Fear The Chorizo

Both giving Deguara credit for an offense that he did not even actually participate in, and comparing Deguara to Kyle Juszczyk who is basically a one of a kind breed the last decade or so, are enormous reaches right now based on a single training camp IMO. I thought Deguara was a reach for various reasons when the pick was made, and nothing has occurred since then to make me think it was a good value. If I end up being wrong about it, I'll be happy to own it. But there's certainly nothing to retract based on a few snaps in 2 regular season games. I'm not giving Deguara credit for an offense he didn't have the opportunity to play a full season in due to injury - I am giving him credit for earning the significant role he must have earned through his rookie training camp with that offense that proved to have alot of talent on it. His name was all over the 2020 training camp reports for good reasons. I'll just leave well enough alone regarding Deguara and whether it was a travesty that he was picked 75 or so slots above his perceived mock value, because I'm guessing this has zilch to do with the point of the thread...

And he was slated to play a key role in an offense that wound up being the best in the NFL last year until a knee injury ended his season. If a 3rd round pick ends up being essentially a week 1 starter on the depth chart for his position after a 3 week COVID-shortened training camp, it's a pretty good indicator the player was at minimum not drafted too early and probably has a very bright future. Once practices and games start happening, previous mock drafts mean zilch.

Rodgers' 2018 and 2019 seasons were career lows for him in terms of completion percentage and TDs when able to play a full year. They were also career lows for the QBR stat and by a significant margin - he was ranked 17th in NFL QBs in 2018 and 20th in 2019. Rodgers wasn't bad in those two seasons, but he wasn't great or frankly much more than average either.

On another note it seems to constantly get brought up that Rodgers was on a massive decline and washed up. He certainly wasn't MVP level, but the dude was still probably vastly better than Jordan Love could ever dream of being. But Rodgers having a 2 year stretch of stats that don't have him in consideration for being a league MVP is a massive decline for him, particularly when it comes to how his contract impacts other aspects of how the Packers can build their roster. One of those years was impacted by a knee/shin injury along with McCarthy's stale offense and the other (2019) was a year where he still had good production learning a new system but just wasn't making game-changing plays on his own. Step back and consider what we would be thinking about Rodgers and his current contract heading into 2021 had the 2020 season not been played at all due to COVID and Rodgers wouldn't have just had an MVP season, which was a distinct possibility during the 2020 draft that saw Love go in Round 1. It would have been a given among fans that his current deal required a restructuring this offseason, without any discussion of a significant extension - particularly one that eliminated a cap-friendly way for the Packers to move on after 2021 if they wanted to. Speaking of that 2020 season, regardless where he plays QB next year I'll be very interested in seeing how Rodgers performs in games that actually have significant crowd noise again that don't allow for getting blocking adjustments and all offensive players on the same page pre-snap like last year's crowdless games did. I think most QBs benefitted from that, but Rodgers probably benifitted more than most due to his presnap hard count abilities that significantly slow a pass rush even if it isn't drawing lineman offsides and providing free shot plays, and experience with presnap reads/audibles against defenses.

A lot of assumptions in that post. We literally have no real understanding of what's going on. Not really alot of assumptions on my end, just 1. It's about $ - Rodgers is currently getting $$$$$, but he wants $$$$$$$$$$. He can't flat out say that publicly because it flies in the face of everything else that's been sporadically dribbled to the media in effort to get what he wants financially in terms of one more huge guaranteed pile of cash. I'd have more respect for him if he just came out and said as much, even though it conflicts with having a talented enough team around him to win a Super Bowl before he does hit the twilight years of his career. Say it's actually about Rodgers wanting more influence/input on personnel decisions - I mean Jimmy Graham worked out great here, so why not?? IMO that makes Rodgers even more at fault with this whole situation, because no matter how great a quarterback is on the field his job is not making personnel decisions for both the short and longterm interest of the organization he plays for.

Still unclear on what he actually wants if he's not mad at Gute. Extension? Trade Love? Do we need to send someone to his house to give him a backrub and sing "Lullaby" by Shawn Mullins to him? When Rodgers doesn't know the answer to this question or simply can't specify his actual beef publicly without revealing it's self-generated due to his ego, how is anyone else supposed to?

