FROM THE MIND OF THE O.M.I.S.!
Volume 32
By: Old Men in Sweats! ™
Let the Inmates run the Asylum!
Russell Wilson wants to get away from Seattle and Coach Pete Carroll. Deshaun Watson wants no part of Houston and the Texans’ joke of a front office. Carson Wentz just shut it down completely after being benched last season. Never uttering one word until the Eagles traded him to the Colts. Dak Prescott refuses to sign anything that Jerry Jones puts in front of him. And you can be rest assured that Jones has offered to “overpay” Prescott on several occasions. Matthew Stafford left Detroit on good terms, which is a polite way of saying he asked to be traded from the perennial loser and the Lions were happy to oblige. A rare win-win QB departure.
The wonderful new trend is today’s NFL star QB's have the big contracts, all the power, and are starting to wake up and exercise that power to leverage their way out of town. It’s never happened like this in the NFL. Sure, there’s always been an unhappy star player that bitches his way out of town. Guys like Charles Haley leaving the 49ers for the Cowboys in the 90s. Going from one championship franchise for another. Or Terrell Owens stumbling out of San Fran, Philly, and Dallie. Or Eric Dickerson refusing to take the Rams lowball offer in the early 80s and orchestrating a move to oblivion in Indy. A well-paid oblivion nonetheless. Does anybody even remember seeing the amazing Dickerson lugging the football for the Colts? Exactly. Back then star players had to really scream, yell, pout, and stomp their feet to get traded. And everybody hated those players except for the cities they landed in. I loved them then and I love them now. Explain to me why somebody should have to live and play in a city they do not feel comfortable in. Or spend their entire career getting planted into the ground in Detroit. Or running for his life in Houston. I’m with all these players when they say, “Get me outta here!”
Now the star QB's are taking over the reins of the NFL and it’s going to get ugly before the dust settles. And fun for a change. Tom Brady started it last year by saying adios to faux-friend Bill. Brady said nothing about Bill, Bill said nothing about Brady. And the star QB just quietly eased his way down the east coast to Super Bowl victory #7. This year we’re seeing these young QB's flexing their power. Deshaun Watson should get out of Houston. After trading away D Hopkins for nothing, and I mean NOTHING! Watson is saying, “I’m done!” Good for you Deshaun.
Russell has gone about it a little differently. His agent came out with a statement last week, “Russell Wilson does NOT want to be traded from Seattle. But if he was traded these are the four teams he wants to go to. Raiders, Cowboys, Saints, Bears.” Once we all stopped laughing at the hilarity of that statement we finally heard why Russell wants out. Because he went to Pete Carroll last season when the offense ran into a brick wall of unimaginative and uncomplicated play design, and asked to have more input. In fact, Russell gave Ol’ Pete some pretty detailed suggestions about how to better utilize the QB’s skill set as well as talented WR's DK Metcalf and Tyler Lockett. Apparently all of Russell’s suggestions fell on deaf ears. So the star QB and his agent came up with the most comical exit statement we’ve seen in many years. Maybe since Drew Rosenhaus’ “next question, next question, next question," while standing on the front lawn of Terrell Owen’s house outside of Philly. Oh, and then the fans all went back to the agent’s statement to see, “The Bears?????” And we laughed and laughed and laughed some more. Russell actually wants to go to the Bears instead of finishing his career in the Pacific Northwest. I’m just loving the new era of pro sports. Where the star athlete runs the show and all the professional franchises are paying their GMs and Presidents crazy money for doing essentially nothing nowadays. The players call the shots and usually end up on the team of their choice.
Of course, all the old schoolers will blame Lebron for the massive shift. Lebron started playing GM in Miami and is now on his third franchise as a player/GM. There are no more player coaches like in the days of Bill Russell. There are only player/GMs. And thank God for that. Because I don’t know how many times we have to watch the GMs of all these franchises pick the worst QB's...i.e. Joey Harrington, Christian Hackenburg, Jamarcus Russell, Akili Smith, Cade McNown, Tim Couch, Sam Bradford, Heath Shuler, Paxton Lynch, Giovanni Carmazzi, everybody else before Tom Brady and the piece de resistance, Ryan... Leaf.
LeBron built a championship team in all three cities of his GM/player career. He brought Chris Bosh with him to Miami, and convinced Dwyane Wade to stay. He then returned to Cleveland and promptly traded #1 draft pick Andrew Wiggins for Kevin Love and brought in Richard Jefferson, JR Smith, and Tristan Thompson. Then he went to LA and traded for Anthony Davis, got Dwight Howard to re-sign with the Lakers, and traded for Markieff Morris and Rajon Rondo. I’d say Lebron is one helluva GM. Almost as good as he is a player. I’ll say this much, he’s a way better than David Griffin. The GM of the championship winning Cavs who beat out of town to New Orleans complaining that the championship season was the worst of his career, due the stress of dealing with LeBron. That’s funny David Griffin, because I would have never even heard of you if it weren’t for LeBron. And there’s the rub.
These NFL GMs are so bad that the QB's are basically saying, “I can QB this team AND make all the draft picks and trades.” You can’t tell me that Deshaun Watson would have done a worse job than Bill O’Brien did during his ridiculous tenure as Texans’ GM. O’Brien traded away the best WR in the NFL for a 2nd round draft pick. I’m going to say this one again. O’Brien traded away the best WR in the NFL for a 2nd round draft pick. And he traded away multiple 1st round picks for guys like Laremy Tunsil and Brandon Cooks. Bill O’Brien was the worst GM since the GM in Chicago drafted Mitch Trubisky ahead of Mahomes and Watson. The Bears’ GM Ryan Pace. How Ryan Pace is NOT selling insurance for a living now is the biggest scam in America. This brainsurgeon traded UP to acquire the rights to draft Trubisky, while Mahomes and Watson just sat there. While Watson’s college coach Dabo Sweeney was telling everybody that Watson was Michael Jordan. Yup, Ryan Pace ignored the NCAA championship winning coach and decided Trubisky, who was only good enough to start one year in Chapel Hill, was the man for the Bears. And Pace still has the same job title. Wow!
And one of the few GMs who actually made it to the Hall of Fame, Bill Polian recently proved my point about QB's making better GMs than the current GMs. Polian claimed before the 2018 draft that Louisville QB Lamar Jackson should move to WR. He said it over and over and over in all the shows leading up to that draft. Luckily, the Ravens didn’t listen to the overrated Polian and they chose Lamar at the end of the 1st round. Three playoff appearances and one MVP later, and we can now see why the NFL should give the GM title to the star QB's. It’s better for everybody if the inmates are running the asylum. Which is the line used by the late Texans’ owner Bob McNair. The year before he died he said, “We can’t let the inmates run the asylum.” Never a greaterFreudian slip by an NFL owner!
-Thomas Tallarino
“PREACHIN’ SPORTS KNOWLEDGE FOR A LIFETIME!”