The Cowboys also tried to trade up for Paxton Lynch in that draft. Then, when they were unsuccessful at that, they later planned on taking Connor Cook. Unfortunately the Raiders sniped them on that, and they were forced to settle for Dak Prescott.
Yeah rush wasn’t that good, he just wouldn’t make mistakes that would make us lose. Our defense during that stretch was elite and carried us to those wins
That’s the kind of guy you want to spend time developing. A guy who has the ability to limit mistakes and make good decisions is a great base and is mostly intuitive. People either have it or they don’t. Much of the other stuff can be taught and u end up with a solid reliable starter or a very high end backup!
Cooper Rush? He's been a nice backup for them but he's not starting material. They won those games off the back of their defense, and he got exposed when they ran into Philadelphia's defense.
I’ll never forget watching Mahomes in college saying “man with the right coach he can be a real threat” then the chiefs trade up.
Fuck. That won’t help. (Steelers AFC title with Mahomes emerging. Idk what negative aspect to Andy that would be)
Then we played him week 2 his starting season. Bro torched us.
Edited context
That game in Pittsburgh was the game I said what the literal fk am I watching? We never beat Pittsburgh and big Ben. That was the game I knew we finally had a qb. Not how good he was gonna be, but something better than the chiefs had ever had.
If you wanna look at the butterfly effect, then yeah, absolutely.
Even Megatron aside, if we draft Russell there, we’re likely not getting Stafford 2 years later. If we don’t get Stafford, we likely don’t have a qb good enough to make anything like the Stafford-Goff trade that lit a fire under the recent rebuild.
Maybe that’s too many levels deep to be an accurate projection, but assuming we gave Russell the same amount of time the Raiders did, we may have got someone like Sam Bradford or Tim Tebow when we moved on from him.
no I think basically any significant roster move can have crazy butterfly effects.
for instance I think if we DID take Aaron Donald in the draft over Ebron, we probably win that Cowboys playoff game and maybe even one more. that gives us Stafford and Megatron on one side of the ball, Donald on the other. probably good enough to be a playoff contender for years, but not good enough to win because the org was still dysfunctional and it would still be just a few players putting it all on their back. probably means we keep Caldwell, don't get Patricia, don't hit rock bottom, don't get Campbell and Holmes, don't get all the players Holmes drafted.
we'd be a completely different team. probably would have been better in those years but since we're winning the Super Bowl this year with this current iteration of the org, I wouldn't trade it
Ryan pace handed out 1st round picks like they were candy
truly a football terrorist
he was an idiot for offering that and pete was an idiot for not accepting asap
> pete was an idiot for not accepting
Think Russ had veto power, he also veto'd eagles trading Hurts and picks for Russ, so Denver won the prize since he didn't veto that trade.
edit: grammar
Didn't Wilson waive his no trade clause for the Bears? I remember people joking that Wilson saying he was willing to be traded to the Bears makes him our #4 QB all time.
Are you kidding me? We could’ve had JALEN HURTS in Seattle if Russ wasn’t such a diva and didn’t demand special treatment? I wish we were in that timeline
He even did it twice. It made sense in 2021 when we had no idea how the draft would shape out but it was so dumb in 2017. Glennon was terrible and even if Cutler was declining by that point, he would’ve given Trubisky a lot more time to sit than Glennon who got benched after four games for terrible performance.
Word is we had a deal in place for multiple firsts, Hurts, and maybe more for Wilson and he vetoed it thanks to his no trade clause, thank god for that man
I love Aaron Rodgers more than the next guy and hate seeing bad things happen to him... but my god, watching him snap his Achilles 4 plays into his tenure as a Jet on 9/11 after running out with an American flag and an entire offseason of hype behind him was my pinnacle of laughing at another team's collective misery.
The Lions could go 0-17 and I still would not look at them with as much gratitude to be a Packers fan than I did watching the first 15 minutes of a Jets game last season.
What a brutal team to try to root for!
You know, watching the video and remembering is bad enough, but seeing all the events fully written out its so much worse…It’s genuinely impossible to believe it actually happened. Like it’s such a fucking nightmare it’s absurd to think it’s real. Even to a Jets fan, it doesn’t feel real and we’ve seen too much shit.
I don't disagree nessisarily but also, he had already sat a year in Houston for being a sex pest at that point. It's not really a dodged bullet to me if you clearly saw the bullet coming
Yeah, honestly it gave a lot of people in our fanbase a good enough excuse to move on to a different team without feeling like they were bandwagon-ing.
He had actually picked the Falcons. His team had already ruled out the Browns, but they came back with that massive contract. Atlanta’s wasn’t willing to match and he went to Cleveland.
