Make Up Your Mind!
July 19th, 2017
Good contract.
Joe is relishing this chance to unload on a stat geek.
One thing Joe has learned in the past couple of years is that a good number of these clowns who spew more numbers than a calculator — and can’t type a sentence without somehow using a friggin’ number forced into a phrase somewhere — are really thin-skinned little girls.
Just try remotely questioning their junk science and the first thing they do? They block you on Twitter!
Joe encourages all the numbers crunchers to block him on Twitter. Makes life a helluva lot less frustrating, Joe will tell you that for sure. That way their feces doesn’t litter Joe’s timeline.
(To be clear, Joe doesn’t hate all of them. Some are rather enlightening. The ones who grind Joe’s gears are the ones who will try to act like they are smarter than everyone else and when questioned to explain their numbers, the only defense they muster is “That’s what the numbers say.” Joe learned in high school anyone can twist numbers to support any premise.)
That brings Joe to follicly challenged Bill Barnwell of BSPN. He’s one of those thin-skinned types that blocked Joe long ago (No, Joe doesn’t attack the stat freaks on Twitter. Joe guesses they don’t like to get exposed so their only defense is to block on Twitter, not that it ever stops someone from reading their Twitters). Hey Bill, if your numbers were so insightful, how come you aren’t working for an NFL team? Pretty sure they pay better than BSPN.
Anyway, Barnwell decided to list the 25 most bloated NFL contracts and he has Bucs stud defensive tackle Gerald McCoy’s contract at No. 21. But in explaining GMC’s contract, it reads like much more of a defense of GMC’s contract than anything else.
There are six defensive tackles in the NFL who make far more than the rest of the league’s interior linemen and crash this list. McCoy got paid first, signing his deal in October 2014, when the former third overall pick was nearly two seasons away from requiring a franchise tag, let alone hitting unrestricted free agency. The Bucs structured McCoy’s old CBA rookie deal with a small sixth year, which always made it likely McCoy would negotiate a new contract before that final season, but McCoy has the smallest contract of the big six because he took his money first.
Well, we all know (at least, rational Bucs fans) GMC is no worse than the third-best defensive tackle in the NFL. So if GMC is the sixth-highest paid tackle, wouldn’t it stand to reason the Bucs are getting a bargain?
Good players set the market. Always have. Always will. Salaries for star players do not decrease. What may be expensive today is a bargain in a couple of years (enter, GMC).
And it’s not like the Bucs are being choked on the salary cap with GMC’s contract. Per Spotrac.com, the Bucs have some $22 million in cap space. Next year, if the Bucs chose to do so, they could opt out of GMC’s contract at only a penalty of $500,000 per Spotrac.com.
This doesn’t seem like a horrible contract in any way. Not sure what Billy Boy is trying to suggest here. Funny that once he steps out of the realm of trafficking in numbers, Billy’s focus seems all over the map.
What are you going to do now Billy? Can’t block Joe any more on Twitter. What, you are going to block Joe on Instagram? Joe wouldn’t follow you on Instagram if he was offered cash. Why would Joe stare at your bald dome with thousands of scantily-clad babes to gawk at?
July 19th, 2017 at 9:21 am
Just another pencil -necked. living in mom’s basement, never played a sport in their life geek. GMC is going to have a bodacious season this year, and the geek will still be a geek !
July 19th, 2017 at 9:33 am
I read this yesterday. I was going to share it with you on Twitter but I thought it was a garbage article not worth your time.
Agreed. It was a poorly written article to say the least. Confusing and it went all over the place. The one thing he did manage to get right is that GMC is a bargain and not overpaid despite what the mouth breathers round here think.
July 19th, 2017 at 9:39 am
There is a talentless hack by the name of Benjamin Allbright, works for BSPN and “his numbers” lead him to believe that Freeman>Winston.
Some attitude with this guy, you disagree with him he attacks you and “threatens” to block you. What else can you expect from that horrible network, they are losing money hand over fist so they can only afford nobodies like Allbright and Barnwell.
July 19th, 2017 at 9:50 am
1Gr8Buc:
Saw that last night. Unreal.
July 19th, 2017 at 10:00 am
This wasn’t an opinion piece. He was looking at money in the first 3 years of the deal vs the average for the position since the new CBA was signed.
July 19th, 2017 at 10:03 am
I am hoping for a breakout year for GMC this year, now that we got him some real help on the D Line.
He has faced constant double teams nearly the whole time he has been in Tampa.
July 19th, 2017 at 10:38 am
holymoly13 Says:
July 19th, 2017 at 9:21 am
Just another pencil -necked. living in mom’s basement, never played a sport in their life geek.
Help me out here. Are you talking about Bill Barnwell, JBF, or sports fans in general?
