Happy Hump Day! We’re halfway to the weekend and only four days away from the Super Bowl! While we’re counting things down, we’re just six days away from the Raiders’ deadline to trade or cut Derek Carr. Fortunately for the Raiders, Carr is meeting with the Saints today. Here’s what we know and why it’s important.
We learned last night that the Saints were granted permission to meet with Derek Carr today. Initially, it was reported that this was a due diligence meeting, and no compensation was discussed. A little later in the evening, Tashan Reed of The Athletic said that the Saints and Raiders have agreed to the “framework” for compensation ahead of the visit.
So, no deal is done. But compensation has been discussed, and the Saints and Raiders have agreed to the framework for a deal. Still, Derek Carr can veto any trade, so his meeting with the Saints would have to go well for this to work for all parties.
ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler reported that inquiring teams are looking to re-work Carr’s deal. However, Fowler also acknowledged that Carr probably wouldn’t be interested in that idea. Fowler also hears that the Raiders’ asking price has been modest, which bodes well for getting a deal done. New Orleans is the team furthest down the road in this scenario.
So, to summarize, there is framework for a deal in place between the Saints and Raiders. If Fowler’s sources are correct, a third-round pick could be the compensation. The Saints will likely try to re-work Carr’s deal, and Carr probably won’t be interested. This brings us back to Carr’s no-trade clause, and we’re back at square one if New Orleans insists on re-working the deal.
Re-working the deal is essential for New Orleans because they’re currently $60 million over the cap. However, as Jason Fitzgerald of OTC tweeted last night, New Orleans can create $93 million in cap space by converting almost all 2023 salaries into signing bonuses. That would open roughly $33-35 million in cap space. Still, Carr would eat up $33 million of that, leaving New Orleans with nothing and no maneuverability.
Unless Carr is willing to re-work his deal, it’s doubtful New Orleans can swing this and have resources to add to the rest of the roster. At this point, I would be surprised if a deal got done without Carr taking a pay cut to go to New Orleans and play for the Saints.
Of course, he might if he values his relationship with Dennis Allen enough. Allen helped draft Carr and made him the starting quarterback when he was the Raiders’ head coach. So, maybe there’s enough familiarity/loyalty to make it work.
Alright, let’s talk about the Super Bowl. No, not the one on Sunday. Let’s talk about when the Super Bowl logos were cool. The late 90s and early 2000s were the peak of Super Bowl logo design. The logos used to be specific to the year and paid homage to the host cities. They were vibrant, unique, and fun.
Yeah, I talk about this every year. I’ll continue to talk about it every year until someone at 345 Park Avenue wakes up and smells the coffee. No one likes the corporate cookie-cutter Super Bowl logos that have been around for the last decade. They started in 2011 when the Packers and Steelers played in Super Bowl XLV. That was the first of five straight seasons with the Lombardi Trophy above the roman numerals in silver. Super Bowl 50 was unique to the event, but since then, we’ve seen only minor variations in the cookie-cutter design that the NFL rolled out in 2016 for Super Bowl LI.
Check out these 90s and early 2000s logos and field designs, and tell me I’m wrong.
I came across an interesting story yesterday. It was a mailbag by The Athletic’s Bay Area writer Tim Kawakami. Kawakami covers the 49ers, Giants, A’s, and Warriors for the Athletic. In this story, he answered questions about the 49ers QB situation. Kawakami said that Purdy’s injury, in his estimation, doesn’t affect the pecking order under center in San Francisco. It’s still Purdy’s job to lose in 2023.
“If Purdy is healthy by the first few weeks of training camp, I believe he’s the incumbent. Lance will have to put together a remarkable offseason and start of training camp while Purdy recuperates for this to become any kind of QB competition, and even then, I think the job is 90 percent waiting for Purdy.”
Kawakami also shed some light on the deteriorating relationship between Jimmy Garoppolo and Kyle Shanahan that led to cold answers on Garoppolo’s future from Shanahan last week and a duck job by Garoppolo on the team’s cleanout day.
If I was to make a knowledgeable guess, I’d say that the mood was always a little questionable this season between Garoppolo and Shanahan. They’ve never been especially close, even while they were winning. But they worked very well together for long stretches over this period. The personality differences were part of why this worked. Until Garoppolo got hurt. Then hurt again. Then hurt again. And in between all that, Shanahan and Lynch traded a ton of stuff to move up to acquire his replacement, Trey Lance. And even after Garoppolo jumped back in after Lance was hurt this season, Shanahan daydreamed about Brock Purdy playing one day and then Garoppolo got hurt again and Purdy did play quite well.
Finally, Shanahan and Lynch decided to keep Garoppolo on the active roster all through December and January after his injury, hoping (believing?) he could come back from his foot injury at some point during the playoffs to provide insurance in case of a Purdy injury. They could’ve used that roster spot for somebody else, maybe defensive tackle Hassan Ridgeway. But Shanahan and Lynch saved it for Garoppolo, who tried and couldn’t get healthy enough to be Purdy’s backup in the conference title game. And then Purdy got hurt.
It sounds like Shanahan was miffed last week that he kept Garoppolo on the active roster all season to use him as the backup in an emergency like the one we saw in the NFC title game. When Garoppolo couldn’t go, and the worst-case scenario played out, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back in the Shanahan-Garoppolo relationship.
To be clear, there was no chance that Garoppolo was coming back to San Francisco to be a backup again next season. But the long-time hot and cold relationship between Shanahan and Garoppolo came to a head last week.
In other not-surprising news, Aaron Rodgers will do some weird stuff again this offseason. Rodgers will lock himself in a dark house for four days and contemplate his future in the NFL. Listen, this guy is a goofball. I can think of 59 million reasons why he’s playing in 2023. And we don’t need any darkness retreat to tell us that it won’t be in Green Bay. Luis has more on the Rodgers weirdness:
It saddens me to say, but it sounds like the end is near for Patrick Kane in a Blackhawks sweater. Kane also sounded like a guy who knows it on Tuesday night.
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