[MIJB#19]

General Manager Notes: It's quiet in Maassluis
Calm before the storm?

Doubtful. Cap space is lacking, free agency is limited to a couple of restricted free agent signings. Cornerback Ted Frias found a new home. We made a triplet of trades with draft picks. Tomorrow we'll see which ten players will be our class of 2093.

And then the tough moment comes: how will we find the cap room to hire a quarterback? Moe Sheldon isn't getting any offers elsewhere, heck, it's unlikely any other team in the league will even come close to feeling like the man is worth the $111M over 3 years with a $34M bonus that he's demanding. Player agents simply have no frickin' clue what players actually are worth. Do we want him back? Sure. Do we have the cap space? Nothing remotely close to what his agent is demanding. Do we have a plan B? We have plan F: Francisco Farley.

The roster situation is 41 players signed, with 1 quarterback. But with 10 draft picks incoming, quarterback is quite simply the only position where we have a hole to fill.

It's not all there is to do, we've got a linebacker to re-sign as he's in his fourth year of the rookie contract. Brandon Brady, elite linebacker, asking for $63M/year over 5 years. Yes, I kid you not, this man wants about twice what our quarterback is demanding. You'd almost think he has the same insane player agent. The answer: he actually does.

Is there any cap room remaining? Well, theoretically there is. Our running backs and our fossil cornerback Kirk Hitchcock are still giving us some room to work with. Releasing Hitchcock would free up about $19M, which might be the money we'll need to bring back Sheldon or sign Brady longterm. But by the time we know Hitchcock is worth keeping, we'll be way past training camp and Sheldon will have forgotten all he ever learned in Maassluis, because that's what we do in the IHOF: a player that doesn't go to camp, is obliged to visit the league mandated brainwash studio and is forced to forgot he ever set foot in the training facilities of his latest team. I still remember the day our IHOF Bowl winning quarterback Alfred Hickman returned after just a year of absence and started reintroducing himself to all the defensive star players that made him an IHOF Bowl winner and spent 5 full seasons in the locker room with. The look on Shaun Hartman's face was telling: how can this guy have forgotten who we are?

Back to today. Is my spirit broken? Not quite, but the fire to go all out, it had to witstand an unexpected wave of emotions. Sometimes things that happen away from the turf make you pause and wonder: "how did that go so horribly bad, so completely opposite from what the intentions were?". As a result, I'm kind of going through the motions of the off-season, doing the same old: scraping for cap space and hoping to have a quarterback before training camp begins.

Or Plan F.
Brandon Bell retired at the start of this off-season, but Francisco Farley is a lock to make the team for the seventh straight season. Sometimes undrafted rookies last longer than first round picks that get the keys handed to them as a rookie. Farley's too young to know the song, but it makes you wonder, does he barely know the song and just have the chorus stuck in his head? "I gotta have faith, faith, faith..."