sflegend89

Here's a little head to head comparison with Stewart who was hilariously labelled a "high impact" safety after he signed with the Broncos. Rarely do I actually laugh out loud from reading an ESPN headline but I think that marks the first time Darian Stewart and "high impact" were ever in the same sentence. Stewart is solid, fairly consistent... but high impact? That's a joke and a half. Darian Stewart 2014: 16 games played, 53 tackles, 1 FF, 1 INT, 4 passes defended, 2 stuffs Kendrick Lewis 2014: 16 games played, 84 tackles, 3 FF, 2 INT's, 1 TD, 6 passes defended, 4 stuffs Lewis was better in ever statistical category, over 30 more tackles, contributed to 3 more turnovers, more passes defended, oh yeah and he had a pick 6 while we're talking about "high impact". Do stats mean everything? no. But they certainly point in the direction of the truth more often than not.

Still waiting on contract details but this looks like a quality addition to the secondary. Like others have said easily an upgrade over Stewart and Elam. Texans fans were sad to see him go and wanted him to re-sign there, fans don't get upset over a "crap" player who was only on your team for one season leaving.. if he was half as bad as our pal Sami84 made him out to be then Texans fans would be saying "good riddance". I think Lewis will start for us and be solid.. not outstanding, but solid. He won't be whiffing on tackles like Elam and he will play the ball in the air better than Stewart who had issues tracking the ball (But to be fair Stewart was getting better at the very end of the year). At just 26 I think we can get the best years of his career out of him in this 3 year span and I certainly wouldn't be surprised if he continues his upward trending performance from last year.

3rd and Ellerbe is A LOT to give up for Stills, was thinking more along the lines of a 4th and 6th would be fair, that's why I'm happy to have Oz, he sees the value in draft picks and doesn't just ship out a 3rd rounder for a guy like Stills, that's highway robbery. I knew this first week of FA was going to be quiet for us but I would've never guessed we weren't going to make a single new signing after clearing all that cap. Missed out on AJ, Browner, Culliver, Cameron, Chandler, Rahim Moore, Antrel Rolle, Royal... I trust Ozzie but I would just want us to pull the trigger on someone. We have big holes at WR, SS, TE and need depth at CB and on the DL. We have too many holes to fill to just rely on the draft, we usually don't have so many openings so I'm concerned we're going to get burned playing the bargain bin game this year.

I would be intrigued if I were Ozzie. Yes, he disappointed big time in Minnesota last season but he's 23 and extremely talented. We've seen flashes of what this kid can do with ball in his hands but he just needs to develop his route running and mental game a bit. We would have the perfect guy in Smith Sr. to mentor him. That would be a tremendous Torrey replacement with a little refinement and teaching. You can't teach that kid's speed and natural ability, you can teach him how to run good routes and conduct himself like a professional and there was clearly no one to do that for him in Minny's wr group. It's a pipe dream still but I'm a big fan of Patterson's potential down the line if he can get with a good team/organization.

Don't think Rahim Moore wanted to come to the place that ruined his life for an entire offseason lol. Moore will be 50 years old and still have people asking him about the mile high miracle. I'm sure he could get over it for the right price but I doubt he would want to play for us without a bigger money incentive. I agree that he could have been a nice piece for us but it would've been an awkward fit. Glad we got Forsett but we need to get active in the secondary. Please get Culliver, we could have afforded Browner which ticks me off, went for a lot less than I thought his market value would be.

Love the deal for Forsett. Is it a tad risky? sure. But that's true for pretty much every FA rb on the market. Even the #1 rb on the market in Murray is risky, that's just how it is at that position.With Forsett we have a guy who has already proven he fits and can produce in our system. Oh yeah and we got him for a FRACTION of what the Eagles and other teams paid for a top 10 rusher. While a guy like Murray is clearly an upgrade from Forsett, the amount we re-signed him for is an absolute steal in contrast, the drop off between those two players isn't nearly as much as the contracts suggest and that's what our FO is all about, value for money.

Browner and Jimmy would be a nasty duo. A 6'2 and 6'4 duo of cb's that specialize in press coverage..scary. With that said, I still think we can get better value for money from a guy like Culliver, Cromartie, or Perrish Cox so that's the route I expect Oz to go. He's always opted for making smaller, calculated moves across the board over breaking the bank on one high profile FA.

Kenny Britt is a clown, too immature and unmotivated to be a Raven. The real FA wr's to watch are Denarius Moore and Eddie Royal. Then add a guy like Jalen Strong or DBG in the draft and we're in business.

Forsett is such a tough call. It's hard to separate to what extent his success was based on the system vs his talent. His age makes a long term deal even more risky. We don't have many other options though, Pierce is meh and LT isn't quite ready for a full time gig, Pierre Thomas is also pretty underwhelming as a FA alternative. I feel like we know Forsett can produce in our offense so we might just have to take the risk and re-sign him.. I don't see a better solution. Something like 3 years/14M sounds fair, that would be just north of what Gore got from Indy.

