I tore myself away from The Bible marathon on History Channel to jot down some thoughts.
$.01--The biggest free agent fish of the past week was landed by the Atlanta Falcons, who signed former Giants defensive end Osi Umenyiora to a two-year, $8.5M deal. This move was so widely anticipated that it caught many NFL observers with some surprise that it took so long.
Aside from Atlanta being Umenyiora’s hometown, this is an absolute perfect melding of player fit and team need. Osi’s run defense has declined to the point where he seldom played in short yardage situations any longer, a point of contention in New York that made his return to the Giants nearly impossible. Yet he continues to be a very effective edge pass rusher. That’s all the Falcons need him to do, rush the passer. If opponents want to waste time running at him with Sean Weatherspoon and Akeem Dent behind him, that’s no problem for Atlanta. Umenyiora should be able to replicate John Abraham’s 10 sacks as a pass rusher. Also in his favor: because he’s been part of a deep rotation and hasn’t played a high number of snaps, his body is fresher than most 31-year olds.
Atlanta still needs a young pass rushing DE with some fresh juice, but signing Umenyiora is a very good move. The Falcons are in win-now mode, and this deal helps them in that goal.
$.02--The Dallas Cowboys rankled some feathers on Friday with the announcement that they have signed Tony Romo to a lucrative extension. Seven years, $119.5M are the terms, with a $25M signing bonus and at least $40M guaranteed.
Yes, the amount of the contract is somewhat disturbing for a player with Romo’s propensity for not coming through in the clutch. That is not all on him, but enough of it is that I get the apprehension from the masses. The Dallas faithful are going to have to overcome their inherent revulsion to Romo, because this extension means he is going to be the quarterback for at least the next three years.
I don’t mind the move. The amount makes me throw up in my mouth a little, but I get the line of thinking that the Cowboys are actually being fiscally prudent with this extension. In effect the deal is for three years and $55M, just as Joe Flacco’s longer deal is really a three year with superfluous extra seasons to spread out the cap pain. That’s not outrageous cash for a quarterback of Romo’s caliber. It might even look like a bargain at this point next year. Aaron Rodgers is about to sign a deal for $25M/yr. any day now, according to sources. Matt Ryan is due for an extension in the next year, and his deal will easily surpass Romo’s. Colin Kaepernick and Russell Wilson will be primed for rich new deals after next season. Matt Stafford needs a new deal, as does Sam Bradford. Should Josh Freeman guide the Bucs to the playoffs, he will get a deal that is richer than Romo’s. I think Dallas is shrewdly preempting the escalating salaries for quarterbacks by striking now. Whether that is intentional or not is an open question.
Dallas had other reasons to make the move aside from reaffirming its commitment to Romo. Before the deal, they had exactly $24,500 in cap space after signing linebacker Justin Durant on the cheap. They couldn’t even sign street free agents to futures contracts, let alone sign anyone to a deal above a veteran minimum amount. Now they have some flexibility to get Romo more help. He needs it.
$.03--The Oakland Raiders may or may not be about to make a dramatic change at quarterback. Carson Palmer has refused to take a needed pay cut to remain with the team, as his $13M salary hangs like an albatross around the cap-strapped franchise. Recently Palmer refused to trim $3M from his salary to help out the team, which dealt a first round pick in 2012 and this year’s second round pick to the Bengals to acquire the big righty.
Palmer was not the big problem in Oakland. Despite having a multitude of wideouts rotating in and out of the lineup due to injuries, Palmer still managed to throw for over 4000 yards and 22 touchdowns. He did throw 14 INTs but several were of the miscommunication variety, a symptom of a lack of coordination with the shuffling lineup. But Palmer is quite clearly not the long-term solution in Oakland either, and new GM Reggie McKenzie refuses to pay him to be that guy. Palmer has lost any semblance of mobility and at 33 is not going to get any better. The team was terrible with him; it can be terrible less expensively without him.
Palmer will definitely find interested parties. He can walk into Arizona and start for the Cardinals, giving Palmer a chance to throw to Larry Fitzgerald. He could saunter across the Bay Bridge and serve as a veteran backup for Colin Kaepernick, giving him a viable chance to win a Super Bowl. Palmer could also fill that role in Atlanta, though that would require a more dramatic pay concession than he probably wants to swallow.
