- Joined
- Feb 9, 2014
- Messages
- 20,922
- Name
- Peter
These are excerpts. To read the whole article click the link below.
******************************************************************
https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/09/03/khalil-mack-trade-aaron-donald-contract-monday-morning-quarterback
On Khalil Mack, Aaron Donald and the Value of a Franchise Defensive Player
One gets traded, the other re-signs, and in the end both get paid big. For the Raiders and Rams, the behind-the-scenes machinations revealed contrasting strategies for dealing with their premier defensive players, and only time will tell which approach was the wiser.
By Albert Breer
Getty Images
The words that stuck out most, from Khalil Mack’s introductory press conference in Chicago, were perhaps the most simple and concise. What, he was asked, was so attractive about the Bears?
“To be wanted,” Mack answered. “That’s all it takes.”
This week the market for defensive players was reset by the two truly generational talents to emerge from a loaded top half of the first round of the 2014 NFL draft. And the differing paths the two players, Mack and Rams defensive tackle Aaron Donald, wound up navigating is explained almost completely by that single line from the newest Monster of the Midway in his first meeting with the Chicago media.
Donald was wanted by the Rams, and L.A. wasn’t going to let him go. Mack was wanted in Oakland, but only to a certain point, and that became clear quickly.
In February, around the time of the combine, the Raiders made an offer to Mack’s agent, Joel Segal. Segal counter-offered. So at that point, the Raiders definitely were ready to enter into a deal to keep Mack well past the planned 2020 move to Las Vegas, and Mack was ready to sign his future away to the only NFL home he’d known. Problem was, that shared willingness came at very different price points.
As a result, that was the end of it. And contact going forward was minimal.
It’s not as if the Rams and Donald didn’t have disagreements on value. They did. Their standoff lasted almost two years. But after not negotiating at all through last year’s holdout, as a matter of policy, the Rams kept the lines of communication, and negotiation, open this time around, and kept chipping away at a new deal.
Getty Images
Coach Sean McVay kept in contact with Donald. Team negotiators Kevin Demoff (the COO) and Tony Pastoors (VP of football and business administration) stayed in touch with CAA agents Brian Ayrault, Todd France and Rich Hurtado. The deal was never going to be easy—the market for defensive players hadn’t moved in three years—but the mutual intention to reach a solution was never in question.
“Aaron has earned the right to be on the Rams Mt Rushmore,” GM Les Snead told me on Sunday. “And the goal, what’s best for the organization is to make sure that occurs. That principle allowed to keep things very positive through the daily grind of trying to come to a long-term solution; We all took that approach, because the endgame was always make sure Aaron Donald is a Ram for a long, long time.”
You want to know why Donald is signed to his megadeal in L.A., without so much as a game missed, and Mack was being toured through Halas Hall on Sunday morning? It’s right there for you.
It’s why Donald arrived at the Rams facility on Friday afternoon to sign a new six-year, $135 million extension. It’s also why just hours after that, in the wee hours of Friday night/Saturday morning, the Bears called Segal, whom Mack happened to be visiting in New York, and said, “We have permission.” Segal’s response: “Let’s go.”
Consider the numbers, side by side, all of which were far beyond what any defensive player, or non-quarterback for that matter, has ever made.
Total new money APY: Mack $23.5 million; Donald $22.5 million.
Signing bonus: Mack $34 million; Donald $40 million.
Year 1 cash: Mack $41 million, Donald $40.892 million.
Year 2 cash: Mack $56.3 million; Donald $50 million.
Year 3 cash: Mack $73.3 million; Donald $67 million.
Total new money: Mack, six years, $141 million; Donald, six years, $135 million.
Practical guarantee: Mack $90 million; Donald $86.892 million.
Mack had an advantage here. He was working off a fifth-year option number of $13.846 million, and plays a position with higher tag numbers. Donald’s fifth-year option was only worth $6.892 million. So that can explain the discrepancy in numbers favoring Mack.
And that wasn’t the only thing differentiating the two. As the above illustrates, the two players were in very different spots. So with that as the backdrop, here are nuggets I was able to glean Sunday from the two situations.
There wasn’t a seminal moment in the Donald talks for the Rams, but four days (Aug. 5-9) sequestered in a Baltimore-area hotel for joint practices with the Ravens gave Demoff and Pastoors every reason to spend significant time on the deal. And while it really was just more chipping away if you were to somehow chart how this all went, Snead got a nice, positive vibe from his colleagues after the calls with CAA.
“That’s probably when I changed the script a little bit,” Snead remembers, “And said we were in the same zip code.”
As for keys, here are a few …
• The Rams were unwilling to talk, as a matter of course, during Donald’s 2017 holdout. They backed off that this time around, almost viewing Donald staying away more as injury risk management than any sort of wildcat strike. Simply, it was an acknowledgement by the team that this was a special circumstance for a special player, and that it didn’t make much sense to try and make a point by not talking.
• Another concession came in the structure of the deal: The Rams had been against funding guarantees in the past, but did so in this case, using a rolling structure that marries the club to the player for four years (very rare) at the aforementioned price of $86.892 million. Why were they more willing?