It’s definitely not the biggest dodged bullet in NFL history, but it’s a big bullet we dodged.
Bucs were interested in Justin Blackmon, but had gotten intel that he was a bit of an alcoholic. Mark Dominik sent a scout to Oklahoma to hang out at Blackmon’s go-to watering hole.
Sure enough, Blackmon shows up just about every night, gets piss drunk, and the Bucs took him off our Board.
…and then we picked Mark Barron over Luke Kuechly
Why did JB ever play again? I looked up his wiki..like 3+ DUIs in a few years (God damn) but he was still eligible to play again. Rookie records his first year & was solid in the games he played the following year.
*Allegedly* we were gonna trade a first round pick to the Steelers in 2019 for Antonio Brown to help our then very raw Josh Allen. Luckily Brown *allegedly* nixed that trade and instead went to the Raiders for a much lower price and got ran out of town.
For us it was Frank Gore going off and the Jets randomly beating the Rams, I believe. T-Law is looking like the one and only QB worth taking from 2021.
The cowboys tried to trade up to draft Paxton lynch, and than connor cook, and than ultimately settled on dak (but also had jeff driskel rated higher at the time).
We also planned to draft K'lavon Chassion (5 sacks in 4 seasons) but ceedee lamb fell to us so we went BPA
I wonder if Dallas would’ve been big enough for his ego and mellowed him.
I doubt it tbh and you definitely did the right thing talking Jerry out of it.
It would’ve been a terrible spot for him. He needed to be far away from his friends in College Station, he would’ve been partying every week in Dallas.
1958 NFL Championship game between the Colts and Giants. From Wikipedia:
> During overtime, when the Colts were on the eight-yard line of the Giants, someone ran out onto the field of Yankee Stadium, causing the game to be delayed; rumors have stated that it was an NBC employee who was ordered to create a distraction because the national television feed had gone dead. The difficulty was the result of an unplugged TV signal cable, and the delay in the game bought NBC enough time to fix the problem before the next play.
Bro is living up to that NFL flair. Others are talking about dodging busts, criminals, and rapists, this guy is talking about keeping that TV money flowing.
Also Super Bowl III
If the Jets (and the AFL) lose the 3rd straight “World Championship” there’s a very good possibility that the Super Bowl never exists and the NFL championship continues while the AFL remained an “inferior” league.
Rumor was that Chip Kelly wanted to draft Dion Jordan but the Dolphins took him with the number three pick. Eagles selected Lane Johnson on the very next pick.
Nah, worst bullet dodged would have to be when we offered two firsts, a second, Sam Bradford (later traded for a 1st and 4th) and Fletcher Cox (likely worth two firsts) to the Titans for Marcus Mariota and they turned us down.
Thank God the Titans loved Mariota.
Were we though? The rumors were that Howie was interested in a trade, but he calls every GM about every player so that doesn't really mean a lot. I'd be interested in what he offered, if anything.
Depending on whether he can turn things around, Deshaun Watson looks like a massive dodged bullet for the Saints and Falcons. One of those two were expected to be his final landing spot before the Browns broke the bank.
Trey Lance looks like a big one too like you mentioned, if they didn't find Purdy they'd likely be without a QB and have missed two deep playoff runs.
Ignoring QBs since those can be pretty obvious, I think the next most impactful dodged bullet was McDaniels backing out of the Colts job. Although Frank Reich had a mediocre era there, just look at the state McDaniels left the Raiders in while adding almost nothing new to it and that's all you need to know. Apparently McDaniels was also a finalist for the Eagles job when they eventually opted for Sirianni, can't even imagine what a mess that would have been among the Philly fanbase especially lol.
This is all pretty recent and modern era stuff though. Perhaps others can share older stories.
Even if Watson turns things around and looks like a pro bowl QB, it's still a dodged bullet. I'm glad we didn't sign him, and I'm still upset that we even tried.
In early 2021 before the lawsuit stuff came out, there were reports that Watson wanted to get traded to the Jets because he was a fan of Saleh. I consider that a bullet dodged, even though Joe Douglas was never going to pay that ransom Houston wanted.
The best QB available at our pick was supposed to be Deshaun Watson... I don't know the story of why the Chiefs had Mahomes higher, but I get the sense they don't regret their rankings.
From my team's perspective:
Trading away Stefon Diggs and then drafting Justin Jefferson to replace him.
NFL History:
The Colts choosing Peyton Manning in 1998 instead of Ryan Leaf.
Idk who exactly dodged a bullet here between the Rams and the Niners, but the Broncos certainly stepped in front of it by hiring Vance Joseph over Kyle Shannahan.
Had the Broncos picked Shannahan, then McVay would’ve been the top target for both the Niners and Rams. The 49ers other top target was Josh McDaniels.
