Offseason Thus Far (I am not inspired)

Starting to get quite discouraged with this off-season. Before you rattle off the “Let Joe Cook” comment, hear me out.

I totally agree with the notion that you can’t just sign anything that moves. I am not as mad that we struck out on the DKs of the world. However, I do think if your strategy is to sign players at a bargain, you will have to sign players at a bargain. We haven’t made very many signings and it’s not like there is something secret bargain bin of players that only we know about. I have seen a lot of “Don’t spend A+ money on B+ Talent” but then those people never have any like actual takes on which free agents are worth the money. Genuine question, if you have argued in favor of not overpaying, who do YOU think is a good use of money.

To me probably the most worrying part is the Bozeman/Raegor re-sign and the Ford non re-sign. Especially the Bozeman/Ford part because they are so far in the opposite direction of what the general tune has been. “Prioritize the trenches” but in reality that means letting your good trench players walk and bringing back the ones that help us lose games? Doesn’t make sense to me.

“We’ll build through the draft”, sure I get the idea but I think it is as foolish to completely rely on the draft as it is to think we’re going to sign every hot free agent. Draft busts happen to even the smartest front offices. While we had a particularly good draft last year, things can change year to year and we can’t afford to bust on any major picks. We also can’t really afford major development projects either on our timeline…

I think given the seismic shift in our franchise last year, fans have tricked themselves into thinking the previous years didn’t happen to Herbert. The dude has had several back to back violent years in terms of injury, those didn’t magically disappear because the franchise has gotten a facelift. I am starting to get nervous that whether it’s the Andrew Luck route or the Matt Stafford route, Herbert’s time on the Chargers could come to an end. The seemingly rising tension between Burrow and Cincy’s FO should worry us too, I feel like a trade demand snowball can’t be too far off over there. If you don’t think Herbert’s our guy and just want to be ready for a post-Mahomes NFL era, fair enough, I get that. But if you do think Herb is our guy like I do, I think it’s fair to want our FO to cook with a bit more urgency, at least optically. They kind of haven’t given the fans or the team anything to be excited about so far.

I am not calling it quits on the season or anything, gonna support the Bolts no matter what. We’ve obviously still got the draft to think about. I have just been seeing a lot of “Build through the trenches” and “Let Joe Cook” commentary and I just feel like maybe we’ve learned the wrong lessons on the first idea and the second idea doesn’t necessarily match up with where our timeline is at.

Rant over, thanks for reading. BTFU.