reed20fence

There're a lot of psychological states involved in special teams. Gunners need to have a certain craziness. Returners have to be loco enough to be ok with a guy ramming into them full speed with a 65 yard head of steam.

When it comes to why teams plug in veteran guys to return at specific moments it has more to do with awareness and calmness than return ability. You don't want to be holding onto a 3 point lead late in the 4th, have your defense hold the other guys just out of their kicker's range, force them to punt, but stick a shaky wide-eyed rookie out there with the weight of the moment on his shoulders, and depend on him to have the awareness to judge the kick and in a split second determine where it's gonna bounce, how it's gonna fly, where he is, whether he should fair catch, or let it go into the end zone.

That's why historically there were times where we'd stick an old and weary Ed Reed back there.

You gotta have athletes back there, but also need to keep the older calmer guys ready to go.

I honestly like Pees' "everybody is a starter" attitude. Not only is it smart from a conditioning stand point (keep in mind we start in Mile High again), but it forces all guys, young and old, to bring their A-game, dial in and focus, feel like they have a vested stake, and yes - enhance competition.

"...and helped turn them into a perennial playoff contender."

Garrett, I think they've only been in the playoffs twice since their founding in 2002. We knocked them out in 2011 and NE trounced them in 2012. And he broke his foot early in 2011, the QB was TJ Yates for the better part of the season and in the playoffs.

The problem Schaub and the Texans suffered is the one downside of Kubiak's system -- you gotta have healthy playmakers. The thing that got Schaub, Kubiak and his crew canned was largely the bad back and hamstring of Arian Foster. You can't have a league-leading RB playing seriously hurt in a run-first offense and expect defenses to respect the run the same way at the expense of the pass.

Arian Foster was literally carrying that franchise on his back in 2013. And it's not for nothing that Forsett thrived with us with his knowledge and therefore patience and discipline in letting those zones develop like Foster used to.

If you all think Forsett was good, wait til we find fresh-legged thick-bodied RB with a lethal first cut in this scheme.

Welker is going to Houston. They're all about padding the retirement funds of Patriot's has-beens before they retire.

Also, agree with RMC, as much sense as tagging Tucker makes, tagging KO or Yanda makes no sense whatsoever.

Anyone else thinks he looks like Podrick Payne from Game of Thrones in this picture?

Gillmore bears a closer resemblance to Khal Drogo than Boyle to Podrick.

If we can flatten out the yearly hit instead of backloading the deal it'd be nice. They basically agreed on a 3 year ~47mm contract cuz everyone in the room knew that barring any major disaster, 3 years were guaranteed. Hence Linta's smart insistence on guaranteed money against injury.

He's still got 11.8mm that needs to be spread out in an extension from the last signing (not optional) bonus. That means we could lop on a decent bonus to extend til 2020 or 2021, provide a respectable salary that'll keep him hovering around that 20mm annual figure, and flatten the deal out until he's 35-36 and re-assessing how long he wants to stay in the league cuz not all QBs necessarily want to play into their late 30s.

20mm flat a year against the cap would bring his annual chunk of the cap down to 13-14% from 20%. The saved 6 or 7% translates to 10.5mm per year with which to ensure Joe has a solid supporting cast for the rest of his career.

Fair, equitable, considerate deal all around.

Not sure about you guys, but ive been inclined to back and watch the Bears from last year so we can tell "oh, that was a trestman scheme or play" vs "ok, that was a kubiak setup from last year." But it can be really painful to watch Jay Cutler play. There are way too many "WTH were you thinking" moments. Like watching a trainwreck sometimes.

Look at it this way, Joe came into the league with a great arm, has always had good chemistry with receivers going deep. Then Pitta came and started getting him comfortable with TEs. Then Kubiak came and really taught Joe how TEs can be used in misdirection and mismatch and moved around presnap to maximize the run game output. Now Trestman is coming in and layering on how to use RBs in the passing game for something other than flats and check downs.

It's the continuing education of Flacco.

Am I the only person that thinks its a better business move to resign Osemele, the guy is 24 years old and Yanda will be 32 next year. I love Yanda more than anyone but purely speaking about business, Osemele should be the priority.