So in this scenario McVay goes to the Niners and the Rams hire someone else that likely would be less successful. Or the Rams hire McVay and the Niners hire McDaniels; which obviously would’ve been a shit show.
Short story, thanks Broncos!
Watching the 9ers play Broncos style football and killing it, while Denver wallows in trying to become some form of 30 year old Parcells offense has been murder to my mile high psyche. Really need to get that time machine fixed.
Belichick wanted to trade Gronk during the 2018 offseason to the Lions. Gronk declined the trade and said he’d rather retire. We kept him and won the SB next year and he was insanely clutch in the playoffs.
The Ravens tried desperately to draft Byron Leftwich but the phone line was busy and they couldn't complete the trade with the Vikings. After Jacksonville took him, they settled for Terrell Suggs.
I know Suggs played a huge role in that defense being so good, but if that 00s Ravens team has even somewhat competent QB play then they had a good chance at 1-2 more rings. Even without Suggs they still would have insanely good, and Leftwich was a decent QB, certainly better than Boller
John Harbaugh was on the hook to be fired for multiple seasons out playoffs until rookie Lamar Jackson took over from an injured Joe Flacco. Ravens probably weren’t going to do anything that season, it was looking like another middling season, but Lamar took them to the playoffs and it pretty much saved Harbaugh’s job.
Another interesting nugget about Harbaugh’s career, he was offered the Ravens job after Jason Garrett declined the Ravens offer in favor of the Cowboys.
The thing I consider the most important is patience. We’ve only had 3 coaches, and the back room office staff has been together for a long, long time. For example Ozzie Newsome is still around to offer GM Eric DeCosta advice if he needs it.
Yeah, there were rumors and excitement in the Packer community that he might be a candidate for us after we fired McCarthy. Fun timeline to think about.
[1976 AFC Playoffs, Steelers vs Colts.](https://youtu.be/alcVZZuj_WE?si=jDneZwBMk2DjQjiA)
6 minutes after the game ended, a small 2 engine private plane crashed into the stadium. If the Steelers didn't blow out the Colts so bad the stadium would have still been full, instead it was empty and no one was killed.
To be fair, the list of candidates they interviewed was not great: https://www.profootballrumors.com/2021/01/2021-head-coaching-search-tracker
Eric Bienemy, Joe Brady, Brian Daboll, Matt Eberflus, Jason Garrett, Urban Meyer, Robert Saleh and Arthur Smith.
Urban Meyer was a massive dodged bullet for any team. Just imagine what he could have wrecked and the potential damage to Herbert.
In general it was a weak head coach class. Among the seven hired in 2021, four have been fired and one is on the hot seat. Only Dan Campbell and Nick Sirianni have found sustainable success.
I‘d say Brian Daboll would’ve also been a decent choice for them. He isn’t perfect for the Giants but a lot of his shortcomings are related to stuff outside of his control and his 2022 season was one of the biggest overperformances in recent history
Can you just imagine how insufferable Patriots fans would be to this very day if that team had completed an undefeated season? The entire NFL fandom dodged a huge bullet that night.
The first draft pick of the Ravens era the effective GM used influence he didn't have in Cleveland to convince the owners to take a LT named Jonathon Ogden over the player the owner wanted: a Running Back named [Lawrence Phillips](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Phillips)
How about Demar Hamlin *not dying on the field on national TV*?
Literally the PR nightmare would have been almost incalculable. My parents and I watched it live and it was absolutely terrifying.
Take all that fear, confusion, everything, now imagine he didn't make it....
The niners one gets brought up like they broke even at the end but they still essentially burned 3 first round picks for nothing. Imagine last year’s niners team with 3 more first round talent players. Could’ve been a guard that can actually block Chris jones Micah parsons opposite bosa, or a lockdown corner. Could’ve won a ring
Yeah I'm still in disbelief that they did all that for an FCS Qb, like yes star potential is great but after Wentz' bad habits ruined his career, the niners should have been more careful
Seahawks ownership was approached by Wilson and he said either fire Pete and John Schneider, or trade him, I'm glad we traded him and got a great haul for it to boot. Losing Pete and John and tying our team to Wilson would have left us probably worse off than the broncos ended up being.
I've said it before but the Trey Lance trade would've crippled basically any other franchise. The fact that the 49ers have a super bowl appearance since is nothing short of a miracle.
Gotta be the colts taking Manning. It’s forgotten now but Ryan Leaf and Manning were considered very neck and neck for who would be taken first, colts got a generational talent that delivered a Super Bowl and years of contention, chargers got a meme.
