The NFL season is over, but there is still one piece of 2016-17 season business left for us to attend to here at the Guardian. It is time to announce the winner of our Pick the Playoffs competition. Going into the Super Bowl, we had a three-way tie in first place, but nbcnfl takes home the title as the only member of that leading pack to predict a(nother) Patriots win.
Our champion was perfect through the postseason – calling all 11 games correctly. Do join me in offering up a hearty round of applause.
Thanks to the many hundreds of you who took part in both our regular season and playoff contests over the past five months. In the absence of any more games to pick for the time being, here are a few predictions for the offseason ahead. Can I match the same three-out-four success rate of last year? Let me know yours in the comments section below.
Jimmy Garoppolo will wind up in Cleveland
If you thought the Brock Osweiler debacle would discourage NFL franchises from mortgaging their futures on inexperienced backups from Super Bowl winning teams, then think again. Even in a year when Tony Romo and Tyrod Taylor look set to hit the market, Jimmy Garoppolo is emerging as the preferred target for a host of QB-needy teams.
It’s not hard to see why. Yes, the sample size is limited – Garoppolo has only started two games in his NFL career, and left the second with a shoulder injury before half-time – but his performances were eye-catching.
He threw for a combined 496 yards, four touchdowns and no interceptions with a better-than 70% completion rate against Arizona and Miami, but more impressive than the raw numbers was the composure he showed on the game-winning drive against that stout Cardinals defense. Garoppolo completed five of seven passes for 62 yards as he steered his team into position for a go-ahead field goal deep into the fourth quarter.
And while we should not forget the example of Matt Cassel, who thrived in his one year filling in for Tom Brady in New England, only to underwhelm after being traded to Kansas City, we must also recognise that Garoppolo has a very different background. He entered the league as a highly regarded second-round pick, with one NFC scout telling CBS: “His delivery is the best I’ve seen in the last five years.” Cassel, by contrast, was a seventh-rounder.
With all that being said, where does he wind up? Chicago would be one obvious landing spot. Garoppolo was born in Illinois and played his college ball there as well. The Bears are expected to release Jay Cutler, creating a vacancy at quarterback, and after last season’s 3-13 finish you’d have to hope that front office staff are realistic enough to see the merit in pursuing a long-term solution instead of a veteran such as Romo.
It’s also true that Chicago’s coaching staff might have some additional insight into Garoppolo’s qualities, since they practiced alongside the Patriots for several days ahead of a 2016 preseason matchup. Oh, and general manager Ryan Pace has done business with the Patriots before, sending Martellus Bennett and Jon Bostic there in trades over the last couple of years.
San Francisco, likewise, need a quarterback, and new head coach Kyle Shanahan is a known admirer. He told reporters during Super Bowl week that he had ranked Garoppolo as the No2 quarterback in the 2014 draft, just behind Derek Carr, back when he was serving as offensive coordinator of the Cleveland Browns.
Shanahan was overridden at the time, the team trading up to grab Johnny Manziel against his wishes. But in an ironic twist, it is Cleveland who I now expect to snatch Garoppolo from under his nose.
What the Browns have, over San Francisco and Chicago, is opportunity. The Patriots are said to be seeking at least a first-round pick in return for Garoppolo. For the 49ers and Bears, sitting at second and third in the order respectively, that price feels a little too steep.
The Browns, by contrast, have a pair of selections in each of the first two rounds. They are unlikely to part with the No1 pick, but might well conclude that the 12th is a fair price to pay in a year when the draft class looks light on elite passers. Garoppolo might still be an unknown quantity to some extent, but he feels like a safer bet than Deshone Kizer, Mitch Trubisky or Deshaun Watson.
I should add here that the Pats are under no obligation to trade, and there is certainly a case for them to retain Garoppolo as Tom Brady approaches his 40th birthday. But the latter’s performance this season, allied to the complicated situation New England would find themselves in when Garoppolo’s rookie contract expires next offseason, makes me think that they will deal this year if the offer is right.
Kirk Cousins gets another one-year deal in Washington
As an outside observer, it’s easy to like Kirk Cousins. He’s a self-confessed “dork”, who wears ridiculous Christmas suits, gets everyone in on the “high-five party”, and cares enough about winning that he would chase a defender 50 yards to make a tackle in the Pro Bowl – in a contract year, no less.
