Season 3: Offseason Stories

The biggest thing lacking in the league is participation. What moves are you making? What impact will players like Champ Bailey retiring have on your team? There's no need to share strategy, but give us an incite on your offseason.

The Chicago Bears had to part ways with WR Brandon Marshall due to a contract impasse. The second highest paid receiver, Earl Bennett was cut to save money as he projected as a 4th WR in the coming season.

Charles Tillman's age finally caught up with him. After being a liability a year ago, and recording zero interceptions, the fan favorite has been benched, and is now a backup Strong Safety.  The Bears have depth to spare in their secondary though, so there should be limited drop off in talent, and Peanut should become very productive spelling Major Wright and covering Tight Ends instead of chasing Demaryius Thomas all over the field.

The only position of need is WR, the entire Bears roster is basically ready for the new season, and only has depth concerns to round out the final roster spots.

The Seahawks decided to part ways with defensive end Cliff Avril. He wanted to much money and I couldn't stomach paying him it. The Seahawks also lost starting corner Brandon Browner to free agency. Browner turned down several offers from the team before deciding both parties decided to go separate ways.

The Broncos have had massive cuts/losses at various positions.

At QB, team MVP Josh Freeman was sent packing as the team has a near-talented Brock Osweiler waiting in the wings. While not as fast and certainly not possessing a 99 THP arm, he does have 96 THP and decent accuracy across the board.

WR took a huge hit as Wes Welker left Denver fuming as the front office laughed their ass off at his demands of a 13 million dollars a year contract. Then ST stud Marc Mariani also bolted for FA. He had many big returns in the season, including the opening kickoff of the Super Bowl 100+ yards for a touchdown. The Broncos threw the ball a ton to Beybey last season but Welker was usually open as a 2nd target and now it falls on TE Julius Thomas and WR Robert Meachem to pick up the slack. Broncos probably go WR early and often in the draft as they are loaded with slow, shitty WR's outside of Thomas.

Both the offensive and defensive lines were gutted of players, but most of them were depth guys. Though, Gross did retire, and he was a stud. The LB core lost 2 of their 4 starters but the staff thinks they are replaceable.

Champ Jesus Bailey retired, and informed the Broncos just in time as they were about ready to send nickle CB Mike Jenkins packing, which would have left them with only 3 corners. But now they have 4 quality corners that the staff feels can run with anyone. Elsewhere in the secondary, the front office cut contract talks off with Rahim Moore early in the season as he was benched and replaced with Usama Young, but late in the season he earned his starting job back and the front office regrets their earlier decision, but he won't be back either way.

Man there are so many ridiculous good FA's on the list. Also, does anyone know why it sells me I have 50 million in cap space, but can only use 18 of it on FA contracts?

The Dolphins give up on resigning LB/DE Sergio Kindle who emerged as a pass rusher late in the season when he replaced the injured Cam Wake. Kindle's contract demands were simply too high.
With Wake back healthy the team hopes to be able to fill the gap created by the departure of Kindle from inside. Koa Misi will probably see increased action as a backup DE after losing his starting strong side LB spot to youngster Jelani Jenkins late in the season.
On offense RB Ahmad Bradshaw was not retained. With Lamar Miller locked in as the starter the team is looking for a different type of runner to complement Miller in the backfield. Also keep in mind that youngster Mike Gillislee did a decent job pounding the ball in short yardage situation when called upon.

Due to very limited cap-space the Dolphins will probably not be major players in this year's free agency. After spending a lot of money to reshape their roster last offseason the front office has full trust in the core of the current roster. GM Biermann was quoted: "We made a lot of changes last offseason, especially on offense. We started kinda slow into the season but finally picked it up and made a good run deep into the playoffs where we finally lost against the best team in the league. Progress was clearly made, I believe in my coaches, I believe in this team and I believe in Ryan Tannehill as our starting QB. We might make the occasional move in the offseason but don't expect any fireworks."

The San Diego Chargers barely miss the playoffs last season with QB Phillip Rivers throwing over 40 INTs.

Second-year QB Connor Shaw will be contending for the starting job as the Chargers hope to mirror the Seattle Seahawks' success with a mobile QB and playmakers all over the defense. 

The team is pushing hard to sign MLB Brian Cushing to pair with Donald Butler. At the moment, it appears that the Manti T'eo Experiment is over.

The Packers have been so miss-managed by absentee owner Shooter that both Wr Jordy Nelson and Randal Cobb have decided to leave town. Who's going to replace them? Who knows? Shooter has even looked at his team more than once this month a source inside the organization stated. Maybe he will actually take a break from watching season 5 of Friday Night Lights on netflix at lunch today to check on the state of his franchise.

Broncos resign MLB Dakota Watson and add an explosive return man in Brandon Tate.

Watson was a bum mid 60's rated MLB I picked up to user control on most downs and cover TE's on passing downs because he had decent speed and low 70's MCV. He has progressed to a 75 or 76 IIRC and now is a great MCV LB and can shed blocks well and read plays well enough. He will be my starter at MLB, replacing David Harris.

Tate replaces Mariani who had some great returns. Tate adds a lot more speed, so hopefully I can bust through the holes a lot quicker and take off. Marc got caught from behind more than a few times. Brandon also becomes a nice slot WR to have.

Nice pickups. Always good to see when a user takes a bum and turns him into a stud or at least a decent player. I have my own 'pet project' in safety Don Jones (got him up to 84 OVR).