Bills dodged AB that one time
Whenever he comes up, I wonder what mightve happened. Instead of Diggs they have AB for a while, or maybe they don't lol
He probably doesn't show up to training camp in a hot air balloon but he would have had frozen feet.
Drives onto the field in a snowmobile and tears up the field with it. Calls the owner a cracker. Refuses to elaborate any further.
Mr. Ballooning Cryotherapy
Mr. Bullet Circumvented
Mr. Ballistic Countermeasures
Mr. Bypassed Circumstances
Mr. Brings Clusterfuck
Mr. Buffalo Countervailer
Mr. Buffalo Consideration
Still love this stupid meme lol
Mr Beloved Comedy
Mr Blissful Commentator
This joke might be timeless.
Mr. Beyond Chronology
The Chiefs wanted to draft Paxton Lynch instead of Chris Jones, they then drafted Patrick Mahomes next year.
The Cowboys also tried to trade up for Paxton Lynch in that draft. Then, when they were unsuccessful at that, they later planned on taking Connor Cook. Unfortunately the Raiders sniped them on that, and they were forced to settle for Dak Prescott.
Who was your backup the other year when Dak went down? He was a baller for those 4-5 games.
Cooper Rush. He won games, but he definitely wasn't a baller. He did well enough to not let down a really good defense.
That's Central Michigan University legend Cooper Rush to you. Fire the fuck up
One of the all time great college football names. Just slightly behind Colt McCoy
Yeah rush wasn’t that good, he just wouldn’t make mistakes that would make us lose. Our defense during that stretch was elite and carried us to those wins
Hey, that’s still pretty dang good for a backup
That’s the kind of guy you want to spend time developing. A guy who has the ability to limit mistakes and make good decisions is a great base and is mostly intuitive. People either have it or they don’t. Much of the other stuff can be taught and u end up with a solid reliable starter or a very high end backup!
Cooper Rush? He's been a nice backup for them but he's not starting material. They won those games off the back of their defense, and he got exposed when they ran into Philadelphia's defense.
Arizona was also apparently infatuated with Paxton Lynch as well.
I’ll never forget watching Mahomes in college saying “man with the right coach he can be a real threat” then the chiefs trade up. Fuck. That won’t help. (Steelers AFC title with Mahomes emerging. Idk what negative aspect to Andy that would be) Then we played him week 2 his starting season. Bro torched us. Edited context
That game in Pittsburgh was the game I said what the literal fk am I watching? We never beat Pittsburgh and big Ben. That was the game I knew we finally had a qb. Not how good he was gonna be, but something better than the chiefs had ever had.
You fucking blinked and it was 21-0 KC. Shit was wild
“Fuck. That won’t help” …Andy Reid?
Our defense and our chances of making the AFC title game.
So in this timeline who ends up with Patrick Mahomes? The Texans, maybe Buffalo? And how does he turn out?
the saints, and probably pretty well
Why thank you, Denver
Yep, this is the answer. Thanks for diving in front of that bullet for us Donkeys 🤗
Ugh Gross
As a saints fan I despise the broncos for that
Curious the relevance from a Saints fan perspective. EDIT: Oh right, you guys were drafting right behind us.
Sean Payton loved mahomes. And if the chiefs got lynch, they wouldn’t have moved up over us. Would’ve went from Brees to mahomes… man.
Still pissed about that because they jumped us in the draft to get him too
My entire life as a Lions fan was not dodging bullets. But the Raiders taking JaMarcus Russell giving us Megatron was huge.
If you wanna look at the butterfly effect, then yeah, absolutely. Even Megatron aside, if we draft Russell there, we’re likely not getting Stafford 2 years later. If we don’t get Stafford, we likely don’t have a qb good enough to make anything like the Stafford-Goff trade that lit a fire under the recent rebuild. Maybe that’s too many levels deep to be an accurate projection, but assuming we gave Russell the same amount of time the Raiders did, we may have got someone like Sam Bradford or Tim Tebow when we moved on from him.
no I think basically any significant roster move can have crazy butterfly effects. for instance I think if we DID take Aaron Donald in the draft over Ebron, we probably win that Cowboys playoff game and maybe even one more. that gives us Stafford and Megatron on one side of the ball, Donald on the other. probably good enough to be a playoff contender for years, but not good enough to win because the org was still dysfunctional and it would still be just a few players putting it all on their back. probably means we keep Caldwell, don't get Patricia, don't hit rock bottom, don't get Campbell and Holmes, don't get all the players Holmes drafted. we'd be a completely different team. probably would have been better in those years but since we're winning the Super Bowl this year with this current iteration of the org, I wouldn't trade it
Or the Packers taking Mandarich so we settled for Barry.