Cameron is worth the risk for me. This guy would be getting big time money if he didn't have some red flags, We're talking about adding a pro bowl caliber TE to an offense that relies heavily on TE's. For me the reward outweighs the risk, it's not a position we can easily just draft and we're obviously shopping on a budget. When you look at value for money at positions of need Cameron is near the top of the list.

This offseason is chaos.. never seen so many blockbuster trades going down in such a short span of time

Go get Jordan Cameron, going to be hard to replace Daniels in the draft when we have so many other areas to address. We need good TE's to run this offense, Cameron is a great fit.

I really hope we can land AJ, that would be a game changer. Then bring back Daniels and get a decent corner and sit tight until the draft. That's not too much to ask for right? Why do I get the feeling what we actually do in FA will be extremely underwhelming?

Nothing like making a massive investment in Joe and giving him no real weapons... Draft isn't enough for our offense the way things are going. We need to cut Ngata and restructure Webb, it sucks parting ways with a player like Ngata but we have to add someone quality to our offense before the draft. As much as I like Camp and Aiken this is a bleak group of weapons for Joe even if we add a 1st round wr. As much as I want secondary help the offense has jumped to priority #1, we need at least one new weapon for Joe before the draft even if it costs us Ngata. We have Pitta and his hip, Daniels is UFA, Smith Sr. is likely playing his last season, Camp and Aiken are talented but still very unpolished, Marlon has a low ceiling, Forsett might very well be gone... we just had the SB champs in deep water in their house, is 2015 really going to turn into a transition year like 2013 after being on he cusp of a SB birth?

I said "almost any cost". I'm a big Terrence Brooks supporter but he's starting the year on the PUP list and was inconsistent in coverage when he was healthy. I expect Brooks to develop into a nice player for us but given the circumstances you can't just let a proven stud safety walk out the door and expect Brooks to go from the PUP list to starting safety. If a team is bonkers over Will Hill and throws the bank at him then we won't really have a choice but as long as the offer is reasonable we should match because Hill has low market value for his amount of talent/potential and we would still be getting a lot of bang for our buck. It was Hill's first year in our defense after a lengthy suspension and he played at a high level, he really isn't too far off from the Jairus Bryd's and Devin McCourtey's who have received massive deals.

We need to keep Will Hill at almost any cost, guy is a stud and he was just getting started last year after his suspension.. incredible value for money even if we have to match another teams offer on him, as long as the offer isn't ridiculous he will be worth every penny. Would be insane if we pulled AJ somehow and then got a wr in the 1st round

Crabtree to Buffalo. The quality wr options in FA are falling off the board fast and it hasn't even officially begun yet. Still holding out hope AJ will somehow end up here. Starting to think Ozzie will only add a mid tier wr in FA and look to the draft to get that potential #1 wr.. even if we have to uncharacteristically trade up to do it. At this point I'm just hoping we can get Denarius Moore or Eddie Royal and a decent corner before draft time.

Crabtree is intriguing, never played with a QB the caliber of Joe and is more of a complete wr than Torrey imo.. big no to Harvin and Nicks though. Harvin is more trouble than he's worth off the field and isn't a great pass catching wr, we already discussed Nicks in another thread but he was a massive flop in Indy who had an offense that caters to airing out the ball and making full use of wr's. If Nicks was next to useless with Luck in that type of offense I have zero interest in bringing him to Baltimore. Crabtree, Eddie Royal, and Denarius Moore are really the only FA wr's that peak my interest in our price range

Free Agency is really going to suck this year huh?... you're right though, those are the caliber of FA's we are going to be looking at unfortunately. I'm all aboard the Denarius Moore bandwagon, as far as the cheaper FA wr's are concerned I think he has the most untapped potential. Bowe is meh, not as bad as some people make him out to be these days but it would surely be met by groans and eye rolls from me if we signed him.

Brandon Williams and Jernigan can hold us down there if we lose Ngata. Wilfork, while not as expensive as Ngata is certainly no bargain and we just have much more pressing needs where that money could be invested (CB, WR, SS, TE).

