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NFL Random Thought of the Day

Regarding photos of Watson and Jilian holding hands.
The societal norms and laws in Saudi Arabia are based heavily on Islamic principles. Consequently, public displays of affection with the opposite sex are generally seen as disrespectful and are illegal. This includes acts such as holding hands, hugging, or kissing in public spaces. Any form of PDA [public display of affection] can lead to consequences from verbal warnings [by police] or taken to jail.......especially if repeated. Men are not even allowed to hug their mothers in public. But men can hold hands and kiss in public with other men or boys. :thinking:



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www.espn.com

Lions sign St. Brown, Sewell to $100M+ deals

The Lions and wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown have agreed to a four-year, $120 million extension that includes $77 million guaranteed, sources told ESPN.
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Wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown agreed to a four-year, $120 million extension, a source confirmed to ESPN, and offensive tackle Penei Sewell is signing a four-year, $112 million deal, a source told ESPN's Adam Schefter.
St. Brown's contract includes $77 million guaranteed, the source said. That's the most guaranteed money for a wide receiver in a single contract in NFL history, according to ESPN Stats & Information research.

Sewell's contract includes $85 million guaranteed, the source told Schefter, the most for an offensive lineman, according to ESPN Stats & Information. The $28 million annual average salary in his contract is also the largest for an offensive lineman.
 

Saudi Arabia’s Latest Sports Ambassador Is Deshaun Watson​

BY DENNIS YOUNG
UPDATED APRIL 24, 2024 | 04:21 PM
  • The QB was in the country to promote American football and meet with Saudi royalty.
  • The NFL currently doesn't permit investment from sovereign wealth funds, but likely will soon.
Saudi Arabia’s plan to buy up every inch of global sports shows no signs of stopping. Having become a major player in golf and soccer and a significant force in tennis and dozens of other sports, the nation’s interest in the NFL is clear.

The U.S.’s biggest sports league currently bans sovereign wealth funds (and institutional money of all kinds) from owning teams, but it’s probably only a matter of time before Roger Goodell and the owners change their rules to let more money in the door.

Abdullah Bin Mosaad—a Saudi prince who loves the NFL so much that he has “49er” in his X handle and was once described by an ESPN writer as “one of the most rabid fantasy football players I’ve come across”—recently welcomed Deshaun Watson on an apparent goodwill trip to his country. Watson posted a picture of himself and the prince holding Browns and 49ers helmets on Instagram.

“I had a nice time visiting Saudi Arabia and learned a lot about the original Saudi culture and society,” Watson wrote Tuesday evening, adding that he went to several Saudi soccer games. He tagged the prince in his post and added, “God willing, we will see [football emoji] in Saudi Arabia soon.” In a video, Watson talked about what it would take to get a major football game to the country and region.

Watson, the disgraced Browns quarterback, was suspended for 11 games in 2022 over extensive allegations that he sexually assaulted and harassed massage therapists. Watson settled 23 suits from women who claimed he sexually assaulted them between ’20 and ’21, paying out millions of dollars in settlements and league fines. At least one suit remains in the court system, where Watson may have to testify again this year.

He’s perhaps an apt partner for the Saudi regime, whose own pioneering American golf partner, Phil Mickelson, trashed the country in a 2022 interview. “They’re scary motherf***ers to get involved with,” Mickelson—again, someone who took $200 million from LIV—said. “We know they killed [Jamal] Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights. They execute people over there for being gay.”

Bin Mosaad, the 49ers-mad prince, is also the primary owner of English Premier League team Sheffield United, where he recently announced the firing of the head coach in a live radio interview. He previously ran what is now known as Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Sport.

“we really enjoyed having you in Saudi,” he replied to Watson. “I wish you and your family health and happiness, I wish you the best of luck in every game you play except when you play against you know who!”
 
CloakNNNdagger said:

Saudi Arabia’s Latest Sports Ambassador Is Deshaun Watson​

BY DENNIS YOUNG
UPDATED APRIL 24, 2024 | 04:21 PM
  • The QB was in the country to promote American football and meet with Saudi royalty.
  • The NFL currently doesn't permit investment from sovereign wealth funds, but likely will soon.
Saudi Arabia’s plan to buy up every inch of global sports shows no signs of stopping. Having become a major player in golf and soccer and a significant force in tennis and dozens of other sports, the nation’s interest in the NFL is clear.

The U.S.’s biggest sports league currently bans sovereign wealth funds (and institutional money of all kinds) from owning teams, but it’s probably only a matter of time before Roger Goodell and the owners change their rules to let more money in the door.