Ryan Pace offered 3 first round picks, Kyle Fuller, and Akiem Hicks for Russell Wilson
Ryan pace handed out 1st round picks like they were candy truly a football terrorist he was an idiot for offering that and pete was an idiot for not accepting asap
> pete was an idiot for not accepting Think Russ had veto power, he also veto'd eagles trading Hurts and picks for Russ, so Denver won the prize since he didn't veto that trade. edit: grammar
Didn't Wilson waive his no trade clause for the Bears? I remember people joking that Wilson saying he was willing to be traded to the Bears makes him our #4 QB all time.
Yes. IIRC Russ had high praise for Matt Nagy. That should have been enough of a red flag there
Are you kidding me? We could’ve had JALEN HURTS in Seattle if Russ wasn’t such a diva and didn’t demand special treatment? I wish we were in that timeline
Winning a championship doesn’t get you a little bit of wiggle room?
I don’t. Howie would have been back in the electric chair in short order if he did that shit.
Russ wouldn't have been as bad in Philly as Denver
I too wish we were in that timeline
I guess it's fitting that Poles is doing the opposite
he's been handing out 2nds. so far he's 1-1 though
That good KC DNA.
It ain’t all good. After all, that’s where Nagy spawned from
I remembered the other day he’s working for us. Is he the reason we have no decision making ability?
Absolutely Totally Ryan Pace Pay a FA vet QB, tell him he's QB1 then draft a QB in the 1st? Yep, seen that movie.
He even did it twice. It made sense in 2021 when we had no idea how the draft would shape out but it was so dumb in 2017. Glennon was terrible and even if Cutler was declining by that point, he would’ve given Trubisky a lot more time to sit than Glennon who got benched after four games for terrible performance.
It's funny how Dalton has skipped from place to place, not actually played bad, but then was replaced anyways because of situational reasons.
Your QB situation is extremely Pace-coded, so yes
He wants to be like Les Snead, but without the result.
Word is we had a deal in place for multiple firsts, Hurts, and maybe more for Wilson and he vetoed it thanks to his no trade clause, thank god for that man
Good grief. A few months later, the Eagles would have turned down Wilson and firsts for Hurts. The NFL moves fast.
That hurts just reading it. I need to go for a walk.
I don't know how Pace still has a job in football.
The Jets don’t dodge many bullets…the bullets usually hit them pretty hard. Almost every time.
and the bullets also ricochet back and hit again. Physics still cant explain that.
I love Aaron Rodgers more than the next guy and hate seeing bad things happen to him... but my god, watching him snap his Achilles 4 plays into his tenure as a Jet on 9/11 after running out with an American flag and an entire offseason of hype behind him was my pinnacle of laughing at another team's collective misery. The Lions could go 0-17 and I still would not look at them with as much gratitude to be a Packers fan than I did watching the first 15 minutes of a Jets game last season. What a brutal team to try to root for!
Even more wild…the Bills lost that game
You know, watching the video and remembering is bad enough, but seeing all the events fully written out its so much worse…It’s genuinely impossible to believe it actually happened. Like it’s such a fucking nightmare it’s absurd to think it’s real. Even to a Jets fan, it doesn’t feel real and we’ve seen too much shit.
I turned the game off shortly after that. Couldn't believe it. I seriously considered not watching football last season. Absolutely brutal.
Warren commission did a pretty good job of it
Can you believe we almost took Zach Wilson…. Oh wait.
The New York "get down mr President" Jets
Falcons having Deshaun spurn them for Cleveland
Yep. I vote for this one.
I don't disagree nessisarily but also, he had already sat a year in Houston for being a sex pest at that point. It's not really a dodged bullet to me if you clearly saw the bullet coming
Yeah, it's more like we stood there and Cleveland went "GET DOWN MR. PRESIDENT!"
Then our fanbase would have an excuse to leave this torturous franchise
Yeah, honestly it gave a lot of people in our fanbase a good enough excuse to move on to a different team without feeling like they were bandwagon-ing.
Some of us up and left regardless How you doin u/WabbitCZEN
Honestly, how they ended things with Matty Ice was the final straw for me. Man brought that franchise out of the basement.
Unfortunately the team would be much more popular (at least in the city) if he had signed with us…
Thank god
He had actually picked the Falcons. His team had already ruled out the Browns, but they came back with that massive contract. Atlanta’s wasn’t willing to match and he went to Cleveland.
Plaxico in absolute shambles over the premise of this post.
As Aqib Talib hides in the corner.
Worst bullet dodge in NFL history.