Well, one reason is because Jared Goff’s deal is the next foundational piece to take care of, and they’re going to have to be reasonable on guarantees in that one (based on the QB market), so holding the line on Donald, the best player on the team, just wasn’t worth it.
• Maybe the most interesting win for Donald—generally these deals are measured against the money left, plus what two franchise tags would cost, which represents the team’s leverage point. In this case, the number was around $40 million over those three years. Donald got $67 million over the first three years of his deal, which is a massive 68 percent hike over the aforementioned baseline.
• There was no deadline for a deal last week but the Rams and Donald certainly were cognizant of the lessons of last year. In 2017, he reported two days before the opener, missed that game, and really wasn’t quite himself for the two games after that. Both sides wanted to avoid having to endure a similar re-acclimation this year, so getting in ahead of game week was a goal.
And when it was over?
“It was, ‘Hey, we’re finally whole again, Aaron’s gonna be a part of this,’” Snead said. “That’s the first thing that crosses your mind—OK, all is right for the Rams for this moment. Obviously, there’s tomorrow and another adversity that’s inevitable, that we’ll have to deal with. But that’s the first thing, and then you do start daydreaming about some of the moves you made during the offseason to improve the defense.
“Those moves were made with Aaron penciled into the starting lineup on paper. When there’s an agreement, and he drives up your driveway, it’s no longer on paper, it’s on grass.”
It’d be wrong to assume that Donald’s deal frameworked what Mack and his people did a day later in Chicago. But there’s no doubt it had its effect on the proceedings.
Because the financial area that Donald and Mack sought to reach was uncharted by anyone other than the guys throwing the ball, the Raiders certainly had their right to believe that Mack’s asking price was crazy. And so for weeks, as teams inquired about his availability, they were met with a very firm no.
The tone changed as Donald and the Rams closed in on their deal. By then, Oakland knew what Mack was asking for was about to seem a great deal more reasonable than it had a few weeks before. And so as coach Jon Gruden would hand teams off to GM Reggie McKenzie (Gruden wasn’t kidding Sunday about not having dealt the second-rounder) late last week, those calling started to see Oakland not only as more open to dealing Mack. At that point, it seemed like they actually wanted to deal him.
So it was that the ball started rolling …
• As far as I can tell, among the teams involved, the Jets were the only ones close to what the Bears were willing to part with to get Mack. The Browns, Bills and Packers, among others, called, but this one was too rich for their blood.
• Mack’s resolve carried the day here. This was different from the Donald situation, in that Mack was on island and not communicating with his coaches on any kind of a regular basis. That could certainly get to you, especially when reporting would mean making $13.846 million for the season ahead. Mack didn’t crack, and that’s a credit to him.
• Gruden panned his roster to me last month and did it again at his Sunday press conference, and it colors why the Raiders were unwilling to go to the place they needed to in order to extend the 2016 Defensive Player of the Year. If you think you’re two years away, allocating resources into someone who may be 30 before you’re ready to seriously contend might not be the best idea.
• For their part, the Bears were monitoring Mack’s status all summer, and Matt Nagy was spending a ton of time late into the night in GM Ryan Pace’s office this week to discuss the concept of dealing for a potentially franchise-shifting talent. That was all facilitated, in part, by the rookie-contract-quarterback flexibility enjoyed with Mitch Trubisky, the same kind of flexibility that Seattle rode to a title in 2013 and the Rams and Eagles have worked to their advantage the last couple years.
• The key number for Mack: $90 million. That’s the guarantee he secured, and Segal and Pace and Bears negotiator Joey Laine were able to get there within 24 hours, which says all you need to know about what resulted from Pace and Nagy kicking tires on Mack. It’s also important here to know that the Raiders were never going there. Oakland’s brass and Mack’s camp did talk at the beginning of training camp, but unlike February, offers weren’t exchanged, a sign of how entrenched each side was.
The depth of the Bears’ investment, in fact, is probably even better illustrated by the Rams’ reasoning for going the extra mile on Donald. They saw what it cost the Giants to sign a player, Olivier Vernon ($17 million per), who wasn’t in Donald’s class, and what it cost the Jags to get a really good, albeit older, interior defensive lineman in Calais Campbell ($15 million per). And then there were the Saints, giving up an extra 1 to move up for Marcus Davenport on draft day.
In the Rams’ minds, it was worth going the extra few million per year, while saving the draft picks, to keep a player who was better than any of those guys and had been a model teammate and citizen to boot. The Bears? They went the extra few million and gave up the draft picks.
So it was a bumpy ride for Mack to get to this finish line. And there was last one kick in the junk he didn’t see coming. After spending the weekend with his agent, Mack flew Saturday from LaGuardia to O’Hare. His plane landed at 7:30 local time, and into a storm. Sure enough, the weather kept others from taking off, which meant his plane’s assigned gate was occupied by another plane in a delay.
Mack spent 90 minutes on the tarmac, not reaching his hotel near the team’s facility until around 10:30 p.m., where Nagy, his four kids, Pace and defensive coordinator Vic Fangio had come to meet him. Nothing in this saga came easy for Mack.