Patriots Forum Timeline: *Bob Kravitz tweets about deflated balls investigation* 1: "Indy reporter is just a sore loser, there is no investigation" *Investigation is confirmed* 2. "There's no evidence" *Report breaks that Pats had 11/12 deflated balls and Colts balls were all legal* 3. "We would've won anyway, it was a blowout" *Rest of country ostracizes them for cheating* 4. "We didn't cheat, it was uhhhh... the weather, I passed 4th grade science, trust me" *Why didn't the Colts balls deflate under the same weather conditions?* 5. "..........." *Belichcik pseudoscience press conference* 6. "Aha equilibrium or something and rubbing the football, told you, science!" *Bill Nye: What he said made no sense* 6. "Well all the other teams cheat too" *Ball attendant named person of interest* 7. "Aha rogue ball boy! NFL has no evidence on us, nothing I say!" *What about the 11 deflated footballs with no logical explanation besides tampering* 8. "We told you guys already it was the weather" *Again, Colts balls were legal, same weather, makes no sense* 9. "Well uhh... the Colts...uhhh they hired the Easter Bunny to uhhh break into our locker room... and tamper with the footballs... actually on second thought it was the weather" *sigh*

People mainly talked about the passing game effect when this story broke.. now I think more and more people are realizing that this was done to cut down on fumbles. Belichick is known for being extremely obsessive about ball security.. there isn't a shorter leash in the NFL than playing RB for Bill Belichick (Stevan Ridley?). Their fumbles per carry stat is astronomically better then the 2nd best team, given the evidence of 11 deflated footballs something is very amiss here and it's all starting to add up. I found this interesting. Benjarvus Green-Ellis had ZERO fumbles in 4 seasons as a Patriot. As a Bengal he had 5 fumbles in 2 seasons. The NFL wants the negative publicity about this story to go away and if they could have put it to rest and said there's no evidence the Patriots had any involvement they would've done it by now. I think the Patriots really gave themselves away with how badly they over compensated their reaction to this, if Bill Belichick had nothing to do with it he wouldn't feel the need to do an additional press conference and speculate about a bunch of pseudoscience explanations that made no sense. The charade is winding to a close for NE and more and more of their supposed explanations have been swiftly debunked. It wasn't "atmospheric conditions", it was only 51 degrees and every single one of the Colts balls maintained their PSI and both sets of balls were inspected and approved at the same time prior to the game. By far the most logical explanation is that they were tampered with using a ball pump with a pressure gauge post-inspection.. hmm I wonder who had possession of those footballs post inspection. There's episodes of Scooby Doo that are harder to figure out than this.

Jacoby played scared all year. On all his big returns over his career he would confidently sprint full clip and force coverage teams to take good angles on him or get burned. This year he was afraid to put the pedal to the floor, he would bring the ball out and dance around looking for a lane before he would actually get in stride and he looked borderline scared of taking a big hit. I'm not sure whether he took a shot that scared him off from being fearless in his returns or what but something was definitely off with him this year. I love Jacoby as a person, I'm forever thankful for the huge role he had in our 2012 SB run but I think his time in Baltimore has come to a close. It's not personal, just 100% a football decision. He's not a good wr and he was sticking around by being a playmaker in the return game. Reminds me a lot of Hester how they both lost their "spark" as returners at a certain point. It's been a hell of a ride but I think the magic has finally run out for Jacoby.

I really can't see Torrey not getting re-signed. Home grown product, loves the city, loves the team, still young and a big part of our offense.. we would have to low ball him really bad for him to test the market. I could see us letting Forsett walk before Torrey.. there's a lot more risk involved with Forsett because of his age/position and his desire for a big pay day after the season he's had. It sucks because he did great this year and he deserves to get paid for how he produced but I can't help but think Ozzie isn't willing to pay him like a top 10 RB just based on one season at age 29. There will be a doormat team that is willing to pay him like a top 10 RB because they have a lot less to lose than we do on a bad deal. It's ultimately up to Forsett, take less money and play for the team that gave you your big break and compete for a SB or swallow your pride and take the big pay day as it may be his last shot at that kind of money considering his age/position. I wouldn't think any less of him if he followed the money, it's understandable given his circumstances but I really want to see him back in Baltimore and I know that's where Justin wants to be as well. But as we all know sometimes business get's in the way of what players want on a personal level and we have to be understanding of that as fans. If Forsett goes after the money it's not for selfish reasons, he would be looking after himself and his family long term. Hopefully both sides can find a happy median here.

It would be nice to have a guy that fits that "true #1" billing at wr but I can't really pin point how because guys like Dez and Demaryius aren't financially viable for us and are extremely likely to stay put anyway. Outside of those 2 I would say Crabtree has #1 potential still but SF is going to make it a priority to keep him. That leaves the draft which is still possible but not all that likely unless we move up.. a guy that intrigues me and could make it to our neck of the woods is Dorial Green-Beckham from Oklahoma, 6'5, freak athlete. Will have to see how much his stock rises leading up to the draft. With that said there are so many recent SB winners who didn't have a "true #1". The only reason we lost to NE wasn't because we didn't have enough weapons on offense, it's because we couldn't get a single stop when it mattered, couldn't even force a FG. Losing that game really came down to our injury depleted secondary.. we got picked apart by the short passing game and inexperienced guys like Melvin blew their assignments on those gadget plays. That was the difference in the game and in our season.. the secondary depth and not having Jimmy.