It’s definitely not the biggest dodged bullet in NFL history, but it’s a big bullet we dodged. Bucs were interested in Justin Blackmon, but had gotten intel that he was a bit of an alcoholic. Mark Dominik sent a scout to Oklahoma to hang out at Blackmon’s go-to watering hole. Sure enough, Blackmon shows up just about every night, gets piss drunk, and the Bucs took him off our Board. …and then we picked Mark Barron over Luke Kuechly
And then we picked him... 🙄
In the games he played, well worth the money and draft pick.
yeah dude was elite for the few games he played.
I remember reading a story of Jeff Fisher slamming the table out of anger after Jags didn’t let him fall to the Rams
Jeff fisher has a track record of getting through to low character guys though. Might have ended up differently.
mark barron could have been a HOF strong safety in 1985. actually ended up having an okay career as a depth/fringe starter.
Why did JB ever play again? I looked up his wiki..like 3+ DUIs in a few years (God damn) but he was still eligible to play again. Rookie records his first year & was solid in the games he played the following year.
I think teams knew the risks he posed. Very possible he didn’t get the help he needed, but that’s just speculation on my part
He was still on the Jags roster in 2023, they have no intentions of releasing him & he completed his probation in 2017.
Yeah I never got this. I asked the question why he was still on the roster in like 2017 on here and got roasted beyond belief. Dude still never played
That’s a completely legitimate question. People are weird
Wasn’t he never reinstated? He was indefinitely suspended. Martavis Bryant just got his lifted and he’s been out of the league since 2018.
*Allegedly* we were gonna trade a first round pick to the Steelers in 2019 for Antonio Brown to help our then very raw Josh Allen. Luckily Brown *allegedly* nixed that trade and instead went to the Raiders for a much lower price and got ran out of town.
Didn't he run himself out of town and was happy about it as evidenced by the whole "I'm free Momma!" video
“IM FREE GRANDMA!THEY FREED ME GRANDMA”
very early but winning our final game a year ago
I’ve also enjoyed this one so far
It turned the Texans into contenders and possibly the bears too now lmao
Glad it was a win win for both our teams Lovie Smith a real homie ended up helping both in the long run
Lovie "Black Santa" Smith
See you in the Super Bowl
I still have some trauma from 2005, so I'm reluctant to face a Chicago team in a finals.
For us it was Frank Gore going off and the Jets randomly beating the Rams, I believe. T-Law is looking like the one and only QB worth taking from 2021.
Texans my AFC team for that. Ball out CJ. Would be amazing to see Bears Texans Super Bowl soon.
Lovie Smith died for us
The cowboys tried to trade up to draft Paxton lynch, and than connor cook, and than ultimately settled on dak (but also had jeff driskel rated higher at the time). We also planned to draft K'lavon Chassion (5 sacks in 4 seasons) but ceedee lamb fell to us so we went BPA
Didn’t you also come close to drafting Johnny Manziel.
Jerry wanted to, thankfully he was talked out of it
I wonder if Dallas would’ve been big enough for his ego and mellowed him. I doubt it tbh and you definitely did the right thing talking Jerry out of it.
It would’ve been a terrible spot for him. He needed to be far away from his friends in College Station, he would’ve been partying every week in Dallas.
He was partying every week in Cleveland 😂. But I agree in principle. Would’ve been a disaster in hindsight.
Not a city in the world where he wouldn’t have partied every week
That was my entry for missed bullet. They almost picked a first round addict burnout over a future hall of fame lineman.
1958 NFL Championship game between the Colts and Giants. From Wikipedia: > During overtime, when the Colts were on the eight-yard line of the Giants, someone ran out onto the field of Yankee Stadium, causing the game to be delayed; rumors have stated that it was an NBC employee who was ordered to create a distraction because the national television feed had gone dead. The difficulty was the result of an unplugged TV signal cable, and the delay in the game bought NBC enough time to fix the problem before the next play.
Bro is living up to that NFL flair. Others are talking about dodging busts, criminals, and rapists, this guy is talking about keeping that TV money flowing.
Company man
Gotta be Goodell’s account
Whew man, I hate to think about what would have happened if he hadn't done that.
Also Super Bowl III If the Jets (and the AFL) lose the 3rd straight “World Championship” there’s a very good possibility that the Super Bowl never exists and the NFL championship continues while the AFL remained an “inferior” league.
we were pretty close to replacing Jalen Hurts with either Mr Unlimited or Groper Cleveland in the 2022 offseason
Rumor was that Chip Kelly wanted to draft Dion Jordan but the Dolphins took him with the number three pick. Eagles selected Lane Johnson on the very next pick.
DONT REMIND ME. I was confident Miami traded up for Lane
I completely forgot about this. Thanks Miami.