As for Donald? He flew private from Pittsburgh to L.A. last week.
----------------------------------------------------------------
WHO’LL BE THE TOP QB COME JANUARY?
As I was making calls this week to try to unearth who would (and wouldn’t) be on the trade block ahead of this week’s final cutdown to 53, a Packers skill player came across my desk. So I texted with an executive who had intimate knowledge of the guy, and asked if he was functional as an offensive weapon. The response I got: “Should be functional for Green Bay, due to Rodgers being so good.”
We all may debate who the best quarterback in the league is now. What I’ve found is that debate is less heated inside NFL buildings. Most think it’s Aaron Rodgers.
I set out a few days ago to try and reprise, on the fly, a larger project I ran three summers ago at NFL Network. The idea was to ask football people a simple question: Who will be the Top 5 QBs in football at the end of the season? I set the question up that way because it would reflect what these insiders thought would happen over the course of the season, rather than how things looked at the start of the season.
Also, by keeping the ballot to five names, I’d take the pressure off of the responders feeling they needed to name their own quarterbacks, limiting it to players these coaches and scouts felt were truly top shelf. We wound up getting some interesting results (Andrew Luck at No. 2!) out of the process.
So this week I sent the texts out, and what follows is based solely on the opinions of NFL general managers, head coaches, scouting directors, offensive coordinators and quarterbacks coaches, with two defensive coaches mixed in for good measure. I received 32 ballots back, and scored five points for each first-place vote, four points for second-place, and so on. Without further ado, here are the results …
1. Aaron Rodgers, Packers: 148 points (23 first-place votes)
2. Tom Brady, Patriots: 125 points (7 first-place votes)
3. Drew Brees, Saints: 81 points (1 first-place vote)
4. Ben Roethlisberger, Steelers: 29 points
5. Carson Wentz, Eagles: 26 points
6. Matt Ryan, Falcons: 20 points
7. Philip Rivers, Chargers: 14 points
8. Russell Wilson, Seahawks: 12 points
9. Deshaun Watson, Texans: 7 points (1 first-place vote)
10. Cam Newton, Panthers: 6 points
11. Jimmy Garoppolo, 49ers: 5 points
12. Jared Goff, Rams: 4 points
13. Kirk Cousins, Vikings: 2 points
14. Andrew Luck, Colts; Case Keenum, Broncos; Derek Carr, Raiders: 1 point each.
A couple points to make in comparing this year’s exercise to the 2015 version:
• Respondents factored in age much less this time around than last.In 2015 Brady finished third, behind Rodgers and Luck. Brees was seventh, just behind a 40-year-old Peyton Manning. That, in fact, was sort of what I was looking for—who are teams expecting to ascend/descend? Age was clearly taken into account less this year, with Brady and Brees very comfortably in the top three—maybe because the expectations on aging at the position have changed.
• Rodgers was a stronger No. 1 this time around than last. In 2015 he pulled in 18 of 27 first-place votes. This time he got 23 of 32. The Packers’ QB was first or second on 30 ballots, and no lower than fourth on anyone’s list. Brady was the only other QB on everyone’s ballot, and also was no lower than fourth on any one of them. Brees was on 28 of 32 ballots. Ryan was the next most consistent to appear, landing on 14 ballots.
• Yes, Deshaun Watson got a first-place vote. When I asked the voter why, the answer came back: “Weapons.” It’s a reminder that every quarterback is to some degree a product of his environment.
• It was hard for anyone to break the stranglehold that Rodgers, Brady and Brees had on the top three, but Wentz was the one who did it most often. The returning Eagle was only on 11 of 32 ballots, but six of those 11 had him listed in the top three.
• I heard from more than a couple coaches that it was hard to rank the young quarterbacks against the older guys because they were products of such different environments, which I found interesting. The older QBs, of course, are largely equipped to play traditional NFL offense, whereas most of the younger guys have been raised in the spread.
• That Garoppolo appeared on four ballots, given the league’s limited exposure to him (seven starts), was notable, I thought.
----------------------------------------
TEN TAKEAWAYS
1. You shouldn’t lump together the Broncos cutting Paxton Lynch after two years and the Giants whacking Davis Webb after one year.The Broncos traded up in the first round to land Lynch as Peyton Manning’s replacement, while the Giants took a flier on Webb in the third round. Plus, Lynch was cut by the man who drafted him, and Webb wasn’t.
But the one thing the Broncos and Giants have in common is that they passed on quarterbacks in the upper reaches of the 2018 draft. The Giants liked Sam Darnold and Josh Allen, and took Saquon Barkley instead. The only quarterback Broncos really considered at five was Darnold, but they did believe all four of the QBs who went in the Top 10 would be upgrades over Lynch. So in both cases, the teams passed on players who could have been the future. Of course, it’ll be a few years before we can fairly determine whether those calls were mistakes.
2. Lynch’s problems, by the way, were largely between the ears. And it would be easier to excuse Denver on the pick if there hadn’t been questions about him in that regard coming out of Memphis. “Confidence is shot,” said one rival exec. “He’s not seeing the field and doesn’t look comfortable in the offense. The issues were all above the neck with that guy.