July 19th, 2017 at 10:45 am
Have the haters really watched GMC play a full game? I have tickets ten rows up behind the Bucs bench. One game last season GMC came off the field winching in pain with a shoulder injury. He took one series off. The next set of downs, he had two tackles and a sack. Not bad for a guy with a bad wing. Will be interesting to see how he does now that he will have a bit more help.
July 19th, 2017 at 10:55 am
Speaking for Pablo
“Pablo bets that the stat nerds would deduce that every person would have uno teta & uno cajones”
July 19th, 2017 at 11:19 am
@1gr8buc: I saw that also. It was unreal. The guy came off as a major d bag.
July 19th, 2017 at 11:57 am
Get em
July 19th, 2017 at 12:48 pm
Joe – since you brought up “scantily-clad babes to gawk at”.
Isn’t it high time you stopped depriving your readership of said jiggly women and bring back the Morning Cup of Joe?
July 19th, 2017 at 1:06 pm
I watched the 2016 game 1 Bucs-Falcons game last night.
GMC played well and WAS absolutely a difference maker. Had 2 big stuffs of plays behind the LOS along with a sack and was also pressuring Ryan well on the final 4th down play of the game for the win.
One of the backfield tackles was beautiful because he split the attempted double team so quickly (got sideways and just slithered through really fast after the snap) they were both just left standing there watching their man blow up the running back who barely got the exchange tucked away.
GMC is a good player and there’s just really no way to dispute that and still maintain any credibility.
July 19th, 2017 at 1:43 pm
“GMC is a good player and there’s just really no way to dispute that and still maintain any credibility.”
Yeah, I mean even if you rank him according to his contract (6th), it’s still well worth it. Not to mention that it’s the market that dictates salary, not the fans. GMC is worth every penny!
July 19th, 2017 at 1:52 pm
Joe… I feel like you’re pandering to a “certain” crowd. The stat geeks are not ALL wrong just because you point out one mistake of one thing one guys says. That’s not how it works. Especially considering ALL the times the “eye-test” scouts have gotten SO MANY things wrong.
There is a science to everything. Things don’t “just happen”. These stat guys are over time refining efficiency and what really matters.
These stats guys revolutionized baseball. I never heard of OBP and WAR and all these other acronyms when I watched a lot of baseball in the 90s. Theo Epstein has proven TWICE against impenetrable curses that stats and metrics matter. Our own Rays were able to compete against the big boys when they took the lead in looking at metrics.
Football is in its infant stage of using metrics and there will be major mistakes until it’s refined. But it will be refined and we will start seeing how we view who is a great player change because of it over time.
July 19th, 2017 at 1:53 pm
Terrible worthless analysis. There is a reason those DTs get paid WAY more than the next best salaries. It’s because they are WAY better.
Tyrone Crawford / Dontari Poe / Nick Fairley all making close to $10 mill and are not 1/2 the player of a Kawaan Short / Fletcher Cox / Gerald McCoy / etc
July 19th, 2017 at 5:24 pm
Benjamin Albright is another “Tom Jones” too. Needs to get a Big MFN stick up his arse
July 19th, 2017 at 5:49 pm
Sadly when there are only one or two excellent players on a team their excellence can get lost in the malaise of losing.
Sapp is HOF…give him his props…he was a GREAT player…but he DID play on a great TEAM….wonder how many sacks were facilitated by a strong back seven that features one HOFer already and two more on the borderline.
This is GMC’s year!!! Finally some help on the DL for him and I’m hoping our back seven is getting close to the glory SB D…no Lynch yet…not sure the rules will allow us to play one anyway…I do believe that VHG compares favorably to Ronde and of course he’s waaaay ahead of Ronde at this point in his career.
Hopefully he can keep up the pace because obviously Ronde blew up and became great not just good.
July 19th, 2017 at 8:38 pm
Think Joe made that clear.
But every GM worth his salt (including those who confess to being stat-guys) will tell you, at the end of the day, you go by the tape.
Example: Joe had a GM tell him at the combine three years ago that every form of analytics he had access to suggested Khalil Mack would be a total bust. However, the GM said everything on film told him this guy was a total beast.
The stat nerds Joe detests are the ones that believe their information is absolute and you cannot question their math. Yet these guys not only don’t have access to significantly more detailed stats that NFL teams use, they can’t get a job with an NFL team.
The stat guys Joe respects (Football Outsiders is an example) use reason and common sense along with standard football knowledge research to come to their conclusions and will even question their own findings.
July 19th, 2017 at 9:29 pm
1 thing I learn from Raheem and that I will always be thankful for is that stats are for losers. I live and die by that law and it’s proven true.
Sadly, ppl still put a number behind a players name to prove to others if they are good or not.
Winston doesn’t get love because of his STATS which imo winston is one of the best young players in nfl. No stat in world can prove otherwise.
DM avg 2.9 yrds a game but his impact was of that of 10 yards a pop guy in the opposing defenses minds who was going against him. Eye test