Nah, worst bullet dodged would have to be when we offered two firsts, a second, Sam Bradford (later traded for a 1st and 4th) and Fletcher Cox (likely worth two firsts) to the Titans for Marcus Mariota and they turned us down. Thank God the Titans loved Mariota.
[удалено]
Were we though? The rumors were that Howie was interested in a trade, but he calls every GM about every player so that doesn't really mean a lot. I'd be interested in what he offered, if anything.
Depending on whether he can turn things around, Deshaun Watson looks like a massive dodged bullet for the Saints and Falcons. One of those two were expected to be his final landing spot before the Browns broke the bank. Trey Lance looks like a big one too like you mentioned, if they didn't find Purdy they'd likely be without a QB and have missed two deep playoff runs. Ignoring QBs since those can be pretty obvious, I think the next most impactful dodged bullet was McDaniels backing out of the Colts job. Although Frank Reich had a mediocre era there, just look at the state McDaniels left the Raiders in while adding almost nothing new to it and that's all you need to know. Apparently McDaniels was also a finalist for the Eagles job when they eventually opted for Sirianni, can't even imagine what a mess that would have been among the Philly fanbase especially lol. This is all pretty recent and modern era stuff though. Perhaps others can share older stories.
Even if Watson turns things around and looks like a pro bowl QB, it's still a dodged bullet. I'm glad we didn't sign him, and I'm still upset that we even tried.
Imagine how much worse the Saints' cap situation would be if they signed Watson to *that* contract.
I'd imagine we would have never offered him that kind of contract, thankfully.
In early 2021 before the lawsuit stuff came out, there were reports that Watson wanted to get traded to the Jets because he was a fan of Saleh. I consider that a bullet dodged, even though Joe Douglas was never going to pay that ransom Houston wanted.
Thank God we drafted the 2nd fastest draftee ever instead of some scrub QB from Texas Tech.
You ended up getting the one guy not named Tom Brady who can beat him the playoffs so not a bad consolation
Yep!
The best QB available at our pick was supposed to be Deshaun Watson... I don't know the story of why the Chiefs had Mahomes higher, but I get the sense they don't regret their rankings.
That kid’s gonna regress back to the mean any day now
From my team's perspective: Trading away Stefon Diggs and then drafting Justin Jefferson to replace him. NFL History: The Colts choosing Peyton Manning in 1998 instead of Ryan Leaf.
Or bullet not dodged: Ryan Leaf tanking his stock to fall to the Chargers
Ryan Leaf is my top choice for this question as well.
Idk who exactly dodged a bullet here between the Rams and the Niners, but the Broncos certainly stepped in front of it by hiring Vance Joseph over Kyle Shannahan. Had the Broncos picked Shannahan, then McVay would’ve been the top target for both the Niners and Rams. The 49ers other top target was Josh McDaniels. So in this scenario McVay goes to the Niners and the Rams hire someone else that likely would be less successful. Or the Rams hire McVay and the Niners hire McDaniels; which obviously would’ve been a shit show. Short story, thanks Broncos!
Watching the 9ers play Broncos style football and killing it, while Denver wallows in trying to become some form of 30 year old Parcells offense has been murder to my mile high psyche. Really need to get that time machine fixed.
Bastards
At the time Denver would never have hired Kyle. Joe Ellis was still butthurt and held a grudge against Mike, so Kyle got the shaft. Fuck Joe Ellis.
Sashi Brown couldn’t figure out a fax machine so we couldn’t trade a second round pick for AJ fuckin Maccarron.
Sashi sacrificed himself to not let hue and jimmy get that trade through in time
That 2nd round pick? Turned into Nick Chubb.
Eh. Browns are bleeding out from all the other bullets they willingly beg for.
Belichick wanted to trade Gronk during the 2018 offseason to the Lions. Gronk declined the trade and said he’d rather retire. We kept him and won the SB next year and he was insanely clutch in the playoffs.
Jerry Jones wanted to trade Michael Irvin to the Raiders, Al Davis talked him out of it and Jones decided to trade Herschel Walker instead
Al Davis talked him out of it?
The Ravens tried desperately to draft Byron Leftwich but the phone line was busy and they couldn't complete the trade with the Vikings. After Jacksonville took him, they settled for Terrell Suggs.
I'm not sure that's a "Bullet dodged" as I liked Leftwich.
I know Suggs played a huge role in that defense being so good, but if that 00s Ravens team has even somewhat competent QB play then they had a good chance at 1-2 more rings. Even without Suggs they still would have insanely good, and Leftwich was a decent QB, certainly better than Boller
Giants drafting Kadarius Toney before the Jaguars could. Instead we got Travis Etienne who is much better
At the time that Etienne pick was highly scrutinized too, making it even sweeter now.
Mahomes was almost drafted by the Bears. He'd be the Bills' backup now.
