Gross Bombs: NFL Props for Week 16
Josh Gross
Minnesota Vikings general manager Kwesi Adofo-Mensah positively adores Justin Jefferson. Sean Payton would toss Russell Wilson into the mouth of a volcano if he could. The Chicago Bears braintrust still likes Justin Fields, but not nearly as much as they like their other options.
The NFL scouting combine is a time for head coaches and executives to mutter mixed messages to the media through droning, desultory press conferences. They rarely divulge their true intentions, or even provide interesting soundbytes, but it’s not too hard to read between the lines to determine their plans for solving a thorny salary cap or quarterback situation.
A decade-plus of combine coverage has made me an expert interpreter of NFL bibble-babble. So I ran some newsworthy nattering from this week’s press conferences through my Universal Coachspeak-to-Plain English Translator. Here are the results:
Bears GM Ryan Poles on Justin Fields
What He Said
“The hot topic, The first pick. The quarterback situation. Contrary to reports out there, I have no master plan to present to everyone today. This is an opportunity for us to continue to gather information, learn about the different players in the draft, listen to what opportunities could come up and then we’re gonna to make the best decision that we can for the Chicago Bears. It will not be based on fear of what could happen with this, what could happen with that. We’re gonna put our information together and make the best decision.”
What He Meant
“I have not heard an offer for Fields OR for the first-overall pick that I really liked yet.”
Poles is handling the Fields messaging well. He has done nothing to sabotage the quarterback’s trade value. He’s kept the door open for trading the top pick in the draft, saying on Tuesday that he will listen to offers like the one that brought D.J. Moore and a haul of extra picks to Chicago last season. Poles almost certainly hopes to trade Fields, but the more difficult he makes the decision sound, the more appealing Fields looks to some team which thinks it can harness his undeniable talent and salvage his hypothetical potential.
Poles is also being honest-ish when he claims he wants to move quickly. No, he doesn’t want to force Fields to live with uncertainty for weeks just for the sadistic thrill of it. But it’s also in the Bears’ interests to get a trade done before potential suitors begin spending money and assets on other veteran quarterback solutions.
Bears coach Matt Eberflus on Justin Fields
What He Said
When asked what he looks for in a starting quarterback, Eberflus said: “I look at situations. I look at the guys that can operate third down, two-minute and the end of the game situations. That, to me, is a separator.”
What He Meant
“Caleb Williams, please and thank you.”
Here are Justin Fields’ career adjusted yards per attempt by quarter, per Pro Football Reference:
- First Quarter: 7.4
- Second Quarter: 6.4
- Third Quarter: 8.2
- Fourth Quarter: 4.1
Pretty awful in end-of-game situations, right?
Ah, you say, having marinated in Justin Fields is slowly improving narratives for two years, but his passing numbers late in the game simply must be better now than they were in his first two seasons.
Nope, here are his 2023 adjusted yards per attempt figures:
- First Quarter: 10.2
- Second Quarter: 6.6
- Third Quarter: 6.5
- Fourth Quarter: 3.7
Fields has gotten better at early-game scripted passing (thanks in part to the arrival of DJ Moore) but worse at running the Bears offense late in games. Eberflus, who has lots of other things to worry about and improve upon, doesn’t want to be saddled with a quarterback who offers little hope of a comeback in a close game. And he’s not afraid to say so.
Vikings GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah on Justin Jefferson
What He Said
“I think people forget: Deals rarely happen after three years. And there’s a reason. With two years left [on a rookie contract], there’s uncertainty that somebody has got to hold. Either the club has got to hold it, or the player has got to hold it. There’s new money, old money. How do you look at contracts? Those are very hard conversations to have. So a lot of them don’t get done.
“We’ve said it and we’ll continue to say it: We think he’s the best wide receiver in the league and should be compensated as such. We think he’s the one of the best non-quarterbacks in the league, and think he should be compensated as such.
“I promised and will continue to promise them, I will not talk about our negotiations. I think this job should be done with integrity. So a lot of this stuff I hear is completely false. But I can’t get up here and tell you what’s not true or not because that’s not how I promised to do this job. But I will tell you … he’s somebody we want around for a long time.”