No doubt he had starting QB tools coming out—big, mobile, cannon for an arm, but the mental [aspect] was very average coming out, and that was an obvious concern for that position. [The Broncos] didn’t do him any favors with three OCs in three years. Volume most likely paralyzed him.”
Lots of teams have made mistakes with first-round quarterbacks, of course, and the Chiefs and Cowboys, both of whom had interest in Lynch, certainly dodged a bullet here. But the scoreboard only shows that Dallas came away with Dak Prescott a few rounds later, and Kansas City landed Pat Mahomes the next year, which puts them on the winning side of the ledger.
3. Along the lines of knowing what you’re getting, the Raiders had to know the risk in taking on Martavis Bryant, and so losing the third-round pick they sent to Pittsburgh for him should sting a bunch. If you’re scoring at home, Oakland sent the 79th overall pick to Pittsburgh for Bryant, whom the Raiders cut this weekend. The Steelers packaged that pick with a seventh-rounder to go up three spots, to 76 overall, and take quarterback Oklahoma State QB Mason Rudolph.
4. I remembering hearing from a couple people the story of how 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan saw Jerick McKinnon as such a fit for his offense that he basically told GM John Lynch to do what it took to get him—an approach that set the table for McKinnon’s four-year, $30 million free-agent deal this offseason. So Shanahan has to be heartbroken this morning learning that his new jack-of-all-trades weapon will be on the shelf for the season with a torn ACL.
The second-year coach has very specific roles he looks to fill in a scheme built to attack every level of the defense, and pass-catching backs, like the ones he had when he was offensive coordinator in Atlanta, are vital to it—and a big reason why the team was comfortable with the de facto McKinnon/Carlos Hyde swap this offseason.
5. AJ McCarron didn’t wow the Bills, but I wouldn’t downplay the role that second-year pro Nate Peterman had in pushing the ex-Alabama star off the roster. Buffalo coach Sean McDermott has liked Peterman’s ability to see the field and process it from the start, which is why he gave the 2017 fifth-rounder a shot at starting last fall.
The disaster of that start (five picks against the Chargers) made Peterman a punchline, but all the while he’s kept progressing, and had a pretty good August. It doesn’t mean he’s a star in the making. It does mean the Bills would be OK with starting him.
And while we’re in Buffalo, if you watched Josh Allen’s start against the Bengals in the Bills’ third preseason game you’d understand why it might makes sense to go with Peterman now. A rebuilt offensive line (gone are Eric Wood, Richie Incognito and Cordy Glenn) left Allen running for his life, which isn’t a great environment for a kid who was seen as raw coming out of Wyoming.
So I asked Sean McDermott the other day—do you factor in not just what’s good for the team, but what’s good for the player, given what you’ve invested in him? “There is [a balance],” McDermott told me. “Going back to the vision for how we’re trying to build this, it’s the long-term success of the organization. And Josh is a big part of that.” So if the Bills think playing Allen now will mess with his development, I think (and I think McDermott thinks) it’d make sense to go with Peterman short-term.
7. In the rush of news over the week, the Panthers putting left tackle Matt Kalil on injured reserve flew a bit under the radar, but it shouldn’t. Carolina’s had issues at the position for a while, which forced the signing of Kalil (an OK player who never lived up to his draft position) at $11 million per in the first place.
And there’s certainly a chance that Kalil doesn’t get his job back if he returns this season. Taylor Moton, a 2017 second-round pick, has impressed, and the staff seems very comfortable with the idea that he’ll be starting and protecting Cam Newton’s blind side in five days.
8. Sometimes teams reveal problems to you during cutdowns. Two contenders did just over the week—with the Saints implicitly conceding that they haven’t yet got a solid plan for replacing Mark Ingram’s production over the first four weeks of the season, and Patriots showing they’re still uncomfortable with their receivers, particularly with Julian Edelman, like Ingram, set to miss a quarter of the season on a PED suspension.
The Saints only carried two true tailbacks through the cutdown (Alvin Kamara, Boston Scott), then signed Patriots castoff Mike Gillislee on Sunday. New England, meanwhile, only carried three receivers through the cutdown (Chris Hogan, Phillip Dorsett, Cordarrelle Patterson), then claimed ex-Seahawk Amara Darboh and ex-Jet Chad Hansen off waivers.
9. When the Texans punter Shane Lechler got whacked on Saturday, I couldn’t help but think of Al Davis, and perhaps his most infamous draft class—the 2000 group. The late Raiders owner took a lot of heat for drafting Sebastian Janikowski in the first round and Lechler in the fifth round that year, but last season those two and a sixth-round quarterback named Brady were the only players left from that entire draft. Oakland got 31 years of service from Janikowski and Lechler, and each wound up being among the best at his position.
And while I wouldn’t advocate ever taking a kicker in the first round, Janikowski certainly outdid a lot of players drafted around him. Fun fact: All three of those 2000 survivors played in the Tuck Rule Game.
10. Good news that the Cowboys decided to carry all-everything center Travis Frederick, battling Guillan-Barre Syndrome, on the 53. Dallas needs him on the field, of course, but this—more importantly—is a sign that there’s optimism in his recovery.
