Which NFL Players Are Most Likely Being Traded?

With the Nov. 1 NFL trade deadline approaching, prepare to see a lot of reports, rumors and takes about who is likely to be traded.

Midseason trades in the NFL don’t happen often and they seldom involve “name” players unless they happen to be in decline. Speculation about trades often comes from people who believe that teams with losing records are better off getting draft picks than hanging onto players with name value, but they don’t always follow a logical pattern.

If a team is thinking about trading a player, it needs to consider the following factors:
Continue reading Which NFL Players Are Most Likely Being Traded?

Osweiler’s Bad Contract Has Company

The Monday Night Football game between the Broncos and the Texans was further evidence that Brock Osweiler isn’t worth the contract that the Texans gave him.

Granted, John Elway was prepared to pay a fair amount of money for Osweiler, too, though initial reports were that he wanted to keep his average salary per year around $12M, but made his final offer at $45M over three years. On one hand, it’s a bit misleading to say Elway was wise not to pursue Osweiler because he did make an effort to re-sign him. On the other hand, Elway was smart enough not to declare “the sky’s the limit” when it came to retaining him.

What the Osweiler contract really demonstrates is the importance of teams to exercise restraint when they offer contracts to free agents. Even if you consider that the Texans only have to commit to Osweiler for two years at $37M, that’s still too much to pay for a player of his talents.
Continue reading Osweiler’s Bad Contract Has Company

What If The Regular Season Overtime Rule Was Never Added?

In honor of the kicking trainwreck that was Sunday night’s 6-6 tie between the Seahawks and Cardinals, I thought it might interesting to see what happened if the NFL never took the step of instituting regular season overtime in 1974.  As you may know, the first such game invoking the rule was when the Broncos hosted the Steelers that year–and it still ended in a tie.  The only other time the rule was invoked that year was a Big Apple showdown between the Giants and Jets.  And if you know anything about football in New York in 1970s, it was very pathetic, so the outcome of that game did not affect any playoff seedings.

But if ties at the end of regulation remained that way after 1974, there would indeed be changes in fortune for several teams.  The following is a list of how playoff teams and seedings would have changed–and yes, we’ll have to ignore a bunch of alternate history butterflies that would take place in making the difference between a team going deep in the playoffs, or firing the coach and front office after barely missing them.

And be forewarned: this universe is not kind to the Broncos, so we should all be grateful that regular season overtime exists. Continue reading What If The Regular Season Overtime Rule Was Never Added?