That's why this is a dillema. Perfectly reasonable people can disagree on the right way forward. We know Yanda's work ethic by now. If he agrees to play til 36, he'll literally play every down until the final game of the last year of his contract, come hell or high water. And he'll likely continue to play at a top 5 level guard until that point.

On the flip side, Osemele is a beast who has worked his tail off to not only get back on the field after back surgery, but do so in a dominating fashion. You could sign the kid to a 6 year deal and be set at the left guard position for a while.

The only thing we know is that the front office is not comfortable tying up that much cash on 2 positions on the o-line.

Still, they may bite the bullet and pay them both. But it's a risky proposition.

We are definitely putting a franchise tag on Tucker, I don't see why we don't tag Yanda and work on keeping KO. We are allowed to tag two people for up to two years. In two years, who knows, maybe Yanda will be ready to sign by then. If not, then we have both under contract in case one goes down. Hate to think of it, but it is a reality and Yanda has been fighting injuries the last two years (and is still great).

Tagging an o-lineman costs like 13mm a year. That's hard to swallow considering the current highest paid left and right guards, Mankins and Yanda, get closer to 8-9mm a year. You'd be wasting a good 5 million by tagging a guard for a year. Not to mention players generally don't like being tagged. Given them cash up front as a bonus and spread the damage out with their salary to lessen your own cap hit and afford other players.

We're obviously gonna go with Yanda. He's only 30 and if he signs an extension to play til 34, you know he'll play every game until 34. Osemele deserves to and will get paid, but it's not the end of the world if he walks. People cried Henny Penny when Grubbs walked and we plugged Jah Reid in, and then slid Osemele over to left guard. It turned out just fine. There's probably guys on this team like Myers that'll turn out to be complete freaks at the guard position once their coached up. Just relax.

RavenManiac#7:

It's really disappointing to have to come to the realization of how unlikely it is that we will have both Yanda and KO lining up together beyond this upcoming season....

I see the money situation the other way. People tend to think that if a player makes an extra 4 or 5 million, they'll blow it away on throwing lavish parties or buying lamborghinis and be broke within 5 years. Not all of these guys are like that. Many of these guys get that the limited window they have in this life for large earning potential is fleeting and they have the possibility to alter their family's life for generations to come. To many people an extra 150k is a college trust allotment for their siblings or children, or if they're really mature, their grandchildren and beyond. They can set their loved ones up for life. They can ensure a comfertable retirement for their parents and themselves. They can really build up charitable causes they feel very deeply about.

It's not all about chasing a few extra bucks and being selfish.

I can totally get why someone wouldn't necessarily want to be a coach. For a majority of the year you are working insane hours. You really have to have a family situation that's amenable to being a coach. Aside from that, like Forsett admited, you have to really really enjoy reviewing hours upon hours to tape and noticing little minutae of guys techniques and flaws and opponents tendencies etc. You invest years in coaching young men into all-stars, only to have them move on and do great things for someone else, which is probably fulfilling, but also tragic in a way.

It may be exciting for most of us for a few days. Being surrounded by celebrity atheletes all prepping to play a childs game... and get paid to do it. But I bet it would burn most people out really quickly.

I'm sure it's not on purpose but we keep forgetting to mention Juszczyk along with the TEs. The guy isn't just Vontae Leach's successor, he's an H-back and plays a healthy dose as a TE as well.

Boyle is another one of those guys that with his 270lb frame would work great in a Kubiak-type, TE friendly scheme, But if he can run routes and master the block and release routes like TEs in Kubiak's offense were coached to do he could be another lethal weapon for us. There's nothing more psychologically confusing in man coverage for a defender than to have to sit there and wait and guess whether your guy is truly helping to block a downlineman or whether he's just pretending and testing your patience and discipline and is gonna suddenly release downfield or into the flat and gash you for 10 here, 13 there etc.

Could someone on BR.com do an article on the meaning of the little patches on the practice jerseys of the players? The ones on the left side of their jerseys. I'm sure they mean something. Anyone else wonder what those are? One looks like an arm holding a hammer or weight or something.