Abdullah Bin Mosaad—a Saudi prince who loves the NFL so much that he has “49er” in his X handle and was once described by an ESPN writer as “one of the most rabid fantasy football players I’ve come across”—recently welcomed Deshaun Watson on an apparent goodwill trip to his country. Watson posted a picture of himself and the prince holding Browns and 49ers helmets on Instagram.

“I had a nice time visiting Saudi Arabia and learned a lot about the original Saudi culture and society,” Watson wrote Tuesday evening, adding that he went to several Saudi soccer games. He tagged the prince in his post and added, “God willing, we will see [football emoji] in Saudi Arabia soon.” In a video, Watson talked about what it would take to get a major football game to the country and region.

Watson, the disgraced Browns quarterback, was suspended for 11 games in 2022 over extensive allegations that he sexually assaulted and harassed massage therapists. Watson settled 23 suits from women who claimed he sexually assaulted them between ’20 and ’21, paying out millions of dollars in settlements and league fines. At least one suit remains in the court system, where Watson may have to testify again this year.

He’s perhaps an apt partner for the Saudi regime, whose own pioneering American golf partner, Phil Mickelson, trashed the country in a 2022 interview. “They’re scary motherf***ers to get involved with,” Mickelson—again, someone who took $200 million from LIV—said. “We know they killed [Jamal] Khashoggi and have a horrible record on human rights. They execute people over there for being gay.”

Bin Mosaad, the 49ers-mad prince, is also the primary owner of English Premier League team Sheffield United, where he recently announced the firing of the head coach in a live radio interview. He previously ran what is now known as Saudi Arabia’s Ministry of Sport.

“we really enjoyed having you in Saudi,” he replied to Watson. “I wish you and your family health and happiness, I wish you the best of luck in every game you play except when you play against you know who!”
Click to expand...
To be fair, he only fired the coach.. he didn't execute him. {shudder}
 
Man who killed former Saint Will Smith sentenced to 25 years in prison
By Josh Alper
Published April 25, 2024 02:24 PM

The man who shot and killed former Saints defensive end Will Smith received a 25-year sentence for manslaughter in New Orleans on Thursday.

Cardell Hayes was convicted of the crime in January. It was the second time that Hayes has been convicted and sentenced for the crime.

Hayes’s first conviction came in December 2016 on a 10-2 jury vote, but was overturned when the United States Supreme Court struck down non-unanimous verdicts. A conviction for attempted manslaughter for shooting Smith’s wife was also overturned and he was not convicted of that crime a second time.

“Mr. Hayes, you ruined my life,” Smith’s daughter Lisa said in court, via the Associated Press. “You took my father away from me.”

Smith was shot and killed by Hayes during a dispute after a car crash earlier in 2016.
 
CloakNNNdagger said:
Man who killed former Saint Will Smith sentenced to 25 years in prison
By Josh Alper
Published April 25, 2024 02:24 PM

The man who shot and killed former Saints defensive end Will Smith received a 25-year sentence for manslaughter in New Orleans on Thursday.

Cardell Hayes was convicted of the crime in January. It was the second time that Hayes has been convicted and sentenced for the crime.

Hayes’s first conviction came in December 2016 on a 10-2 jury vote, but was overturned when the United States Supreme Court struck down non-unanimous verdicts. A conviction for attempted manslaughter for shooting Smith’s wife was also overturned and he was not convicted of that crime a second time.

“Mr. Hayes, you ruined my life,” Smith’s daughter Lisa said in court, via the Associated Press. “You took my father away from me.”

Smith was shot and killed by Hayes during a dispute after a car crash earlier in 2016.
Click to expand...
interesting he was not convicted on manslaughter of Smith's wife.
 
do you know what I absolutely love about this draft 😁?

Is how the rest of the division is tied to absolute failures at QB., but they're still tied to them for the foreseeable future 😂

Stroud is about to hike his leg on this division, Brady style 👍
 
www.espn.com

Eagles star Brown gets historic $96M extension

The Eagles and A.J. Brown have agreed on a three-year, $96 million extension that includes $84 million guaranteed, his agent told ESPN's Adam Schefter.
www.espn.com www.espn.com
The $84 million is the most guaranteed money in NFL history for a wide receiver, surpassing the $77 million guaranteed that Amon-Ra St. Brown recently received from the Detroit Lions. The $32 million average annual value of the three-year extension also is the highest for any receiver in the NFL.
 
