NFL Notes:

• The Chargers are cutting Travis Benjamin.
  • In order to stay with the team last year, he agreed to a pay cut & a team void option for 2020.
    • He responded by playing in only five games and caught only six passes for 30 yards.

• Two Monday Night Football rumours to mull:
  • The game may move back to ABC; and
  • If so, ESPN would like to hire Peyton Manning.

• In cap-space news, the Jags have traded AJ Bouye to the Broncos for a 4th-round pick in the 2020 draft.
  • Bouye carried a cap number of $15.4 million in 2020, and with the Jaguars owning just $21.4 million in projected cap space before accounting for Ngakoue’s impending tag number, it was time to create some room on Jacksonville’s books.
    • It made better sense than cutting him, which would have only saved $11 million & given the Jags a $4 million dead-cap hit.
      • This way they dumped his whole salary & will get a young player via the draft to replace him.
  • Guy-who-forced-his-way-out Jalen Ramsey responded thusly:

Free all my dawgs lol

— Jalen Ramsey (@jalenramsey) March 3, 2020

• More cap news: A hilarious side effect of Tom Brady possibly hitting free agency – a dead-cap charge.  
  • If he isn’t a Patriot by the start of the new league year, all his future cap hits become one consolidated package the Patriots have to absorb against this year.
    • That amount? $13.5 million.
    • The Patriots are projected to have a total of $41.6 million in cap space, according to overthecap.com, so they can easily absorb the hit, but it’s still funny to think that all those home-team discounts he gave them will still pinch their books a bit in divorce.
      • A discount overthecap measures at $29 million versus the only peer they could measure against – Peyton Manning.
  • FYI – the Dolphins, Colts & Bills currently have over $80 million in space, leading the league.
    • The Vikings & Steelers have the least room, with only $1.5 million available.

In doing my due diligence above for the Tom Brady piece, I observed that the Cowboys, in lieu of signing Dak Prescott & Amari Cooper to long-term deals, have $78 million in cap space available for 2020. Now, the Cowboys have said they’d like to negotiate a deal, but are also not adverse to using a tag for one of the two in the interim.

For the 2020 season, the cost of the franchise tag is $26.895 million for a QB, and $18,491 million for a WR. If you consider Prescott the more valuable of the two,

here’s what you could buy for that $26.895 million:

• 6,774,559 DAK Fully Cooked Premium Hams (16 oz Can) from Walmart.com.
• 455,847 “massages” at the Orchids of Asia Day Spa.
• 64,046 10-vial packages of Ricky Williams’ “Real Wellness Herbal” Optimize Hemp Tonic
• 1494 series of bets on NFL games, based on the total amount Paul Hornung is “alleged” to have bet between 1959-61.
  • With plenty left over for Alex Karras to use, given he only ever bet $600 total.
• 336 Lake Minnetonka “excursions” with the 2005 Minnesota Vikings.
  • With an extra 5000 Fred Smoot autographed rookie cards thrown in instead of change.
• 107 League fines for Ray Lewis for “obstruction of justice” from some incident in Atlanta in 2000.
• 67 Ben Roethlisberger “alleged” lawsuit settlements.
• 3 Michael Vick “bankruptcy reorganizations“.

As you can see, there’s a lot of value out there, should they choose to move on from Dak and to a high-round draft pick.

Tonight’s sports:

• NHL: (all Canadian games are regional broadcasts)
  • Bruins at Lightning – 7:30PM | NBCSN / Sportsnet
• NBA:
  • 76ers at Lakers – 7:00PM | TNT
  • Raptors at Suns – 9:00PM| Sportsnet1
• NCAA:
  • Michigan State at Penn State – 7:00PM | ESPN
  • Syracuse at Boston College – 7:00PM | ESPN2
  • Marquette at DePaul – 8:00PM | FS1
  • Tennessee at Kentucky – 9:00PM | ESPN
  • Texas at Oklahoma – 9:00PM | ESPN2
  • West By God Virginia at Iowa State – 9:00PM | ESPNU

Of course, tonight is “Super Tuesday”,

where the internecine cleavages in the Democratic Party will be laid bare by a trio of septuagenarians looking to take on the Republican’s own orange-lacquered septuagenarian, all chosen by people far-less interesting than Blaxabbath. In case anyone wondered what happened to American hegemony, here you go.