Free Agency Update: By the Pricking of Licht's Thumbs

Baker Mayfield this way comes! And so do running backs, lots of 'em, as we take a look back at a week of transactions, trades and tampering.

If you still think running backs matter in any substantial way, then this week was your Woodstock.

The Eagles signed Saquon Barkley. He replaced D’Andre Swift, who signed with the Bears. The Giants replaced Barkley with Devin Singletary. The Texans replaced Singletary by trading for Joe Mixon, who was available because the Bengals signed Zack Moss. The Colts don’t need to replace Moss because they extended Jonathan Taylor last year, for better or worse.

The Ravens signed Derrick Henry, whom the Titans replaced with Tony Pollard. Henry replaces Gus Edwards, who signed with the Chargers to replace Austin Ekeler, who signed with the Commanders to replace Antonio Gibson, who signed with the Patriots.

The Packers swapped out Aaron Jones for Josh Jacobs. The Vikings, who released Alexander Mattison before the start of the tampering period, snatched up Jones in a move that drove both fanbases into a tizzy. The Packers/Jones situation got a little messy at the end, with reports that the Packers demanded a substantial pay cut. The Mixon/Moss/Bengals situation also included some melodrama.

Jones ended up signing with the Vikings for about what the Packers wanted him to accept. Pride dictates that it’s better to get cut and take a reduced salary elsewhere than accept a cut to stay at your current job. Pride can sometimes be a little stupid. 

So many running backs on the move! What a group grope! What a boon for web traffic: these moves will keep the fantasy media busy for months, and the Saquon aftershocks (tampering charges!) are still being felt along the I-95 corridor. Oh, and what a jumbo bag of potato chips’ worth of empty calories for anyone trying to analyze the NFL from a wins/losses/Super Bowls standpoint.

Barkley was arguably the best rusher to change addresses. He’s going to one of the teams with the best odds to reach the Super Bowl among the ones mentioned above. He also signed one of the biggest contracts, though three years at $37 million is a fitting salary for a journeyman guard these days. (The Giants signed guard Jon Runyan for three years at $30 million with their leftover Barkley Bucks; the Rams signed Kevin Dotson for a reported three years/$48 million and Jonah Jackson for even more). Barkley is a delicious part of a nutritious Eagles free agent breakfast headlined by Bryce Huff and C.J. Gardner-Johnson. He’s not the Fruit Loops (that would be DeVante Parker), but he’s not the grapefruit or nonfat yogurt, either.

Colleagues analyzing the Barkley signing were quick to point out that the Giants had one of the worst offensive lines in the NFL, while the Eagles have one of the best. I mentioned that too on Monday, but I meant it differently. Saying Barkley could rush for 1,400 yards in Philly simply because of the offensive line and scheme is tacitly admitting that Singletary, Pollard or Moss could rush for about 1,300 yards for the same reasons. I don’t think the 100 yards are worth the financial investment, especially when bundled with the risk that Barkley misses three games and is limited by injury in four-to-fourteen others. 

If Barkley rushes for, say, 1,100 yards in 2024, adding 300 or so receiving yards, then the Eagles will have erred by signing him, though I don’t think it would be perceived that way. The Eagles line and other playmakers should raise the expectations for Barkley, not make it easy to forecast big fantasy production. And yes, I am oversimplifying by equating yardage with “impact,” but it’s best to paint in broad strokes when discussing the NFL before the start of the NCAA tournament.

Derrick Henry is the other huge-name running back to sign with a legitimate contender. Henry and Lamar Jackson sound like fun. They would sound like more fun if this were 2019.

Henry is an upgrade over Edwards (who was never supposed to be the Ravens featured back in the first place) in the same way that Barkley is an upgrade over Swift. He is also 30 years old and just led the NFL in carries for the fourth time in five years. The Ravens almost certainly plan to use Henry as a committee chairman and a short-yardage back. I get the impression that role will equate to about 900 rushing yards and a dozen touchdowns: in other words, Edwards’ 2023 production.

Barkley and Henry represent incremental improvements. Such improvements can be valuable for playoff teams. But if you try to figure out what the Moss/Mixon swap means for the Bengals or the Mixon/Singletary shuffle means for the Texans you will end up sounding like Dark Helmet: absolutely nothing.

At least nobody, not even the Eagles, is truly overpaying for a running back anymore. Jonathan Taylor’s extension cost the Colts $26.5 million guaranteed last year. Barkley’s guarantee is just $26 million. Jacobs’s four-year, $48-million deal contains just $12.5 million in guarantees. Signing a veteran running back these days is a minor splurge with limited risk.

A Moneyball extremist might insist that a third-round pick could replicate the production of a Jacobs/Mixon/Swift/Singletary for far cheaper. Moneyball extremists, however, are vulnerable to their own set of fallacies: not every mid-round rusher is a potential 1,000-yard rusher waiting for the right circumstances. Also, forgive coaches for wanting someone in the backfield with experience as a receiver, pass protector, big-game competitor, etc. 

It’s notable that the Cowboys, of all teams, avoided this week’s running back key party. At presstime, Deuce Vaughn, who is built like Puck from Alpha Flight and averaged 1.7 yards per rush as a rookie, is at the top of their depth chart. Maybe Jerrah plans to bring Ezekiel Elliott back or sign Clyde Edwards-Helaire. If so, he can probably get either or both at around the veteran minimum. No matter what the Cowboys do, it appears that even they figured out that running backs are highly replaceable.

The value-conscious Eagles coveting running backs? The freewheeling Cowboys ignoring them? Is there a market correction at work? Has Howie Roseman concluded that the pendulum has swung so far that running backs are now under-valued? 

I’ll believe it when I see it: in the standings, not on the transaction wire or fantasy draft boards.