******************************************************************
https://www.si.com/nfl/2018/09/03/khalil-mack-trade-aaron-donald-contract-monday-morning-quarterback
On Khalil Mack, Aaron Donald and the Value of a Franchise Defensive Player
One gets traded, the other re-signs, and in the end both get paid big. For the Raiders and Rams, the behind-the-scenes machinations revealed contrasting strategies for dealing with their premier defensive players, and only time will tell which approach was the wiser.
By Albert Breer
Getty Images
The words that stuck out most, from Khalil Mack’s introductory press conference in Chicago, were perhaps the most simple and concise. What, he was asked, was so attractive about the Bears?
“To be wanted,” Mack answered. “That’s all it takes.”
This week the market for defensive players was reset by the two truly generational talents to emerge from a loaded top half of the first round of the 2014 NFL draft. And the differing paths the two players, Mack and Rams defensive tackle Aaron Donald, wound up navigating is explained almost completely by that single line from the newest Monster of the Midway in his first meeting with the Chicago media.
Donald was wanted by the Rams, and L.A. wasn’t going to let him go. Mack was wanted in Oakland, but only to a certain point, and that became clear quickly.
In February, around the time of the combine, the Raiders made an offer to Mack’s agent, Joel Segal. Segal counter-offered. So at that point, the Raiders definitely were ready to enter into a deal to keep Mack well past the planned 2020 move to Las Vegas, and Mack was ready to sign his future away to the only NFL home he’d known. Problem was, that shared willingness came at very different price points.
As a result, that was the end of it. And contact going forward was minimal.
It’s not as if the Rams and Donald didn’t have disagreements on value. They did. Their standoff lasted almost two years. But after not negotiating at all through last year’s holdout, as a matter of policy, the Rams kept the lines of communication, and negotiation, open this time around, and kept chipping away at a new deal.
Getty Images
Coach Sean McVay kept in contact with Donald. Team negotiators Kevin Demoff (the COO) and Tony Pastoors (VP of football and business administration) stayed in touch with CAA agents Brian Ayrault, Todd France and Rich Hurtado. The deal was never going to be easy—the market for defensive players hadn’t moved in three years—but the mutual intention to reach a solution was never in question.
“Aaron has earned the right to be on the Rams Mt Rushmore,” GM Les Snead told me on Sunday. “And the goal, what’s best for the organization is to make sure that occurs. That principle allowed to keep things very positive through the daily grind of trying to come to a long-term solution; We all took that approach, because the endgame was always make sure Aaron Donald is a Ram for a long, long time.”
You want to know why Donald is signed to his megadeal in L.A., without so much as a game missed, and Mack was being toured through Halas Hall on Sunday morning? It’s right there for you.
It’s why Donald arrived at the Rams facility on Friday afternoon to sign a new six-year, $135 million extension. It’s also why just hours after that, in the wee hours of Friday night/Saturday morning, the Bears called Segal, whom Mack happened to be visiting in New York, and said, “We have permission.” Segal’s response: “Let’s go.”
Consider the numbers, side by side, all of which were far beyond what any defensive player, or non-quarterback for that matter, has ever made.
Total new money APY: Mack $23.5 million; Donald $22.5 million.
Signing bonus: Mack $34 million; Donald $40 million.
Year 1 cash: Mack $41 million, Donald $40.892 million.
Year 2 cash: Mack $56.3 million; Donald $50 million.
Year 3 cash: Mack $73.3 million; Donald $67 million.
Total new money: Mack, six years, $141 million; Donald, six years, $135 million.
Practical guarantee: Mack $90 million; Donald $86.892 million.
Mack had an advantage here. He was working off a fifth-year option number of $13.846 million, and plays a position with higher tag numbers. Donald’s fifth-year option was only worth $6.892 million. So that can explain the discrepancy in numbers favoring Mack.
And that wasn’t the only thing differentiating the two. As the above illustrates, the two players were in very different spots. So with that as the backdrop, here are nuggets I was able to glean Sunday from the two situations.
There wasn’t a seminal moment in the Donald talks for the Rams, but four days (Aug. 5-9) sequestered in a Baltimore-area hotel for joint practices with the Ravens gave Demoff and Pastoors every reason to spend significant time on the deal. And while it really was just more chipping away if you were to somehow chart how this all went, Snead got a nice, positive vibe from his colleagues after the calls with CAA.
“That’s probably when I changed the script a little bit,” Snead remembers, “And said we were in the same zip code.”
As for keys, here are a few …
• The Rams were unwilling to talk, as a matter of course, during Donald’s 2017 holdout. They backed off that this time around, almost viewing Donald staying away more as injury risk management than any sort of wildcat strike. Simply, it was an acknowledgement by the team that this was a special circumstance for a special player, and that it didn’t make much sense to try and make a point by not talking.
• Another concession came in the structure of the deal: The Rams had been against funding guarantees in the past, but did so in this case, using a rolling structure that marries the club to the player for four years (very rare) at the aforementioned price of $86.892 million. Why were they more willing?
