Quote:Its like I said yesterday. The NFL is a results orientated business. You either succeed or fail. There is no "try". I think I'm quoting Yoda, but whatever......its true.  

First off, it's, "Do or do not. There is no try." Get your Star Wars quotes straight. That's only the most famous thing that Yoda ever said.

 

Quote:As for the very top level Unrestricted Free Agents, or the ones that can seemingly pick their next destination - we won't be any more attractive of a destination for them until we emerge as a team that is seen as a legit SB contender. Just merely making an offer to Mack isn't making any of those FA want to come here. 

Wrong. Making Mack an offer that will leave him as the highest-paid center in the history of the NFL is the type of move that, even if it is "merely making an offer", will resonate with players and agents looking for a new team next March.

 

Quote:Why would we still have failed? That would have been a contract that totaled upwards of 50 MIL over the life of it, and the extra 1-2 MIL per might have been enough of a deterrent combined with the other contract language, to make the Browns pass. The final contract we offered totaled 42 MIL, only slightly more than Kalil, Kelce. The contract I suggest was enough over the next closest that if the Browns matched, you simply tip your cap and say, congrats. Our offer really wasn't that high. People are quick to say we offered the highest C money in the league, but that alone, really is a claim that essentially falls after every successive FA period. Its not that a big a deal beating the previous highest by a couple $5 bills (figuratively) ...

 

Yeah, I know the rhetoric/ posturing coming from the Browns camp is that "the deal needed to be fully guaranteed 5 years for them to not match", but I don't buy that for a second. The Browns are merely using that platform as a flimsy attempt to discourage the rest of the league ( should the Browns transition another player down the line), from going after one of theirs in the future.... 

First off, get over yourself. If $42M didn't get it done, $47M sure as hell wouldn't have, and $52M probably wouldn't have either. Would it have to have been fully guaranteed? Maybe, maybe not, but given the amount of cap space the Browns have and given the amount of time they've spent this offseason acting like a bunch of monkeys humping a football, there was very little chance that the Jaguars were going to craft an offer that would have made them go back on their promise to match any offer to Mack. Even if the Browns are trying to posture, so what? The Browns can sit around all day thumping their chests about how they said they'd match any offer, and that's what they did. Doesn't mean that if they try to get away with a transition tag on Haden next year, some team won't throw a big offer sheet at him.

 

Quote:Then what the hell was the whole point of wasting time on this player, if that was the case??

 

I don't share the same view. Mack could have been got. 

The point of "wasting time" on Mack is that Bradwell identified a player they wanted, and they flew him down to Jacksonville to craft an offer sheet that would have paid him what they perceived his value to be. It was an aggressive move on their part to do so, and it sends the message to next year's FAs that they Jaguars don't rely solely on the Gus-Aid to land free agents. Caldwell is willing to open the checkbook for top-tier talent, which is an attractive message to send.

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