What He Meant
“We’re working on it. It will get done come summertime.”
The “holding uncertainty” stuff is just Adofo-Mensah being Adofo-Mensah; he often sounds like a finance professor trying to explain macroeconomics to a teenaged barista before he has had his Starbucks. The Vikings and Jefferson are no-doubt haggling over the lengths of guarantees and other long-term risk factors. Jefferson’s agent also wants to see how the free agent market shakes out before resetting it. Based on how long Adofo-Mensah gushed about Jefferson on Tuesday, however, the exec is not too worried about creating fake leverage by pretending to play public hardball.
Kwesi Adofo-Mensah on Kirk Cousins
What He Said
“At the end of the day. We have our interests. He has his. We’ll get to the table and see if we can figure out a creative solution and meet in the middle. That’s what every contract negotiation is, and that’s what it will be with him. What we do know is we have a really great quarterback, a great leader, and somebody we think we can win the ultimate prize with. That’s ultimately what I focus on and that’s where we’re at right now.”
What He Meant
“Can we go back to talking about Justin Jefferson?”
Compare the roses and chocolates Adofo-Mensah heaped upon Jefferson with the clinical we have our interests language and perfunctory praise for Cousins and it becomes obvious where the organization’s priorities are. The Vikings aren’t closing the door on Cousins, but both sides see free agency as a short-term trial separation and need a “creative solution” in order to come together financially.
There’s a chance that Cousins, turning 36 in August and coming off a midseason Achilles tear, doesn’t draw much interest from other teams. If that’s the case, Adofo-Mensah will be waiting with open arms and a short-term contract containing more bells and whistles than guarantees.
Jets GM Joe Douglas on the Jets offensive line situation
What He Said
“We just had some unbelievable meetings with our coaching staff about free agency. There are three avenues we can pursue: a trade, free agency and the draft. Going through the meetings we just went through, the flexibility of [Alijah Vera-Tucker], we think there are some guys who can come in and be the right type of fit for us, in terms of intelligence, toughness, reliability. There are some good candidates out there who can come in and help us.”
What He Meant
“We’re gonna cross our fingers with a bunch of journeyman free agents.”
It sounded at one point during Douglas’ Wednesday press conference that the Jets planned to make Vera-Tucker, coming off an October ACL injury, play four positions at the same time. In fact, the Jets’ plan makes slightly more sense than that. They will pursue veterans to fill several starting positions. The Jets only have about $12-million in paper cap space right now. They can free up more, but they will likely be picking from the “excitingly-average 30ish year old” bin, because that’s just about the only bin of offensive linemen there is this year. The Jets will probably draft a tackle in the first round, which will go a long way toward solving about 33% of the problem.
Douglas mentioned “reliability,” so he probably is not interested in aging, oft-injured Packers offensive tackle David Bakhtiari, who may soon be released. Then again, Douglas doesn’t REALLY make the decisions that matter when it comes to the Jets offense, does he?
Broncos head coach Sean Payton on Russell Wilson
What He Said
“Next week, we’ll be in meetings with ownership. So I expect that we’re going to know fairly quickly… Somewhere in the neighborhood of next week. There’s a couple of factors here, obviously the cap projections came out, we’re further down the road with the draft class, so I would anticipate it being within the next two weeks.”
What He Meant
“We’re gonna cut him ASAP.”
Payton also shared his thoughts about an Internet meme with the national media, which is not something coaches normally do during press conferences. “There’s a Broncos fan with a shirt on with like eight quarterbacks’ names crossed through them, and he’s drinking the quarterback ‘Kool-Aid,'” he said. “Our job is to make sure this next one doesn’t have a line through it.”
So yeah. Payton stopped just short of hiring a skywriter to scrawl “F**K Russell Wilson” in the clouds above Indianapolis.
Cutting Wilson with a post-June 1st designation will cost the Broncos $35 million this season and next. Payton does not care: he comes from the Saints, where they blow $35 million per year on 30-plus year old defenders and Wildcat quarterbacks. The chunky new cap figures for 2024 make the cap hit slightly more manageable, which in turn makes the decision to cut Wilson more palatable.
