The Random Thought Thread

[Simba]

The hard part with trading Brown is as being discussed above... we have no T depth so you have to be sure you can find someone competent. Our RTs last year after Stanley went down consisted of 2 Gs that moved out to T (Fluker and Phillips), a C that moved out to T (Mekari), and a PS T that we didn't feel strongly enough about to promote when another team came calling (Holden). We have pretty much 0 viable options at T at this point. Hard to move on from Brown unless you are absolutely sure that you can find someone else.

 

[rossihunter2]

I hear you but I think both those guys would be competing for RT along with the rookie. The only way I see otherwise is if we draft a rookie RT with a first or second. The team has a clear history of making people earn their reps outside the first round and often second round but not always.

i guess my assumption would be that if we traded orlando away that we'd 100% be drafting a tackle in the first 2 rounds...

it's also true that when a rookie wins the competition they get the start - it's just we normally have a decent enough incumbent to fight them off - we literally wouldn't have a tackle for him to fight off - mekari would be competing to start at C so likely isn't in the tackle competition and Tyre's likely competing at RG so also likely isn't in the tackle competition (i don't think anyone in the building was sold on him as a tackle but he and fluker were basically our only options)

only way an incoming rookie would have anyone to fight off is if we re-upped with fluker and given that he lost a camp battle at RG to a rookie with only a training camp (let alone a full offseason) i'd find it hard to believe he wouldn't be usurped by a half-decent rookie...

 

[rossihunter2]

The hard part with trading Brown is as being discussed above... we have no T depth so you have to be sure you can find someone competent. Our RTs last year after Stanley went down consisted of 2 Gs that moved out to T (Fluker and Phillips), a C that moved out to T (Mekari), and a PS T that we didn't feel strongly enough about to promote when another team came calling (Holden). We have pretty much 0 viable options at T at this point. Hard to move on from Brown unless you are absolutely sure that you can find someone else.

yeah it removes any leeway - you're basically committing to either find a free agent (which would seem counter-productive given that the only reason a trade happens is because you dont want to pay orlando) or you're committing a high draft pick to the position which goes against the organisation's BPA mantra

 

[JoeyFlex5]

But isn't that part of the problem here, too? Why are teams going to trade premium draft capital and give up a large contract when they can draft a guy and have him for 4-5 years? I know that's not a sure thing but not sure the OBJ trade is as cut and dry as it seems.

Simple, the ravens have absolutely crushed it drafting and developing OL and most of the league is the exact opposite. Teams trying desperately to protect their investments, the Justin herberts and kyler Murrays and joe burrows of the world, and have absolutely shit the bed trying to develop OL, they just don’t wanna swing and miss.

if the chargers spend the 13th overall pick on an OT and they bust(because even in a strong class the hit rate for OTs is gonna be trash at best) then they’re dramatically slowing down the trajectory of the team during herberts rookie deal and exposing Herbert to injury, and that applies to all teams with young qbs and poor OL play.

We hold all the leverage for a young star at a premium position with a high bust rate league wide and the ravens have churned out OTs like it ain’t shit.

 

[rossihunter2]

Simple, the ravens have absolutely crushed it drafting and developing OL and most of the league is the exact opposite. Teams trying desperately to protect their investments, the Justin herberts and kyler Murrays and joe burrows of the world, and have absolutely shit the bed trying to develop OL, they just don’t wanna swing and miss.

if the chargers spend the 13th overall pick on an OT and they bust(because even in a strong class the hit rate for OTs is gonna be trash at best) then they’re dramatically slowing down the trajectory of the team during herberts rookie deal and exposing Herbert to injury, and that applies to all teams with young qbs and poor OL play.

We hold all the leverage for a young star at a premium position with a high bust rate league wide and the ravens have churned out OTs like it ain’t shit.

tbf case in point is last year's stacked tackle class

of the 6 1st round tackles - 1 already looks like a bust and another played really poorly all season (and was the first tackle selected) - so right now we're looking best case at a 2/3 hit rate - Wirfs and Becton look like slam dunks but Wills and Jackson are still up in the air - wills did well enough not to be a concern and jackson did well but not well enough that the dolphins wouldnt consider taking another LT this year

and this was in a great looking OT class

 

[JoeyFlex5]

tbf case in point is last year's stacked tackle class

of the 6 1st round tackles - 1 already looks like a bust and another played really poorly all season (and was the first tackle selected) - so right now we're looking best case at a 2/3 hit rate - Wirfs and Becton look like slam dunks but Wills and Jackson are still up in the air - wills did well enough not to be a concern and jackson did well but not well enough that the dolphins wouldnt consider taking another LT this year

and this was in a great looking OT class

Last years OT class I thought looked way better than this years, I like the depth of this class but the top of the OT class IMO isn’t close to last years

 

[Grim]

The hard part with trading Brown is as being discussed above... we have no T depth so you have to be sure you can find someone competent. Our RTs last year after Stanley went down consisted of 2 Gs that moved out to T (Fluker and Phillips), a C that moved out to T (Mekari), and a PS T that we didn't feel strongly enough about to promote when another team came calling (Holden). We have pretty much 0 viable options at T at this point. Hard to move on from Brown unless you are absolutely sure that you can find someone else.

