This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The Anatomy of an NFL Holdout
When a star NFL player enters the final year of his contract, it's customary for his team to negotiate a deal that will keep the player with the club long-term and usually compensate him handsomely for it. Occasionally, however, the player and the team can't come to terms. Sometimes the player will bide his time until he can become a free agent and see if the market is willing to give him the deal he thinks he deserves. But other times the player feels an emotional connection to his team and wants to stay, but on his terms, not the team's. And sometimes the team doesn't even attempt to negotiate a new contract when the player wants one. In times past, these second two scenarios would occasionally lead to a training camp holdout, when a player would stay home from team practices in an attempt to gain leverage in negotiations. Theoretically, any player unhappy with his current contract could hold out, but it was more common when players were entering the final year of a deal and wanted to renegotiate early, since that would usually result in a higher salary for the current year. The 2020 Collective Bargaining Agreement (the master deal between the league and the players union), put an end to this practice, imposing ruinous fines on players for not performing in accordance with their contracts. But there are exceptions.
Lamar Jackson was drafted by the Baltimore Ravens near the end of the first round of the 2018 NFL draft. He took over for injured starter Joe Flacco in November of his rookie season, became the youngest QB to start a playoff game, and quickly made a name for himself as one of the league's most exciting young players. In 2019 he was unanimously selected as league MVP, and in 2020 he had another great season and recorded his first playoff win. Jackson's value comes from a unique combination of arm strength and mobility. There had been mobile quarterbacks before, but for most of them their mobility was their only real strength; if they were forced to beat you with their arm, they couldn't do it. So guys like Michael Vick, Colin Kaepernick, and RGIII would give defenses fits—there's one less linebacker to blitz or drop into coverage if you have to assign one to spy the QB on every play—but these defenses soon found out that their strength could be mitigated by neutralizing the ground game and forcing them to throw. Jackson, for all his running talent, was a traditional pocket passer in college, and was as comfortable throwing the ball as he was running it. He could roll out on what appeared to be a designed run play, bait the defense in, then stop and throw a perfect over-the-shoulder fade. It was incredible.
Jackson entered 2022 on the final year of his rookie contract, and it was widely expected that the Ravens would sign him to a long-term deal. That didn't happen, but both sides seemed optimistic, and the year passed mostly uneventfully. But, as the season wound down, it became clear that trouble was afoot. The NFL is unique among sports leagues in that most contracts aren't fully guaranteed; the team can, subject to certain constraints in the CBA, cut a player without paying them. Often teams will guarantee part of the contract, and these terms get too complicated to describe here, but the amount of guaranteed money is usually the biggest sticking point in negotiations involving superstars. It was assumed that, though the Ravens were probably willing to give Lamar Jackson a ton of money, they probably weren't willing to guarantee all of it. The NFL salary cap prevents teams from just eating bad deals; it's hard to bring in good players to improve your team when one player is responsible for a huge cap hit, and doubly hard if that player is no longer a key contributor.
This unwillingness to guarantee became more salient as 2022 unfolded. The 2022 offseason was marked by two big deals. The first was the Cleveland Browns giving the Houston Texans a king's ransom for QB DeShaun Watson, and then immediately resigning Watson to a fully guaranteed $250 million deal. Watson had been the subject of lawsuits and a criminal investigation for sexual misconduct toward massage therapists. He was very good, but the Texans wanted nothing to do with him, and benched him for the entirety of the 2021 season. The legal issues went away, but the NFL still suspended him for the first 12 games of the 2022 season. So Watson entered the Browns on a monster contract but hadn't played a game in over a season and a half, and when he finally took the field in November, it showed. The jury's still out on whether Watson can shake off the rust, but the move seemed questionable when it was made and seems incredibly foolish in hindsight. The other big move was the Denver Broncos sending a similar haul to Seattle for veteran QB Russell Wilson, and similarly renegotiating his contract to one with a lot of guaranteed money. Wilson won a Super Bowl in Seattle and was one of the better players in the league for a long time, but the Seahawks struggled in 2021, and with the team entering the rebuild stage, and Wilson being their obvious best player, it made sense to move him. When he got to Denver, however, it became clear that Wilson was a large part of the reason why Seattle had been underperforming. Wilson was awful in Denver, a team that was supposedly a quarterback away from greatness, and Seattle almost made the playoffs with Geno Smith, a journeyman who was a bust with the Jets, under center. If the jury is still out on the Watson deal, most pundits agree that the Wilson deal screwed over Denver for a long time.
