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Bruce Dowbiggin

The Secret To Landing Huge QB Contracts? Timing

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What is the reward for a quarterback who can’t get his team out of the wildcard round of the NFL playoffs? If you’re Miami QB Tua Tagovailoa the reward for failure will likely be a $250 million handshake over five years. While Travis Kelce walks off with Taylor Swift, Tua will walk off with a Brinks truck. How? And why does this have NFL executives petrified?

Tagovailoa has been a thing since his splashy college days at Alabama where he was anointed as the next great QB in the NFL. Losing teams were “tanking for Tua” in an attempt to draft him in 2020 when he left the Crimson Tide. In the end, the Miami Dolphins came away with what was purported to be the left-handed version of Joe Namath.

Unlike fellow 2020 draftees like QBs Joe Burrow, Jalen Hurts and Justin Herbert, Tua did not instantly light up the NFL. In his early years he was plagued by injuries and concussions so bad that there was talk he might even retire. But this year he stayed healthy and flourished early on in coach Mike McDaniel’s upbeat offence. When Tagovailoa and his speedy receivers Tyreek Hill and Jalen Waddle put up 70 points against Denver in Game 5 it seemed Miami was the team to beat for the Super Bowl.

But then injuries and defences caught up with the Dolphins. Once again, Tua faded down the stretch. From masters of their fate, the Fins gave up 56 points to Baltimore in Week 17 and then allowed Buffalo to beat them on their home field, losing the AFC East and home-field advantage to the Bills. Thus they were sentenced to the freezing -28 C windchill conditions in KC and a 26-7 spanking from Patrick Mahomes.

Despite being second in yards-per-throw while also ranking top five in yards-per-game and passing touchdowns since 2022, Tua is being branded as a disappointment in big games. Which couldn’t be worse news for the Dolphins. Having extended his contract into a fifth year in 2022, Miami must now decide whether to gamble it all on Tua improving or look for another QB who could get them over the hump.

Or pay the pitiless NFL Pay Piper nonetheless. In the modern NFL, the QB is king and thus must be paid as such. If you have a QB who might— might—be Super Bowl worthy you must pay the equivalent of the GDP of a small African nation. You are also whip-sawed by the certainty that the price for your QB will go up if you dither. Or else letting him go and trying to find another saviour in the unpredictable Draft lottery. In Tua’s case if he stays, that means anywhere from $225 (Hurts) to $275 million (Burrow) on the Miami salary cap with no hope of getting out from it if he stalls.

It’s the same dead end that faced the New York Giants last year where, after extending Daniel Jones’s contract through to the end of his rookie deal, they were forced to pay the unexciting Jones $160 million. Jones lasted six games this season before a season-ending injury. Ditto Washington which dithered on Kirk Cousins, paying him enormous amounts on one-year extensions then losing him to the Vikings in free agency.

While Miami contemplates either arsenic or strychnine in its Tua dilemma, they can look out and see a team that played the QB Casino perfectly. Houston’s C.J. Stroud— selected second in the 2023 Draft— lit up the Cleveland Browns in his first playoff game, looking every inch the Sure Thing NFL clubs crave.

As opposed to Tua, Stroud still has four more years at a very friendly rate. Throughout the four-year rookie contract, Stroud’s cap hit never goes above $11.5 million. That allows the improving Texans to spend on other players needed to win in the postseason.

The Chicago Bears wish. They have entered the extend-or-lose-him phase with fourth-year QB Justin Fields, who flashes some promise but also major warning signs. Do they sign him to the going $250 M rate or use the No. 1 pick in this year’s Draft (obtained from Carolina) on his replacement? Picking wrong will set back the Bears rebuild at least a couple of years.

The Bears are lucky by contrast with the Carolina Panthers who thought they’d answered their QB muddle by trading up, forgoing Stroud to take undersized Alabama QB Bryce Young first overall. His rookie year was a washout, with the Panthers winning just two games and coach Frank Reich fired midway. Critics who loved him at last April’s draft now think Young might be too small for the position, forcing Carolina to go through the whole QB gauntlet once again if, by next year, he is washing out.

Some teams try to add a young QB once they have the other pieces in place, hoping to find someone whom will fit into an existing template. The Detroit Lions are trying to make that equation work with Jared Goff. That was also the thought with Cousins in Minnesota. Just plug-and-play him into a veteran team and voila! Except it hasn’t worked. It rarely does.