Definitely lack depth at T for sure. It was an area I wanted to improve in via draft pick regardless of Brown but he makes the question a larger question mark. I thought Mekari played T for us originally then moved out to C after problems there or am I mistaken? I could definitely see Mekari in the mix for RT though if we moved on from Brown depending on our plans.

i guess my assumption would be that if we traded orlando away that we'd 100% be drafting a tackle in the first 2 rounds...

it's also true that when a rookie wins the competition they get the start - it's just we normally have a decent enough incumbent to fight them off - we literally wouldn't have a tackle for him to fight off - mekari would be competing to start at C so likely isn't in the tackle competition and Tyre's likely competing at RG so also likely isn't in the tackle competition (i don't think anyone in the building was sold on him as a tackle but he and fluker were basically our only options)

only way an incoming rookie would have anyone to fight off is if we re-upped with fluker and given that he lost a camp battle at RG to a rookie with only a training camp (let alone a full offseason) i'd find it hard to believe he wouldn't be usurped by a half-decent rookie...

So I agree with you here that you'd think we would be targeting a OT early but I also don't think that's a decision you make either. The draft can turn different directions and you can't trade a player assuming you can land a guy because that is the exact strategy that causes reaches. I think if anything the Ravens would decide to move Mekari or Tyre to RT to compete. If either of these occurred then I could see Skura re-signed in a move to keep someone around at least familiar with the offense to compete at C. In this hypothetical I think it would depend on where the Ravens think Tyre & Mekari fit best compared to our other options in Powers, Bredeson, & TCC. And to your point, that does suck we don't have a legit option to fight off a RT rookie--you don't want a guy to come in and just expect to win the job by default.

Simple, the ravens have absolutely crushed it drafting and developing OL and most of the league is the exact opposite. Teams trying desperately to protect their investments, the Justin herberts and kyler Murrays and joe burrows of the world, and have absolutely shit the bed trying to develop OL, they just don’t wanna swing and miss.

if the chargers spend the 13th overall pick on an OT and they bust(because even in a strong class the hit rate for OTs is gonna be trash at best) then they’re dramatically slowing down the trajectory of the team during herberts rookie deal and exposing Herbert to injury, and that applies to all teams with young qbs and poor OL play.

We hold all the leverage for a young star at a premium position with a high bust rate league wide and the ravens have churned out OTs like it ain’t shit.

So I do think Brown Jr would land us a haul for numerous reasons, those being a) he is a proven commodity vs. unproven rookies that can bust or take time to develop, b) he could make an immediate impact vs. rookie growing pains but c) he would also cost more because the Ravens clearly value him and would be devoid of true options at RT if traded & therefore the premium for him would naturally be higher. You're not wrong though that there are reasons for teams wanting him, but there are reasons we would want to keep him too.

For me, whether we trade Brown or not doesn't matter--if we do, awesome because it means we got a haul because no way in Hell would we just hand him over for peanuts when it will create a hole for us and a decent-sized hole at that. If we don't trade him then awesome, we have an awesome RT for our team who can protect Lamar.

 

[JoeyFlex5]

Definitely lack depth at T for sure. It was an area I wanted to improve in via draft pick regardless of Brown but he makes the question a larger question mark. I thought Mekari played T for us originally then moved out to C after problems there or am I mistaken? I could definitely see Mekari in the mix for RT though if we moved on from Brown depending on our plans.

So I agree with you here that you'd think we would be targeting a OT early but I also don't think that's a decision you make either. The draft can turn different directions and you can't trade a player assuming you can land a guy because that is the exact strategy that causes reaches. I think if anything the Ravens would decide to move Mekari or Tyre to RT to compete. If either of these occurred then I could see Skura re-signed in a move to keep someone around at least familiar with the offense to compete at C. In this hypothetical I think it would depend on where the Ravens think Tyre & Mekari fit best compared to our other options in Powers, Bredeson, & TCC. And to your point, that does suck we don't have a legit option to fight off a RT rookie--you don't want a guy to come in and just expect to win the job by default.