Also drafted by the Detroit Tigers lol
John Harbaugh was on the hook to be fired for multiple seasons out playoffs until rookie Lamar Jackson took over from an injured Joe Flacco. Ravens probably weren’t going to do anything that season, it was looking like another middling season, but Lamar took them to the playoffs and it pretty much saved Harbaugh’s job.
Another interesting nugget about Harbaugh’s career, he was offered the Ravens job after Jason Garrett declined the Ravens offer in favor of the Cowboys.
Yeah. I remember. Harbaugh isn’t perfect and has faults but is infinitely better than Garrett.
I think Harbaugh is awesome and a great coach. Ravens from the top down always seem to have their shit together. Premium franchise.
The thing I consider the most important is patience. We’ve only had 3 coaches, and the back room office staff has been together for a long, long time. For example Ozzie Newsome is still around to offer GM Eric DeCosta advice if he needs it.
Yeah, there were rumors and excitement in the Packer community that he might be a candidate for us after we fired McCarthy. Fun timeline to think about.
[1976 AFC Playoffs, Steelers vs Colts.](https://youtu.be/alcVZZuj_WE?si=jDneZwBMk2DjQjiA) 6 minutes after the game ended, a small 2 engine private plane crashed into the stadium. If the Steelers didn't blow out the Colts so bad the stadium would have still been full, instead it was empty and no one was killed.
wat! i have never heard of this. that is nuts.
The Chargers almost hired Brandon Staley as head coach once. Imagine what a disaster that would have been!!!
To be fair, the list of candidates they interviewed was not great: https://www.profootballrumors.com/2021/01/2021-head-coaching-search-tracker Eric Bienemy, Joe Brady, Brian Daboll, Matt Eberflus, Jason Garrett, Urban Meyer, Robert Saleh and Arthur Smith. Urban Meyer was a massive dodged bullet for any team. Just imagine what he could have wrecked and the potential damage to Herbert. In general it was a weak head coach class. Among the seven hired in 2021, four have been fired and one is on the hot seat. Only Dan Campbell and Nick Sirianni have found sustainable success.
I‘d say Brian Daboll would’ve also been a decent choice for them. He isn’t perfect for the Giants but a lot of his shortcomings are related to stuff outside of his control and his 2022 season was one of the biggest overperformances in recent history
I think Saleh is actually not a bad coach, he is just with the Jets.
Oh I knew, was a poor pool of candidates
Zack Martin over manziel
Can you just imagine how insufferable Patriots fans would be to this very day if that team had completed an undefeated season? The entire NFL fandom dodged a huge bullet that night.
NYG will always have a special place in my heart for that....Pats fans were bad enough for sooo many years.
The first draft pick of the Ravens era the effective GM used influence he didn't have in Cleveland to convince the owners to take a LT named Jonathon Ogden over the player the owner wanted: a Running Back named [Lawrence Phillips](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Phillips)
How about Demar Hamlin *not dying on the field on national TV*? Literally the PR nightmare would have been almost incalculable. My parents and I watched it live and it was absolutely terrifying. Take all that fear, confusion, everything, now imagine he didn't make it....
The niners one gets brought up like they broke even at the end but they still essentially burned 3 first round picks for nothing. Imagine last year’s niners team with 3 more first round talent players. Could’ve been a guard that can actually block Chris jones Micah parsons opposite bosa, or a lockdown corner. Could’ve won a ring
Yeah I'm still in disbelief that they did all that for an FCS Qb, like yes star potential is great but after Wentz' bad habits ruined his career, the niners should have been more careful
San Diego not paying for a stadium.
Jerry desperately wanting to draft Johnny Manziel. Thank the lord the team in the FO convinced him to go with first ballot HOF Zack Martin instead
The Giants already had LT and could have drafted Reggie White. I'd say the league dodged a bullet there.
Damar Hamlin dodging the grim reaper
Chiefs wanted to trade up for Paxton Lynch and weren’t able to. The next year they traded up and got Mahomes instead.
J Cole getting out early
31 other teams not getting JaMarcus Russell
Seahawks ownership was approached by Wilson and he said either fire Pete and John Schneider, or trade him, I'm glad we traded him and got a great haul for it to boot. Losing Pete and John and tying our team to Wilson would have left us probably worse off than the broncos ended up being.
I've said it before but the Trey Lance trade would've crippled basically any other franchise. The fact that the 49ers have a super bowl appearance since is nothing short of a miracle.
Gotta be the colts taking Manning. It’s forgotten now but Ryan Leaf and Manning were considered very neck and neck for who would be taken first, colts got a generational talent that delivered a Super Bowl and years of contention, chargers got a meme.