Replacing Palmer in Oakland may or may not be Matt Flynn. Seattle is openly shopping last year’s prized free agent, and the Raiders have not hidden their interest. Remember that McKenzie came from Green Bay, where Flynn shined brightly in extremely limited duty that got him paid in Seattle. Usurped by Russell Wilson, the Seahawks have little use for Flynn and his salary. As unproven as he is, Flynn gives the Raiders a better option than Terrelle Pryor, who would be the only QB on the roster if/when Palmer leaves. Interestingly, Flynn is sort of the anti-Palmer. He’s short, doesn’t have a very big arm, and has some ability to move around and create with his legs. He’s an inspirational, feisty persona. That alone might be worth the risk of a middle round pick for the Raiders…but only if they are able to trade the #3 overall selection and parlay that into extra draft picks. Flynn is more of a bridge guy than a franchise quarterback, but the Raiders likely perceive that there is no immediate franchise QB available this offseason. Some other team (Buffalo, New York Jets) might however, and that gives the Raiders a chance to acquire more picks and replenish the thinnest, least-talented roster in the NFL.
$.04--Flynn is proof of the QB circle of life. If he does indeed wind up in Oakland it will be his third team in three years. That makes Flynn just like former Raiders starter Jason Campbell, the man who lost his job to Palmer. Campbell signed a one-year deal in Chicago to back up Jay Cutler but was deemed too expensive to keep around by the Bears, so he once again had to file a change of address.
Now Campbell is in Cleveland as the newest attempt at bandaging the hemorrhagic fever that has gripped the Browns QB situation since Bill Belichick announced that Bernie Kosar suddenly became awful and replaced him with Vinny Testaverde, who had been relatively awful for quite some time. About this time a year ago, Matt Flynn was widely speculated by the media masses to wind up in Cleveland to compete with (read: kick to curb) Colt McCoy. Never mind that a then-Browns staffer told me the team didn’t see Flynn as an upgrade at all over McCoy. Cleveland took Brandon Weeden in the first round, and he was an upgrade over McCoy. Just not enough of an upgrade for the new regime, apparently, because Campbell is not in Cleveland to just look good in a baseball cap. He will get a chance to beat out Weeden for the job, though the deck is somewhat stacked against him.
At minimum, Campbell pushes McCoy off the roster and prevents the need for the Browns to draft a quarterback in the first four rounds. Campbell has the arm that Coach Chudzinski covets and has had intermittent NFL success as a starter with chaotic turnover all around him on a yearly basis. That makes him a great fit in Cleveland much better than the weak-armed, scattershot McCoy. The ultimate QB circle of life could be completed if McCoy winds up replacing Flynn as the backup in either Green Bay or Seattle, both of which are in need of upgrades at the #2 QB spot. The difference is that in those locales the #2 QB is never expected to play.
$.05--And then there is Kevin Kolb, who walked down the Flynn career path of being an incredibly prolific fill-in for a brief time and parlaying that into big $$ and a supposed starting gig elsewhere. Kolb turned two huge outings in Philadelphia into a six year. $65M deal in Arizona. Two years later Kolb is a street free agent after extracting the same reaction from Cards fans that Ernesto Escobedo screamed at the TV monitor in his private bowling alley as President Bennett flaunting a major drug bust in the classic movie Clear and Present Danger: “You are stealing my money!” What a fantastic movie, by the way…
Kolb’s Arizona tenure was pockmarked by injuries, ineffectiveness, and some of the worst offensive line play since David Carr, who knows all about the vagabond backup QB life, was nearly slaughtered with the expansion-era Texans. That has not stopped the truly desperate Buffalo Bills from signing Kolb to a two year deal that could be worth as much as $13M is he wins the starting job. As of today he would be the starter over fellow vagabond Tarvaris Jackson, but his grasp is tenuous; Buffalo still figures to select a quarterback high in the draft. I will be stunned if they do not take a QB in the first two rounds, and that QB will be given every advantage to win the starting job.
Kevin Kolb has seen this movie before. He was set to inherit the starting job from Donovan McNabb in Philadelphia before Michael Vick seized that job. He strangely lost out in Arizona when John Skelton kept wining even though Kolb put up better numbers in losses. Now he will compete with Geno Smith or Matt Barkley or Ryan Nassib and probably play just well enough to start at the beginning of the year but lose the job as the team losses mount.