Apparently, though, it is rather less easy to like him if you work in Washington’s front office. For the second year running, Cousins’ employers find themselves in a conundrum about how best to proceed with a quarterback who has an inconvenient habit of tearing up the team’s record books.
His numbers mark him out as one of the better starting quarterbacks in the NFL. Cousins threw for the third-most yards in the league (4,917) this season, with the seventh-best passer rating (97.2) among qualified players. He has had bad games, as most players do, but his level of play has been sustained at a similarly high level now for two full years.
And yet, Washington continue to dither over signing him to a multi-season deal, even though every alternative seems unpalatable. As of Wednesday, the team has a two-week window in which they may reapply the franchise tag – guaranteeing him another one-year contract, this time with a salary of $23.94m. In the short term, it feels like a viable solution. But it would set them up for even bigger trouble in 2018, when the tag would rise to an eye-watering $34.47m.
The problem Washington face is that Cousins, too, is aware of this reality. He might accept a salary lower than the franchise tag figure for this season, in return for the security of a long-term contract, but he would certainly expect any deal to reflect the reality of what he could have received by going year-to-year.
He is, by all accounts, also unhappy with the team’s leadership for failing to put a viable offer on the table before now. Cousins had a terse moment on the field with general manager Scot McCloughan at the end of a week 11 win over Green Bay, screaming “How you like me now?” in the executive’s ear. At this stage, it is hard to imagine the player backing down an inch on what he and his agent believe to be his market worth.
It has been suggested in some quarters that Washington could look to shift Cousins this offseason. By applying a non-exclusive franchise tag, they would leave the door open for other teams to make their own offers to the player, and to receive compensation in draft picks if he goes (league rules would entitle them to two first-rounders, though this can be negotiated with the team making the approach).
Personally, I don’t believe McCloughan would be keen to take a gamble on a rookie quarterback at a time when there has been speculation about his own long-term job security. Equally, though, the relationship between him and Cousins does seem to have reached an impasse. Having the quarterback play another year under the franchise tag might be the worst possible outcome for Washington. But I could see things heading that way all the same.
Mitch Trubisky will be a top-five pick
This feels like an especially intriguing offseason at the quarterback position. Even looking beyond Garoppolo and Cousins, you can find several other signal-callers hitting the market who have shown at least glimpses of the potential required to thrive when the circumstances are right. Tony Romo is the most obvious, but there is also Tyrod Taylor, Mike Glennon and Colin Kaepernick.
So while the teams holding the first three picks in April’s draft all need help at quarterback (if we’re being honest, Jacksonville also do at No4, but Blake Bortles is going nowhere for the time being), it is conceivable that they could each address the position through trades and free agency. Even if that does happen, though, I would still expect somebody to make a move to get ahead of the Jets at No6.
And I would also back Trubisky to be the first quarterback taken. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and there will be teams who have higher grades on Kizer or Watson. But my suspicion is that Trubisky has the most scope to improve his position over the coming weeks for the exact same reason that some have downgraded him so far.
Promoted to the first-string at North Carolina last year, Trubisky started just 13 games in college. As impressive as he was in those appearances – completing 68.2% of his passes for 3,748 yards, 30 touchdowns and just six interceptions – it is logical to infer that some teams might be wary of gambling on a player of such modest experience.
We should be wary of overstating this point. In total, Trubisky only threw 40 fewer passes in college than Carson Wentz – whom the Eagles selected with the second overall pick last April. But I also think that what’s missing might ultimately help him. Trubisky has a chance to fill in the blanks for teams by impressing them at try-outs and interviews.
By contrast, Kizer and Watson can only seek to persuade teams to look past the mistakes they have seen on film. Both are freak athletes with all the physical tools to succeed in the NFL, but each has also struggled with his accuracy.
Kizer was unable to elevate Notre Dame beyond a 4-8 record in 2016 and had two games in which he completed less than half of his passes. Watson went 31-3 as a starter for Clemson, and played in two national title games, but he threw 17 interceptions this year. Per Sports Illustrated, only four teams in all of college football had more.
The scouting process for NFL draft prospect is designed to root out flaws. In that context, there are times when less can be more.
Jay Cutler lands with the Jets
OK, look, this one almost certainly won’t happen. Not even (or perhaps I should say ‘Especially not’) after the Jets signed a quarterback coach who has worked with Cutler before. Honestly, though, who could be better than Smokin’ Jay to forward the quarterbacking legacy of the team that invented the Buttfumble?
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