Getting a QB to perform over his contract value means riding a young player like Stroud till he gets to the serious money. Then putting other key pieces in place around him. See: Mister Irrelevant Brock Purdy in San Fran where they were able to pay stars like Nick Bosa, DeeBo Samuel, Christian McCaffrey, George Kittle and Trent Williams because Purdy was costing so little.

Who knows which 2020 QB model will prove to be the template? Based on this past weekend it might just be the guy selected 26th overall who waited behind Aaron Rodgers. Packers QB Jordan Love made himself $500 K in humbling the Dallas Cowboys after a long apprenticeship. His affordability just might take the Packers to the Super Bowl.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his new book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

BRUCE DOWBIGGIN Award-winning Author and Broadcaster Bruce Dowbiggin's career is unmatched in Canada for its diversity and breadth of experience . He is currently the editor and publisher of Not The Public Broadcaster website and is also a contributor to SiriusXM Canada Talks. His new book Cap In Hand was released in the fall of 2018. Bruce's career has included successful stints in television, radio and print. A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada's top television sports broadcaster for his work with CBC-TV, Mr. Dowbiggin is also the best-selling author of "Money Players" (finalist for the 2004 National Business Book Award) and two new books-- Ice Storm: The Rise and Fall of the Greatest Vancouver Canucks Team Ever for Greystone Press and Grant Fuhr: Portrait of a Champion for Random House. His ground-breaking investigations into the life and times of Alan Eagleson led to his selection as the winner of the Gemini for Canada's top sportscaster in 1993 and again in 1996. This work earned him the reputation as one of Canada's top investigative journalists in any field. He was a featured columnist for the Calgary Herald (1998-2009) and the Globe & Mail (2009-2013) where his incisive style and wit on sports media and business won him many readers.

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Bruce Dowbiggin

Garbage In, Garbage Out: The Democrats 2024 Election Coup

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Been quite a month for political plot lines, no? Since Joe Biden went full Sling Blade in his debate with Donald Trump to a near-fatal assassination attempt on Trump in Pennsylvania to the Democratic Party staging a Covid-inspired coup against Biden. And now Ms. Montreal, Kamala Harris, being retro-fitted  into the Dems’ nominee against Trump while her media pals hastily erase her past.

You rarely get this much red meat from the people who run the American political system. Most of the time the public is encouraged to think that Aaron Sorkin’s version of politics on The West Wing is how it works. Earnest liberals gamely coping with venal right wingers and foreign potentates in airtight 60-minute chunks.

There have been occasional attempts to pierce the fog. Veep showed politics as Benny Hill farce, Wag The Dog showed Hollywood’s staging counter narratives. The Death of Stalin showed the totalitarian state managing leadership succession.

But thanks to mainstream news networks, American politics for the most part is shown as a horse race to the White House, one with show ponies, handicappers and media jockeys. That seems to be the way people wish to consume their constitutional republic. Show business for ugly people.

That’s likely why the naked bones of the process being shown so explicitly since June 27 has upset people. Like the making of sausage, the making of laws is a distasteful sight. Guts and tissue on a blood-stained abattoir floor are hard to un-see. The fainting-goat followers of The West Wing are upset that the man with his hand on the nuclear codes can’t zip his own fly anymore.

Gullible liberals, with their fondness for the Covid administrative state, are most upset with all this honesty. As we wrote in September of 2023 of this Gallup Poll “It shows that from 1972-2022 that GOP trust of media has plummeted from 41 percent to under 10 percent, while independents have gone from 53 percent to under 36 percent trust. IOW, their former favourite news sources don’t jive with their everyday reality.

But Democrats in the poll have vaulted from 64 percent to 76 percent in trust of media. Why? One reason probably lies with being told the narratives that please them. That give them comfort. These consumers allow legacy media’s fact checkers to sort out what they should know from “disinformation” without getting their hands dirty with the original story.”   IOW, give me The West Wing.

The previous occasion when political machinations were so stark was the Western cultural upheavals of 1967-74, when assassinations, race riots, civil disobedience and blatant political chicanery poisoned the culture. Faced with insurrection and Charles Manson’s flower-power insanity, the powers of the time abandoned politesse for bare-knuckled reality. Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy were dispatched to another realm, LBJ was told to go back to his Texas farm, and sources inside the FBI apparatus stabbed Richard Nixon after the greatest presidential win in U.S. history.