OptimisticTexan said:
I thought ownership had to be a billionaire…..you want a new stadium, you and your investors should build a really nice one.
Click to expand...
Not going to happen in foreseeable future. Houston with Bob Lanier and the Oilers with Bud was the test that will never again happen in the NFL unless the team actually IS looking to move. Any city that wants to keep a team that wants to stay will pay...
 
show-me-the-money-gif-16.gif


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Roger Goodell tries to reconcile the NFL’s embrace of sports betting
By Mike Florio
Published April 27, 2024 10:07 AM

The NFL hated gambling until it loved it. And the NFL is still trying to reconcile its prior position on gambling with its current effort to grab every last dollar.

The issue came up on Friday, when Commissioner Roger Goodell appeared with Pat McAfee and crew.

At one point, Darius Butler asked Goodell “how much louder” it’s gotten for 345 Park Avenue with sports betting being legalized and people complaining about officiating and games being scripted. (An excellent question.)

“I haven’t felt that at all,” Goodell said.

If Goodell hasn’t felt it, he has kept his fingers buried deep in his pockets. The tinfoil-hat crowd has been energized by sports betting, with any and all irregularities being met with cries that “the fix is in.” We hear it ALL THE TIME.

And that’s exactly what the league feared. Here’s what Goodell said in 2012, when the NFL was fighting the fight against the legalization of sports betting: “If gambling is permitted freely on sporting events, normal incidents of the game such as bad snaps, dropped passes, turnovers, penalties, and play calling inevitably will fuel speculation, distrust, and accusations of point-shaving or game-fixing.”

Goodell was asked to reconcile his words with the league’s current sportsbook cash grab during his invitation-only/bring-me-the-broomstick-of-the-witch-of-the-west Super Bowl press conference. He has since come up with a new talking point to justify the NFL’s embrace of legalized wagering, after hating it for so long.

“We didn’t support making it legal,” Goodell said. “The Supreme Court made the decision. We’ve got to adjust to that. And when we did, you do have to be partnering with some of these partners, because they actually give us access to information that can detect something before it really becomes a problem. And so we get a lot of information by being involved there. People think that’s, you know, conflicting with our previous position but we just have to adjust to whatever the law is. That’s the way it works.”

That’s not the way it works. That’s the way the NFL has decided to make it work. Because that approach not only creates a tattletale hotline from the sportsbooks to the league but also allows the ultra-rich to get ultra-richer.

From the sponsorships to the sale of data to the dirty little open secret of owners being allowed to own up to five percent of a company that operates a sportsbook (the league has refused to disclose which owners own pieces of which sportsbooks), it’s always about the money.

The NFL could have continued to take a hard line against gambling. No betting allowed, by anyone at any time. No sponsorships. No data. No commercials. No equity positions. Aggressive efforts to get fans to shun the get-rich-quick pipe dreams that inevitably end up being a tax on the poor and/or stupid.

Yes, trading stocks is a form of gambling, but you can make money that way because it’s not an inherently rigged system. Gambling, when the odds and lines are set properly, is.

The idea that the NFL is doing what it’s doing to simply have an easier path to catching players who break the rules is laughable. The NFL and the owners saw an opening to make even more money by aligning with the house.

Once sports betting became legal, the NFL’s epiphany wasn’t that it needs to align with sportsbooks because that will help the league catch rule breakers. The epiphany was far simpler than that.

One, the house always wins.

Two, we can be the house.
 
The push for 18 games officially begins (next stop, 19 . . . then 20)
One of the biggest nuggets we picked up at the Scouting Combine was that the NFL still wants to expand to 18 regular-season games. On Friday, Commissioner Roger Goodell finally said it out loud, again.

He previously had been pushing for 18 regular-season games and two preseason games. During the 2020 Collective Bargaining Agreement negotiations, the NFL settled for 17 and three.

“I’d rather replace a preseason game with a regular-season game any day,” Goodell said. “If we got to 18 and two, that’s not an unreasonable thing.”

They want 18 and two. They’ve wanted 18 and two. They backed off, a bit, because it was impossible to reconcile the health-and-safety reckoning with more games that count. Goodell’s comments officially put the subject back on the front burner.

Yes, the union will have to agree to it. They will. For one very simple reason. The owners will lock the players out until they do.

That’s what happened in 2011. That’s what would have happened in 2020. That’s what will happen the next time around.

That’s why new NFLPA president Jalen Reeves-Maybin didn’t say “no way in hell” when asked the question last month. He said, “When that time comes, we’ll address that.”