I'm sure this would feel very good for him but it would accomplish nothing. At the end of the day Gute has a responsibility to look out for the best interests of the franchise, not get into an ego standoff with Rodgers which would only deepen the chasm between Rodgers and the franchise. If I thought the relationship was salvageable I might agree with you....but Rodgers has proven over the years that once he has his mind set on something there is no way to mend things. Exhibit A is his own family. I think the only way Rodgers comes back a completely happy camper to the Packers is if Gute is fired, and that's not happening. Trying to placate a primadona who mentally has moved on is pointless, so Gute needs to do what keeps the locker room together for the players who do want to be in Green Bay. Maybe that's holding the door open for ARod to come back, maybe that's telling him to pound sand, or most likely it's somewhere in between. Bottom line is that Gute's actions can't be made with the intent of changing #12's opinion of things, because there's no way that's happening.

I think they should fine Rodgers and cite his own recent quote about how they made that decision in effort to change the "team philosophy and do things the right way"..."it's the people that make the thing go. It's about character, it's about culture, it's about doing things the right way." Gute should just state that it's tough to do things the right way and improve the perceived culture problem around the building if people who are supposed to be there willfully aren't - particularly the one player who apparently isn't happy with the culture and is grousing about it in the media. All WRs at minicamp today, btw...

Maybe they can trade him for Kelenic since he stinks, too

Hiura's hands/batspeed through the zone are elite - but his timing/swing load mechanism are totally out of whack and it does seem like what adjustment he may have made in terms of increasing his launch angle have really created holes all over his swing because the bat just isn't on plane nearly long enough to make consistent contact. I never envisioned Hiura being a potential 30+ HR per season player, but his start in 2019 projected him to have that potential with a pretty high average to boot....I think he ran too much down the road of swing adjustments looking for a bit more power power that he simply didn't need to do. Even in 2019 he was a high strikeout hitter - but he did damage to all fields with that much more level swing. He's got to get back to that type of swing for starters before doing anything with adjusting his timing/footwork in the batters box.

The Bucks have a good shot at absolutely torching the Nets in the paint - their interior defense is atrocious. They can score with anyone, but so can the Bucks. Will be fun to watch!

Huh? That’s what coaches do. Ryan too. Sometimes it backfires and you get even less calls. Of all the things to lose respect for..... There must be more to the story... please share. Go watch the tape. It went beyond what is acceptable for a college coach. That is his M.O.....remember he's a Bobby Knight disciple and played for him back at Army. There has always been this stigma that Duke is playing with 5.5 players on the floor at all times because most referees are in their pocket even before Coach K. pipes up - but he's never been one to shy away from in-game tongue lashings at stripes to remind them if calls aren't going their way. To be honest a big part of that over the years has been superior talent compared to most of their competition....but it's definitely more than that. An excerpt from an article shortly after that game, which saw a completely differently officiated game in the 2nd half vs the first: "At halftime of Monday night’s frantic NCAA men’s championship game, I happened into conversation with one of Mike Krzyzewski’s fellow Hall of Fame coaches, someone I’ve known for a while, and someone who knows not only where the bodies are buried, but also where they hid the shovels. The game was tied at 31-31. Duke’s gifted young center, Jahlil Okafor, had two fouls, which is exactly as many as Wisconsin had as a team. This was no surprise. All year, Wisconsin’s trademarks were that it did not turn the ball over and it did not foul. Everybody in the building knew that, including Krzyzewski, which is why he spent almost the entire half yapping at the officiating crew. If he’d gotten any closer to them, they’d all have been picking out china patterns. There are many things that make a great basketball coach. One of them is recruiting talents like Okafor, and point guard Tyus Jones, and surprise star Grayson Allen. One of them is knowing what to do with that talent once it turns up in your gym. And another is working the refs, and what Krzyzewski did with Joe DeRosa, Michael Stephens, and Pat Driscoll was nothing short of a masterpiece. He chewed their ears in that first half like Mike Tyson at an audiologist convention. Still, though, it was 31-31, and Wisconsin had only as many fouls as Okafor. Things seemed to be going according to Hoyle. But the veteran mentor saw what was coming. “Watch,” he said to me. “Mike’s got them now.” Sure enough, come the second half, just as the Badgers took a nine-point lead, the world turned upside down. Wisconsin was up to 10 team fouls with just under 11 minutes left. Duke was in the double-bonus situation for the last seven and a half minutes of the game. By the time the championship ended, at 68-63, Krzyzewski’s fifth title was headed back to Durham and the Blue Devils had attempted 16 free throws in the second half to Wisconsin’s three. This was a whopping statistical anomaly. So, before we get to the rest of the game — and it was a terrific one, all the more so because it was so ragged and scrambled — let us salute DeRosa, Stephens, and Driscoll. Nice work, gents..."

