Tag: Baker Mayfield

Drafting Georgia RB Sony Michel is the Most Patriots Move Ever

By on • ( Leave a comment )

The Patriots love to zig when everybody else zags. They absolutely love it, which is why drafting Georgia running back Sony Michel is the most Patriots move ever. Most teams these days seem to have all but agreed that the RB position is overvalued (except for the Giants). With absolute studs like Alvin Kamara and Kareem Hunt both drafted in the 3rd round, its no secret that you can find elite running backs after Day 1 so why waste the draft capital? So we’re all in agreement? Ok cool.

*Bill Belichick immediately drafts a running back in the first round*

Its the first time he’s even drafted a SKILL POSITION player in the first round since Laurence Maroney in 2006.

Zagging for days.

You saw it in recent years as the Patriots adopted the more commonly seen in college spread attack and hurry up offense, which all but eliminated the need for a fullback. Then most of the league gravitated towards a similar approach. Then the Pats shifted gears and started heavily utilizing a fullback in James Develin, who only made the Pro Bowl this past year. Or what about when the Patriots all of a sudden changed their offense on the fly and morphed into a two Tight End system? They proceed to wreak havoc on the league with a young Rob Gronkowski and Aaron Hernandez. Until one of them became a famous serial killer, but the point remains.

Sony was a beast at Georgia playing with the big boys in the SEC, where he averaged 7.9 yards per carry last year.

He’s also the guy that ended Baker Mayfield’s college career with the walkoff TD run in that epic Rose Bowl game earlier this year.

As Phil Perry points out, Sony’s ball control is a bit of a concern, fumbling 12 times in his career, but half of those came in his freshman year. The only thing Bill Belichick preaches more than Do Your Job is hold onto the football. Ball security is job security. So that’ll be something to watch. Perry also shed some light on another reason why the Pats may have fallen in love with Sony:

“But in the passing game is probably where Michel’s true value will be at the next level. He may be the best pass-protector at the position in this year’s class of backs (two hurries on 52 pass-blocking snaps, per Pro Football Focus), and he’s a capable receiver (64 catches, 621 yards receiving in his career).”

The Pats love a guy that can play in pass protection. Thats your No. 1 priority. Then running the football, and if you can also catch the ball out of the backfield? Well now we’re cooking with gas. Too many times in recent years have teams been able to either stack the box or just sit back in coverage because the RB on the field was either a battering ram (Blount) or a receiver (James White). Dion Lewis was excellent as a runner and a receiver, but he’s gone so Belichick got someone who can do both.

The Patriots are the ultimate marketing arbitrage in the NFL, buying and selling where they identify the most value. Everybody devalues running back these days? Time for us to snatch up a potential stud while you’re all sleeping on him just because thats what the rest of the league says you should do.

They are the tastemakers of the NFL. They’re not trying to do business as business is done, no they’re setting the trends themselves and letting the rest of the league react. And thats why the Patriots will always be successful with Bill Belichick running the show.

Plus if you are a fan, not an NFL Draft Analyst that gets paid to scout and report on players, who gets genuinely angry about who your team does or doesn’t draft? Then you are lying to yourself because any rational human being realizes that the only thing we really know about the draft is that we don’t know shit. So just sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

An Open Letter to the Patriots and Patriots Nation: Baker Mayfield is About to Go #1 Overall to Cleveland and I am About to Become a Browns Fan

By on • ( Leave a comment )

Dear New England Patriots, Pats Nation, my colleagues here at The 300s, and anyone I’ve failed to recognize,

For almost three decades now I have been a dedicated fan of all four major Boston sports franchises without fail. The lows of the Bledsoe/(Dee)Brown/Bourque/…Valentin? slumps of the 90’s. The highs of breaking the curse, the Big 3, the Cup in 11′, and, of course, that slew of Super Bowls.

The Patriots obviously hold a special place among special places. They are our dynasty. They are our safety blanket. We worship at the Church of the Immaculate Hoodie and at the Statue of the Perfect Cheekbones. We were a down, downtrodden fan base and the Pats gave us hope.

With that said, Baker Mayfield is the balls. There is something about his chip-on-the-shoulder, “Fuck you I’m too small” self-confidence, electric style of play, and just pure competitiveness that is completely absorbing. He sometimes gets compared to Johnny Football, but Baker is a fucking mad dog QB1, a gunslinging sonofabitch who happens to be on the shorter side and can use his feet, as opposed to Manziel who always had a questions mark when it came to his arm and competitiveness.

So with that my dear, dear contemporaries I must confess that should the Cleveland Browns, the worst franchise in the history of anything – and I mean that, there were militias that were quite frankly paved by the Roman conquerors that looked better in comparison – draft Baker Mayfield, I must switch teams. I can’t root against Baker. His elusiveness as it pertains to law enforcement may not pass the sniff test, but he has the ability to drive the ball downfield and into my heart.