Of course they will. Because the league has shown it will put padlocks on the doors to get what it wants, and that the players will cry “uncle” faster than Schwartz in the clutches of Scut Farkas.

Let’s take it a step farther. For the same reason 17 was a stepping stone to 18, 18 could be a stepping stone to 19 — which could be a stepping stone to 20.

Goodell started the push for more games that count by publicly criticizing the games that don’t. The same argument that applies to cutting the preseason from four games to three applies to cutting it to two, which will apply to cutting it to one — and which will apply to cutting it to none.

It might not happen in my lifetime, but it’s coming. Seventeen will become 18. Eighteen will become 19. And nineteen will become 20.
 

Unsurprisingly, Cleveland voters very wary of the Haslams as business partners.​

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If you want a dead zone on Cleveland’s lakefront, leave Browns Stadium right where it is: Brent Larkin​

CLEVELAND -- Seventeen acres of perhaps the most valuable urban land in Ohio sits on the Lake Erie shoreline, just east of where that great lake intersects with the historic Cuyahoga River.

Rising high above the ground on that precious property is a $350 million (in 1998 dollars) mountain of steel and concrete, a 70,000-seat football stadium that stands empty at least 340 days each and every year.


Only in Cleveland would a city’s leaders allow that to happen. Only in Cleveland would planes, trains and a busy highway for cars and trucks block access to one of the planet’s largest bodies of fresh water. And only in Cleveland would those barriers date back more than 150 years.


Undoing mistakes made in the aftermath of the Civil War is no easy task. But now, with the Browns lease on that stadium expiring in 2028 and Mayor Justin Bibb deep into the weeds of the city’s umpteenth lakefront development plan, community leaders are again wildly overvaluing the economic importance of where the Browns play meaningful football for less than 30 hours a year.


No motives are entirely pure in this overdone drama. The mayor doesn’t want to be known as the guy in charge when the Browns left downtown for the suburbs. So his agents are busily attempting to undermine any effort by Jimmy and Dee Haslam to squeeze taxpayers dry, hoping taxpayers pay half the cost of a $2 billion domed stadium in Brook Park.


The Haslams are hardly unique in being billionaires who believe taxpayers should make them even richer by paying for new or extensively renovated sports facilities. But they’re far richer than most of their counterparts and have less leverage than they may think.


Absent a financially reckless act, neither the county nor city can afford to give the Haslams what they want to renovate the existing stadium or build a new one in the suburbs. Without a voter-approved tax hike, it is practically, maybe literally, impossible. And considering the business-related skeletons rattling around in Jimmy Haslam’s closet, any adequately funded campaign to defeat such a tax hike would prove ridiculously easy.


What’s needed here is a good-faith effort by the Browns, Bibb, Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne and their respective councils to build a new stadium away from the lakefront without digging deep into the pockets of hard-working Greater Clevelanders.


That type of collaboration is exactly what seems to be happening in Chicago, where owners of the football Bears have pledged a minimum of $2 billion in private funding towards a massive domed stadium project. Pointing out that stadium deals rarely prove a wise investment of public funds, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker has yet to commit to the state supporting the idea.


But Chicago rarely lacks for corporate leadership, while Cleveland today seems to have almost none. Complicating matters is that Bibb’s relationship with the Haslams is unlikely to ever be any warmer than cordial. The Browns owners inexplicably helped fund a negative campaign to defeat Bibb in the 2021 mayoral election, badly misreading an electorate that was clearly prepared to make him mayor.


Greater Cleveland has suffered from a glaring absence of visionaries since the death 22 years ago of Richard Shatten, the original head of the Cleveland Tomorrow business group established in the early 1980s. One of the region’s few widely respected voices on matters related to economic development belonged to Edward “Ned” Hill, a former dean of Cleveland State University’s Maxine Goodman Levin College of Urban Affairs. Hill left CSU nine years ago for a prestigious post at Ohio State University’s John Glenn School of Public Affairs, but still pays close attention to what happens here.


“Football stadiums are by far the biggest sucker bet of all these sports facilities,” Hill told me in mid-April, days before his retirement from OSU. “A stadium on the lakefront is dead space. It draws eight football games, a couple concerts, and maybe a tractor pull. And putting any more parking down there would be a city killer.”


A recent Washington Post analysis revisited the mountains of data proving public investments in stadiums and arenas “don’t generally create promised economic booms,” as predictions of job growth and tax revenue windfalls for local governments invariably prove wildly exaggerated.