Scottie Pippen scored almost 20K points and averaged 6.5 boards, 5.2 assists, 2 steals, and a block per game over his career. 7x allstar in a loaded eastern conference, all-NBA defensive team 8 straight seasons and NBA 1st team 3 seasons. Those accolades in that era make him a superstar. Kris Middleton is a drastically different player in terms of his abilities, but from pure "star" standpoint he's nowhere close to Pippen. In the seasons that Jordan took off between 3-peats, Pippen was an absolute superstar after emerging from his shadow and his overall stats jumped. However, Pippen was never going to be a high volume scorer - I actually would compare him to Giannis, as I think they have very similar games and think prime Pippen could readily average 25+ ppg in today's game that is much more transition-oriented. Those 93-95 Bulls teams were still really good, but they lacked the volume scorer on the wing or a dominant postman in the middle - two positions that teams who expected to win a title in that era needed to have. Also, the Jordan-less Bulls were robbed at a chance to beat the Rockets by a terrible officiating call in the conference semis against the Knicks that probably changed the outcome of that series. Saying Pippen did nothing without Jordan at that time isn't accurate. As much as the NBA is about superstars and individual talent, winning a title still requires really good role players - the superstars will get you to the dance, but oftentimes it's how the rest of the team plays that determines who goes home with a ring.

Pippen was a top 50 player all time. https://www.nba.com/history/nba-at-50/top-50-players I agree that Jordan was better but he had help. Jordan didn't start winning titles until Pippen showed up as one of the top 10 players of his era and the team around him improved dramatically. Their second run of 3 titles also wouldn't have happened without prime Kukoc and Rodman on that roster, too. Jordan is the GOAT, IMO, but he doesn't win anywhere close to 6 titles without Pippen and other great players.

This type of conversation goes on with all kinds of employees in the world (not necessarily the draft replacement aspect, but the other aspects) No it doesn't - that type of conversation about replacing an employee gets made when they are approaching a promotion or approaching the typical retirement age that they tend to control as an individual. A HOF level QB doesn't have anywhere else to climb up within their current organization, particularly when there's mounting evidence of a decline in ability/production (based on 2018-2019 seasons). If a company feels like an employee isn't performing to the standards they are compensated for, they get fired or laid off and the feel-good convo about how much they've meant to the organization takes place after the fact.

I am guessing the 15 or so drafts prior basically any QB in the entire draft could have fallen to their first (or even second) pick and they wouldn't have drafted them. Brian Brohm was the Packers' 2nd round pick the same year the Packers gave Rodgers the keys to the franchise and were in the process of jettisoning Favre. The front office at the time went out and drafted a QB high in the event Rodgers fell on his face at the start of his playing career. I can see some parallels with getting Love in the building towards the end of ARod's career - especially considering what his level of play was leading up to last year's draft. With any uncertainty at the QB position, the right move is to go out and find talent at that position when the perceived value is there and if you view your roster as being playoff caliber. GK saw firsthand under TT's tenure how Packer seasons were cratered by having nothing in the QB room outside of Rodgers when he had those collarbone injuries, so it's not surprising he was looking to get more talent at that position - because heading into the 2020 draft it was barren behind ARod. Based on Rodgers' production in 2018 and 2019, his age and his building injury history - coupled with the uncertainty if there would even be a 2020 NFL football season due to COVID at the time of last year's draft - makes for an awful lot of reasons to find a successor or at least have a viable option that would be ready to start in ~2021 or 2022 had Rodgers continued on-field decline in performance. As to how communication was managed with Rodgers before that draft, the Packers were looking to move up to go after a 1st round WR and weren't able to find a deal to get their targets (which I'm pretty sure Rodgers was aware of) - if Love truly was really high on their board I can see why there wouldn't be a discussion with Rodgers about picking him in the 20s before draft night...same way like there wasn't a reason for TT to talk with Favre on potentially drafting Rodgers if he dropped into the 20s years ago. And I agree with areacodes - Rodgers persona IMO would have him feeling insulted if the GM talked with him a few days ahead of the draft to state if our initial hopes of trading up for a 1st round WR don't work, we'll pick Love around that same area if he's still available. Speculating about trying to have a proactive conversation with Rodgers on where he's at mentally, how his contract looks, anything along those lines would just come off the same way in Rodgers' mind..."we've seen your level of play decline and you're on the wrong side of 35 - we are at the point where getting a succession plan at the QB position goes from an afterthought to a priority". ARod would've enjoyed that just as much if not worse than not getting a text 45 seconds before the Love pick was announced on draft night.

