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08 Mar 2010

MMQB: Free Agency is Overrated

In today's installment, PK reveals that this year's free-agent spending spree differed from last year's ... well, not at all. He also talks to Bruce Allen about the relative quiet in the nation's capital, reviews the mass exodus in Arizona, updates Five for Fighting, agrees with Aaron on Darrelle Revis, and agrees with the Academy on Christoph Waltz.

Posted by: Doug Farrar on 08 Mar 2010

41 comments, Last at 27 Mar 2010, 4:37am by sports-veronica

Comments

1
by andrew :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 10:26am

PK notes that Mike Martz will now have a tight end to play around with.

... um... yeah. I mean, Martz may well make this offense click, but I'll believe him using a TE when I see it.

3
by Tiger (not verified) :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 10:41am

That sounds good to me too...

5
by Jimmy :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 10:42am

Manumaleuna has played for Martz before and played plenty. Martz thinks TEs are incredibly important to Martz' offense - to block.

10
by Temo :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 10:56am

Maybe he means he'll actually play around with him. Like build stuff out of legos and race hotwheels and stuff.

13
by Theo :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 11:22am

...and a powerful back to top it off.

22
by Dean :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 12:21pm

Manumaleuna is actually pretty good as far as GURTs go. But those guys are dime-a-dozen. I would think you could find just as good as GURT for much less money.

2
by AnonymousA (not verified) :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 10:36am

That is one damned strange picture of Peppers.

9
by Kevin from Philly :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 10:49am

They shouldn't have fed him after midnight.

27
by jebmak :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 1:16pm

Nice.

4
by Keith (1) (not verified) :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 10:42am

I like "Bills fans harmed themselves over the weekend. Bucs fan are mutinous." There is only one Bucs fan!

6
by Keith (1) (not verified) :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 10:45am

And this is a very spurious statement: "Eight players who struck it rich, who combined to earn $58 million last year -- and none of the eight made the Pro Bowl, none of them had 80-catch seasons."

That is technically true; however, TJ had 79 catches and a very respectable season overall. Silly sports writer!

8
by DZ (not verified) :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 10:49am

I think his point is still valid. Free Agent wideouts don't pay off. When Housh's pretty ok season is the best of the lot, that says something, doesn't it?

14
by Keith (1) (not verified) :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 11:23am

None of those players had ever been very good. Sure, they were overpaid, but their production was not unexpected.

25
by MJK :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 12:45pm

And yet in the same article that he (1) points out that free agency is a long process, not a one-day event, and (2) that free agent wideouts often don't pay off, he takes New England to task for not making a big splash by going after a free agent WR in the first weekend.

I'm not sure exactly what big name free agent WR's he was thinking of...I certainly haven't noticed any solid ones out there (the best on the market, unless I'm forgetting someone, is probably Josh Reed, who the Patriots ARE chasing).

28
by Cro-Mags (not verified) :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 1:24pm

Yet PK (he who doubts the return on FA WRs) goes on to slag the Patriots picking up pass rusher Burgess last year instead of a FA wide receiver this year when clearly the Pats's most glaring hole is still on the pass rush.

So a team that needs pass rush help should go after a WR that likely won't live up to their contract, and doesn't address the pass rush problem anyway.

32
by opticallog :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 2:37pm

It's a sample size of one year. The reality is a WR needs a good QB (no one on that list from last year played with one), as well as a role that best utilizes their particular skill set. How did the acquisition of Wes Welker turn out where he had a great QB and perfect usage in a great system?

34
by tuluse :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 2:40pm

And TO to the Cowboys worked out pretty good.

37
by JasonK :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 4:54pm

... as did Burress to the Giants. (For a little while, anyway.)

21
by MilkmanDanimal :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 12:12pm

Now, now, there's at least a good half-dozen of us Bucs fans left. Granted, your average Bucs fan probably spend most of their time drunk and weeping these days.

33
by jebmak :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 2:39pm

I believe that Tim Love from "Fumble in the Endzone" switched to the Bucs this year. So, maybe it is two now.

7
by Jimmy :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 10:46am

Christoph Waltz is awesome in Inglorious Basterds. Brad Pitt on the other hand was apalling.

11
by Temo :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 10:58am

This is the general consensus, yes. And all the excuses of "Pitt was playing a part that was meant to be horrible" have been used for so many Tarantino actors, it's annoying.

If anything, Waltz showed how to take an outrageous, improbable Tarantino character and make it work. Plenty of the other actors did the same (the Bear Jew). Pitt did not.

12
by Eddo :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 11:18am

I didn't think Pitt was bad; he wasn't good, though.

I would have preferred a more subtle character, obviously, but that's not Tarantino's style. And I'll gladly make the tradeoff if it means an overall excellent movie like Inglourious Basterds.

15
by Temo :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 11:35am

Other than the Italian scene at the movie theater (Bonjourno!), I can't think of anything he did well in that movie. The Farmhouse scene and the Pub scene (pre-Pitt entrance) really made that movie, I thought. And he had nothing to do with either one.

