[MIJB#19]

General Manager Notes: What a draft!
Two sixth round picks, yay.

Wait, what happened to the two first and two second round picks? There were nine picks in total. Didn't you pick a cornerback and a tight end late in the first round. Yes, we did. And both got traded, the #29 overall pick (CB Aidan Matthews) at about the last second before the draft finished and the signing bonus would have been on us, making a trade no longer worth the troubles. And yes, I gave away the pair of seventh round picks that we still had as well.

A bizar change of events took place, as far as I'm concerned. Three teams showed interest in Aidan Matthews. The first was Bordeaux, we traded tight end Derrick Velazquez to them and received their backup left tackle in return. The second was the team we ended up exchanging the seventh round picks to (North Plainfield). The third team I'll leave anonymus, but that's the team where we actually had back and forth offers that by (bad) luck of timing eventually didn't go through. I lined up the addition of a backup center and guard, already having the deal for the seventh round picks in place, but as I missed the message from the other team about trading Matthews and the clock ran out on us for the sixth round picks, by the time I saw the counter offer, we had two rookie offensive linemen eager to join us. End of the day, Matthews went to Bordeaux rather than to the other conference for a pair of quality backup veteran linemen.

So it goes.

The best news of the day? Moe Sheldon is loyal, he won't hold out. Good for you! it means we'll get around the table after the first pre-season series to see if we can find a new contract for him to assure his services for the 2093 season as well as the upcoming 2092 season.

Our cap situation is still very tight. We're $2.08M under the cap, with 53 players signed. It means we have some room to make bids to free agents, especially some undrafted rookies, but it's likely that the other vulturing teams out there will scoop our targets up.

Moe Sheldon isn't the only player in his contract year. We'll have a bunch of important guys due to become a free agent in the 2093 off-season: backup quarterback Francisco Farley, running back tandem Francisco Patter and Reggie Thongchanh, tight end Jeffery Blake, wide receiver Harris Wilkerson, center Butch Pearson, recently acquired tackle Chase Springer, punter Doug Guynes, defensive tackler Darien Fletcher and cornerback Jessie McNeil. Less of an issue are the potential restricted free agents.

Oh, rookies? We picked guard Hayden Gaylor and center Lewis Azzolini in the sixth round. Gaylor is the type of linemen that in the late 40s, and the 50s and 60s would be considered a 'creeper': strong with stamina, but seemingly with little upside in blocking technique. Azzolini is primarily a run blocker, in potential and as the staff assesses now, no upgrade over trade demanding Jared Labbe. Bringing back Brady Burke might have been a good decision here.

Speaking of bringing back, aside from Burke, we also re-signed special teams running back Asher Ford and special teams linebacker Alec Palmer.

So, what's next? The same old:
* sign undrafted rookies
* training camp
* trim down to 60-men pre-season roster
* await the flabbergasting reassessments of players between our pre-season games
* make contract extensions to potential free agents, unless I feel we can run the risk of letting become that and feel good about winning a bidding war
* trim down to 53-men
* have a great regular season
* surprise the league in the playoffs
* be amazed about how quickly we've arrived at the new off-season

But once more and quickly back to the two main events, how do I feel about those? I feel okay about trading the first round picks for a triplet of future second round picks. Was I convinced these two rookies would be any good or would suck? You can never know. Our staff was positive about the tight end, we didn't interview the cornerback, but he looked like a real shut-down corner to be. Sending them to a division rival is very tricky. But the best news is Sheldon not holding out, which means we've got his services for the 2092 season, bar injury. The cap situation means we probably can't afford a contract extension for him, but you never know what creative offers and unexpected cap space moves will be made.

For now, I'm cautiously optimistic about bringing back an overwhelmingly high majority of the players that made it to the AOC Championship game last season. Best case scenario, Andy Russell and Brandon Bell will turn out to be the only departing players, but realistically we'll be down about 5 players.

And one potentially departure could be last season's high second round pick wide receiver Rickey Lyle, as trade talks for him have been on hiatus, but very serious. It might be a good idea to put him on the block and see what the best offer is we can get. Or determine whether the best deal is "no deal" and we should keep him to become our new WR2 or WR3, ahead of the likes of Sandlin, Wilkerson and Stuckey.

So, plenty of decisions to make in the next couple of days, that's for sure!