So I do think Brown Jr would land us a haul for numerous reasons, those being a) he is a proven commodity vs. unproven rookies that can bust or take time to develop, b) he could make an immediate impact vs. rookie growing pains but c) he would also cost more because the Ravens clearly value him and would be devoid of true options at RT if traded & therefore the premium for him would naturally be higher. You're not wrong though that there are reasons for teams wanting him, but there are reasons we would want to keep him too.

For me, whether we trade Brown or not doesn't matter--if we do, awesome because it means we got a haul because no way in Hell would we just hand him over for peanuts when it will create a hole for us and a decent-sized hole at that. If we don't trade him then awesome, we have an awesome RT for our team who can protect Lamar.

And I agree with this. If we have him for this season I’m happy, I dont expect to have him for next season, so naturally I expect nothing less than a tag and trade next offseason for a first round pick

 

[rossihunter2]

Last years OT class I thought looked way better than this years, I like the depth of this class but the top of the OT class IMO isn’t close to last years

i havent got that far into the tackle class yet so cant say for sure - but unlikely that there'll be 4 guys in the top 15 again i imagine

 

[rossihunter2]

Definitely lack depth at T for sure. It was an area I wanted to improve in via draft pick regardless of Brown but he makes the question a larger question mark. I thought Mekari played T for us originally then moved out to C after problems there or am I mistaken? I could definitely see Mekari in the mix for RT though if we moved on from Brown depending on our plans.

he's always been an IOL for us - he played the 2nd half of 1 game this year in relief at T after we benched fluker who was having a nightmare but has never played any other snaps there - until that 2nd half the last time he'd played any tackle was in college

the other issue with him competing at tackle is that he's going to be the incumbent starter at C and likely going to be competing there - i doubt they'll split his time between 2 positions

 

[rossihunter2]

So I agree with you here that you'd think we would be targeting a OT early but I also don't think that's a decision you make either. The draft can turn different directions and you can't trade a player assuming you can land a guy because that is the exact strategy that causes reaches. I think if anything the Ravens would decide to move Mekari or Tyre to RT to compete. If either of these occurred then I could see Skura re-signed in a move to keep someone around at least familiar with the offense to compete at C. In this hypothetical I think it would depend on where the Ravens think Tyre & Mekari fit best compared to our other options in Powers, Bredeson, & TCC. And to your point, that does suck we don't have a legit option to fight off a RT rookie--you don't want a guy to come in and just expect to win the job by default.

the problem is mekari was never an option even this year with the car crash going on at RT - they only thought about it for the 2nd half of one game when they had no other option

and if you take Mekari out of the C spot then you're basically handing the starting C job to TCC - or you're just committing to drafting a C high too which is the exact same issue

Tyre i dont think we're going to see play any RT again - he was clearly over-matched out there and it's pretty telling that neither he nor Fluker ever won the job - it's a bad sign that even in a playoff game we're rotating right tackles every couple of drives

skura's not coming back - would be pointless

but this is also why i think it's highly unlikely we allow brown to leave - because we hate going into the draft with obvious needs because as you say it leads to reaching - but if orlando was gone i see no possible way we aren't forced into taking a tackle high

the stated goal from both Decosta and Harbs in their season-ending presser was that we need to get better on the OL - getting rid of orlando our pro-bowler and replacing him with guys already on the roster is not going to improve the OL at all

 

[Grim]

he's always been an IOL for us - he played the 2nd half of 1 game this year in relief at T after we benched fluker who was having a nightmare but has never played any other snaps there - until that 2nd half the last time he'd played any tackle was in college

the other issue with him competing at tackle is that he's going to be the incumbent starter at C and likely going to be competing there - i doubt they'll split his time between 2 positions

Ahh, okay, good to know. I know Mekari played at T but wasn’t sure when. I thought he played there in college but what you said sounds right to me. I would think Tyre would be the de facto guy then if we had to roll out based on your hypothesis. Are you sure Mekari will be the incumbent?

the problem is mekari was never an option even this year with the car crash going on at RT - they only thought about it for the 2nd half of one game when they had no other option

and if you take Mekari out of the C spot then you're basically handing the starting C job to TCC - or you're just committing to drafting a C high too which is the exact same issue