There was little subtlety. Chicago mayor Richard Daley saw to that in Grant Park. CBS reporter Dan Rather was gut punched on camera at the DNC convention for getting too close, and VP Spiro Agnew was canned in favour of the genial Gerald Ford, friend of the donor class and Warren Report booster. He and Jimmy Carter smoothed the anxieties of the urban middle class that went from protest to pacified. Martin Sheen über alles.

By the 1980s Ronald Reagan was crushing the Soviets, and Aaron Sorkin began his soothing epistles to the sanctity of the political process. Ted Turner’s birth of CNN cable news in the ‘80s codified the game. Guard rails were erected to keep news in its place. The true power brokers like donors and PACs were grated anonymity. Anyone defying the rules of the DC Media party— hello, Rush Limbaugh— was sent to the gulag of right-wing radio.

The emergence of brash NYC hotelier Donald Trump was first seen as fodder for the cable-news showbiz narrative. He’d be the sideshow carny to distract zombie voters from the coronation of Hillary Clinton. MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough thought he was money, constantly pimping for Trump on his morning show. What a laff riot he’d be.

Then Donald got too close to the untouchables. He discovered there were probably 50 million votes just lying there waiting for someone to pick up. Certainly not the bespoke DEMs. Or the Bush Republicans with their pals in the armaments and pharmaceutical lobbies. It was free money, and when has Don Trump ever left money on the table?

From the instant he started talking about borders, foreign wars and the Swamp he had a target posted on him. Because there is no treachery like class treachery the Swamp sought to destroy him in 2016. Chuck “Schemer” Schumer confirmed it: “Let me tell you: You take on the intelligence community — they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.”

WASHINGTON, DC – MAY 12: Sen. Charles Schumer (D-NY) holds a news conference following meetings between Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump and GOP congressional leadership at the U.S. Capitol May 12, 2016 in Washington, DC. The Senate Democrats pointed to policies they say that Trump and Republicans in Congress agree on and said they were both operating from the same textbook. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

When he punked Hillary in the voting they employed the FBI, CIA and Barack Obama’s machine in a coup attempt predicated on Russia. While it was a struggle, they managed to keep the real story from their MSNBC/ NYT devotees, who to this day, still recite the Russiagate tropes. To them it was a West Wing plot line in which their liberal friends would persevere.

For all that the game was in still peril. Then came Covid. The Left and Neo-Con Trump haters were able to orchestrate a quasi-election in 2020, replete with historic voting totals and hastily-assembled regulations— hello vote harvesting, unsupervised drop boxes— never seen before.

Aging longtime DEM loyalist Joe Biden “a blowhard senator, a bad guy, a fabulist, corrupt, and a preternatural liar who didn’t hold a single consistent principle in his career” was appointed as place holder till the Obamas and Nancy Pelosi could orchestrate a new Barack in 2024. It almost worked, until Biden’s debate meltdown against Trump advanced the agenda and threatened the donors.

As the world watched in amazement it was out with Joe and in with Kamala. They don’t care who knows. Between now and the election in November expect more Black Swan events to unsettle the public and advance the globalist agenda.

During that time, never forget that confusion and chaos are the calling cards of the Far Left. Far from being a problem, the head-spinning reinvention of normal is their goal. Don’t believe legacy media, they’re happy for this.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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Bruce Dowbiggin

The Buck Stops Nowhere: Biden / Trudeau & The Accountability Gap

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It’s unlikely Donald Trump will have time or energy for a post-presidential TV encore. But were he to do so at the age of 85 he might call it You’re Not Fired! In this take on his Apprentice franchise, Trump brings on governments officials and employees who’ve never been fired despair egregious mistakes, many costing lives.

They compete to see which one made the most gargantuan mistake without ever taking responsibility. Bonus points are awarded for players who can say things like  “The buck stops here” with the most cloying insincerity as they keep their job. At the end of the episode Trump declares to the winner, “You get to keep your job forever. Better yet, we are giving you a raise.”

It’ll be a smash hit. Certainly he can talk from firsthand experience about government service being the gift that keeps on giving. To its employees and contractors. This past weekend, for instance, a complete cock-up by the Secret Service nearly cost Trump his life in front of a worldwide TV audience. As snipers tried desperately to put down a shooter, Secret Service folks heroically draped themselves over the president’s body. (At least those tall enough to shield Trump from incoming fire.)

