OT: Official 2020 Tompa Bay Gronkaneers Thread

[Deus Irae]

 

[Deus Irae]

 

[amfootball]

LOL. I like him.

 

[Deus Irae]

LOL. I like him.

There was another cut with him, but I figured it was both more routine and a bit disjointed. However, since you've like him, let me share that one as well. I hope you like this one as you like the other.

 

[Deus Irae]

 

[amfootball]

There was another cut with him, but I figured it was both more routine and a bit disjointed. However, since you've like him, let me share that one as well. I hope you like this one as you like the other.

Thanks. I appreciate all your posts related to the Bucs this off-season. Their message boards are awful so coming here is a great resource.

 

[Deus Irae]

Thanks. I appreciate all your posts related to the Bucs this off-season. Their message boards are awful so coming here is a great resource.

Yeah, those message boards are amazingly bad.

 

[Brit patriot]

Maybe I am in the minority, but I am finding Gronk tiresome at best. The late retirement that likely deliberately screwed up the Jared Cook deal, coming back and ruining his trade value, and constant jabbing at the Pats. Thanks for the memories but he can go rot

 

[VectorPrime]

Missing voltu

Maybe I am in the minority, but I am finding Gronk tiresome at best. The late retirement that likely deliberately screwed up the Jared Cook deal, coming back and ruining his trade value, and constant jabbing at the Pats. Thanks for the memories but he can go rot

Oh no.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

Maybe I am in the minority, but I am finding Gronk tiresome at best. The late retirement that likely deliberately screwed up the Jared Cook deal, coming back and ruining his trade value, and constant jabbing at the Pats. Thanks for the memories but he can go rot

Great excuse from the Patriots, who have fcked up a number of deals recently and then blamed others. They aggressively tried to sign Cook and failed to, partly because they failed to make their best offer to him, and he committed to the Saints. They did the same thing with Adam Humphries and Michael Bennett (the year before they traded for Bennett.). There are a bunch of reports similar to this. Gronkowski did not hinder them from signing Cook; they hindered themselves.

Report: Patriots target Jared Cook won't reconsider signing with Saints

Rob Gronkowski’s retirement has opened up a big void at tight end for the New England Patriots. Late in the free-agent process, there aren’t a lot of options available on the market, but Jared Cook is (technically) one of them. As of yesterday, Cook hadn’t yet signed his deal with the New...

www.nbcsports.com

It's funny how the "no excuses" organization has been so full of excuses for the last 2-3 years. They've really lost their way and need to make some big changes by bringing in some outsiders. Here's another one:





Absolutely bllshit revisionist history as the organization tries to save face again. They were very confident that signing Thuney and McCourty was their best play, since that gave them no more money to make an offer to Brady; it seemed at the time almost like a spiteful move to show that they weren't going to wait on anyone and the deals added up to almost the same amount: $25M. The Thuney signing was laughably stupid, signing a guard for a year at that money while letting your all-time great QB walk, when you're not even going to be able to extend Thuney.

Belichick really needs to replace the guys around him. It's embarassing just how bad their personnel department has become.

 

[jmt57]

Thanks. I appreciate all your posts related to the Bucs this off-season. Their message boards are awful so coming here is a great resource.

Yeah, those message boards are amazingly bad.

There was a time when the Pewter Report had a very robust forum, as well as very well written articles - but that was long ago (Dungy/Gruden era), and that forum is no longer the same.

Ironic that the best forum for Bucs info may now be another team's fan forum. Maybe reddit has become the destination for Buc fans? (225 users currently online, early afternoon on a weekday.)

r/buccaneers

r/buccaneers: ??Time Super Bowl Champs!

www.reddit.com

 

[VectorPrime]

I’ve become convinced by the actions of both the Bucs and the Saints that the restrictions of the cap are not nearly as debilitating as we’ve been led to believe for the last 20 years.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

By the way, this is from the NFL Films SB55. This is when the Bucs picked Mahomes with under two minutes and set off the Gatorade and everthing. Anyone want to guess the first person who Gronk embraces?





Yeah....that's right. As I've argued for two years, Gronk left New England because Belichick's one-size-fits-all approach to practices and fitness didn't fit him..and Brady followed him out the door. To me, Guerrero's presence in Tampa Bay tells so much about the exodus.

In the end, Guerrero's training methods worked. Maybe he was a quack in the past; maybe he's a quack now. Maybe Brady did a crappy job explaining the benefits in a book that also makes a lot of ridiculous claims. But bottom line: Brady and Gronk's careers were extended after leaving New England and going to a place where they had more discretion over workload, rest times, and which nutitionist/workout program they wanted to use, with an organization that embraces it instead of reluctantly allows it to an extent. People should stop being so bitter and start giving Alex Guerrero some serious credit. I'm quite certain that if you asked Brady privately who is the single most important person that helped his NFL career, I know his answer...and that means a lot.

 

[VectorPrime]

Alex is absolutely a quack and I don’t believe for a second he has an original thought in his body BUT his willingness to try already known but never before used in this context methods of physical training to keep football players healthy clearly has merit. Traditional weight training and maxing out on squats twice a week isnt good for everyone. Sports science has advanced so incredibly far over the past half century but so much of football training still revolves around the principles established in the 60s if not earlier.

 

[PP2]

Alex is absolutely a quack and I don’t believe for a second he has an original thought in his body BUT his willingness to try already known but never before used in this context methods of physical training to keep football players healthy clearly has merit. Traditional weight training and maxing out on squats twice a week isnt good for everyone. Sports science has advanced so incredibly far over the past half century but so much of football training still revolves around the principles established in the 60s if not earlier.