Broncos ownership surely saw this scenario coming when they hired Payton. After all, the rest of us did. The moneyline on Payton going through the motions with Wilson for most of a season, finding an excuse to bench him by mid-December and then dumping him should have been around +120 on the day Payton was hired.
Payton and Broncos GM George Paton are just waiting to see if a trade partner materializes over the next week or so. None will.
Giants GM Joe Schoen on Saquon Barkley
What He Said
“I wouldn’t say his value has changed, especially in the organization. He’s a captain. He’s a leader. He’s a hard worker. I think the world of Saquon and I still think he can play. So my value for Saquon really hasn’t changed.
“Unfortunately, starting back in November of 2022 we weren’t able to come to an agreement in terms of where we thought a deal made sense. So we’ll circle back again. He has a new agent, Ed Berry, who we have a really good relationship with. So I look forward to sitting down and having conversations with him.”
What He Meant
“Why won’t you weirdos leave me alone about Saquon? He’s a running back, for heaven’s sake!”
Schoen wants to quietly lowball Barkley with a short-term, incentive-laden deal, watch him shop it on a glutted veteran running back market (Josh Jacobs, Tony Pollard, Austin Ekeler, Derrick Henry), then either let him sign with some team like the Panthers or bring him back at a cut rate. But many Giants fans have adopted Barkley as a spiritual son in these times of famine, so the organization is forced to pretend that it is 1979 and Barkley is Earl Campbell.
The four most important words in Schoen’s long discussion of Barkley did not make it into many headlines: “Running back market value.” It doesn’t take a financial wizard to figure out what it means when supply exceeds demand, especially for perishable commodities like running backs or bananas.
Barkley was not worth the $10-million franchise tag the Giants placed on him in 2023 and is definitely not worth a $12.1-million 2024 tag after a season in which DYAR graded him as a replacement level running back. Schoen knows this, as do Tom Telesco for the Raiders (who franchised Jacobs last year) and even Jerry/Stephen Jones (Pollard), and all would rather play musical chairs with their running backs than overpay them. But if Schoen said that in a press conference, everywhere from Bergen County to Queens would burst into flames.
Panthers GM Dan Morgan on Brian Burns
What He Said
“We would definitely use [the franchise tag] if we had to use it. You know, we love Brian. Brian’s a Panther. Somebody that I know and that I’m close to, I played with his brother [Stanley McClover]. So, I definitely love Brian. But all options are on the table for him.”
What He Meant
“Dear Lord, what have I gotten myself into?”
The Panthers have been run by a bunch of overstimulated toddlers with no object permanence and three-femtosecond attention spans since David Tepper bought the team. Extending Burns should have been the organization’s top offseason priority for the last two years – they’ve had practically no other veterans worth spending money on since they traded Christian McCaffrey and DJ Moore – yet the team somehow turned Burns’ contract status into a crisis. Morgan, who was promoted from within because no executive with other options would work for the Panthers right now, is desperately trying to signal the front office’s baseline professionalism and respect to Burns, other players and fans.
The Panthers will franchise Burns, then try to convince him that Dave Canales will last through November as head coach, and that a long-term contract would not be the equivalent of an extended sentence in the NFL’s saddest salt mine.
Ravens GM Eric DeCosta on Odell Beckham
What He Said
“We’ve just texted. He’s a great, great guy. I love Odell. He’s become a great friend of mine and a friend to the Ravens, and I think we’ll just kind of assess and see what happens over the next couple of weeks.”
What He Meant
“Please take this money sink off our hands.”
Note: It’s always a sign of strained/weird relations when a coach or general manager casually mentions that he is exchanging texts with a player. We’re BFFs. It’s true. Why, we even know each other’s phone numbers and communicate in the most impersonal way possible!
Joe Douglas on Aaron Rodgers’ impact on the Jets organization
What He Said
[Speaking with the emotion and energy of someone woken from a sound sleep and forced at swordpoint to recite the alphabet backwards] “Aaron’s an unbelievable addition to this team off the field. We all know what he can do on the field. We texted a little bit since he left the building. But I can’t wait to have him back here because he makes such a large impact on our group, on our guys. So we’re going to have some more conversations.
What He Meant
“The Jets are a hostage situation. Please send help.”