We're all thinking it so I'll just say it... ideally he wants to be invited to the Pro Bowl and be forced to not attend due to prior committments - namely practice for the Super Bowl the following week.

I will say... I think the Panthers did a good job with the structure of that Newton deal. It has a lower cap hit in year 1, but from year 2 through year 5, the cap hits never fluctuate more than about $4-5M in any given year. He's basically right around that $19-$23M cap hit range for most of his contract terms. I think the Ravens should attempt to do something similar with Flacco's next extension. Trying to "straight-line" his contract seems to be a lot easier to deal with in the long run, and it can be done while still allowing Joe to get more money up front. Just don't think having these $10M jumps in cap hits year over year is long-term sustainable, and I think the FO realizes this now.

This would be really nice. There's just something about back-loaded deals for players that everyone knows are franchise guys that doesn't make sense. Give him something like an added $3.5mm signing bonus for extending til he's 35 and use the 20mm baseline for every year. That'd bring the existing guaranteed signing bonus money to ~6.5mm, keep the injury guarantees for 4.75mm and pay the rest as salary til you get 20mm a year.  

Atleast this way your year-over-year roster planning gains some stability.

By now we all can recite the Flacco narrative in our sleep.

"Oh, his early career success was because he had a stacked defense" – never mind that that defense couldn't carry the like of Boller/McNair/Redman deep into the playoffs.

"Oh he's just lucky Jump Ball Joe" – never mind that he keeps seeming to be 'lucky' year in and year out. Defenses really must be stupid. Not to mention that all successful QBs seem to develop these monikers from their haters. For Manning it's those pesky 'rub' routes where receivers blatantly set picks. For Brady it's things like eligible/ineligible receiver deceptions. Just find a way to stop it and be a man.

"Oh he only won a Super Bowl because of his defense." – never mind that the defense ranked middle-of-the-pack in 2012, gave up 30+ points to Denver and SF, and Flacco was named the MVP, not some defender.

At this stage Flacco critics have officially become just trolls.

Flacco is bound to end up in the top 3 of those 'NFL Network Top 10' shows for most under-rated players of all time.

I think br.com should start a "53 watch" feature to see whose stock is rising and falling. With all these features on guys in backup roles having really good offseasons and exciting rookies from the mid-to-late rounds, coupled with what happened to guys like John Simon last year, it'd be nice for us fans to have a tangible understanding of who we could risk losing to cuts or plucks away from our practice squad.

And this is as good a time as any to mention this, considering we were talking about the bohemoth frame of Gillmore and Boyle and those 3 TE sets we used in the playoffs last year.

History will thank the Ravens for restoring the importance of running the football to the game. While all these dink n' dunk divas get the limelight, a handul of franchises are quietly restoring the position of RB to it's rightful glory.

I'm an LT fan. Don't care what they naysayers gobble about ball security. Anytime a guy reliably requires 2 or more defenders to bring down he's a keeper. The onus is on the coaches to find a way to use him.

We play AFC North football. This is a man's game.

We're hungry too, for another Lombardi.

Usually veteran players on the final year of their deal can be obtained for mid-to-low draft picks but we in particular have two problems. (1) What remains of the cap space is likely going to be kept in reserve for in-season injuries. (2) All that dead space we get back next year can and likely will be eaten up with new contracts for lineman and LBs and naturally rising salary numbers.

So obtaining a veteran on the final year of his deal may not be affordable now, and likely wouldn't be a re-sign possibility next year unless we're planning on moving on from Osemele, Yanda and Upshaw.

Here's an interesting coincidence. It being our 20th anniversary as a franchise, the Ravens designed emblem has the Roman Numerals 'XX' to commemorate the milestone. Who's everyone marking as the steal of our 20th draft? MaXX Williams. Obviously his parents had their own ideas in mind when naming the kid. But it's a strange tip of the hat from fate for us Ravens fans.

I'll always remember the below headline. By the end of next season when he's being passed the Lombardi I want to see us write another headline. "The media are idiots, because ofcourse they are."

http://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2014/07/25/ravens-sign-will-hill-because-of-course-they-do/