The term heroically is key here. While the sunglasses/ walkie-talkie dudes risked their lives in service of the president, their superiors safely back in a DC office were cravenly insisting that they’d do better next time. In an NBC interview, Biden appointee Kim Cheatle claimed the mantle of “the buck stops here.” She promised transparency in finding out why her department had failed so many basic tasks of the raid to almost getting Trump’s head blown off.

What she didn’t do was resign in shame for almost getting the former and likely future POTUS killed. Nor was she asked to resign by her boss at Homeland Security, Antonio Mayorcas. Ditto the Big Boss, Joe Biden. Even when DEI appointee and Jill Biden chum Cheatle tried out a shameless meme about the sniper’s rooftop being unsafe (too severe a slope), no one asked for the keys to her office.

She held tight to her pension even when it was revealed her squad knew the shooter was around hours before the shots that wounded Trump and killed at least one other. That Trump was allowed to take the stage when the sniper’s parents were desperately calling police to find him. That her claim of local police screwing up was debunked. That the crew was undermanned while a more experienced crew worked a Jill Biden function.

Look, this is not to conduct a review of the protocols flubbed and the roofs abandoned. This is about accountability. To say that there is no glory without honour. And from Biden on down, honour has been MIA throughout the years of affirmative hiring and official bungling. They claim glory, but it’s a shattered chalice.

As just one example, DHS head Mayorcas still gets a seat at Joe’s cabinet table despite the total breakdown of border security. So does Kamala Harris, who was named “czar” for border security. Transport secretary Pete Buttiegieg has overseen fatal bridge collapses, train derailments and transit shutdowns without connecting it to his administration of the department.

The same absence of responsibility has ruled in the decade of Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government in Canada. While his father earned (and then wasted) some honour by facing down rock-throwing separatists in 1968, Justin has been Brave Sir Robin, high-tailing it to the rear at the first sign he might be asked to show some stones.

While his media toadies downplayed Ol’ Yellow Stain at the time of the Truckers Convoy, most now acknowledge that had he emerged from under his desk at the Rideau Cottage in the early days to confront the protesters the disaster might have been averted. Instead, Skippy sent in the Ottawa Police and the Mounties to do his job, thereby converting a temporary problem into a historic assault on civil rights and the dignity of his office.

Whenever the coast was clear, Trudeau has predictably acted like a schoolyard bully to give himself gravitas. In addition to the Convoy, there was his draconian vaccine assault on the unconvinced, the cemetery pantomime leading to calling his nation genocidal at the UN, the imposition of the Carbon Tax and the honouring of a former Nazi in Parliament to silence his Ukraine critics. To impress his UN, EU and WEF pals he’s dissed Donald Trump at a distance, something that will now haunt him after November.

His cabinet and party quickly learned that they’d never be canned if they polished the PM’s apple. Most recently came the news that a cabinet minister had ordered the military to prioritize his fellow Sikhs in the frantic retreat from Afghanistan. Using the armed forces to protect your kin? Trudeau gave Harjit Singh Sajjat a pass because Harjit thinks (publicly at least) that the Boss is swell.

The Chinese cutouts in his caucus are likewise exempt from accountability, because Justin wants to be loved in Beijing. Why not? When he’s been repeatedly nailed on ethics violations or self-dealing he’s just gone la-la-la-la-la-la and moved on to new catastrophes. Or had a former Governor General whitewash his devious dealings.

In fact, the only way to get in trouble with Trudeau is to DO your job properly. Justice minister Jodi Wilson Raybould, a signature appointee as a woman and native, was canned by Trudeau for insisting the RCMP get to the bottom of a scandal from Quebec-based SNC Lavalin. Bill Morneau was edged out, because his view of a functioning economy didn’t include the top-down imposition of fantasist climate and gender diktats.

Both Biden and Trudeau drone on about restoring people’s faith in government without ever asking whether there are the problem. When your heart is pure, they say, your mission is noble. Now shut up.

Except Biden and later Trudeau are about to find out that their public is in no mood to shut up anymore.

Bruce Dowbiggin @dowbboy is the editor of Not The Public Broadcaster  A two-time winner of the Gemini Award as Canada’s top television sports broadcaster, he’s a regular contributor to Sirius XM Canada Talks Ch. 167. His new book Deal With It: The Trades That Stunned The NHL And Changed hockey is now available on Amazon. Inexact Science: The Six Most Compelling Draft Years In NHL History, his previous book with his son Evan, was voted the seventh-best professional hockey book of all time by bookauthority.org . His 2004 book Money Players was voted sixth best on the same list, and is available via brucedowbigginbooks.ca.

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