So Lance Briggs decides to retire. Yet he waits until after the 2nd round of free agency I believe? What the fuck. Now my depth is alllll screwed up.

Signed all the defensive players I was going for. Eventually my secondary will be loaded with 90+ rated corners this season. Signed Patrick Robinson and was pleasantly surprised to see he came with almost 27k XP.

Offensively though I only got my center resigned and Clyde Gates at WR. I missed out on Dez Bryant and Javid Best, both of whom went to Cleveland. The Best loss was especially bummish as I work during the draft and really wanted to draft a speedier HB with more ball security than Hillman. I scouted 4 perfect candidates all for nothing.

Will hit up FA for some depth when it's open I guess. I need a backup QB, some guard depth, and maybe another safety.

I gave dez a monster contract to have an excellent receiving core Dez and Josh Gordon outside and Emmanuel and project Tavares king inside slots. As well as the signing of brandon browner giving us a crazy good man to man group of corners along with standout rookie Terrance Brooks and t.j. ward backing it up. We also got change of pace back Jahvid best back so all in all a good start need to find some back ups now.

NY DAILY NEWS: Giants Drop the Football During Off-Season

The NY Giants GM, Cougars79, has put an already terrible 2-14 team in an even worse position by simply "missing" the free agent period for personal reasons. Several NY Giant players missed their opportunity to be resigned and tested the free agent market, with one of the biggest impacts being Prince Amukamara going to the Dolphins. The Giants GM indicated that this was the busiest few weeks of his paying job and that a newborn has distracted his focus from football. But sources close to the News have informed us that he was spotted at Superbowl Blvd, a NY Giants private lounge, and the NFL Honors last weekend. The organization is conducting an internal investigation to get the details of Cougars79's unexcused absence.

The Giants have come up with a revised strategy that will center around listening to offers to the team's overall #2 pick. They wouldn't reveal too much more than that as they didn't want to give away their strategy to competitors.

The Chicago Bears draft class is settled, and while they filled one key need, they largely ignored other needs and went with luxury picks more often than not.

Round 1 pick, WR Stefon Diggs had some of the best hands in the class, and 97 Acceleration with 93 Speed. The 3rd round prospect, WR Jamal Turner fell almost two rounds when Chicago went value. He was rated with A speed, but turns out is only 88 Speed. His elusiveness was top 5 in the class, as was Diggs. Chicago might have to air it out and let these guys make ankles break.

Three linebackers were drafted, and Zaire Anderson is expected to step up and start with Lance Briggs' surprise retirement late in the offseason. Bears staff has a major bias towards Husker players, thankfully Anderson came out with a 71 overall rating and 87 Speed (damn!) and 91 Acceleration (daaaaaaaamn!). He can also return kicks! Thanks to a 67 return rating. haha

Finally, despite having a punter on the roster, the Bears made Kyle Christy out of Florida a 7th round pick thanks to his 99 kick power.

Wow.. The CPU made some decent picks for me. 

FS Ha Ha Clinton-Dix was the best player available in the 1st round and the Chargers took him despite having Eric Weddle. Clinton-Dix came in at 78 overall.

CPU-selected WR Amari Cooper is 66 overall, but has 86 catch, 72 CIT, and 85 spectacular catch. Not bad at all.

The packers were disappointed with the overal ratings of their first two picks, but clowney and Thomas will still be day one starters for the organization and will look to make big impact plays with their elite level athleticism.... Now they need to find a receiver who doesn't suck

@Shooter: If you're looking for a reliable receiver you might want to have a look at the Dolphins trading block.

Browns also have receivers out there

Browns don't make a big splash but get quality players in the draft. The love Dorian green Beckham's size n speed but know he's a work in progress. Other than that it would be hard to see any of these guys play much considering the youth and talent of the browns current roster.

The Colts had a horrible draft and a lot was riding on this, Family matters prevented a great trade that was all approved and only the last fax was missing at the league office. It was a trade with the Dolphins to acquire an instant upgrade and starter at CB with Ras-I-Dowling, we will have to see if this is still something that can be rectified. 
All picks in the draft were made by the intern on the management staff since the Owner was still totally occupied by his family emergency and just wasn't well prepared to maximize the great draft position. All selected players had fairly low OVR, but seem to have some talents in various areas, now its on the new coach to make the most out of it.
FA was somewhat successful even when the majority of the targeted big name players decided sign with other teams. Those players can look forward to a bounty being placed on their head, especially Dez Bryant(LOL)! But let's rather focus on who decided to join a young rebuilding team which should be all but a sure lock to progress fast and make a push for the division crown and maybe even a deep playoff run. 

Signed FAs:
LOLB S.Kindle
MLB C.McCarthy
MLB M.Foster
LE J.Jenkins
HB F.Whitaker
WR D.Rogers
WR C.Shorts III
C T.Robinson
DT Ta'amu
CB L.Johnson
RG B.Jones

Nonetheless the team is still short several players from having a full roster leave alone have a full camp squad, stay tuned to see who the GM/Owner brings in to compete for a starter spot as there are still some deep holes and starter positions up for grabs.

One thing is for certain, this team will be much more exciting than last year while having went through a serious rejuvenation & rebuilding process in just half a season and one full off-season.

oh yeah I still have well over 40mil in CAP space and plan on using some of it, so if anyone needs to unload some talent due to need to resign guys once regular season starts, my office is always open !