Prick Love for Pricking

Maybe it’s a matter of semantics, but I would much rather have a quarterback who’s a sunuvab***h than a prick.

A prick, as I have come to understand such individuals over the decades, is either a devious backstabber (a giant prick) or a mealy-mouthed irritant (a little prick). A sunuvab***h, by definition, has that dawg in him. When you’re messin’ with one, you are in trouble. 

I apologize for the profanity and gender-coded slurs doubling as compliments, but Jason Licht started it. The Buccaneers GM called Baker Mayfield a “10 on the prick scale,” when announcing the quarterback’s re-signing. 

Licht meant it in a good way. “That’s what you want in your offensive linemen. Baker is kind of an offensive lineman in a quarterback’s body. It’s what has rallied this team this year. He’s a big part of it.”

With all respect to Licht, no one wants to be protected by pricks or surrounded by pricks. What Licht is describing is a brewpub near Wall Street after the closing bell, not a championship-caliber locker room.

Licht probably wanted to say “d**k” but opted for “prick,” for the same reason I use asterisks for one and not the other. A boss who’s a d**k orders you to work late, but he does so to your face, so you are more likely to grudgingly comply. A boss who’s a prick sends out an office email asking everyone to work late, then goes home early but orders Dwight Schrute to take names of anyone who doesn’t work late, then passes those folks over for advancement without telling them what they did wrong.

A boss who’s a sunuvab***h steps up behind your desk with a Louisville Slugger and says, “you’re working late.” Then works late with you. Then takes you out for shots afterward. Then leaves you face down in the parking lot.

There is also the a**hole option, which at least is non-gender specific. A**hole can have a positive leadership connotation, albeit a rather specialized one. How many times have you heard someone in the workplace volunteer to “be the a**hole” who tells a co-worker criticism that they don’t want to hear?

Machiavelli himself said that a great leader needs to be an a**hole, and he took a whole darn book to say it. But a**hole is only marginally less inappropriate than d**k, and Licht chose to keep his press conference PG rated. Oh, and I already quoted Dark Helmet once in this feature. 

Badass may have been the word Licht was searching for. The ass in badass is clearly a determined, stubborn, reliable mule. If someone called you a 10 on the badass scale, you would know you were being praised and what you were being praised for. Buccaneers media team: I’m available for press-conference punch-ups. 

So, apparently, is Mike Florio of Pro Football Talk. Florio took Licht’s remarks as an opportunity to gush a little overenthusiastically about Mayfield’s pricklyness. 

It’s part of a natural charisma that has been honed and focused through maturity. When he was younger, there were times when that 10 of 10 on the “prick” meter created issues. Now that he has matured, it’s a gift that makes him a true and effective leader.

Mayfield could get a squirrel to attack an elephant. And the squirrel would believe it can win. And I wouldn’t bet against that squirrel.

That’s what Mayfield brings to the table. Everyone but the Buccaneers missed it last year, when Mayfield signed a one-year, bargain-basement deal with the Bucs. Everyone missed it again this year, when no one else made the kind of offer that Mayfield wouldn’t have refused.

E.L. James could not have written a more enlightening scouting report. Florio’s Mayfield fluffing in the paragraphs above goes beyond genuine admiration or access currying all the way to the poetry a vestal virgin might chant at an ancient fertility festival. Gosh, how did nitwits like, um, Sean McVay fail to notice the HONED NATURAL CHARISMA that allowed Mayfield to lead a bunch of veterans with Super Bowl rings to a 9-8 record in the Sun Belt Conference?

In fairness to both Florio and Mayfield, lots of young pricks grow into outstanding leaders. They usually do so, however, by maturing out of prickishness, not further into it.

The problem here is etymological. Prick comes from old English pricca: “a sharp point, puncture; minute mark made by sticking or piercing; particle, very small portion of space or time.” Pricca comes from a Germanic word for a tiny hole or dot. By Middle English prikka, it’s a pin, fastener or insect stinger.

The prick later grew into a cattle prod, and by Shakespeare’s plays it made the predictable leap into the male britches, but it retained its pointy-and-diminutive meaning for Macbeth’s witches and Shylock, then shrunk back to its original size in modern everyday and slang usage. We still get pricked by a pin, but few lovers yearn to be pinned by a … Sorry, I read a few too many Shakespearean double-entendres while researching this. Do not reprehend. If you pardon, we will mend.

By the pricking of their thumbs/A public domain image this way comes.

In short, it’s difficult to turn “prick” into a male compliment, even if you increase it by an order of magnitude. It’s like calling someone an S-tier peckerwood.

We’re stuck speaking a language full of phallic and gender-degrading insults while talking/writing about a sport played by the manliest of men. It’s hard to find praise appropriate to a football player’s driven character that isn’t either naughty-to-offensive or bland-to-meaningless yet also somewhat offensive (what makes a leader of men different from a mere leader?) When searching for a word that praises a leader of any gender who is more focused on being respected and effective than cheerful and likable, we get stuck repurposing insults, and those insults aim squarely for the private parts. 

Whatever the language, it’s great to see the NFL establishment validate Mayfield verbally/professionally/financially. Everyone deserves a chance to outgrow their youthful reputation as a little such-’n’-such. 

Finally, Licht’s “prick scale” comment marks an important moment in history: an exec finally admitted that the NFL is just a glorified weenie-measuring contest. We always knew it, and it’s about time someone said it. The prick scale probably exists as a real document. Bill Polian probably kept it next to the old draft trade value chart in his war room. 

And if Mayfield is a 10 on the prick scale, Dan Campbell must be a 10,000,000,000, which equates to a 1 on the Campbell Scale.

Thanks for sticking with me all week. Too Deep Zone returns on Monday!