Well, one reason is because Jared Goff’s deal is the next foundational piece to take care of, and they’re going to have to be reasonable on guarantees in that one (based on the QB market), so holding the line on Donald, the best player on the team, just wasn’t worth it.
• Maybe the most interesting win for Donald—generally these deals are measured against the money left, plus what two franchise tags would cost, which represents the team’s leverage point. In this case, the number was around $40 million over those three years. Donald got $67 million over the first three years of his deal, which is a massive 68 percent hike over the aforementioned baseline.
• There was no deadline for a deal last week but the Rams and Donald certainly were cognizant of the lessons of last year. In 2017, he reported two days before the opener, missed that game, and really wasn’t quite himself for the two games after that. Both sides wanted to avoid having to endure a similar re-acclimation this year, so getting in ahead of game week was a goal.
And when it was over?
“It was, ‘Hey, we’re finally whole again, Aaron’s gonna be a part of this,’” Snead said. “That’s the first thing that crosses your mind—OK, all is right for the Rams for this moment. Obviously, there’s tomorrow and another adversity that’s inevitable, that we’ll have to deal with. But that’s the first thing, and then you do start daydreaming about some of the moves you made during the offseason to improve the defense.
“Those moves were made with Aaron penciled into the starting lineup on paper. When there’s an agreement, and he drives up your driveway, it’s no longer on paper, it’s on grass.”
It’d be wrong to assume that Donald’s deal frameworked what Mack and his people did a day later in Chicago. But there’s no doubt it had its effect on the proceedings.
Because the financial area that Donald and Mack sought to reach was uncharted by anyone other than the guys throwing the ball, the Raiders certainly had their right to believe that Mack’s asking price was crazy. And so for weeks, as teams inquired about his availability, they were met with a very firm no.
The tone changed as Donald and the Rams closed in on their deal. By then, Oakland knew what Mack was asking for was about to seem a great deal more reasonable than it had a few weeks before. And so as coach Jon Gruden would hand teams off to GM Reggie McKenzie (Gruden wasn’t kidding Sunday about not having dealt the second-rounder) late last week, those calling started to see Oakland not only as more open to dealing Mack. At that point, it seemed like they actually wanted to deal him.
So it was that the ball started rolling …
• As far as I can tell, among the teams involved, the Jets were the only ones close to what the Bears were willing to part with to get Mack. The Browns, Bills and Packers, among others, called, but this one was too rich for their blood.
• Mack’s resolve carried the day here. This was different from the Donald situation, in that Mack was on island and not communicating with his coaches on any kind of a regular basis. That could certainly get to you, especially when reporting would mean making $13.846 million for the season ahead. Mack didn’t crack, and that’s a credit to him.
• Gruden panned his roster to me last month and did it again at his Sunday press conference, and it colors why the Raiders were unwilling to go to the place they needed to in order to extend the 2016 Defensive Player of the Year. If you think you’re two years away, allocating resources into someone who may be 30 before you’re ready to seriously contend might not be the best idea.
• For their part, the Bears were monitoring Mack’s status all summer, and Matt Nagy was spending a ton of time late into the night in GM Ryan Pace’s office this week to discuss the concept of dealing for a potentially franchise-shifting talent. That was all facilitated, in part, by the rookie-contract-quarterback flexibility enjoyed with Mitch Trubisky, the same kind of flexibility that Seattle rode to a title in 2013 and the Rams and Eagles have worked to their advantage the last couple years.
• The key number for Mack: $90 million. That’s the guarantee he secured, and Segal and Pace and Bears negotiator Joey Laine were able to get there within 24 hours, which says all you need to know about what resulted from Pace and Nagy kicking tires on Mack. It’s also important here to know that the Raiders were never going there. Oakland’s brass and Mack’s camp did talk at the beginning of training camp, but unlike February, offers weren’t exchanged, a sign of how entrenched each side was.
The depth of the Bears’ investment, in fact, is probably even better illustrated by the Rams’ reasoning for going the extra mile on Donald. They saw what it cost the Giants to sign a player, Olivier Vernon ($17 million per), who wasn’t in Donald’s class, and what it cost the Jags to get a really good, albeit older, interior defensive lineman in Calais Campbell ($15 million per). And then there were the Saints, giving up an extra 1 to move up for Marcus Davenport on draft day.
In the Rams’ minds, it was worth going the extra few million per year, while saving the draft picks, to keep a player who was better than any of those guys and had been a model teammate and citizen to boot. The Bears? They went the extra few million and gave up the draft picks.
So it was a bumpy ride for Mack to get to this finish line. And there was last one kick in the junk he didn’t see coming. After spending the weekend with his agent, Mack flew Saturday from LaGuardia to O’Hare. His plane landed at 7:30 local time, and into a storm. Sure enough, the weather kept others from taking off, which meant his plane’s assigned gate was occupied by another plane in a delay.
Mack spent 90 minutes on the tarmac, not reaching his hotel near the team’s facility until around 10:30 p.m., where Nagy, his four kids, Pace and defensive coordinator Vic Fangio had come to meet him. Nothing in this saga came easy for Mack.
As for Donald? He flew private from Pittsburgh to L.A. last week.