I hope you understand this is out of a love gained, not a love lost,

Best wishes,

-Joey Ballgame.

BREAKING: Patriots Trade Brandin Cooks to the Rams for a First Round Pick

By on • ( Leave a comment )

As per usual, I have no idea what the Patriots are planning here. On one hand, it really is great, great value to get the No. 23 overall pick for a guy with one year left on his contract. On the other hand, great value aside… Tom Brady might blow a goddamn gasket when he hears about this. First Danny Amendola walked, now Cooks is out, Gronk is still hemming and hawing about playing next year, and Julian Edelman is coming back from a shredded knee. Not exactly confidence inspiring for a QB in his 40s.

The real question here though is; what do the Patriots have up their sleeve? The Pats rarely trade up into the first round so I FULLY expect them to trade down again for five 4th round picks so they can fill out the team with more Rutgers and Navy guys. But, if we want to have a little fun for a minute; what could the Pats realistically do with this pick?

Well they could turn around and give it to New York in a trade for Odell Beckham Jr. It was rumored that it would take a 1st rounder to pry ODB from the Giants and the Rams were the team most commonly mentioned in those rumors. Now with their first round pick in hand, the Patriots could effectively trade Brandin Cooks for ODB straight up. That would be fine with me, but of course that would open up Pandora’s Box of yet another guy bitching about his contract in the locker room.

Or are the Patriots potentially looking to package No. 23 and their own No. 31 pick to move up in the draft and take say…a quarterback?

I’m still driving the Johnny Manziel hype train, but I was just listening to Felger and Mazz and they took a quick peak at the NFL Draft Value chart and according to them these two picks would, in theory, be enough ammo to move up to No. 9 overall in the Draft. Now that…that is interesting. Are the Pats looking to trade up and grab my boy Baker Mayfield?

https://giphy.com/embed/RveDcLXAWGizK

via GIPHY

Probably not, but Bill Belichick is nothing if not a sneaky and devious SOB so I fully expect this newly acquired draft capital to go to good use. So it sucks to see another one of Brady’s weapons, who I expected to improve in Year 2, leave the team but I’ll reserve judgement until we see what Bill does with the pick.

For what its worth Zolak seems to be thinking the same thing and I’d say and he’s *kind of* tapped into the team.

https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

“Agents Are For Suckers” – Baker Mayfield, Probably

By on • ( Leave a comment )

ProFootballTalk – At a time when all the top incoming rookies are picking their agents, former Oklahoma quarterback Baker Mayfield’s choice may be none of the above.

Via Liz Mullen of SportsBusiness Daily, the Heisman winner currently is trying to decide whether to hire an agent, and he possibly won’t.

This story flew sort of under the radar yesterday (as opposed to the subject of the story, who often flies too close to the sun, buh dun bshhh). Baker Mayfield, Heisman Trophy winner and hell-spawn amalgamation of Johnny Football and Phillip Rivers, may not sign with an agent. I know there are a number of NFL veterans out there that don’t work with an agent for reasons unto themselves, Russell Okung being possibly the biggest name among them, but a rookie flying solo is rare. The closest thing that comes to mind is when Ricky Williams allowed Master P to represent him in his rookie contract negotiations. It breaks my heart knowing I’m so old that a lot of people reading this have zero clue what that last sentence meant, or how bad of an idea it was both from the jump and upon seeing how said negotiations played out for Williams. Hint: It is often referred to as the worst deal for a player of all time. Baker Mayfield choosing to sign with no agent rather than a rapper is a little better than that arrangement but is still problematic for a couple of reasons.

I think the first thing of importance to note is that for rookies, which Baker Mayfield will be for approximately one year, an agent’s job can be seen from a high-level as administrative. They represent their client in the truest sense of the word – taking the calls and preparing the documents a professional athlete doesn’t want to deal with. This is because as of a couple years ago the NFL introduced a rookie wage scale that basically writes rookie deals themselves. With that said, a good agent can affect the rookie deal of a first round pick, which Mayfield very well may be, in a positive manner to some extent, exploiting what little wiggle room there is in terms of guaranteed money, etc. However, barring things like catastrophic injury, most of the money in rookie deals is what it is, and up to the player himself to earn.

The first of what I see as two major problems with Baker Mayfield not signing with an agent is the fact that, as I previously mentioned and as is widely known, you are a rookie for one year. Mayfield is entering the draft at the position of Quarterback, the most important position on a football field, and hopefully of the Franchise Quarterback variety as well. So, if all goes well and the Franchise Quarterback performs satisfactorily, on top of having bountiful endorsements to work out thanks to the player being the face of a franchise, a good agent could get to work pretty much right away on putting a bug in the team’s ear regarding an extension for more money over more years. Now, these extensions are rarely given before the 3rd year for 4 year rookie deals or the 4th year for 5 year deals, but the conversations could at least start taking place right? Will Baker Mayfield be taking time out of his, you know, professional football player schedule during week 3 of his 2nd year to discuss the future? Will his team really love him having to do that? That’s probably a no to both and thus bad business strategy for #6.