The Browns deal surprised no one since the Browns are notorious for being the most incompetent team in the league. But a lot of people thought that the Broncos got a fair price for a player of Wilson's caliber. Either way, the Ravens are known as one of the more competent teams in the league when it comes to personnel decisions, so it's certainly in character that they wouldn't want to commit to guaranteed cash, even for their undisputed best player. After these two fiascos, though, it makes it seem insane that any team would be willing to commit so much money, let alone the Ravens. Furthermore, Jackson has not proven himself immune to the other big weakness of mobile QBs: Injuries. Mobile quarterbacks take more hits than pocket passers, and as such tend to get injured more. Jackson sat out the last several weeks of both the 2021 and 2022 seasons injured. So it's clear that Jackson's bargaining power is greatly diminished compared to last year.
Technically, Jackson is a free agent. But the Ravens weren't willing to let him walk just yet. In an effort to keep teams from losing key players in free agency, the CBA has a Franchise Tag. What this means is that each team can select one player to tag, and the league will essentially write a one year contract for them. The Franchise Tag comes in two flavors. More common is the exclusive franchise tag. This simply says that the team keeps the player for one additional year at the average salary of the top 5 players at the position. Less common is the non-exclusive tag. This comes with a lower salary number, but allows the player to negotiate with other teams. If the player can reach a deal with another team, the original team has the option of matching the offer. If the original team decides not to match, they get two compensatory draft picks from the new team. Earlier this month, the Ravens announced their intention on giving Jackson the non-exclusive tag. This is normally a risky move, since the compensation provided is less than what the team could get than from simply trading the player. But it's genius in this case: Baltimore knows that after the Watson and Wilson fiascoes there won't be too many teams looking to sign a guy who wants a fully-guaranteed contract. And indeed, so far no other team has shown any interest. Things have become more contentious in light of recent reports that, prior to last season, Jackson turned down a five-year, $250 million deal with $133 million guaranteed. The message from the Ravens is clear: Your demands are unreasonable. We offered you a fair deal, and you won't get that deal anywhere else. If you don't believe us, we'll let you test the market and see for yourself, and if you don't like it, you can play here for another year for $30 million.
https://www.fantasypoints.com/nfl/articles/season/2021/mobile-quarterbacks-and-injury-rates#/
The claim that mobile quarterbacks are more injury prone is unsubstantiated at best.
Dumb luck and how good a team’s offensive line is at pass protection are where I’d put my concern.
My mind immediately goes to Cincinnati’s brass knowingly rolling the dice on a suspect front five in 2020 and having to watch a guard’s fuckup result in their franchise QB’s knee getting imploded.
But even if the non intuitive answer is true (running QBs that get hit more or not more likely to be injured) the effectiveness of a running QB after injury may be entirely different compared to a passer QB. Thus even if the risk of injury may be the same it doesn’t follow the risk from an injury is the same.
That’s fair. But I also think that since the advent of the zone read, any QB that can average even say 5 YPC and 6-10 carries a game gives his offense an extra man in the run game.
With any contract, teams want to pay for future performance and I think there’s consensus Jackson’s demands are optimistic. At the same time, even if he regresses on the ground he has some room to fall before he’s no longer effective.
You can’t win the Super Bowl with an “effective” QB on a massive contract. You either need an elite QB on a massive contract, or you need an effective QB on a tiny contract that you can build a great team around.
No one said otherwise, above. But it’s not impossible — Peyton Manning’s 2015-16 salary was $18M (high for that year), and he was cooked in his final season. (I hope he still thanks Von Miller for that last ring).
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link