Yep, and it still took a defensive pick 6 and a game ending defensive stop to seal the game after the offense went down the field late but had to settle for a FG on the drive where Rodgers made that great throw to Jennings.

Hard to come through when your coach decides to kick a field goal though. I get your point though. They had the ball at least two other possessions earlier in the fourth quarter where a drive for a TD would have given them the lead and did nothing with them. It's also not lost on me the one time Rodgers and the Packers got to and won the Super Bowl, the defense won and closed out 3 of their 4 playoff games when the opponent had legit chances of taking the lead or tying the game with the ball after the Packers' offense seemingly turtled down the stretch when they had opportunities to put the game away, including the Super Bowl. Rodgers lit the world on fire in that Falcons game and was solid in the Super Bowl against the Steelers, but his performance was far from elite against the Eagles and Bears.

After reading the last few pages of this thread, what i'd like to know is whether Alexander is going to show up to training camp or if he's going to demand to be traded after GK selected a CB in the 1st round this past draft. Because apparently if a team drafts someone in round 1 that plays your position, you have every right to grouse about it and feel slighted unless the gm actually let you walk up on the stage with Goodell to announce the pick. Oh, that's just for qb's who get to act like a spoiled child after making a quarter of a billion dollars in their careers that know damn well if they keep playing at a high level they have nothing to worry about. Got it... Rodgers may have very well earned the right to act however he wants to based on his career to date....that doesn't mean how he chooses to act can't be looked at by others as the wrong way to go about things - both from how the Packers as a whole should deal with this situation to how he is writing his own legacy longterm.

Apparently they changed this back last year, before LaRussa was ever hired as their manager...didn't get a chance to print that story last season because there weren't any fans in the stands frequenting LaRussa's Lounge (LaRussa's name for a pizza area has actually been a thing at that ballpark for a very long time, just in a different level). I didn't see where LaRussa himself did this or dictated it happen as a condition of his hiring a season later. And checking the standings...yep, not the worst hiring of a baseball manager ever - or a manger, for that matter. And frankly it has zero to do with this story.

I can honestly see Rodgers pushing to sit out the season - not retire - and just take his ball and sit out on the west coast. Green Bay could still get a ton for him via trade next offseason, they don't necessarily need to do it right this second. Knowing there would be more teams potentially looking to acquire him and knowing the salary cap for 2022 should at least let most teams interested in Rodgers be able to offer him what he's looking for in terms of a contract without crippling their own cap situation has me leaning towards GK just telling Rodgers to take the year off if he doesn't like the terms of his current contract.

You more or less described Tom Brady 2002 2004 2005 2015 2017 2019 2021 2021 salary cap # - ~$10.5M 2011 2021 salary cap # - ~$37M See the difference?

And that's assuming it will be $208M and not a bit lower (I'm guessing it will be at or very close to the ceiling next year)

Seems like he's got enough on his plate that he probably doesn't have time for football anymore....planning a wedding, vacationing/instagramming in Hawaii, Kentucky Derby, toxin cleansing spokesman, prepping for a golf match with Bryson/Phil/Brady. If I'm Green Bay I stick to my guns and just let him take the year off if he wants it, then potentially look to trade him next offseason when there would probably be many more teams gunning for him and salary cap constraints won't be near as big an issue working a deal out to get the most value in return for him. As for the Raiders being a good landing spot for him - Him on that team basically makes them about as good as the Packers were a couple seasons ago, with a bad defense and in a division where they are the 2nd (or possibly 3rd) best team. Him going to Denver probably makes them a notch better assuming the players sent back to GB don't leave too many holes, but still not better than KC. Seattle would be an interesting trade partner - particularly from Rodgers' point of view with that WR corps....but then again that O-line probably gets him injured and their defense is far from good, too. There aren't many other teams just a QB away that would suddenly become anything close to super bowl favorites by adding him to the mix - maybe the 49ers if the QB they drafted this year isn't their answer, but they won't know that for a couple seasons.

Yes, but getting a decently paid QB back in return is probably the easiest way to make the financials work this offseason....then you could always flip that QB elsewhere the next offseason if you really wanted to hand the keys to Love in 2022.