If Dak is as good as some here claim to be then 2 firsts is what we should be able to get somewhat easily. Funny how there are crickets after that...
The problem? Lining up his replacement gives him crazy-huge leverage.
Derek Carr's salary is about 20M this year. Dak's people threaten to sign the tag, giving us a $27M backup and ballooning our QB payroll this year up near $50M, and we're faced with the choice of letting him skate onto the open market without getting anything in return. The alternative is setting ourselves on fire financially for spite.
This is how Nick Foles got to walk right into free agency when his value was sky-high and the Eagles could've been able to get top picks for him. Because the threat of him signing the tag made it unthinkable to tag him at that point.
If we wanted to tag and trade Dak without him having the leverage to call our bluff and force his way directly into free agency, we'd have to do it without a replacement lined up.
Funny thing about all the people pretending their irrational hatred for Dak all this time was only about him not being good enough and not being able to get over the hump and win big. And pretending it was because Dak was too much of a bus-driver who plays it safe and nickels-and-dimes. And yet look how quick they all are to tell us to go get in bed with absolute proven losers like Carr and Keenum. Absolute nickel-and-dimer types with lower Yards per Attempt. Curious, that.
They throw all those football reasons out the window in a heartbeat so long as they can rid themselves of the guy they hate. It's almost as if the hate was inspired all along by some arbitrary, non-football, cosmetic trait about Dak that we can't quite put our finger on. Hmm. What an unsolvable puzzle that we'll never be able to get to the bottom of, right?