Revis!
I could really end the post there, perhaps tossing in a ‘thank you’ for John Idzik who cleared out the cap space to make this possible (it was possible last year). Revis signed a 70 million dollar contract with 39 of that number guaranteed. Way to go, Island. That is how you grab the league by the horns. Still, Revis wasn’t the only one wheeling and dealing on Day 1.
The Chip Kelly experiment continues to set the league ablaze. He traded the highly touted (and not great) Nick Foles to the Rams for Sam Bradford, a player who it is rumored Kelly really wants to run his offense. I’m more of the cynical sort as I assume it is difficult to run any offense from the IR. That’s exactly where ‘glass body’ Bradford will be after taking a few of those NFC East hits. The more I monitor that situation the more I recognize that this is about ego. Now we know that NFL players have ego. You have to have a great deal of self-confidence, bordering on the super hero level, in order to play tackle football at that level. Chop’em Chip has ego too. Unfortunately, he expects theirs to be the smallest in the room, so he plays moneyball of a sort and releases all of his big name talent near the end of their (oft-realistic) contracts in order to avoid them resigning bloated deals with the Eagles. He’s recruiting B-listers because he thinks that in a room full of betas everyone will buy in to the philosophy of the Alpha Dog. If you don’t, he boots you out in a public fashion. Ask McCoy, Maclin, Cole, et al who didn’t get to stay or didn’t get to come back.
I’ll end this by talking about the Seahawks. They added Jimmy Graham in exchange for Center Max Unger and a first-round pick in this year’s draft. Now on the surface this is an incredible deal for the Seahawks. They get one of the three most prolific TEs in the game and one of the two who isn’t a ‘system guy’. I believe Graham will be able to line up anywhere on that Seahawks offense and continue to be prolific. On the other side I believe the Saints were looking to run the ball a lot more and felt that the interior line position and the pick were enough to push them even more in the direction of that inside-outside game they’ve been looking for. Honestly, there are too many quality receivers on the team to have gotten the rock and grown with Graham still there.
More football is coming down the pipeline. The Giants made a subtle move that is sure to matter greatly and many more discussions to follow. For now, my ten minutes is up.