NFL New Year – Good Times

NFL New Year – Good Times.  With the start of the NFL new year on the 13th of March we are finally in to the time where teams can start to shape who they are going to be for the upcoming season.  It will start to show which teams think they have a chance for the playoffs and a possible championship.  We will see which teams are in total rebuild mode.

What happens the next few weeks will define what teams will target in the draft.  There have already been some clear winners and some clear losers in the first days of the NFL New Year.   Of course that all depends on what your long term goal is.  If you are tanking to get the first pick in the draft then trading your best player for peanuts might be a good thing.  So then you can claim that you won because you did exactly what you set out to do.

It is all about perspective and what you wish to achieve.  The Great Thing about the NFL New Year is that everything starts fresh.  The Division winners are former division winners the Super Bowl Champion is a former Super Bowl Champion.  Everyone has a 0 – 0 record so everyone is tied for first place.  Or last place depending on if you are a glass half full or half empty kind of person.  All of the deals that have been agreed to in principle can be completed now.  The players can officially become part of their new team.  Hope abounds and every team has made the right choice.   Unless you listen to Stephen A. Smith then you just get a lot of yelling and no substance.

I am going to split this into a few sections.  The winners at the beginning of the NFL New Year and those that are in rebuild mode.  I was going to call them the losers at the start of the NFL New Year but that would mean that they did not intend to get worse.  I guess you could say the losers from the fans point of view. But they will stick with their team no matter what.

Who Has Done the Best So Far – The Good Times

The biggest winner in the start of the NFL New Year is the Cleveland Browns

If  you just take into account the Browns fleecing of the Giants to get Odell Beckham Jr. They would have won free agency so far.   What were the Giants thinking here?  No one knows for sure.  The Browns were thinking lets low ball the Giants and see what sticks.  It appears that the Giants said Nah we don’t need that much.  We want to get Odell Beckham Jr. out of here.  Our aging quarterback does not need one of the best receivers in the league.  Give us a first a third and a special teams player and were good.  The Browns could not sign the papers fast enough.  Really you get a top class receiver for almost nothing.   SOLD.   This year you were not going to get a receiver like Beckham in the first round.  There are some good ones in the draft this year but with Beckham you have a known.  A well known.   Even if you take his off field antics into account this was a gem of a deal for the Browns.

The rest of the Browns class of free agents is also pretty impressive.  Sheldon Richardson – defensive tackle, Demetrius Harris – tight end, Adarius Taylor – linebacker, Eric Kush – offensive lineman. I am not sure how all of those are going to turn out.  They will at a minimum more than likely be good roll players.   The signing of Richardson was a win.  Putting him of that defensive line will make that a wrecking crew.

The Browns winning actually started a few years ago when they were going 1 – 31.   It was a difficult stretch for the Browns and their fans.  What happened though was executed very well.  Sashi Brown looked like he was destroying the Browns.  What he was doing was very calculated.   He was setting the Browns up to have multiple high draft picks and a large amount of cap space.  The idea being to set them up to build a team that could win in the future.  This was at the expense of a few more years of being really bad.  The Browns as we know were really bad.  Unfortunately for Brown he was not going to be the person to build the team with the tools he provided.   That person is John Dorsey.  He has taken what was provided to him by Brown and drafted, traded and signed players very well.  All starting with the Pick of Baker Mayfield with the first over all pick in the 2018 NFL draft.

The Radiers have done Surprisingly well

Just about everyone was yelling how horrible the return of Gruden was turning out.  The Raiders had a fire sale last year.  They moved out two of their best players.  Including their best player Khalil Mack.   They did it to gain picks for the future. It will remain to be seen if this move was worth it.  Depends on who they pick up in the draft this year.   Few players are so good that you can’t replace them.   It is possible that Mack was.  Saying that trading him made them worse last year.  We will have to see how it plays out.

Getting Antonio Brown for basically nothing was a huge win for the Raiders.  They will have to get good fast for this to really work out.  It is a step in the right direction.  It will make Carr look much better this year.  The real test for the Raiders will come in the draft and what they do with those three first round picks.  The second biggest thing they accomplished this off season is signing a deal to play in Oakland again this year.  Since they are kicking the city to the curb to run off to Las Vegas it is quite an accomplishment to sign a deal to stay and play this year.  It will be interesting to see how many people are in the stands for their home games.  They better hope that the new stadium is on schedule so they can move in to it as quickly as possible.  Even though they can they don’t want to play the 2020 season in Oakland.

Nick Foles for the win

Nick Foles for the win at least in the bank account.  He has tried to venture out from Philadelphia before.   The Eagles traded him to the Rams in 2015 for Sam Bradford.    Some picks were also exchanged.  Not sure what either team was thinking here.  Foles had a great year in 2013.  An ok year in 2014 and then was traded.   He did not do very well with the Rams.  He then signed a deal with the Chiefs in 2016 to be Alex Smiths backup.  He then went back to Philadelphia.   Where things worked out very well for him.   As a backup he won the Super Bowl.  Pretty impressive.  He backed up Carson Wentz again last year.  He played very well again filling in when Wentz went down.   He turned that into an $88 million deal with Jacksonville.  I am not sure this is a win for Jacksonville.

The Jaguars signed him to replace Blake Bortles.  Some one they probably should have moved on from a few years ago.  I get it.  You get stuck and it is difficult to admit that you made a mistake.   It is difficult to say if Foles will be better than Bortles.  I am pretty sure that he is not going to be worse.  If the Jaguars defense can play anywhere near the level they played in 2017 then this will be a great move.

There have been more winners.  These are the ones that I see as being the biggest ones so far.   That could change as the week goes on.