The 2nd, and definitely bigger problem for Baker Mayfield here, is that not signing with a professional agent, as every other rookie does and is advised to do, does not show, well, at least not emphatically good decision making in terms of the non-football playing part of his life. Poor decision making in terms of the non-football playing part of his life is sort of a major red flag in Mayfield’s file, really the most major one actually, so this really could bode poorly for his draft stock. To recap, he left Texas Tech due to a “miscommunication with coaches,” tried to drunkenly practice the 40 yard dash away from a cop, to no avail, and was booked for a drunk and disorderly thereafter, and then, in a passionate moment after throwing a TD against Kansas earlier this season, tugged at his crotch area and offered the Kansas sideline the opportunity to perform acts on said area. To decide that the fate of the millions of dollars coming his way would be best left to himself, Baker Mayfield, can arguably be seen as a not so great decision, which, given his height and perceived not-superior arm strength (I think that part is bullshit but w.e), he can’t afford going into the draft.

Agents serve their clients. There are no two ways around that. They are there for the athlete and the athlete is the boss. I know it probably chaps a lot of athlete’s asses that their agent takes 10% of the money the he/she earns from ravaging their body, but as a wise man once said, it’s the way of the road, Bubs. To that end, Baker Mayfield should, if nothing else, hire a mouthpiece, a certified NFLPA agent in a $1,000.00 dollar suit, to just “be his agent” under the conditions that Baker Mayfield is his own man. We already know that after all.

I’ve Somehow Developed a College Football Addiction in Boston

By on • ( Leave a comment )

Maybe its just Baker Mayfield being like Johnny Football-lite and filling the massive Manziel void in my life, but I’ve recently developed a college football addiction.

Not a ton of people around here are big college football guys, probably because we’ve had ONE good year of college football in Boston since the 80s. Back in 2007 Matt Ryan was at Boston College and they got as high as No. 2 in the AP Poll.

That was fun as hell because it was the first time BC had been ANY good since the days of Doug Flutie. After Matty Ice moved on to the NFL though BC went right back into the tank.

So its hard to have a lot of love for a sport thats basically nonexistent in your market. With legitimately every major team in this city being so good (all having won a title since 2008) theres no time for shitty teams, especially shitty teams that have no intention of bringing in the players necessary to be any good. Kind of like being a Mets fan.

If I wanted to get in my car and drive to a big time college football game, I think the closest team would be Penn State; a cool 7 hour drive from Boston. Fuck you, UConn and UMass do not count, neither does Syracuse. I’m talking BIG TIME college football where they sell out 70,000+ seat arenas. It just does not exist up here.

So not long after BC went back into hibernation I declared myself a free agent and started looking for a team to call my own. I was looking for a team that was fun to watch, played fast, scored a ton of points, spread out the field, threw it a lot, recruited mobile QBs, and of course had some fire flames unis. Basically I was looking for a team that played the same style as me in Madden. Now what team matches that description to a T? The Oregon Ducks of course.

It was right at the start of the Chip Kelly era too so it was perfect timing to get into and follow a team that was actually good at playing football unlike BC. Not to mention a couple of trips (read: losses) to the National Championship and then Marcus Mariota later wins the Heisman in 2014 and I’m pretty invested in the Ducks. I still wasn’t about to sit down and watch college football all afternoon though.

But I think I reached that turning point this past Saturday. It was the first big weekend of the year with some prime matchups. I know CFB kicked off the week before, but this past Saturday we had Oregon vs Nebraska, Louisville at UNC, Georgia at Notre Dame, Auburn at Clemson, Oklahoma at Ohio State, Stanford at USC, and if you’re a real night owl type degenerate, the triple OT #Pac12AfterDark thriller in Boise St at Washington St.

Long story short, I found myself watching college football on the couch for 8 hours straight. There’s so many great characters this year led first and foremost by Baker Mayfield, who took down Ohio State almost singlehandedly on Saturday.

Maybe its something that is just fresh in my mind after a particularly lousy Week 1 in the NFL, but the majority of these college games are always exciting with the added benefit of projecting who would be a good fit where in the NFL. Sam Darnold or Josh Rosen on the Jets is not something I look forward to.

But also, just getting to watch the Heisman Race from Day 1 and witnessing all the big signature moments these guys need in an effort to win the trophy is exciting as hell.

You got comeback bids with insane catches.

You got former NFL quarterback dopplegangers.

Baker Mayfield just putting Urban Meyer right to bed.

College football, I get it now. Which is a problem since I also just spent 10+ hours watching NFL Football on Sunday, getting my money’s worth from Sunday Ticket. So this could devolve into an incredibly sedentary lifestyle quick.