Taxpayers have invested far more in Cleveland’s Gateway project than they were originally told, but Hill convincingly argues Gateway was worthwhile because it revived a dying part of downtown, sparked a housing boom and helped made downtown a more welcoming place to visitors.


“Mike White and Hunter Morrison deserve statues outside Gateway for changing our definition of what was possible in Cleveland, for giving definition to a lost part of downtown, and for making sure those facilities were designed in a way that brought people downtown and weren’t surrounded by acres of parking,” Hill said of the city’s former mayor and its planning director during the 1990s.


Gateway’s arena and baseball stadium provide unmistakable benefits to downtown, hosting more than 300 events annually. A football stadium on the lakefront scatters about a handful of economic crumbs, often in cold weather on Sunday afternoons.


Business as usual in Cleveland would be to toss the Browns enough bones to extend their lakefront lease another 30 years. Reaching that outcome won’t require much leadership. Nor will it take any act of meaningful commitment to Cleveland by Jimmy and Dee Haslam. If the Browns stay put, I’ll be back with some more columns on this issue when the lease expires in 2058.


Until then, consider this. Of the 525,600 minutes in a year, Browns home games take up less than 1,800 of them. That’s what makes it impossible to argue that stadium is in the right place.


Brent Larkin was The Plain Dealer’s editorial director from 1991 until his retirement in 2009.
 
The article says that he tore his Achilles the first game in 2022............it was the first game last year.

If I remember correctly, for those RBs who did return...........since 2010, no returning RB surpassed 85 touches the following season. And those who suffered an ACL (which he did in 2020......and missed all of 2021.........and had problems with that knee throughout 2022, missing 9 games) and then an Achilles were quickly out of the League.

I wish him good luck!

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J.K. Dobbins: Chargers are getting a guy that’s gonna be healthy from now on
By Josh Alper
Published April 29, 2024 04:08 PM

J.K. Dobbins is playing for a new team and the running back is vowing to be more available to the Chargers than he was to the Ravens.

Dobbins ran for 805 yards and nine touchdowns during his rookie season in Baltimore, but tore his ACL in 2021 and then missed nine games in 2022 with further knee issues. He returned to action for the 2022 opener and tore his Achilles after eight carries in that game.

On Monday, Dobbins expressed confidence that the run of injuries has come to an end.
“The Chargers are getting a guy that’s gonna be healthy from now on,” Dobbins said, via Kris Rhim of ESPN.com.

As the last three years make clear for Dobbins and the last many years make clear for the Chargers, a player only has so much control over whether he can avoid getting hurt. That said, the Chargers would be thrilled if his prediction turns out to be correct.
 
www.espn.com

Vet WR Landry to join Jags rookies for camp look

Five-time Pro Bowl receiver Jarvis Landry will participate in the Jaguars' rookie minicamp. The 31-year-old last played in the 2022-23 season for the Saints.
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Landry, 31, last played in an NFL game on Dec. 18, 2022, with New Orleans before being placed on injured reserve with an ankle injury. He'll be participating in the Jaguars' May 10-11 rookie minicamp as a tryout player.
 
As I read this, if I were the Bears it would scare the heck out of me.................. .........reminds me of HWWNBM...............but supercharged 1714497197000.png


Here's the article that is very interesting

Caleb Williams red flags, explained: Why USC QB's dad, agent, character and more could be cause for concern​

byDavid Sug​

................but below is the section that especially caught my eye:

*************************************************

"Carl Williams​

The 22-year-old quarterback isn't the biggest question mark in his camp. That title belongs to his father Carl, a man who has been preparing his son for an NFL career since childhood.

The elder Williams plays a pivotal role in his son's day-to-day affairs. He even contacted agents to see if Caleb could scoop up a minority ownership stake in whichever team drafted him, per The Athletic. (Aaron Rodgers made a similar request, per Pro Football Talk, but NFL owners voted to ban such a move.)

So even before Caleb Williams takes his first NFL snap, Carl is a controversial figure.

Connected to Carl Williams' control over his son's career is the Caleb's lack of an agent. Carl Williams is wary of agents, and his son still does not have one as the NFL Draft approaches.

Carl Williams manages many aspects of Caleb's life off the gridiron. And he isn't afraid to offer soundbites about the NFL draft process, his son's business holdings and more. His strong connection to Caleb represents an unknown quantity for NFL teams as they look to gauge Williams as a top prospect."
 
I’d love 20 games with two bye weeks per team, and no official preseason games…but multiple controlled contests between teams that serve as a sort of preseason. That’s pushing it…18 is probably the target for the foreseeable future.
 
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