve Smith, James Bradberry) but neither of those guys ever shot back at the Giants on the way out and the fans largely understood it was part of the business.
I still just….can’t even comprehend the Ridley deal. He’s a nice receiver no doubt. But he’s getting paid lik a superstar!
He bet on himself, and won!
Barkley thing is a bummer but if he didn’t work out for the Eagles, I can imagine it’d be the same with Steve Smith situation where the hate gets lessened. Not that I would wish that on the guy however but this somewhat reminds me of the Yankees forum in the 2003 offseason when Pettitte signed with Houston. Imagine had the guy went to Boston instead…
As a Bengals fan, this flowchart needs an extra path for “I don’t want our good people to leave because that means that our window is closing!”
Jalen Mills is… fine? He was a serviceable 2nd corner for a bit, and is versatile enough to be a serviceable safety too. He isn’t going to wow you, but he is perfectly fine for plugging a hole in a defensive backfield. The type of player that you always want to find a replacement for to improve, but you realize that top tier starters cost a lot of money or high picks, so you grumble and move on with life. He won’t win you a game, but he is unlikely to lose your a game either.
As weird as this sounds, I actually have hope for the giants to come out of the draft process a better team than they were last year. I think picking up one of the premier receivers at 6 in nabers or odunze, grabbing one of the “second tier” qbs on day 2 and using the rest of the picks to grab linemen and secondary would be ideal. As much as I want to move on from the daniel jones experience, the more I think about it, the more I feel like taking someone like JJ at 6 would be a massive waste of a high pick. I do not want shoen to settle for the 4th best qb available like that
The Texans had a pretty good free Agency.Our biggest free agent was Danielle Hunter who is coming off his best season in Minnesota. The Texans upgraded at Running Back (Joe Mixon replaced Devin Singletary) and we acquired 2 players who had 10+ sacks(both from the Titans lol) last year. The Texans front 7 might be one of the best in the league next year. However our secondary is still severely lacking and we must address it in the Draft.
Our biggest questionable move is that we traded our first round pick away, I trust Caserio but I feel like one first round pick is more valuable than 2 second round picks.
Breaking News: Aaron Donald has retired (retirement comic incoming?)
As a Giants fan, I’m not super stoked about Jalen Mills, but for totally unfair reasons tbh. Back when I was in high school and he was an Eagle, I worked at Auntie Annes in a dying mall in the Philly suburbs. Once, he did an autograph signing there, and the mall was MUCH more crowded than usual. And instead of getting to quarter-ass it through a shift in the middle of a ghost town, I had to actually do my job, and I’ll never forgive him for that.
Pickett is now an Eagle. Khan is being incredibly aggressive with the roster moves (at least for Pittsburgh’s standards) and I’m not sure how I feel about it. I was bullish on Canada-less Pickett (he looked pretty damn good on the one game he finished), but the rumor mill is that he was demanding to leave because he didn’t want to compete with Wilson and if that’s the case then yeah I understand dumping him at that point. I’m more worried that we have no long term future at the most important position though. I really don’t want the beginning of our own hydra, and while I’m happy with the Wilson signing this season, I don’t want to commit to him long term either.
I’m rea
I’m half wondering if we end up trading up to get a QB, since iirc next year’s class is supposed to be a drought in talent. I don’t follow college football though so I could easily be wrong there
Mills struggled in his first couple seasons, but he has decent speed, can cover, and takes way fewer PI calls than he used to. As mentioned, not a star, but solid.
Mills did his job. He rarely stood out positively or negatively, but was part of a good team defense that may have been underrated due to the horrible offence holding the team back.