----------------------------------------------------------------
WHO’LL BE THE TOP QB COME JANUARY?
As I was making calls this week to try to unearth who would (and wouldn’t) be on the trade block ahead of this week’s final cutdown to 53, a Packers skill player came across my desk. So I texted with an executive who had intimate knowledge of the guy, and asked if he was functional as an offensive weapon. The response I got: “Should be functional for Green Bay, due to Rodgers being so good.”
We all may debate who the best quarterback in the league is now. What I’ve found is that debate is less heated inside NFL buildings. Most think it’s Aaron Rodgers.
I set out a few days ago to try and reprise, on the fly, a larger project I ran three summers ago at NFL Network. The idea was to ask football people a simple question: Who will be the Top 5 QBs in football at the end of the season? I set the question up that way because it would reflect what these insiders thought would happen over the course of the season, rather than how things looked at the start of the season.
Also, by keeping the ballot to five names, I’d take the pressure off of the responders feeling they needed to name their own quarterbacks, limiting it to players these coaches and scouts felt were truly top shelf. We wound up getting some interesting results (Andrew Luck at No. 2!) out of the process.
So this week I sent the texts out, and what follows is based solely on the opinions of NFL general managers, head coaches, scouting directors, offensive coordinators and quarterbacks coaches, with two defensive coaches mixed in for good measure. I received 32 ballots back, and scored five points for each first-place vote, four points for second-place, and so on. Without further ado, here are the results …
1. Aaron Rodgers, Packers: 148 points (23 first-place votes)
2. Tom Brady, Patriots: 125 points (7 first-place votes)
3. Drew Brees, Saints: 81 points (1 first-place vote)
4. Ben Roethlisberger, Steelers: 29 points
5. Carson Wentz, Eagles: 26 points
6. Matt Ryan, Falcons: 20 points
7. Philip Rivers, Chargers: 14 points
8. Russell Wilson, Seahawks: 12 points
9. Deshaun Watson, Texans: 7 points (1 first-place vote)
10. Cam Newton, Panthers: 6 points
11. Jimmy Garoppolo, 49ers: 5 points
12. Jared Goff, Rams: 4 points
13. Kirk Cousins, Vikings: 2 points
14. Andrew Luck, Colts; Case Keenum, Broncos; Derek Carr, Raiders: 1 point each.
A couple points to make in comparing this year’s exercise to the 2015 version:
• Respondents factored in age much less this time around than last.In 2015 Brady finished third, behind Rodgers and Luck. Brees was seventh, just behind a 40-year-old Peyton Manning. That, in fact, was sort of what I was looking for—who are teams expecting to ascend/descend? Age was clearly taken into account less this year, with Brady and Brees very comfortably in the top three—maybe because the expectations on aging at the position have changed.
• Rodgers was a stronger No. 1 this time around than last. In 2015 he pulled in 18 of 27 first-place votes. This time he got 23 of 32. The Packers’ QB was first or second on 30 ballots, and no lower than fourth on anyone’s list. Brady was the only other QB on everyone’s ballot, and also was no lower than fourth on any one of them. Brees was on 28 of 32 ballots. Ryan was the next most consistent to appear, landing on 14 ballots.
• Yes, Deshaun Watson got a first-place vote. When I asked the voter why, the answer came back: “Weapons.” It’s a reminder that every quarterback is to some degree a product of his environment.
• It was hard for anyone to break the stranglehold that Rodgers, Brady and Brees had on the top three, but Wentz was the one who did it most often. The returning Eagle was only on 11 of 32 ballots, but six of those 11 had him listed in the top three.
• I heard from more than a couple coaches that it was hard to rank the young quarterbacks against the older guys because they were products of such different environments, which I found interesting. The older QBs, of course, are largely equipped to play traditional NFL offense, whereas most of the younger guys have been raised in the spread.
• That Garoppolo appeared on four ballots, given the league’s limited exposure to him (seven starts), was notable, I thought.
----------------------------------------
TEN TAKEAWAYS
1. You shouldn’t lump together the Broncos cutting Paxton Lynch after two years and the Giants whacking Davis Webb after one year.The Broncos traded up in the first round to land Lynch as Peyton Manning’s replacement, while the Giants took a flier on Webb in the third round. Plus, Lynch was cut by the man who drafted him, and Webb wasn’t.
But the one thing the Broncos and Giants have in common is that they passed on quarterbacks in the upper reaches of the 2018 draft. The Giants liked Sam Darnold and Josh Allen, and took Saquon Barkley instead. The only quarterback Broncos really considered at five was Darnold, but they did believe all four of the QBs who went in the Top 10 would be upgrades over Lynch. So in both cases, the teams passed on players who could have been the future. Of course, it’ll be a few years before we can fairly determine whether those calls were mistakes.
2. Lynch’s problems, by the way, were largely between the ears. And it would be easier to excuse Denver on the pick if there hadn’t been questions about him in that regard coming out of Memphis. “Confidence is shot,” said one rival exec. “He’s not seeing the field and doesn’t look comfortable in the offense. The issues were all above the neck with that guy.