Not to throw **** right at the fan, but how exactly is he a quack?

 

[VectorPrime]

Not to throw **** right at the fan, but how exactly is he a quack?

I mean he’s literally gotten in legal trouble with the government for selling snake oil.

 

[jmt57]

I’ve become convinced by the actions of both the Bucs and the Saints that the restrictions of the cap are not nearly as debilitating as we’ve been led to believe for the last 20 years.

The multiple player contracts with multiple voidable years in order to create cap space has never been used to this extreme previously. It's a strategy to circumvent the issue with the cap not rising as expected this year, due to lower than anticipated revenues.

In my opinion it is a smart maneuver by Tampa Bay, in order to maximize an opportunity for more championships that has a relatively short window.

New Orleans leveraging the future does not make sense to me though. They are maybe a nine-win team, a borderline top-ten NFL at best. To me they would have been better off bottoming out and regrouping for 2022, rather than continuing to charge on their credit card. The Saints kicked the can down the road by restructuring $52 million in contracts, cap money that is being diverted for a year or two. Even with that they still had to release, trade or not re-sign eight players in order to save another $40 million on the cap. The salary cap had real consequences for them this offseason.

Pittsburgh is another team that used voidable years to get under the cap, yet still lost multiple players due to the cap.


If the cap increases dramatically the next couple years then teams using voidable years will have won that bet; if not then their situations will be even worse than it was before. While the NFL did sign big broadcasting rights contracts recently, last year's revenue shortfall will still be spread out over two more seasons.

Using voidable years to lower the current cap just seems like a very risky business strategy to me. And even if the cap goes up enough that a team can cover next year's cap acceleration, it will still give them fewer cap dollars to spend in 2022 than a team that did not use this tactic. That in turn will mean said club has less money to re-sign their own players than other teams, and less money to sign other free agents.

 

[amfootball]

Maybe I am in the minority, but I am finding Gronk tiresome at best. The late retirement that likely deliberately screwed up the Jared Cook deal, coming back and ruining his trade value, and constant jabbing at the Pats. Thanks for the memories but he can go rot

Man. I can't believe people STILL believe this. The Pats could have signed Cook at any point in FA and did attempt to but as usual they were not willing to pay him to get him. Gronk hindered nothing. And even if his announcement came after FA, why in the world would Bill be waiting on him when he tried to trade him that very season? And on top, the TE position was completely void of talent outside of Gronk given we didn't have anything close to a #2 behind him so this notion that the Pats would have been fine going into 2019 with just Gronk, a player they were just trying to trade, and do NOTHING else at the position is pure fantasy and just feeds the excuse making machine that has become the Patriots the last year and a half.

 

[Deus Irae]

I’ve become convinced by the actions of both the Bucs and the Saints that the restrictions of the cap are not nearly as debilitating as we’ve been led to believe for the last 20 years.

Belichick himself has made that clear, both in word and deed.

 

[Ice_Ice_Brady]

I’ve become convinced by the actions of both the Bucs and the Saints that the restrictions of the cap are not nearly as debilitating as we’ve been led to believe for the last 20 years.

The multiple player contracts with multiple voidable years in order to create cap space has never been used to this extreme previously. It's a strategy to circumvent the issue with the cap not rising as expected this year, due to lower than anticipated revenues.

In my opinion it is a smart maneuver by Tampa Bay, in order to maximize an opportunity for more championships that has a relatively short window.

New Orleans leveraging the future does not make sense to me though. They are maybe a nine-win team, a borderline top-ten NFL at best. To me they would have been better off bottoming out and regrouping for 2022, rather than continuing to charge on their credit card. The Saints kicked the can down the road by restructuring $52 million in contracts, cap money that is being diverted for a year or two. Even with that they still had to release, trade or not re-sign eight players in order to save another $40 million on the cap. The salary cap had real consequences for them this offseason.

Pittsburgh is another team that used voidable years to get under the cap, yet still lost multiple players due to the cap.


If the cap increases dramatically the next couple years then teams using voidable years will have won that bet; if not then their situations will be even worse than it was before. While the NFL did sign big broadcasting rights contracts recently, last year's revenue shortfall will still be spread out over two more seasons.

Using voidable years to lower the current cap just seems like a very risky business strategy to me. And even if the cap goes up enough that a team can cover next year's cap acceleration, it will still give them fewer cap dollars to spend in 2022 than a team that did not use this tactic. That in turn will mean said club has less money to re-sign their own players than other teams, and less money to sign other free agents.

The Saints are an extreme case. They've kicked cap hits down the road so much that the only cap era comparison might be the Saints in the mid-2010s, when their can kicking from previous years did indeed catch up to them and made them a 7-win team despite having prime Brees. They did the same thing again, and I think they were smart to do it even if it didn't work out. They put some super teams on the field for the last four seasons, but Brees wasn't what he used to be and it cost them down the stretch. At this point, I think they almost have no choice but to ride it out. They still have a really competitive roster - maybe the best of the league not including QB - and blowing it all up might not be their best move if they can keep it together one more year and pray that either Winston, Hill, or perhaps a surprise draft pick can lead them to another playoff run. They will be blowing it all up soon, though.

The Bucs are just getting started. They still have cap flexibility for next year, since going into this offseason they had almost zero liability in dead money or bad contracts. I see no reason they can't keep the team in tact at least for 2022 and maybe beyond, and even add another star player or two next year. You have a lot of leeway when you just had four home run drafts in a row, an elite QB at an affordable price, and haven't overpaid for anyone on the roster yet.