Danchat

Yeah, it does feel like that. And it might end the same way with moving him to the bullpen to try and salvage him, but that didn't work either.

13 baserunners for Ober... yikes! Nice to see the bats coming alive. Arcia is having a big day.

Keaschall's a stud... hard to believe will only be 23 this year.

Yup, I think that is close. DH will rotate between a bunch of players and Larnach will retain his LF job for a while.

Buddy, we were losing the game. You don't pitch in the 9th losing as the away team.

If Martin is going to miss time with the concussion, methinks Roden is taking his place.

We got the details on Wentz's deal: It's 1/$3M with $2.65M guaranteed, the rest being bonuses that don't have to be paid out if he's QB3 as far as I can tell. There are a few other veteran QB3s making about $2-3M, so he did not get QB2 money. So I will stick with what I said before, Wentz is here to make JJM earn the QB2 job, and will not be threatening Kyler (I've seen some claim Wentz will be QB1, which is nonsense). To answer the question of "why would Wentz sign now instead of waiting out a QB2 job", it's because he's getting $1.1M in signing bonus. And it's fairly evident that he wasn't getting much other attention on the open market for a QB2 job or he would have signed for more elsewhere.

That had more to do with JJM needing more reps in practice and he didn't get those because it was a Thursday night game. Hence why he played the next week against the Lions and had a surprisingly decent game. Eh, I think a lot of those rumors have been astro-turfed to retroactively salvage KOC's reputation (hence why they all came out after Kwesi was fired, piling on the scapegoat). He definitely wanted Jones to sign here and compete with JJM and did not want Howell as QB2, but otherwise I believe he thought he could coach JJM up. And then it became apparent once he started playing against NFL speed that he wasn't ready, and KOC wasn't prepared for that. His mechanics were not a problem at Michigan nor were they in training camp - he reportedly had a really rough minicamp in 2024 and rebounded in training camp to the point where it seemed like he could push Darnold for the job. And even in 2025 training camp he had a fantastic joint practice against the Patriots where he looked a lot better than Drake Maye. It wasn't until the real games started and then the injuries worsened the issue. I'm seeing people claim that KOC never wanted to draft JJM, which is absurd and plain old gaslighting. JJM was a great fit for KOC's offense, being one of the best intermediate passers in college football who played in a pro style offense which would supposedly speed up the transition from college to pros. And zero injury history, to boot. But the light bulb doesn't turn on for some prospects... Not sure I believe he was "forced to", he was probably chomping at the bit to get back into the lineup to get more reps. Overall I agree that maturity (along with the injuries, obviously) was the primary issue.

9 hits and 1 walk allowed by SWR, good job only allowing 2 runs on that.

Good to hear Abel is in the rotation, as he should be.

I believe they mostly added onto the department, and there were some departures. The last time I saw someone do an article about it, it was something like half Spielman era and half KAM hires. They need to start from scratch.

Plenty of us in the comments section have been sounding the alarms already...

They might ship him off for a 4th round pick, that's true. Once we get Wentz's contract numbers, we should learn quite a bit. Having some kind of signing bonus would be a reason for him to sign now and not wait it out... but I don't think he was getting many, if any QB2 offers elsewhere other than the Jets.

He ran the offense better, but he was also was a worse deep to intermediate passer than JJM. I was digging through the PFF pass depth stats earlier and found that Wentz was one of the worst deep passers in the league last year (lines up with my eye test, we would have won the Eagles game if he could have hit a couple of wide open receivers deep) and a bit worse in the intermediate range than JJM. The main difference was short passes, Wentz was still poorly rated but better than JJM. He also held onto the ball too long and took too many sacks. That combination is how Wentz's PFF grade ended up at 50.8, quite a bit below JJM's 61.8. I guess you can blame the injury to some degree I expect his salary to be something like base $2M. I don't think he had much interest around the league outside of the Jets who kicked the tires but didn't get that deal done for whatever reason. If JJM matures this offseason and improves even a little bit, I think he is QB2 over Wentz.

The Lance comparison is apt, the Cowboys traded a 4th for his 3rd and 4th year of his contract. It's basically the same situation. Methinks the Wentz move is to make sure Brosmer never sets foot onto the gridiron ever again... but if JJM can't beat him out for the QB2 job, then they may as well ship him off.

Yup, and Epenesa just signed with the Browns for "up to" $5M... geez, he didn't have any market. That's a steal.

Dotson got $7.5M per year (somehow) with the Falcons, Wonnum just signed with the Lions for $6M. Ward can work as a passing down DL, but they need a couple of run stuffers. I am surprised Epenesa is still available but as a bigger edge I'm not sure what his fit is, whether it be like Greenard's role or iDL like Ward would be. Dortch makes a ton of sense as a guy who has chemistry with Kyler and will come for the vet minimum.

Was anybody intentionally tanking last year? The Raiders weren't tanking as they thought they could be alright with Pete Carroll manning the helm, which was delusional but they weren't trying to lose. The rest of the other teams like the Titans were just plain old bad... the Cardinals did sit Kyler Murray after he recovered from the foot injury. There was a recent report saying that if he tried to play through the injury with it fully healing it would make his chances of having a full-blown Lisfranc fracture higher so that's why they sat him out the rest of the year. So you can make the argument with them, but the other teams like the Giants / Browns are either bad, injured to hell and back, or just incompetent.

Good question... looks like Pittman has 1/$24M left on his deal and Waddle in under contract for 3 years for cap hits of $5M, $27M, then $29M. I guess teams really valuable flexibility but yeah, the Steelers got an absolute steal in comparison.

Achane is gonna get every touch on that offense that Willis doesn't run on... gonna be fascinating. Doesn't help that their OL sucked last year. They are probably a lock to draft a WR in Round 1.

Berrios is on the edge of qualifying for the last 10 years which is why I didn't include him, looks like he didn't pitch in the minors in 2016. He was a prospect during the Terry Ryan 2.0 days, but hit his stride in the majors in the Falvine era. It's not that Ryan wasn't a rankable prospect, it's that he mostly a product of Tampa's farm system and not ours. I don't mean to say that the Twins organization doesn't deserve credit in developing him, just that this process happened almost entirely in the majors and didn't happen in our minor leagues / farm system. And yeah, clearly the Rays didn't value him or Strotman because trading both for Cruz was a huge risk for them, even without hindsight that seemed like a lopsided trade in our favor. I was referring to how Petty alone was able to get the team two affordable years of Sonny Gray, essentially cashing in a draft pick for a near top-of-the-line starter was one of the best moves Falvey made. Especially seeing the success rate of his pitching prospects, it was a prudent move. In conclusion, Falvey's pitching staffs in the majors did a good job with what they had. The farm system, however, did not see very many pitching prospects fulfill their "hype" and the Graterol + Petty trades showed that they were better off trading them for MLB players rather than continuing their development. Povich and Hajjar were traded too and while their returns failed, they still commanded a bit of value. Though I should note Povich still may develop into something.

Sure, but after that it's Bailey Ober... and then you move onto relievers. Not really sure how much I consider Ryan part of the "farm" system since he was ready to go almost right away, but that's an argument for another time.

Abel all the way, give him all the MLB exposure that he can handle. Zebby will still get probably around 20 starts in the majors given how often injuries happen.

I would bet one of Tristan Gray or Ryan Kreidler get DFA'd.

There was probably a reason why the Rays gave him up for almost nothing... he gets a spot because we are low on RH relievers, but might not get that much rope.