No doubt he had starting QB tools coming out—big, mobile, cannon for an arm, but the mental [aspect] was very average coming out, and that was an obvious concern for that position. [The Broncos] didn’t do him any favors with three OCs in three years. Volume most likely paralyzed him.”
Lots of teams have made mistakes with first-round quarterbacks, of course, and the Chiefs and Cowboys, both of whom had interest in Lynch, certainly dodged a bullet here. But the scoreboard only shows that Dallas came away with Dak Prescott a few rounds later, and Kansas City landed Pat Mahomes the next year, which puts them on the winning side of the ledger.
3. Along the lines of knowing what you’re getting, the Raiders had to know the risk in taking on Martavis Bryant, and so losing the third-round pick they sent to Pittsburgh for him should sting a bunch. If you’re scoring at home, Oakland sent the 79th overall pick to Pittsburgh for Bryant, whom the Raiders cut this weekend. The Steelers packaged that pick with a seventh-rounder to go up three spots, to 76 overall, and take quarterback Oklahoma State QB Mason Rudolph.
4. I remembering hearing from a couple people the story of how 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan saw Jerick McKinnon as such a fit for his offense that he basically told GM John Lynch to do what it took to get him—an approach that set the table for McKinnon’s four-year, $30 million free-agent deal this offseason. So Shanahan has to be heartbroken this morning learning that his new jack-of-all-trades weapon will be on the shelf for the season with a torn ACL.
The second-year coach has very specific roles he looks to fill in a scheme built to attack every level of the defense, and pass-catching backs, like the ones he had when he was offensive coordinator in Atlanta, are vital to it—and a big reason why the team was comfortable with the de facto McKinnon/Carlos Hyde swap this offseason.
5. AJ McCarron didn’t wow the Bills, but I wouldn’t downplay the role that second-year pro Nate Peterman had in pushing the ex-Alabama star off the roster. Buffalo coach Sean McDermott has liked Peterman’s ability to see the field and process it from the start, which is why he gave the 2017 fifth-rounder a shot at starting last fall.
The disaster of that start (five picks against the Chargers) made Peterman a punchline, but all the while he’s kept progressing, and had a pretty good August. It doesn’t mean he’s a star in the making. It does mean the Bills would be OK with starting him.
And while we’re in Buffalo, if you watched Josh Allen’s start against the Bengals in the Bills’ third preseason game you’d understand why it might makes sense to go with Peterman now. A rebuilt offensive line (gone are Eric Wood, Richie Incognito and Cordy Glenn) left Allen running for his life, which isn’t a great environment for a kid who was seen as raw coming out of Wyoming.
So I asked Sean McDermott the other day—do you factor in not just what’s good for the team, but what’s good for the player, given what you’ve invested in him? “There is [a balance],” McDermott told me. “Going back to the vision for how we’re trying to build this, it’s the long-term success of the organization. And Josh is a big part of that.” So if the Bills think playing Allen now will mess with his development, I think (and I think McDermott thinks) it’d make sense to go with Peterman short-term.
7. In the rush of news over the week, the Panthers putting left tackle Matt Kalil on injured reserve flew a bit under the radar, but it shouldn’t. Carolina’s had issues at the position for a while, which forced the signing of Kalil (an OK player who never lived up to his draft position) at $11 million per in the first place.
And there’s certainly a chance that Kalil doesn’t get his job back if he returns this season. Taylor Moton, a 2017 second-round pick, has impressed, and the staff seems very comfortable with the idea that he’ll be starting and protecting Cam Newton’s blind side in five days.
8. Sometimes teams reveal problems to you during cutdowns. Two contenders did just over the week—with the Saints implicitly conceding that they haven’t yet got a solid plan for replacing Mark Ingram’s production over the first four weeks of the season, and Patriots showing they’re still uncomfortable with their receivers, particularly with Julian Edelman, like Ingram, set to miss a quarter of the season on a PED suspension.
The Saints only carried two true tailbacks through the cutdown (Alvin Kamara, Boston Scott), then signed Patriots castoff Mike Gillislee on Sunday. New England, meanwhile, only carried three receivers through the cutdown (Chris Hogan, Phillip Dorsett, Cordarrelle Patterson), then claimed ex-Seahawk Amara Darboh and ex-Jet Chad Hansen off waivers.
9. When the Texans punter Shane Lechler got whacked on Saturday, I couldn’t help but think of Al Davis, and perhaps his most infamous draft class—the 2000 group. The late Raiders owner took a lot of heat for drafting Sebastian Janikowski in the first round and Lechler in the fifth round that year, but last season those two and a sixth-round quarterback named Brady were the only players left from that entire draft. Oakland got 31 years of service from Janikowski and Lechler, and each wound up being among the best at his position.
And while I wouldn’t advocate ever taking a kicker in the first round, Janikowski certainly outdid a lot of players drafted around him. Fun fact: All three of those 2000 survivors played in the Tuck Rule Game.
10. Good news that the Cowboys decided to carry all-everything center Travis Frederick, battling Guillan-Barre Syndrome, on the 53. Dallas needs him on the field, of course, but this—more importantly—is a sign that there’s optimism in his recovery.