Tyre i dont think we're going to see play any RT again - he was clearly over-matched out there and it's pretty telling that neither he nor Fluker ever won the job - it's a bad sign that even in a playoff game we're rotating right tackles every couple of drives

skura's not coming back - would be pointless

but this is also why i think it's highly unlikely we allow brown to leave - because we hate going into the draft with obvious needs because as you say it leads to reaching - but if orlando was gone i see no possible way we aren't forced into taking a tackle high

the stated goal from both Decosta and Harbs in their season-ending presser was that we need to get better on the OL - getting rid of orlando our pro-bowler and replacing him with guys already on the roster is not going to improve the OL at all

Wasn’t Mekari not an option because of how bad Skura was? I don’t know if Skura isn’t coming back for sure. I don’t want him back but I wouldn’t count him out especially if we dealt Brown. I can absolutely see Skura return in that scenario alone. I also don’t know if we’d be handing the job over to TCC automatically either. There’s obviously a lot of guesswork here on everyone’s end, but that’s just proof that trading Brown makes for a messy situation. I have zero idea what happens with him, but I’ll still maintain that if some team comes with a haul you gotta take the haul. If nobody does then it’s no problem either.

I guess I think the Ravens win either way this plays out.

 

[rossihunter2]

Ahh, okay, good to know. I know Mekari played at T but wasn’t sure when. I thought he played there in college but what you said sounds right to me. I would think Tyre would be the de facto guy then if we had to roll out based on your hypothesis. Are you sure Mekari will be the incumbent?

Wasn’t Mekari not an option because of how bad Skura was? I don’t know if Skura isn’t coming back for sure. I don’t want him back but I wouldn’t count him out especially if we dealt Brown. I can absolutely see Skura return in that scenario alone. I also don’t know if we’d be handing the job over to TCC automatically either. There’s obviously a lot of guesswork here on everyone’s end, but that’s just proof that trading Brown makes for a messy situation. I have zero idea what happens with him, but I’ll still maintain that if some team comes with a haul you gotta take the haul. If nobody does then it’s no problem either.

I guess I think the Ravens win either way this plays out.

when it first happened skura still had the start so feasibly mekari could have played RT i think - although maybe he was playing RG at that point - that part of the season is very muddled in my head

but there's no way we bring skura back - he's a UFA and he lost his starting job and we've got 2 young guys who we like at the position

mekari did play T in college but was converted to C/G as soon as he got into the offseason training as a rookie

which you're right in this circumstance Tyre would basically be the RT incumbent (unless we bring fluker back) and that's not a good situation to be in given that we clearly don't want Tyre to be playing RT - we drafted him to be a guard, we played him at guard and we only moved him to tackle when we had basically no other option and even then we didnt let him play the whole time

 

[rossihunter2]

it's funny going through draft stuff and seeing steelers fans think about drafting DBs the exact same way we think about drafting WRs

basically "why bother... anyone we draft at that position is going to suck because we suck at drafting [insert position]"

the only difference is the volume - the steelers have actually spent a decent amount of picks on DBs and had almost none of them pan out - their best DBs have all been acquired from elsewhere

 

[Simba]

it's funny going through draft stuff and seeing steelers fans think about drafting DBs the exact same way we think about drafting WRs

basically "why bother... anyone we draft at that position is going to suck because we suck at drafting [insert position]"

the only difference is the volume - the steelers have actually spent a decent amount of picks on DBs and had almost none of them pan out - their best DBs have all been acquired from elsewhere

I know they're a rival, but it's time to do the first official scouting trade. Swap one of our DB experts for one of their WR experts.

 

[rossihunter2]

I know they're a rival, but it's time to do the first official scouting trade. Swap one of our DB experts for one of their WR experts.

or just a year long foreign exchange lol

 

[JO_75]

Super Bowl commercial featuring Peyton, Eli, Archie and other NFL Legends.

 

[gtalk12]

So I sat with the Kurt Warner video and I watched it another 5 times.




2 things


I need to visit a doctor because I think I'm sick


and the other, can we hire the Kurt Daddy to assist Roman?

 

[JoeyFlex5]

it's funny going through draft stuff and seeing steelers fans think about drafting DBs the exact same way we think about drafting WRs

basically "why bother... anyone we draft at that position is going to suck because we suck at drafting [insert position]"

the only difference is the volume - the steelers have actually spent a decent amount of picks on DBs and had almost none of them pan out - their best DBs have all been acquired from elsewhere

Yeah we frankly don’t have enough quality shots at wr to make a distinction, the only shots we took felt like settling, Clayton and perriman were both settling and you can’t convince me otherwise. The Steelers though, they flat out fucking suck donkey dick at drafting dbs lolololol.

 

[drjohnnyfever]

I don't think there is ever a past draft that has the bust potential of this one.