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Merry Wednesday, everyone!
Wow, the agonizingly slow NFL news cycle suddenly woke up, jumped up & went crazy for about a week........aaaaaaand it’s asleep again, back to pond water speed. Hey! There’s only 37 more days of mock drafts remaining! They will end with the draft, then there will be a momentary pause, a pause so brief that most people won’t even notice that it happened, and then the 2022 mock drafts will begin. I wonder if we’ll draft a kicker this year?
Hopefully Rick is able to focus on the draft, I know that losing his 7th round draft pick last week is something he’ll never fully recover from, but he has to keep his mind focused on the task at hand. With the team’s cap situation, which is only going to get worse next year, thanks to the front office’s newfound love of kicking the can down the road by signing players to backloaded contracts, it’s vital that they have a solid draft. They have to add multiple players who will be able to develop quickly enough to be able to step up and provide quality starts by next season.
Around the DN since our last open thread:
Chris shares an interesting draft scenario proposed by Mel Kiper in his latest mock draft. I’m not against it, his name doesn’t look very hard to spell, sign him up.
BJ Reidell and Drew Mahowald discuss the Vikings activity in free agency so far on Unbelievable! - Picking Up the New Pieces.
Other Vikings/NFL news and random oddities and annoyances:
The Steelers have released CB Steven Nelson, per CBS Sports. They were trying to trade the 28 year-old cornerback, but must not have had much luck. The release frees up $8.25 million in cap space. Nelson is a quality cornerback and is still young, he’ll be a solid addition to some team’s secondary.
The player with the best timing in history has found a new home. Joe Flacco has signed with the Philadelphia Eagles, according to NFL.com. Flacco, as most of you will recall, was a decent quarterback for the Ravens, the team who had drafted him. Then, in the final year of his rookie contract, the team won their division, and Flacco went nuts in the playoffs, they won the Super Bowl, he got a huge contract........ then he went back to being just a decent QB. Catch fire at the right time and you can make tens of millions off of it. Brilliant!
We come to today’s media selection:
This seems like an appropriate song for this extended lull in the NFL news cycle.
Again, we all know the rules, but in case someone is new:
-No discussion of politics or religion
-No feeding of the trolls
-Take the gender hatred elsewhere, it won’t be tolerated
-Keep the bad language to a minimum (using the spoiler tags, if you must)
-If discussing a newer show or movie, please use spoiler tags|
-No pictures that could get someone fired or in serious trouble with their employer
-If you can’t disagree in a civil manner, feel free to go away
-While navigating the open thread, just assume it’s sarcasm.
With that, the beer light is on and the bar is open. Belly up & tie one on, don’t forget to tip the cows, and settle in, the excitement won’t start for a while.