23
by andrew :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 12:26pm

He provides the contrast, to help the scene without him stand out all the more....

16
by nat :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 11:55am

g. Sean Payton presaged the Manning first-half touchdown pass to Pierre Garcon, right over sub corner Usama Young. "Saw that one coming a mile away," he said.

He probably meant "postsage". PK's in the Humpty Dumpty camp, fer sure.

To wit:
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master – that's all."

17
by Bowl Game Anomaly :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 11:59am

Jesus, PK, Paul Zimmerman has suffered enough. Do you really need to subject him to Matt Millen?

24
by andrew :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 12:28pm

Dr. Z used to have high praise for Millen the commentator before he took the Lions job...

18
by Harrison Bergeron :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 12:03pm

"Can those people on the red carpet please think of a question with some smidgeon of intelligence?"

I don't know; what do you think, Brett Favre?

26
by Temo :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 1:15pm

+1 irony

19
by Bowl Game Anomaly :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 12:06pm

So without being judgmental ... if Roethlisberger is without fault, it still is utterly preposterous he puts himself in these situations. If Roethlisberger is without fault, he has to re-think who he associates with, and he has to re-think whether it's a very good idea to be hanging around college bars at 2 in the morning. If Roethlisberger is at fault, the issues are entirely different. If he's at fault, he has got to grow up. So we'll see.

Um, no PK, if Roethlisberger is at fault, he has got to go to jail.

29
by sundown (not verified) :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 1:37pm

Yeah, that was a weird statement. He's not being accused of telling these women an off-color joke or something like that. And he's not exactly a rookie still adjusting to life in the pros--he presumably should have grown up a long time ago.

40
by BigCheese :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 8:00pm

Underclassman rookie or 13-year veteran, if someone sexually assaults a woman, let alone two, growing up is not the issue. Putting it like that makes it sound like sexual assault is fina as long as it's commited in your teens.

Sure, inmature teens do make bad hoices far more often, and it's far more likely that they might turn their lives around after such a hineous act, but that doesn't excuse it. Are we really at a point where we think celebrities are so above it all that when we contemplate what should happen if the accusations of sexual assault are true the inmediate response isn't "he should go to jail" but rather "he should grow up?" If so, that's an apllaing state of affairs.

I wonder if Peter King's reaction to his local barista being accused of sexual assault would be "if he did it he should grow up and stop doing it" or "if he did it I hope they put him away!" Sadly, we probably know the answer to that.

- Alvaro

20
by are-tee :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 12:07pm

"We've got the two best safeties playing together in the NFL," Rhodes said.

Kerry Rhodes is apparently still living in 2006.

30
by Marko :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 2:20pm

"The theft and disposal of a reported $1,100 worth of college newspapers angers me because I worked up to 10 hours a day for much of three years at The Post, Ohio University's independent student paper."

One thing that I haven't seen discussed regarding this incident is the impact on advertisers. Presumably the Texas A&M-Commerce student newspaper includes lots of advertising for local businesses. If I owned one of those businesses, I'd be pissed off that all of the papers were stolen and presumably destroyed so that no one saw my ad. The newspaper probably will have to make this up by running free ads for the affected advertisers.

31
by tuluse :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 2:34pm

Shouldn't they have insurance to cover this sort of thing?

35
by sundown (not verified) :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 2:42pm

No, there likely isn't any insurance, but the paper's subsidized by the school so it's not that huge a deal. They can re-run the ads. Noteworthy is the fact the $1,100 figure being cited is probably just the production cost as most college papers are free distribution.

Also, though it doesn't excuse stealing the papers, there are no charges being filed against the players on the drug charges. And the school is claiming the coach didn't know anything about the paper theft ahead of time and was just trying to be funny.

36
by sundown (not verified) :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 2:51pm

Regarding no charges being filed, I'm a bit foggy on what exactly happened--the Dallas News is saying the investigation didn't turn up enough evidence to charge anybody, but apparently the players were initially arrested? Drug cases tend to be fairly cut-and-dried, meaning if you get arrested there's an extremely high probability you'll be charged. You can bet the university isn't overjoyed with the "you're arrested, oh never mind" approach the authorities used in this case.

39
by JoeHova :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 5:32pm

Maybe it's just me but I think stealing all the copies of a day's newspaper is a pretty good prank. Impressive that they were able to pull it off because there are usually quite a few distribution locations.

38
by Bright Blue Shorts :: Mon, 03/08/2010 - 5:21pm

Has it taken PK the better part of seventeen years to understand that free agency is a bit of a sham?

Rarely do the great players come onto the open market during their peak years. At most there's one or two top players available. The rest are the middle of the pack players (or even those at the bottom of it) who end up getting a contract that are way above their true value. The great players like Barry Sanders who want to move teams get stopped from doing it because of the tags.

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